Nocturne

by Louise Cooper

  “Forth, no.” Indigo held out a hand to bar his path, though he’d shown no sign of moving. “It’s a phantom!”

  Forth’s throat muscles worked, and he swallowed. “I … know.”

  The woman was smiling, fondly and just a little admonishingly, as though her indulgence were being tried. Forth stared fixedly back at her, then his throat spasmed again.

  “My mother’s dead. That isn’t her, it can’t be her.” A great shudder ran through him, breaking the paralysis. “Make it disappear, Indigo. Please—banish it!”

  Indigo shook her head. “I … don’t think I can.” She glanced at him in trepidation. “It’s been drawn from your mind, just as the Brown Walker was drawn from mine. I can’t will it away.”

  The phantom figure tilted her head to one side, and her lips made a moue of mock consternation. Indigo’s flesh chilled as instinct told her that the apparition—and therefore its creator—had heard their exchange. Then, the figure raised her arms and held them out.

  “Eh now, Forth. Come to your Mam. Come and be comforted.”

  “No!” Forth’s scream ripped through the stifling gloom, and with one hand he flung off Indigo’s restraining arm, while the other snatched his knife from its sheath at his belt. The blade flashed murderously—and Forth took off like a hare, running at the arch and the smiling phantasm with the knife raise to kill.

  “Forth, come back!” Indigo staggered, flailed, regained her balance and ran after him as he careered towards the gap in the wall. The apparition uttered a screech of unhuman laughter, spun about with dervish speed and flicked away into the darkness, and Forth, still yelling, charged through the arch in pursuit.

  “Forth!” Premonition struck, and Indigo shrieked a desperate warning. Forth paid no heed; he was a blur in the dimness and she willed her muscles to a last, frantic effort to reach him before—

  She slammed with a tremendous impact face-first into the solid cliff of a blank stone wall.

  •CHAPTER•XIII•

  Indigo swore a soft but heartfelt oath, pressing her face against the wall’s rough surface and shutting her eyes for a few moments while her pounding heart slowed to something akin to its normal rate. Her calves and biceps felt as though they were on fire; she was out of condition, out of practice, and the burden of the pack, harp, and crossbow on her back made matters worse. But the grim effort was almost over: looking up, she saw the sky’s pewter grey above the denser charcoal of stone, and knew she was close to the top of the wall.

  She’d come to, spreadeagled in the grass at the wall’s foot. Putting her hand up to her stinging face and feeling the grazes on her nose and forehead, she’d reflected bitterly that though the rough stonework might be as illusory as anything else in this world, her collision with it had been all too real. But there seemed to be no other damage; no concussion and no bruising.

  At last, shakily, Indigo stood up, and began to consider her new and urgent dilemma.

  The arch had vanished. Where it had been was only a blank stone face, and she knew immediately that to search for any trace of a gap would be futile. The wall’s fabric had shifted at the same instant that Forth ran under the keystone, and now they were separated by a solid barrier.

  Later, when she had shouted his name until her throat was sore and rasping, she realized that the effort had been futile from the start. There could be no answer: for whatever lay beyond the wall was also beyond her reach. The show-master had changed the nature of his performance without warning, and his puppets were suddenly dancing to a new tune. She and Forth were separated by more than stone and mortar: they were a world apart.

  Calm, she had told herself then. Calm. Think. But the willpower that might have crumbled the barrier wasn’t there; she was too angry, and the bile and adrenalin of her anger bound her to mundane means. The demon had skilfully and systematically separated her from her allies one by one, finally to leave her alone and vulnerable. Very well. Very well. What she couldn’t achieve with the strength of her mind, she would achieve with the strength of her body.

  And so the climb had begun. As she set her foot into a tight crevice and hauled herself up the first vital armslength, Indigo had heard the trees and bushes in the garden behind her begin to agitate, and smiled thinly. Yes, she said silently in her mind. Warn your master, if it pleases you. It will do him no good!

  And, because she had willed it, the footholds and the handholds had been there, precarious and unstable but enough none the less to take her like a slow and awkward human parody of a crawling insect up the face of the wall. Now, she had only another few feet to go.

