And something else, an odour that is familiar to him, maddeningly familiar, just different somehow.
He follows this scent along the huge open floor of the metal wreckage. Just coming here has sentenced him to death amongst his own people. There is no going back for him. And then, there they are.
The guild sleds, like giant tracked slugs, quiet and still.
They are parked in rows over an area bigger than the Janua Foris. Instinctively, Ponch rolls behind cover, his movements echoing round the empty hangar. He knows only too well what those stubby nozzles at the front of the sleds can do. He was an idiot to come here, what the hell was he doing listening to that stupid woman? His life was fine until she arrived. After all her words, he is going to end up shot to pieces by the sled operators.
He realises he is grasping the little idol of Janua, still round his neck on a string. The two-faced god, he who sees before and after. ‘Protect me,’ Ponch whispers, even as he accepts that as he has trespassed into the god’s own house he can hardly expect the protection he’s asking for.
Ponch lies there, behind this broken machine thing, for a long, long time. It’s nice. It’s safe.
He has heard nothing from the sleds, nothing at all. A trick? Perhaps, but he can’t sit here for ever, can he? He has to find the answers and this is as good a place as any to begin.
That odour drifts into his nostrils again. What is it? Like an itch, it just sits there, working away at him in a place he can’t reach.
So familiar, yet also so... so strange.
He risks a peep over the machine. The guild sleds are still there, just as he left them. Their skin is smooth, completely sealed, like big kidney beans. The thought makes him chuckle, until he realises the seriousness of the situation and calms himself.
The nozzles on the fronts of the sleds still protrude, but they’re not twisting and waving like they do outside, hunting for prey. The sleds are empty, he decides. They have to be.
Perhaps this is his chance to get past them.
He remembers the way they roll over the fur bundles left for them by his people. The way the bundles disappear. He can’t see any visible doors, so how do the operators get inside?
There must be some kind of hatchway underneath, between the runners and the tracks. As Ponch squints he calculates there is probably just enough room for him to fit under a sled. Might as well try it, better than waiting here for them to start up.
He does so. Moving, sneaking as quietly as he can, Ponch darts to the leading guild sled. He slides himself under its bulk, trying to control the rather sensible instinct to run away as fast as he can.
He shuffles underneath on his back, arms over his head, probing. There is a large metal hole leading into the sled. He grips with his fingers and pulls himself to it.
Awkwardly, and banging his head on more than one occasion, he manages to sit up, into the hole, then stand. A couple of steps up and he is inside.
Artificial lights flicker into life. Ponch flinches, expecting an assault of some kind, but it doesn’t come. Instead, the interior of a guild sled is revealed to him. He is in a bare metal box, with a small opening leading to what appears to be a cramped compartment. There are no seats, just large boxes that Ponch guesses are a control system.
No one drives the sleds. They drive themselves.
How can this be? It cannot be true. Ponch is stunned by the revelation. What does that mean? Where are the operators? There is nothing in here but dormant machinery and the lingering smell of furs. There is never anything but machinery and furs in here.
Furs. The smell of furs, that is the odour he couldn’t place.
It was just so concentrated, so rich, as if, as if... and already Ponch suspects what he is going to find.
He drops back out of the sled and slides his way to the rear of the machine. Then he is up and running, almost feverishly, towards the odour of leathered skins that envelops him as he races in the dark.
The ground gives way and his heart stops in its tracks as he plummets. Some kind of smooth metal chute steers him faster and faster towards the smell which becomes too strong, making him retch.
Ponch tries to grip the sides of chute but they are worn smooth with age. He yells in fright, scrabbling to escape the descent.
At last, the chute ends and he flies through the air, spinning and spiralling, his axe dropping from his hand. He hits something soft and the breath is knocked out of him.
Ponch lies there for a while in the dark, bathed in the overpowering, all-encompassing stench. Is this it? He wonders. Is this everything my life is worth?
He sits up. As he knew he would, he can see nothing but hides and skins and furs, thousands upon thousands of them, stretching out as far as he can see, the precious collections of generations of his people moulding and rotting through the years.
Ponch looks down on them. What to make of it? What to make of all this wasted work?
There isn’t any guild, any operators, any Janua. There is nothing but empty ritual and wasted lives.
He looks up at the twinkling chutes over his head and bellows with laughter. ‘I understand! I understand everything!’
He knows why he understands, why he feels that the final events in the palace of the Old Ones are so true to him. Why there is no other possible ending. Of course. He is such an idiot, such a child; anyone else with half a brain would have guessed it ages ago.
The story, Miranda Pelham’s story, is real because it happened. He knows because he was there.
Ponch stays throughout the long, cruel winter. He uses the time to explore the remains of the citadel. What its function may once have been, he never discovers.
