by Martin Ash
‘Indeed. But the ritual preparation of the root is not a quick procedure, and the first stage requires that I allow it to soak untended for some time. I can do nothing while that process continues, and would prefer to spend the time constructively with my employees.’
I was bending the truth here somewhat, but it seemed to have an effect. The steward puckered his lips and said he would see what he could do, then swivelled upon his heel and departed.
It was Jaktem who came to me a little while later. The steward entered with him, presumably having applied to Feikermun or one of his deputies for instructions.
I thanked him and waited, hoping he would leave, but he simply nodded and remained as he was.
‘I won’t be requiring you any further,’ I added.
‘I am to remain with your man and escort him back to his apartment when you are done, sir.’
And to listen to our exchange and report, no doubt. I turned to Jaktem. ‘Did you learn anything after I left you?’
He shook his head. ‘No one knew what had happened. It was just confusion and terror. The only thing I did learn is that nothing like that has happened before - at least, not in a public place.’
He was plainly not wholly at ease with the steward present, but from his face and manner I gathered there was little or nothing else he wished to add.
‘The creature did not reappear?’
‘No.’
I was baffled, and nervous. The threat was plain: murderous creatures appearing out of thin air to wreak mayhem and death. When I’d mentioned it to Feikermun he had changed the subject. He was uncomfortable with it, I could tell. Did he know what was happening? Was he responsible for it?
‘Where is Ilian?’
‘In the town. He will be coming here in a short while.’
‘Have you been placed under any duress, suffered any restrictions since returning here?’
‘No, sir. Though I note there are now guards in the corridor outside our chamber.’
‘That is perhaps not unexpected, given the circumstances. Jaktem, I hired you to escort me here and have, albeit unwittingly, subjected you to no little danger. Your work and Ilian’s has been exemplary; I made an excellent choice in taking you both on. But it would be wrong of me to expect anything more from you. You are therefore free to leave, with my thanks and full remuneration for your service, if you so wish.’
‘Master Cormer, my understanding was that we were hired to see you to Dhaout and out again when your business was done.’
‘That was my original intention. But it is obvious there are dangers here that none of us could have foreseen. You may quite understandably prefer to remove yourselves, and I will not think worse of you for it. Your association with me is casual, after all. That being so, you may go now, with my blessing.’
‘If it’s all the same to you, sir, I would rather stay and see you through. And I know I speak for Ilian, too.’
‘Are you quite sure of this?’
‘I am.’
‘Then I retain you, gratefully. But should either of you change
your mind I will not hold you to anything. As for now, the next few hours are to be taken up with business for Lord Feikermun. I don’t think I am likely to need you again before morning.’
‘Very good, sir.’
He nodded his head, turned and left the room, the steward following. I hoped the steward had taken note of my speech and would report back to Feikermun the fact that Jaktem and Ilian were casual employees, not regular henchmen. Should things turn bad for me they might at least have some small hope of escaping his wrath.
I turned my attention to the gidsha. First I lit some sweetsmelling joss, then cut the root into small cubes which I placed in the mortar. I added a little water and ground the cubes into a mash with the pestle. Into this I sprinkled several generous pinches of fragrant spices and herbs to disguise the root’s foul flavour, and sweet honey to counter its natural bitterness and acridity. I tasted a tiny sample on the tip of my tongue. It still had a pronounced pungent quality which scoured my palate and offended my tastebuds, but that is the nature of gidsha. Its inherent flavour can never be wholly suppressed; at least my concoction disguised the worst of it. I washed out my mouth thoroughly, keen to ensure that no trace of the potent drug entered my system.
Now it was time to add those most vital ingredients given to me by the Chariness. The first was a spoonful of powdered muss gum, which I carried in a small phial stitched into a secret pocket in my money belt. Muss is a narcotic which dulls the senses to induce a pleasant, floating numbness. It is quite easily obtained and widely used, though like gidsha it is addictive. Then I added a few droplets of a tincture of Blue Joy, a juice with powerful stimulant properties, extracted from the bark of the bird-apple tree and suspended in an alcoholic base. Lastly came a secret ingredient, a peppering of a fine dust of green, white and violet motes whose identity I did not know. The Chariness had been precise in her instructions in regard to adding these final three ingredients, and I adhered to her words meticulously.
All done, I sat before the prepared root, cast a rapture of Purification and invoked a ritual chant. An hour later I was finished. Outside, the sun had hardly begun to set. I waited nervously, uncertain whether I was expected to deliver the preparation forthwith or keep to my original appointment with Feikermun at sunset. I preferred to wait as long as possible, simply to put off the confrontation. Feikermun would no doubt send for me earlier if he wanted me, but quite possibly sunset was his chosen, ritual time for ingesting gidsha.
The sky was staining blood-red, the light in my chamber becoming subdued, and I had just lit the candles when the steward - I never did discover his name - returned for me.
‘Are your preparations done?’
‘They are.’
‘Then come. His Excellency commands that you attend him now.’