  Indigo clenched her teeth against her muscles’ weary aching, and thrust her protesting body up to the next hold. She poised, feeling her sinews burn: then another push, another wrenching effort, and with a gasped, ferocious oath she scissored herself in a convulsive movement to sit astride the top of the wall.

  For a few moments breathlessness and relief combined to lock her, both physically and mentally, into a world of throbbing red exhaustion. At last the sensation began to fade, and she exhaled a long gust of pent air. She’d done it. Unfit though she might be, the old skills had come back to her and she’d achieved her goal. Now, somewhere on the far side of the height she’d scaled, was not only Forth but Esty too; and the key—she felt it, she was certain of it—to the fate of Stead and Chari.

  She opened her eyes and looked down at what lay beyond the wall.

  And saw nothing but darkness.

  “Forth?” She called his name tentatively, and listened for any answering sound from the black well below her. Her voice fell peculiarly flat, as though she’d spoken into a vacuum, and no reply came back from the dark.

  “Forth! Forth, where are you?”

  Nothing. Indigo looked speculatively at the wall’s surface. It was rough enough to provide reasonable purchase; but she could see no more than a few feet down before the darkness encroached like a black lake, and was loth to take the risk of lowering herself into the unknown.

  Shifting to improve her straddled balance, she untied the lantern from where she’d lashed it to the pack, and took out her tinderbox. The knack of defeating this world’s resistance to fire was familiar to her now, and she was gratified when the candle stub caught and flared at the first attempt, slashing yellow light in a ragged circle.

  Indigo leaned as far as she dared from the wall and held the lantern at arm’s length. Its light bit into the blackness, illuminating perhaps another five feet of the stonework, but that was all; it told her nothing of any value. Muttering a curse, she fished in the pack for a length of rope, tied the lantern to it and began to pay it out, lowering the lamp down the side of the wall. The circle of brilliance danced crazily as the lantern bumped against the stone, and Indigo counted the rope by the armslength: ten, twelve, fifteen—then she jerked the lantern to a halt as the light glimmered on grass below.

  Grim satisfaction filled her, and visions of bottomless pits vanished. Quickly she lashed the pack and harp to the rope’s free end and lowered them after the lantern: when the rope went slack she slipped one arm through the remaining loop and, with nothing but the crossbow on her back to encumber her, began to climb down.

  It was a perilous and nerve-racking descent, trickier even than the upward climb. But at last her feet touched ground and, relieved, Indigo straightened and looked around her.

  The illumination from the lantern didn’t extend very far, but it was enough to show her that she was in another garden. Here, though, the grass and the shrubs were neglected and overgrown; rank weeds pushed up through the lawn, and on the brink of the circle of light she could see a sullen tangle of vegetation encroaching on the long grass. Picking up the lantern and holding it high, she glimpsed the shadowy bulk of trees, black trunks encircled by heavily-leafed boughs that arched almost to the ground. It confirmed a suspicion already taking shape in her mind: that this was a distorted mirror image of the garden on the other side of the wall. Twilight deepened to pitch d
arkness, rankness and ruin where before there had been peaceful if gloomy order—another veil had parted, and she was closer to the heart of the demon’s web.

  Indigo lowered the lantern, and turned her back to the wall. If the mirror image held true, then somewhere ahead of her there would be another gate, reflecting the one by which she and Forth had entered this garden’s twin. And beyond that? Better, perhaps, not to speculate as yet, but to walk on and see what awaited her.

  She bent to heave the heavy pack on to her shoulders once more—then stopped, nerves crawling, as something moved in the overgrown shrubbery close by.

  For a rackingly long moment there was total stillness and silence as Indigo stared into the dark. She hadn’t imagined it: the sound of dead leaves rustling under an incautious foot was too familiar for her to mistake. But there was no telltale swaying of a branch or untoward shifting of foliage. Whoever—or whatever—lurked unseen among the bushes knew that she’d heard its approach, and had frozen, waiting to see what she would do.