The only event, the only change in all the time he is here, occurs early, at the end of the autumn. Night is coming in as he stands on the battlements. The sun is a giant orange eye, sinking over the valley, sending down a shadow that is longer and longer every day. On this particular evening, he hears a multitude of clattering coughs from inside the hangar, the noisy coming to life of the guild sleds. It must be the time of the Gathering. One by one they snake out of the hangar and into the darkening valley. A line of metal beetles, on their way to their annual, mindless collection.
A week later they are back. Ponch has prepared a hiding place for himself inside their nest and watches as they drop the useless furs down the chutes, where they will rot.
A year’s back-breaking labour, all he has ever known. In this life.
He wonders how many they killed for coming in below quota this time.
There is food to be found within this silent, dead space: strange metal canisters that he hacks open. Also insects and beetles and, once, a large black bird that somehow made its unlucky way to him.
Ponch doesn’t mind the loneliness, the cold, the hunger.
This life is a dream and it is time to wake. He is waiting for spring.
Look both ways, that’s the creed of Janua, and he knows that this is what he must do.
When the snow has melted sufficiently and the orange eye peeps its way over the mountains again, he prepares a small pack of provisions and leaves the citadel behind.
The inn is still standing, though he knows it will be deserted.
He walks through last year’s township; its smoking ruins are charcoal bones. No bodies, no remains of any kind that will be of use to him.
Only the Janua Foris stands intact. Not so much an inn as a shrine to the trappers’ life. A life Ponch is heartily sick of.
He tries to remember the poetry he must once have written, but recalls not one single word. Just a story, that’s all.
Inside the Janua Foris, a light is spilling through the gloom from one unfamiliar door in the wall. He had asked himself a thousand times how Pelham had got herself here, but all the time he was thinking of boots and sleds and snow. He should have realised she would have no need for these things.
He walks through the shining door.
The warmth is uncomfortable; he is alread
y sweating, so he hauls off his outer layers. He won’t need them any more.
The room is impossibly large. He had walked around the whole inn in the past and seen no evidence of its existence, so he must already have travelled somewhere beyond the Janua Foris.
The white walls are decorated with hangings and a vast shelf of books, nearly obscuring the roundels behind them. A gently humming block of metal, plastic and glass sits snugly in the room’s centre.
Ponch inspects the room with wonder, seeing doors that reveal corridors branching away eternally. Candles flicker and a... a... what is it called?... a clock ticks.
‘You made it then,’ comes a woman’s voice.
Ponch turns, almost panicked. It has been so long since he has heard another’s voice that it seems like a shout in his ears.
She is sitting in a rocking chair, a book in her lap. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. Gave me a chance to catch up with some reading. Stories.’
Open-mouthed, Ponch points at the woman. She is young, beautiful, with dark eyes and clear ebony skin. ‘Are you Miranda Pelham?’ he asks, haltingly.
She smiles and shakes her head. ‘Sorry about that. All that confusion. No. Not Miranda Pelham.’
‘But you showed me the picture, you had a book.’
‘I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again, no doubt. She was such a lovely-looking woman.’
So many miracles, so many of these dreams, he doesn’t know where to begin. ‘You’re the old woman who told me the story, you’ve got the same – I don’t know – the same something. How... ?’ he stumbles, ‘how did you get so young again? I saw you die.’
The woman stands. She picks up a jug of water from the table in front of her, pours a glass and offers it to Ponch. ‘My dear,’ she replies, amused with herself. ‘You of all people should know about the disposal of dead skins.’
Ponch takes the glass, unfamiliar with the niceties of such behaviour. He drains it greedily. ‘You came back for me,’ he realises. ‘That’s what this was all for.’
‘I said I would and I did. I always keep my word.’
‘And the Doctor?’
She laughs and looks up at the high ceiling. ‘The Doctor?
You do surprise me. I don’t know; that’s the answer to that.
Haven’t seen him for years, centuries even. I suppose he’s out there somewhere, getting himself into trouble. He never really liked having companions foisted upon him, you know. I prefer my method, much more thorough. Don’t you think?’
Ponch shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’
The woman walks elegantly to the complicated machine in the middle of the room and commences pushing buttons and pulling levers. The glass column within begins to rise and fall, with an odd, faraway juddering sound.
‘It’s time to go,’ she says.
Behind Ponch, the door to the Janua Foris shuts. The cold wind of his home is cut off abruptly. ‘Look both ways,’ says the woman.
The ground rocks and Ponch has to keep his balance. ‘I don’t know what... I don’t know what’s real any more,’ he says. ‘Is this a story too?’
The woman winks. ‘Let’s find out.’
Document Outline
Front Cover
Back Cover
Part One Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Part Two Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
The Tomb of Valdemar Page 26