Feikermun awaited me in the private chamber where he had received me the previous night. Again he was surrounded by his cronies: Hircun, the soldier; the plump, bald Bondo; Wirm and the other, unnamed man. Feikermun’s lips and the whiskers around his mouth were wet, stained bright red. I assumed he had been drinking blood. Female blood. Two of his dark-skinned slave girls rested upon cushions at one end of the chamber, coloured bandages concealing the wounds on their arms. In one corner a huge grey ape squatted, tethered to the wall by a chain attached to a collar around its neck.
‘Cormer of Chol, you have brought the precious gidsha?’ Feikermun’s eyes were fixed feverishly upon the bowl I carried in my two hands. His intonation was a little slurred. He sat, head and torso forward, on a carved seat before me, his knees wide apart, hands thrust upon thighs, elbows akimbo. His lips were drawn back into a taut grimace; one muscle-bolstered knee bounced rapidly up and down. He was quick, jerky, tense. I sensed his need for the root. And radiating from him was an energy that almost set me back a pace as I approached him. It was wild, violent, unpredictable. It had a quality of near-palpability, and it virtually reeked of unharnessed magic. It was as though something were striving to burst from Feikermun, and it disturbed the very air about him.
I held forward the bowl. ‘It is here, my lord.’
He gazed greedily at the mass, which had turned a deep green from the ingredients I had added, then frowned. ‘This is gidsha?’
‘Prepared, my lord, as I said, in a special manner. Enhanced for your delight.’
The others craned their necks to see.
‘There is sufficient here for how many applications?’ asked Feikermun.
‘That will depend upon how much you are in the habit of ingesting at a time. By ordinary standards I would reckon this would suffice for four separate doses.’
He nodded, and leaned back. ‘Good. Then ingest.’
‘My lord?’ I gaped at him in horrified disbelief. ‘I?’
‘Yes, you, Cormer of Chol. You.’
‘But Lord Feikermun, this is rare, valuable root, prepared for yourself. Gidsha of this qualit
y is not easily obtained. And I do not - that is, I have never—’
A spasm passed across Feikermun’s face and his whole body shook. ‘Eat, Cormer, damn you! Let Feikermun see it pass down your stinking gullet, or by the gods he will force it down with his own two hands.’
It was a test, of course. He was not to know that the preparation was not poisoned. I was caught. I had never ingested this drug, and never wished to. I knew of the horrors, as well as the wonders, that it could inflict. I knew of its addictiveness. There were well recorded stories of unwary people trying gidsha and losing their minds, becoming gawks, loobies, berserks. And yet it had been obvious that Feikermun would not be so unwise as to place his trust in me, a complete stranger. How had I not foreseen this?
I took up the spoon which rested against the edge of the gidsha dish and scooped up a small amount of the mixture. With a glance at Feikermun, and seeing no comfort there, I raised the spoon to my mouth, took the mixture in, and swallowed.
‘More than that. More!’ commanded Feikermun. ‘There is enough for four in the dish, you say? Then eat a quarter, now.’
A quarter! I stiffened with horror at the thought of what that amount could do to me. ‘My lord, I have never taken this before. This amount is for one who is used to its effects, who has built up a tolerance in some respects. I could suffer—’
‘Excuses! Bah! What does Feikermun care for your suffering? Eat, you blasted dog, and then Feikermun will take you to the Citadel.’
‘The Citadel?’
Feikermun rose, his face dark. The thick, hairy meat of his shoulder twitched. ‘Eat!’
I gagged as I forced the green mush down. Even with the added spices and flavourings it was bitter, sour, corrosive on my tongue and throat. All eyes were fixed upon me as I struggled to consume it, every spoonful a new ordeal.
At last I was done. I replaced the spoon in the bowl and faced my tormentor. Feikermun had reseated himself. He regarded me with grim satisfaction. Beside him Wirm made no effort to hide an eely smile. I waited, wondering what was to come, how long before the effects would begin to manifest.
Feikermun leaned forward and snatched the bowl from my hands. He gulped down a portion of the mash, then smacked his lips, the green of the gidsha mash mixing with the blood around his lips to stain them a lurid brown. He belched, closed his eyes, and issued a long sigh, his hands upon his great bulging belly. Then he stood, taking up the dish, and crossed to where the ape sat tethered.
‘Do you dream, Cormer of Chol?’ Feikermun shouted.
‘Dream, my lord?’
‘Dream. Do you have dreams?’ He was spooning more gidsha from the bowl and feeding it to the ape, who accepted it with apparent relish.
‘I dream sometimes, yes. In my sleep.’
Feikermun tossed aside the bowl. He went to the nearby wall and unhasped the ape’s chain, then wrapped the end about one of his wrists.
‘Good,’ he said. He moved over to the ape, emitting grunts and murmurs, and tugged twice upon the chain. The ape eyed him quizzically, baring its great teeth, then stood on feet and knuckles. Beside it Feikermun, even with his wads of muscle, was a dwarf. But he showed no fear.
‘Feikermun dreams,’ he said, and walked towards me, extending a hand almost amicably. The ape came alongside him, snuffling, its brown eyes, deepset beneath an immense beetling brow, looking around mistrustfully. Feikermun grasped my hand. ‘Feikermun dreams.’
