by Fahy, James
“They won’t come into the light,” Woad said. “Will they? Bright and shiny’s no good for slimy monsters.”
“They will if they have to,” Karya said darkly. “We have to get out of here, and quick.”
“I’m guessing,” Robin said, “… that this over here would be the way out then.”
Beyond the pools, amidst the translucent stalactites, stood two vast stone doors, placed side by side. Both doors were tall and wide, towering over the children like ancient city gates, each covered entirely by a vast carved face.
The right hand door was carved to resemble an old man, but in place of hair and a beard, there were twirling oak leaves, fat and broad, growing straight out of the carving’s head.
The other door was identical in design, but the enormous face was framed with a mane and beard of spiky stone holly. It looked far sterner.
“The doors of Holly and Oak,” Karya said. “I think that’s a fair assumption.”
They stared up at the vast stone features.
“Which one do we take?” Robin asked. “Which one leads out of this place?”
“I’ve no idea which one to choose,” Karya admitted, glancing over her shoulder at the dark tunnel on the other side of the cave. “Another thing Hawthorn completely forgot to mention. As long as the door closes firmly behind us, at the moment I’m not too fussy to be honest.”
“Unless one of them leads into a bigger harpy nest,” Woad pointed out conscientiously. “Then it’s pretty darn important which one we choose…”
“Choose? Choose! Why Would We Let You Choose?!”
The voice had boomed out of nowhere, startling all three of them. It sounded like someone bellowing very slowly through a megaphone with a throat full of gravel. Woad jumped almost a foot in the air.
The huge stone face with the oak beard and hair had spoken, its stone eyes glared down at them, rolling in their sockets like dusty medicine balls. The carved leaves came to life as well, writhing and shaking about its face as though blown by the wind. It peered down on them with interest.
“The door … spoke … to us,” Robin whispered after a moment.
“We Have Ears As Well As Mouths, Little Fae,” the other door boomed in its slow and deafening voice, scowling down at them. “It Is Rude To Whisper. We Do Not Like Rudeness.”
Of the three of them, Karya recovered fastest. “They must be enchanted,” she said. “Made by whoever made that viaduct.”
She turned to the giant stone faces. “Please, we need to pass. We have to get through quickly.”
“Quickly She Says,” bellowed the ivy-covered face, casting a sidelong glance at its companion. “Down Here We Are, Since The Fall Of The Great Nethercity. Aeons Of Silence. Nothing To Do, Century After Century, But To Watch The Crystals Grow And Listen To The Earth Above Us Creak. And … Quickly … She Says.”
The oak face ruffled its great beard of leaves with a sound like a small landslide “Despicable. Abominable,” it said. “The Youth Of Today. Always In Such A Rush.”
“Please. There are harpies,” Robin implored. “They’re chasing us.”
“Ugh. Harpies,” the oak face grumbled. “Nasty Smelly Little Things.”
“Get Stuck In The Teeth,” the Ivy face agreed.
“We will be stuck in their teeth if we can’t get away!” Karya said hotly.
“Whippersnapper. Being Bad Tempered Will Get You Nowhere Fast,” the Ivy face said, glaring at her.
“Being Polite And Patient Will Get You Everywhere Slowly,” the Oak face agreed.
Karya threw up her hands in exasperation. “We really don’t have time for this,” she hissed to Robin and Woad.
“Time?” the ivy face said grimly and ponderously. “Time Is All We Have.”
“It’s Not Much Of A Life, Being A Door, To Be Honest,” the oak face confided. “Eye-Spy Is Frankly Rather Depressing When You Have The Same View For Millennia.”
“We need to get through,” Robin insisted.
“Stay And Chat,” the Holly Face suggested. “We Never Have Company.”
“Never,” the oak face agreed sadly.
“Never Ever.”
Robin, acutely aware that he and the others were seconds from being torn asunder, nevertheless felt a pang of pity. These enchantments were truly lonely, here deep under the world.
