by Rob Scott
Steven had helped Lahp – probably saved his life – so the Seron had followed him through the Blackstones, shadowing him until the grettan attack. When Steven left his friends in the forest to search for Hannah, Lahp had moved ahead as well.
‘I want to wait here,’ Steven said, more a request than a command. ‘I believe they are coming this way.’ There was no response, so he tried again. ‘Maybe just for a day or two.’
He expected Lahp to argue with him and was surprised when the Seron merely nodded in agreement.
Warm, well-fed – the grettan was surprisingly tasty once he’d overcome his initial reluctance – and comfortable, Steven let his head fall back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes. Slowly, he tried to bend his leg, to lift it from where Lahp had it wrapped so thickly in the coarse blankets. After a few moments, he felt it respond. It would not be long before he was walking again.
Always do a little less than you know you can and in the end you will go much further. Steven planned on sticking to the runner’s rule; tomorrow he would bend the leg all the way, maybe even try to stand, but tonight, he would bundle up near the fire, tuck his embarrassed tail between his legs and hope for an opportunity to beg forgiveness from his friends.
He saw the hickory staff, leaning against a tree. He had no idea how he had managed to kill the grettan. ‘Maybe I’ll pick that up again tomorrow as well,’ he said. ‘Hold on, Hannah, we’re coming.’
The patch of grey moved back and forth across the darkness, a thin film superimposed over an obsidian night. Curious: for no light existed here, only cold and darkness.
And then cold began to give way, little by little. His legs were empty vessels, his torso a shell, his arms hollow, and all cold, cold as ice, cold as the breath of the Fimbulwinter, cold as Death … but his arms were growing warm and his chest moved in a ragged breath. Still cold, though … he could not see, except for the grey patch that moved across his field of vision, but where there is no light, there is no sight.
No grey should exist here, but there it was again, and there should be no warmth in this bitter chill, but the impossible warmth intensified as the cold dissipated. He was growing warmer, from the inside out. His empty legs filled, flesh and bone encroaching on the empty space, stinging as the frigid cold was pushed out from bone and sinew and flesh.
His torso next, as air filled the shell, and arms close behind as his body took shape and substance.
He was warm, warmer than he could ever remember being, and still the grey patch floated just out of reach, out along the edge of his vision.
Mark Jenkins woke with a cry. Night had fallen. He closed his eyes again, expecting to open them to inky darkness, but there was the dim grey patch. Not hallucination, but real, almost tangible, a shade lighter than the night, it floated there. Mark felt around himself. He still wore his pack and was sitting against the pine tree he had chosen. This was supposed to have been the perfect place to die, but he appeared to be alive. He needed to take stock.
He was buried almost to the chest in freshly fallen snow. Wrapping an arm around the tree, he hefted himself to his feet and brushed snow from his clothes.
But there was something amiss.
‘I should be dead,’ he said, staring into the night. ‘I might have been dead. Might still be dead. Oh God!’ He thought he heard someone approaching and snapped to silent attention, but after several seconds he decided he was alone. All he could hear was the softly falling snow, the creak of weighted branches and his own frantic breathing.
‘How did I get so warm?’ he asked aloud, then added, ‘This can’t be right. It must be something—’ He turned in a circle, his eyes straining to search the forest as he called, ‘Gilmour, are you out there?’ He brushed the snow from his pack and mused, ‘It must be him. He must have found me and cast some kind of spell down here … unless—’ He thought for a moment, then slowly, as if afraid of what he might see, Mark closed his eyes. There it was, a light grey patch of colour, brighter with his eyes closed than open. What was it? Should he keep his eyes closed – or open his mind? That was it!
‘Open your mind, Mark,’ he commanded. ‘This will make sense if you open your mind.’ He remembered falling asleep once at the wheel; as his car drifted he had heard a voice crying to him as if from across a summer hayfield. It had saved his life that night. Now Mark was strangely convinced that if he relaxed and listened carefully, he would be able to hear Gilmour, for it had to be Gilmour who sent the life-saving warmth that had awakened him from what would otherwise have been eternal sleep.