His eyes were glazed, aimed at me but unfocused. I could think of nothing to say.
‘Are your dreams more potent than Feikermun’s?’
‘I would not know, my lord. But I doubt it.’
He nodded to himself. ‘Well, let us see. Come. Enter the Citadel!’
He lurched forward suddenly, pulling me with him. The ape came too. Feikermun was running so that I was also forced to run, and the ape lolloped along at our side. Feikermun was laughing: wild, raucous laughter. He ran with us around the chamber, then out through the door. ‘The Source!’ he yelled. ‘Ha-ha! The Blood! The gidsha! The Source!’
We ran on, faster and faster, along corridors, passing sentries and staff who hardly gave us a glance. We passed through a gallery, along an arcade, crossed a wide patio where fountains played, entered more passageways. I began to feel tired, my lungs burned. I was nauseous from the foul brew that lay heavy in my stomach. We were running faster than I had known I could run. Feikermun’s mad laughter reverberated along the passages. I felt light-headed. Walls flew by. Surely I could not go this quickly? I was not tired now. I felt nothing. Feikermun’s voice was a colossal distant echo. I no longer knew the floor beneath my feet. The light was changing. We swerved around a corner, raced up a flight of stairs, twisting, winding, then into another long corridor. We ran on, on. I could hear music, a woman singing. The laughter. A balcony ahead of me. Running. Roofs of Dhaout. Pigments of sunset. All playing for me. So many colours. The palace had passed away. I was in the air. Then nowhere. Everything was changing. Quite suddenly, a vast open space, a ravishing sunset. Objects forming, things moving, vanishing. Then I was falling, terrified, crying out.
And I heard a voice roar: ‘The Citadel! The Citadel!’
And then there was nothing.
Thirteen
‘Have I died?’
Yellowness. Deep, bright, burning. Yellow. Orange. Amber. Nothing else but a pulsing intensity, a conviction of engulfment, loss of body, loss of being. Fear.
‘Have I died?’
Where was I? What was I? How had I come to be? Was this it? The end?
Such pounding intensity. A jungle of sound, of perception, like nothing I had experienced. The yellow-orange. Shapes above me, unmoving, all around, suspended. And a darkness beyond, so black, so black. A dream? The fear rising again.
'Help me!’
I was soul, at last, nothing more. But nothing of me. An echo of crazed laughter somewhere. No longer I. Just receding, and all closing in.
‘Have I died?’
‘No,’ a voice whispered. ‘You are being born.’
She was standing before me. I glimpsed her for a moment; then she had gone.
‘Please don’t leave!’
Just the yellowish-orange orphic light and the engulfing black far overhead. And the figures suspended everywhere, a blur. I could not make them out.
‘I need you!’
My voice was swallowed by the emptiness of it all.
‘Where am I?’
‘Here.’
‘Where?’
‘In the Citadel.’
I heard the cry of a tiny babe. Then the sweet, tender song of the mother; crooning softly and joyfully. The peal of bells far overhead, resonant out of the blackness, the nothingness, waiting, in a time before the world came into being.
‘Where?’
‘In the Citadel.’
I opened my eyes. The face above me, vast, tender, the eyes huge and filled with love. The mother, her song a paean in the spheres, a hymn of the universe, nurturing, comforting, reaching into my ancient but newborn soul. And such a distance to go. A lifetime. Or many. So far.
‘What is it?’
‘The Citadel.’
‘I don’t understand!’
The cry of the baby. The road before stretched into immeasurable distance over a bare, bare landscape. The figures, in the sky, in the orange, the amber, the yellow, suspended, everywhere.
And there was I, standing facing me. Ronbas Dinbig, in grey tunic, hose and hood, standing motionless on stone steps, gazing across at me.
He moved.
‘Wait!’
He was gone.’
‘Do you dream, Cormer of Chol?’
‘I do not know?’
‘Where are you?’
‘In the Citadel!’
‘Yes! But what is the Citadel?’
‘What is it?’
‘You do not know?’
‘I know nothing. Help me!’
The laughter, far away, mocking.
; ‘Ah, you do not know.’
‘I do not know.’
‘It is the Citadel.’
‘But what is the Citadel?’
‘Selph, Cormer of Chol. It is the Citadel of Selph.’
Selph?
Feikermun. Feikermun of Selph.
It seemed then that I slipped into unconsciousness, as though that word contained a power in itself, had been propelled into my mind like a great stone into a lake, drawing my thoughts to it and pulling them down beneath the surface. When next I returned to any form of awareness it was with a clamouring feeling of hope and dread. Hope in the form of a vague memory, a suggestion that somewhere there existed a normality, a world of familiar, comforting things, a place I could relate to, where not everything was utterly strange. And dread that this might not be so. That this place, this dream of a place, of a world, was just an illusion, that I had invented it out of my madness, or that, if it had ever existed in any form other than within my own deranged mind, then it no longer did so. There was only the utterly strange.