“Look, we can’t,” he implored. “Not now, anyway. But if you let us through, I swear … I’ll come back someday and talk as long as you like.”
“He Promises?” the oak door said to its companion.
“Does He Know Stories?” the Holly door wondered, “Songs? Riddles?”
“Hundreds of them. Trust me, I … I’m the Scion of the Arcania. I wouldn’t lie to you. I swear I’ll return.”
Both faces eyed him stonily.
“I Suppose…” said the ivy door very grudgingly. “You May Choose Your Path. Fleshy Ones Are Always Rushing. Only One Of These Doors Will Open For You. Choose Your Path Wisely.”
“How are we supposed to know which one to choose?” Karya asked, walking over to them. “Where do they lead?”
“One Way Leads To The Surface, High In The Mountains,” the oak door said. “The Other Leads Deep Into The Darkest Burrows Of The Underearth. To The Very Ruins Of The Nethercity Itself.”
Robin ran his hands through his hair. His mana stone had just jittered briefly against his chest, indicating that the Breezeblock had now run out of power. The creatures, freed from their invisible barrier would be flying up the dark tunnel towards them. They had seconds at best.
Robin looked from door to door. The oak king seemed the more friendly-looking of the two, but if there was one thing Robin had learned since he first came to Erlking, it was not to take anything at face value.
He was suddenly distracted by a vibration at his side. He glanced down, confused. Phorbas’ dagger was quivering, tucked into the belt of his jeans. The garnet mana stone flashing.
“What on earth?” he exclaimed, astonished. He pulled the knife out of the belt. It swung around excitedly in his hand as though it had a life of its own.
“Why are you waving your dagger about? It won’t do much good against the harpies,” Karya said.
“I’m not doing it,” Robin said, gripping the dagger by its hilt with both hands. “It’s doing it on its own. Like it’s possessed or something.”
The dagger gave a lurch, and despite Robin’s best efforts, slipped out of his grip.
It fell and landed on the rocky floor of the cave, where it bounced around like a jumping bean, then settled on its side and began to spin.
“This is no magic I’ve ever seen before,” Karya said wonderingly, as the three of them gave the spinning blade a wide berth. “What is this, spirit magic?”
“They’re coming!” Woad said urgently, staring back at the tunnel.
Robin and Karya did not take their eyes off the dagger, spinning faster and faster, its mana stone shining like an orange beacon, until, as suddenly as it had begun, the dagger stopped suddenly, mid spin. It pointed, blade quivering, straight at the vast holly door. Robin stared up at the carved face, which regarded him shrewdly.
“No time,” he said, noticing Karya’s questioning look. “We’ll figure it out later.” He ran towards the door, scooping up the dagger in his hands as he went. Karya and Woad hurried after him.
“Open up!” he yelled at the ivy face. “Hurry! We choose this path!”
The ivy face closed its vast eyes and slowly opened its mouth, wider and wider, until it formed a large opening, a carved archway leading into a gloomy passageway beyond.
Ignoring his natural instinct not to run into the throat of an enchanted stone colossus, Robin plunged inside just as the vast shrieking mass of harpies surged into the glittering cave, smothering the light. The harpies had arrived.
“Close! Close!” he heard Karya yell behind him, and the ivy door clamped its jaws together behind them with a heavy and very final thud.
Muffled noises thu
dded behind the door, as the harpies threw themselves into it in useless frustration, soon replaced by squeals of harpy panic as the doors apparently decided to retaliate. There were many unpleasant crunching noises and what sounded like a gravelly chuckle.
Robin and the others raced down the passage beyond, not stopping until they reached a small round chamber at the passageway’s end. Robin panted to get his breath back, turning Phorbas’ dagger over in his hands. It lay quite inert and regular. The tiny carving of a faun’s face on the side looked up at him mysteriously.
“I have no idea how that happened,” he gasped. “It just … came to life. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“The Oracle did say something about your knife being odd,” Karya pointed out.
“It’s not ‘my’ knife,” Robin said. “It’s like it was helping us choose.”