He sat back down on the rock awkwardly. His clothes, frozen solid, made a cracking sound as he bent over, but still he felt warm and comfortable, not cold at all. ‘Open your mind, Mark,’ he said again. ‘Close your eyes and open your mind.’ He shut his eyes tightly and watched the grey patch move slowly across his field of view.
‘What is this?’ he asked of no one, then allowed the question to linger in his consciousness. What is this? he thought. Who is doing this to me? Gilmour?
There had been an awareness, that night on the Long Island Expressway, something in his mind that understood, regardless of the fact that he was asleep, that he was making a mistake. That was the voice that had called to him from so far away; Mark searched for that voice again now. He knew it was there; he trusted it – the difficulty was being able to give away control of his thoughts.
The grey patch held the answers. Focus on the grey patch. It ought not to be here when I close my eyes, yet it remains.
Then he heard it, faint, like the breathing of a sleeping child, whispering, ‘Mark Jenkins, you must hurry along.’
‘Gilmour? Where are you?’ Mark imagined himself on a journey inside his own mind, searching for this voice.
It came again. ‘Not Gilmour. I used to be called Gabriel. I am called nothing now.’
‘O’Reilly?’ Mark focused his attention on the voice. ‘Gabriel O’Reilly? Where are you? How are you doing this?’
‘I am here. Inside you. I am warming you. You were nearly dead.’
‘Right.’ Mark was dumbfounded. The wraith had somehow worked its way inside his body. He remembered their encounter in the forest, when it had spoken to Steven and battled briefly with Sallax. It had entered both their bodies in a matter of seconds; now it was dwelling inside his frame?
‘How are you keeping me so warm?’ he thought to himself, wondering if the wraith could still hear him.
‘I am a creature of energy now. It is not difficult for me to provide you with this, maybe much more. Nerak took my soul many years ago. I have been tortured without mercy for an eternity. But now I have escaped, and I offer my meagre powers in your struggle against the dark prince.’
‘How did you … get away?’
‘You freed me, Mark Jenkins, when you fell through the far portal. I had drifted, blind and mindless, for uncounted ages. Perhaps I drifted near the seam through which you fell; perhaps it was that same seam that carried my body, my stolen body, through the Fold with Nerak in tow those many years ago. I was lucky. Thousands like me are still trapped there in the Fold. They wait as slaves for Nerak to command them.’
Mark listened intently as the wraith continued, ‘It was many days before I regained control of my own thoughts, but once I did, I came looking for you and Steven Taylor.’
Mark suddenly remembered his friend; he wondered how he could have forgotten him. ‘Where is Steven?’
‘He is far below, in the valley.’
‘Is he still alive?’
‘Yes,’ O’Reilly replied, ‘he is badly injured, but the Seron is nursing him back to health.’
‘Seron?’ Mark instinctively felt at his belt for the battle-axe. ‘How many are there? The tracks I followed were made by just one person.’
‘That is correct. Only one Seron cares for your friend.’
‘But that doesn’t make sense. I thought they hunted in packs, killing wildly and eating the bodies of their enemies—’ Mark ran
a hand across his forehead and thought for a moment. ‘No, there was that one we helped back on the southern slopes near Seer’s Peak. Is that the one? He named himself—’ Again Mark broke off as he tried to recall the conversation.
‘Steven saved it – him. Maybe that’s why … Yes, that must be it. Thank you, Gabriel, for saving my life. Now I have to go.’ He bent down to reclaim his pack.
‘I will accompany you,’ said the ghost. ‘You will need me.’
Drawing a deep, cleansing breath, Mark asked, ‘Out there or … in here?’
‘I must remain in here, Mark Jenkins. Your newfound strength is only because of me. Were I to depart now, you would collapse.’
Mark was uncomfortable with the idea of a dead man’s soul inhabiting his body. The few moments it took to revive him was one thing – although he was deeply grateful to the wraith for saving his life, he wasn’t sure he wanted to prolong the relationship. His mind wandered for a second, picturing a multitude of embarrassing memories and experiences he wouldn’t necessarily want to share.