  Very slowly she reached for the lantern again, and as her hand touched it, a twig snapped just beyond the circle of light.

  Indigo’s heart lurched so violently that she felt it might punch up from her breast into her throat, and—it was madness, but the reaction was instinctive and she couldn’t stop it—she snapped out, “Who is it? Who’s there?”

  A whole section of a tall bush dipped and parted, and a tremulous voice said, “Indigo … ?”

  “Esty!” The pendulum swung back from terror to astounded relief, and it was all Indigo could do not to give way to near-hysterical laughter. Caught in the lamplight, Esty ‘s face as she emerged from the shrubbery was a study in wide-eyed astonishment; with leaves in her hair and a long smear of dirt down one cheek she looked incongruous and comical amid the garden’s dereliction.

  “Oh, Indigo!” Esty scrambled clear of the entangling vegetation, and for a moment stood motionless, trembling, as though she dared not believe what she saw. Then suddenly she launched herself forward, ran to Indigo and flung her arms tightly around her, hugging her with all the strength she possessed. “Oh, Indigo, you don’t know how thankful I am to have found you!”

  “I’ve been so stupid.” Esty wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve and sniffed loudly. “I’ll never to be able to forgive myself for what I did. Never!”

  Her story had been brief and unpleasant. It seemed she remembered little of what had happened when she slipped away from the camp; she’d been aware only of a powerful and imperative longing that blotted out all reason. Like Chalila, whose role she had once played, the demon lover had been calling her and she had run blindly in pursuit—but unlike Chalila, Esty’s tale hadn’t had a happy ending. She had found herself, without knowing how she arrived there, outside the wrought-iron gate, which had swung open to admit her to the garden. And in the garden, the white-faced man with the dark and sorrowful eyes had been waiting for her.

  “He looked so beautiful,” she told Indigo. “And I knew he was so lonely, and that only I could comfort him. He held out his arms to me, and I ran towards him, and …” She covered her face with her hands as the memory brought a fresh flood of shame. “And then suddenly I heard a dreadful laugh, and everything changed, and he was gone, and I was here, alone in the dark. Only everything had changed, and I couldn’t find my way back to the other garden. Oh, Indigo, it’s been so awful! I thought I was going to go completely mad!“

  Esty didn’t know how long she had wandered, alone and frightened with the spell cast on her shattered, through the rank, silent garden. The first appearance of Indigo’s light at the top of the wall had terrified her, and she had hidden among the bushes, certain that some new horror was about to be unleashed on her. Even when the lantern illuminated Indigo’s figure, Esty had feared that she might be yet another phantom, and only when Indigo, equally afraid, had called out her challenge did the girl realize that she was flesh and blood, and not an image sent to delude her.

  Indigo’s relief at having found Esty unharmed was greater than she could express; but it was tempered by deepening concern for Forth. She’d told Esty of what had befallen them and how they had become separated, and tried to convince the girl that she couldn’t hold herself to blame. Any one of them might as easily have fallen prey to the deception; Esty had simply been unlucky in that she was the chosen victim. Esty was only a little comforted by her words; whatever the rights and wrongs, she said, she was responsible for their predicament. And if anything should now happen to Forth, she added fiercely, it would be her fault, and she would kill herself.

  Indigo had to smile behind her hand at this, thankful to see that Esty’s flamboyant spirit—not to mention her sense of melodrama—hadn’t been affected by her ordeal.

  “That would be a great loss to us all,” she said, struggling to keep the amusement from her voice. “But seriously, Esty; we’re faced with a great problem. Forth could be anywhere— I don’t even know what lies beyond this spot, let alone where to start searching.”

  “Ah, but I do.” Esty’s eyes gleamed eagerly. “You see, just before I saw your lantern, I was trying to find another way out, and I found a gate.”

  “A gate?”

  “Yes. Exactly like the one that led me into the other garden, except that it was set into an arch in a wall.”

  A gate within an arch … it must be a signpost, Indigo thought. And if Forth, too, had come upon it, he would surely have gone through.