“Let’s hope it chose well,” Woad said with narrow eyes. “I’ve never trusted my life to cutlery before.”
“Where do we go from here?” Robin said, looking around the small chamber.
Karya pointed. A narrow staircase encircled the wall, spiralling endlessly away. They seemed to be at the bottom of a phenomenally deep shaft.
“Up,” she said. “And hopefully out.”
Robin raised his eyebrows, looking at the dizzying spiral of steps above him. They were narrow, carved directly from the rock walls. “I suppose a handrail would have been too much to ask for, wouldn’t it?”
Woad cackled and scampered up the steps on all fours, springing from one to the next like a cat.
Karya gave Robin an odd look, as though she were weighing something up.
“Good work back there, Scion. There’s more to you than meets the eye.”
Before Robin could reply to Karya’s very unexpected compliment, she set off up the steps. Casting one look back the way they had come, he tucked Phorbas’ knife away and made his way up after the others.
Chapter Twenty One –
The Pass of the Gorgons
They seemed to climb up the carved steps forever. After a while, they could no longer see the bottom of the shaft, and every step seemed to cause their bodies to lurch toward the central gulf, willing them to fall and be swallowed up by the deep blackness below.
Eventually, legs burning, they reached the top. The light and warmth was the nicest thing Robin had ever felt. He filled his lungs greedily and the three companions practically fought one another to be the first to emerge from the doorway into the open air. Fresh wind met them, whipping about the travellers as they emerged to find themselves in a narrow nook between two large rocks. A sheer cliff lay before them, the landscape below far enough away that Robin wouldn’t have been surprised to see clouds pass beneath. Behind them the rocks rose up … and up and up. An almost sheer wall of rugged stone soared for what seemed like miles. All around them rose mountains, massive and craggy. Threading through these jagged peaks, a trail wound precipitously, hugging cliff edges and snaking up and down the rock walls, leading off further into the rocky heights.
“Wow, we’re pretty high up,” Robin said, peering down at the landscape below them, getting as close to the narrow edge as he dared. In the distance on the shimmering horizon, the ground looking glittering and flat, and Robin guessed it was the edge of the Singing Fens.
“It’s hard to believe we’ve covered so much ground in so short a space of time,” Karya said with wonder, looking out over the sweeping vista, a hand shielding her eyes from the sun. “Had we not run into that Fae, we wouldn’t have even reached the Singing Fens by now. And then we’d have miles and miles and indeed miles of wet boggy ground still to cover.”
“Not to mention having to deal with bog-hags and pyreflies,” Woad added, teetering fearlessly on the lip of the cliff with perfect balance. “And willos. You know how I hate willos,” he added darkly.
“Well,” said Robin. “If we come back this way once we’ve found Henry and Phorbas, we’re taking the long overland route thanks. I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t fancy meeting up with those harpies ever again.”
The others nodded in rueful agreement.
Karya turned to the other two, her hands on her hips impatiently.
“Well, come on, we’ve been out of the daylight for quite some time, but if I’m any judge of this sky, it’s getting on for late afternoon. Night falls faster than a lead balloon in the mountains and we won’t be able to travel in the dark.”
“Unless the direction you want to go is straight down, and very fast,” Woad added happily to Robin with a wink, scampering after the girl.
“Exactly. So we should make as much ground as we can while it’s still light.” She looked at Robin curiously. “And we’ll have a closer look at that strange dagger you’re carrying when we make camp for the night, Scion.”
Robin followed her and Woad along the pebble-strewn path. He couldn’t help thinking from her tone that Karya felt he was keeping secrets from her – although, in truth, he was as mystified by the dagger’s strange actions as the rest of them.
* * *
Trekking through the high mountains was difficult and hair-raising. The thin trail hugged the sheer cliffs, dropping away into nothingness all around them. They travelled right until nightfall, before falling into an exhausted sleep. Robin didn’t stir at all until Woad woke him at dawn. “Come and see, Pinky,” the faun said merrily.