‘Do not be afraid.’ The spirit’s hollow voice rang in his mind. ‘I have already seen everything you have ever seen and I know everything you have ever known.’
‘Well, shit,’ Mark muttered, then reminded himself that what was important right now was finding Steven. He resigned himself to Gabriel’s continued presence.
‘Okay, then,’ he said, thinking he needed to formally agree. ‘I suppose you ought to stick around in there. I can use the company, anyway.’ He started back on the trail that led down through the pines blanketing the mountain’s north face.
Now that was settled, he allowed his thoughts to turn to the rest of the group, and Brynne in particular.
‘Do you know where my other companions are right now?’ he asked out loud.
‘I do not. But one of them is a traitor to your cause.’
Mark, shocked, had to fight the immediate urge to stop and interrogate the ghost further. Instead, he would have to learn as much as possible from the former manager of the Bank of Idaho Springs while making his way rapidly towards the valley floor. And first, he had to get more comfortable with the idea of carrying a dead man around inside himself. He had always considered himself an agnostic, although more out of a fundamental lack of interest than any real question of faith. Communicating with a man who had been dead for more than a hundred and thirty years called everything he believed into question.
The spirit had detected Mark’s religious dilemma. ‘I agree. It makes us doubt our faith. I was a dutiful Catholic, a Union soldier, a hard-working businessman.’ Gabriel’s hollow voice was unnerving; though it lacked human resonance, it still sounded like the fatigued reflections of anyone grappling with a misplaced faith. ‘My only goal was to ascend to a Christian Heaven, as I assumed so many of my fellow soldiers did after Bull Run.’ There was a brief pause; Mark thought he should offer some condolence to the spirit, but then O’Reilly continued, ‘I will fight Nerak to his destruction, or be enslaved by him and his evil master for all time.’
Mark was suddenly angry. He wasn’t sure if it were his anger, or Gabriel’s, but it was welling up inside him and at that moment he ignored the fact that he was no fighter; he was ready to battle the dark prince hand-to-hand if necessary.
‘You’re right, Gabriel,’ he said as he clenched his teeth together. He felt his shoulders tense with the desire to go to war, to vanquish the enemy and return safely home. ‘And I don’t know if you can, but I want you to come back with us … back to Idaho Springs. Maybe there you can find the peace you deserve.’
‘I will try, Mark Jenkins.’
‘But first, we have to kill Prince Malagon.’
‘You will find no dissent in my mind, Mark Jenkins.’
The threatened storm arrived mid-morning, careening between the sullen peaks like a frozen tidal wave. There was no place to hide on the exposed mountainside. Neither Garec nor Brynne spoke as the winds howled about them; there was nothing to say. Like Mark, they knew they had to continue moving or they would die.
Sallax spoke periodically, but not about the storm, or their route over the pass. He sounded unconcerned as he chatted aimlessly about friends and old times back home in Estrad. Brynne could not hear much of what her brother was saying, but she was getting increasingly concerned at his apparent complacency about their situation. Did he not realise how serious this was?
Even though she bowed her head forward into the wind, she felt the sting of thousands of fast-moving snowflakes pelting her forehead and cheeks. Like tiny needles, the flakes ravaged her flesh until the cold took over and a forgiving numbness set in.
All the while, Sallax prattled on as if his will to live, lost for days, had returned in a rush, like the very storm through which he sauntered so gaily. Brynne heard his voice through the wind, a resonant bass line beneath the screaming soprano bearing down on her from the north. Periodically, she could make out fragments of what he said.
‘Capina, remember her?’ The storm interrupted him for a while, but he didn’t appear to stop. ‘—had a backside on her that must have been created by a god.’
Brynne, trying to catch up with Garec, slipped on the ice. No one appeared to notice. ‘Garec,’ she called, despairing, ‘Garec, something’s wrong with him.’ She heard no response; Garec, almost shapeless under his cloak, continued trudging ever upwards towards the narrow break just below the mountain’s peak.
Brynne squinted into the blinding snow, but she could see nothing beyond Garec. The rocky peak above had disappeared long ago and the ground beneath her feet extended to blend with the ice-white sky in an endless expanse of nothingness.