  Eagerly, she asked, “Can you find it again?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “Then let’s not delay any longer!” She gathered up her harp, bow and the waterskins; Esty took the pack, and pointed into the dark.

  “If we walk along the line of the bushes, we’ll come to a clump of trees. It’s very overgrown, but there’s a way through, and the gate’s just a short way beyond.” Her hand reached out and squeezed Indigo’s fingers, seeking reassurance. “Do you think we’ll find him … ?”

  “Yes,” Indigo told her firmly, and silenced a small, inner voice that asked: and what else … ?

  As soon as she saw the barred gate under its stone arch, Indigo knew that her surmise had been right. The resemblance both to the original gate and to the arch through which Forth had vanished was blatantly obvious: a clear gauntlet thrown down before them.

  Esty said: “I don’t know what’s in there. I looked, but I couldn’t see a thing, and I was too scared to open the gate.”

  Indigo held up the lantern and peered through. As far as she could judge, the vista beyond the gate was much the same as this; a lightless and unpleasant tangle of weed and grass and shrub. She lowered the lamp again, and tried the latch. It lifted, and the gate swung back on silent hinges.

  They looked at each other. “You first,” Esty said uneasily.

  Indigo walked slowly under the arch. She heard the latch clank faintly behind them as Esty followed her and closed the gate; then hesitated as she felt a change in the ground underfoot, and looked down.

  She was standing on a carpet of sodden, mouldering leaves. Scabrous patches of fungi, moisture glimmering among them, thrust through the slimy litter, and a smell of decay made her nostrils wrinkle. Somewhere, she thought she could hear the sound of water dripping sluggishly.

  “Esty, come and look at this.” She moved the lantern from side to side, then stopped again as her eye lit on what looked like the small, nodding bells of a fritillary growing up through the mould. The lovely and familiar bloom seemed grotesquely out of place, and she bent to pluck one of the flower-stems. It trembled in her hand, and she wondered fleetingly whether this was some cryptic sign, what its true nature might be—

  The flower collapsed, and Indigo found herself holding a decayed stem of something unrecognizable, so rotten that it was all but liquefied.

  Revolted, she swore aloud and flung the black mess away. It fell soundlessly among the sodden undergrowth, and she shook her hand fastidiously. “Did you see what happened?” she said to Est
y. “It was—Esty?”

  Silence greeted her. Esty wasn’t there.

  “Oh, by the Goddess …” Indigo’s pulse quickened to an erratic lurch. “Esty! Where are you?”

  There was no answer, and unease began to swell into deep fear. “Esty!” Indigo called again. “In the Mother’s name, answer me! Where are you?”

  A voice behind her, sepulchral, redolent with decay, said: “Esty isn’t here, Indigo. But we are.”

  And a white, leprous hand reached out of the dark to clamp her wrist.

  Indigo shrieked, and the lantern went flying, arcing to fall with a rustling thud among the leaves. The candle instantly went out, and Indigo jerked her arm free, stumbling wildly as she tried to turn and face her unknown assailant. Blackness surrounded her like a solid wall; accustomed to the lamplight, she could see nothing, and for a terrible moment felt as though the entire dimension were folding in to crush her.

  Then, from no more than two paces in front of her, someone laughed.

  It was one of the most evil and yet most dismal sounds Indigo had ever heard; a hollow parody of mirth, without meaning and without reason. Her teeth began to chatter; she staggered back a step, and forced her voice to life.

  “Wh … who are you?”

  A chorus of soft laughter broke out, seeming to echo from all around her. It died away into a long, dolorous sigh. Then:

  “Don’t you know us, Indigo? Have you already forgotten us?”

  She knew that voice. It was changed, as though it came from beyond the grave, but she knew it. And now as her vision gradually adjusted she could see a dim form shifting in the blackness, moving towards her. The mouldering leaves made a soft, wet sound as feet—many feet, encircling her she realized in horror— shuffled them aside, and then out of the murk, deathly white, his eyes as blank and mindless as the eyes of a dead fish, his skin melting and sagging and decaying on his bones, loomed the face of Steadfast Brabazon.