“What is it?” he yawned. “What’s so important that we can’t even have our cold sausage and dried bread breakfast before we set off?”
The sun was still low and bright, the mountains steaming with morning dew.
Robin realised that back in the human world, it was Christmas day.
Karya pointed ahead. “The Pass of the Gorgons,” she announced in a satisfied voice. “We were right on its doorstep and didn’t even notice.”
A great ravine lay before them, the void filled with clouds and morning mist, shimmering like a liquid gold ocean beneath them. A thin stone bridge arched over the sea of mists to the far side.
“No handrails,” Karya murmured.
They made their way carefully onto the bridge, grateful for the churning clouds below which hid the great height from them. Robin risked a look down a few times and once, the mists seemed to eddy and thin, and he thought he saw a glimpse of rocky slopes and trees ridiculously far below. It was like looking out at the countryside from an aeroplane window, and he quickly averted his eyes, keeping them firmly on the thin arch of stone underfoot.
Woad had already reached the far side of the great ravine. He disappeared into the narrow fissure in a blue flash, and returned after several seconds, quite excited, just as Karya and Robin reached the relative safety of the end of the bridge.
“Hurry, you slow marmosets! Come and see, through here.”
The fissure formed a thin corridor. After a few twists and turns it spat them out into a wide sloping cliff-top meadow.
There were groves of trees dotted around, leaves whispering softly in the sheltered dell’s breeze. Situated near the edge of the cliff was a strange structure, which looked like a cross between an ancient Roman manor house and a makeshift observatory. Even from this distance, they could see it was a ruin. Nothing more than the shell of a once-beautiful house. It was ivy-choked and several of its columns lay toppled in the long. It stood in the sunlight like a peaceful tomb.
“Wow, this is beautiful,” Robin said.
They set off towards the ruin. They were sheltered from the winds and it seemed awfully quiet as the long grass brushed against them. Near to the ruined house, on the edge of the cliff, was an odd structure like a small ski jump.
Karya looked around the ruin with interest. The doors were long gone and the dark interior was piled with junk. Karya poked a broken vase on the floor with her toe. “Where would this magical craft be, then?”
“How should I know?” Robin shrugged. “Let’s have a look around.”
There were a few scattered pieces of furniture, an
upturned table against the wall, a broken chair jammed into the leaf-filled fireplace. Most of the interior had been cleared out however. It was silent and gloomy after the bright morning light outside. They split up, rummaging through the debris.
“There’s a door over here,” Robin called to the others, pulling down a large dust sheet. The noise startled two small birds, which flew out into the sunshine in a flurry of wings and startled complaints.
He leaned against the door with his shoulder and forced it open. The room beyond was jammed with bric-a-brac and junk. Towering piles of yellowing paper stood taller than Robin himself. Models and puppets hung on tangled wires from the rafters. Shelves and boxes were everywhere. They were littered with cogs, brimming with springs, wheels, egg timers, odd glass-blown shapes. Jars and bottles of every size and shape cluttered every surface. Several of the larger shapes were covered with grimy-looking dustsheets. There was barely room to move. It was chaos.
“If it’s here, it must be under one of these sheets,” Robin said doubtfully. “This whole place is a tip. Everything looks broken, rusted, or useless.”
“When Eris’ Peacekeepers came here, I imagine they would have smashed the place up,” Karya said, making a distasteful face. “If there was nothing they thought they could loot or plunder. No one’s lived here in nearly a hundred years, I’d judge.”
Robin made his way through the clutter, trying not to topple anything over. He pulled a large dustsheet off what was revealed to be some kind of modified canoe with an adjustable snorkel made of smudged and thumbed brass.
“Well, this isn’t it … I hope,” he said.
The others followed his lead, unveiling oddity after oddity, raising great clouds of dust as they went. There were all manner of contraptions but nothing which looked like it might fly.
Robin had just uncovered a bamboo chair which seemed to be fitted with mechanical spider legs when he heard an odd noise. It sounded for all the world as though someone were playing the maracas.