‘We will be here for ever,’ she whispered to herself. ‘There can be no path through this.’
Sallax’s voice came again from behind, ‘—always did favour Garec … remember her, Garec? Drank too much beer, though, thought you’d marry her … for no other reason than to be around that backside every day … glorious backside—’
Brynne felt her resolve begin to wane. She found solid footing for a moment, on what she guessed was a snow-covered boulder, and she wondered if she should stay there. Even her thoughts were interrupted by desultory static, she mused, difficult to decipher over the noisy winter around her.
Sure footing, a place to sit down later. Ahead there is nothing, an endless white void and behind there is Sallax, my brother, and his madness. Please, gods, let it be a passing illness. Who would know of a cure? Sallax would. We would turn to him were it anyone else.
Suddenly Sallax was there with her, lifting her up by her armpits. When had she sat down?
‘Come on Brynne,’ he shouted, ‘I’m sure there are safer places for you to sit out this storm.’ His eyes stared down at her, through her, and his mouth hung open slightly, the inane visage of a bewildered halfwit.
‘Right, okay, I’m fine,’ she answered with a groan and climbed to her feet.
‘Do you remember the name of that wine we had at Mika’s last Twinmoon?’
She reached out and touched her brother’s face. He was grinning at her, his eyes alight with enthusiasm. ‘Sallax, what’s wrong with you?’ she asked.
‘It was grand. Don’t you recall?’ He looked into the distance. ‘Gods, but that was a good one. Of course, Mika is dead now. But we had it with those venison steaks Garec brought from home … where is Garec?’
‘He’s just up ahead,’ Brynne said in a comforting tone as she rested her head against Sallax’s chest. She felt her breath catch in her throat; she didn’t want to cry again today. She had no idea what had happened to her brother, nor what to do to help him. And as Sallax carried on about wine and women, she kept getting flashes of memory: Gilmour’s lifeless body catching fire among the pine boughs in his funeral pyre. Brynne’s world shrank to a point. A little rip in Sallax’s cloak caught her eye and she studied it, learning its imperfections, watching as the frayed strands of wool blew back and forth together in the cold wind. Her breath cas
caded over Sallax’s chest and she blew gently on the fabric wound to watch the threads fight back against the storm.
Then Garec was with them, bearing a coil of rope he’d unearthed from his pack.
‘Garec,’ Sallax called jovially, ‘d’you remember Capina?’
Garec blinked, but replied, ‘Of course – how could I forget her?’
‘She was built like a brick alehouse, though, wasn’t she?’
Garec gripped his old friend by the shoulder and grinned. ‘You should have seen her naked, Sallax. Break your heart to see that girl naked.’
‘I knew it, you dog rutter!’ Sallax, apparently thrilled with Garec’s confession, laughed out loud. He appeared to be completely unaware that the Blackstone Mountains were trying once again to kill them.
All the while Garec was indulging Sallax’s madness, he worked with the rope, one end of which he tied to Sallax’s belt. He ran out a length of some three feet and looped a hitch around Brynne’s belt, then did the same for himself.
‘This way none of us will get lost in the blizzard,’ he shouted to Brynne. ‘We need to keep moving, to keep together. We’re near the top of the pass now. We’ll deal with Sallax once we’re safe, but for now, we need to get out of here.’
As Brynne smiled waveringly, he came back and hugged her. ‘It will be okay, Brynne. You’re the strongest, bravest woman I have ever met.’ He rubbed his hands briskly up and down along her back. ‘This storm will kill me ten times before it even begins to dent you.’
‘I’m afraid, Garec.’
‘So am I,’ he said as he pushed her hair back and pulled the hood of her cloak firmly over her head. ‘I don’t know what will happen when we find the others, and I don’t know how we’ll get to Malakasia, but I do know that we’re not going to die on this gods-forsaken mountain, not today.
‘I’ve seen you get angry, Brynne. It’s your strongest survival skill.’ He looked down at her feet, invisible in the snow. ‘It’s all right if you get angry today. Get mean with this storm and you’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll try,’ she muttered, still fighting back tears.