by Sarah Rayne
‘If you won’t,’ said Fenella, ‘I shall quite understand. But I shall have to go in by myself, that’s all there is to it.’ She studied the Workshops, frowning, and Caspar, who was becoming alarmed by this time, saw that this was no ruse to secure his assistance; Fenella intended to get into the Robemaker’s Workshops and rescue whoever it was who was in there. And whether he went with her or not, she would do it. This was not something that could be allowed, not by anybody’s standards. So he said that they could perhaps take a look round to see were there any secluded windows anywhere or any openings where they might just squeeze through. And heard his voice saying these things with appalled horror.
‘That,’ said Fenella warmly, ‘is a very good idea. You should always inspect the terrain before going into battle.’ And then, ‘I read that somewhere,’ grinned Fenella. ‘Shall we try this side first?’ and was off before Caspar had time to collect his thoughts.
He managed to detain her long enough for them to tether the horses, because there would be no sense in coming out of the Workshops (with, or without the prisoner) and finding that the horses had turned their heads for Tara and that they had to walk the rest of the way to the Fire Court. He thought, privately, that they might be very glad of the horses, because they might find that they came out of the Workshops much faster than they went in, but he did not say this.
‘Ready?’ said Fenella, having helped with the tethering and fastening her cloak more tightly about her shoulders.
‘No,’ said Caspar gloomily. ‘No, I’m not ready and I wish I hadn’t come, if you really want to know. In fact, if you want the truth, I wish I was back at Tara with the Gruagach.’
‘That’s not at all the way to think,’ said Fenella severely. ‘We’ll get inside somehow and we’ll find the — the person who was captured and be out again before you know it!’
She sent him the sudden grin again and Caspar said, ‘Oh dear me, what optimism,’ but he said it quietly.
Fenella moved down the narrow, steep slope with the stunted trees and the blackened, scarred ground and felt, as she neared the Workshops, a thick, clotted malevolence belching out towards them. It was rather like going down into a horrid, dark, earthy hole, where dull crimson fires burned and where grinning creatures might be peering at you from the shadows.
But I don’t believe there are, thought Fenella firmly. I truly don’t believe there are. The Robemaker isn’t here — I know he isn’t here — and we shall find a way to get inside and Nuadu will be there and we shall bring him out.
Caspar walked rather ploddingly along at Fenella’s side, but Fenella thought that at least he was at her side and found this unexpectedly comforting. There had been one or two Earth stories of how warriors going into battle had gone shoulder to shoulder, which had always seemed a rather odd expression, but which suddenly made sense. Caspar was not the ideal person to be shoulder to shoulder with, because he would probably melt away altogether if there was a real threat. But at least he is here, she thought, and wondered if she would really have tried to get into the Workshops by herself if she had had to. Would I? Oh yes, if it meant rescuing Nuadu.
As they neared the Workshops, Fenella heard the continuous thrumming of the Looms and saw the pulsating red glow of the furnaces. She thought that the sound and the scent would surely hammer your mind into a state of numbness, eventually. What must it be like to be imprisoned here, day after day, month after month? I wonder, does he keep them chained and manacled, thought Fenella, or does he use sorcery? And, so utterly immersed was she in this strange blue and green land that was not feeling strange any more, that she did not even notice that she was weighing sorcery against steel chains and seriously considering the likely outcome.
Closer to, the Workshops were much larger than either of them had realised. They seemed to stretch back into the hillside as if they might, at some stage, cease to become manmade buildings of stone and wood and brick and become ancient caves; tunnels that would penetrate deep into the earth’s core.
The walls were built of dark, rough stone, almost black, pitted here and there by the heat of the furnaces. There were narrow high windows, far above them; Fenella thought they would open on to rooms at a higher level than the ground. The windows had a sly, mean look, and Fenella had the sudden impression that the Workshops were not workshops at all, but a single crouching monster, black and hard-backed and scaly on the outside, but possessed of roaring, flaming innards, so that every breath it took belched out hissing steam and curls and wisps of flame.
The windows are its eyes, she thought, staring upwards. They are the eyes of the monster, red and evil and calculating, and they are watching us, those eyes, and thinking: oh yes, here are two very useful morsels of Humanity … And I had better not think like that, said Fenella silently, or I shall be too afraid to go any nearer. I’ll concentrate on getting inside, getting to Nuadu.
‘The Looms generate immense heat,’ said Caspar, as they drew nearer and Fenella flinched from the dry, gusty warmth. ‘It’ll probably be quite uncomfortable.’
‘Very uncomfortable, I expect,’ said Fenella and went on studying the black stone buildings to see if there was a small, partly hidden door that they might use to get inside.
As they skirted the western side of the Workshops, they both saw how the grass here was blackened, the walls charred in places, the great smokestacks thickly crusted with cinders. Fenella, moving ahead, saw, as Nuadu had not been able to see, that there were tiny cracks in the walls, from which the glowing heat threw out threads of fiery light and through which little angry hisses of steam continually escaped.
Caspar was peering along the darkened west wall, when Fenella said in a whisper, ‘Caspar! See over there? An open window. Exactly what we want.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is. And,’ said Caspar, ‘there doesn’t seem to be any heat coming from it. There certainly isn’t any light to speak of in the windows. Does that mean there are no furnaces in there, I wonder?’
‘Might it be a storeroom? Set a bit apart?’ The open-windowed room looked as if it was quite far away from the main body of the Workshops. And surely there must be fuel of some kind to feed the great furnaces, and surely there would have to be a store-place. ‘It could be a fuelhouse,’ said Fenella. ‘Which would make it a good place to try to get in.’
‘They say the Robemaker uses human fuel,’ said Caspar, half to himself, and then, ‘Fenella, do you really think we ought to be doing this? Wouldn’t it be better to raise help of some kind?’
‘What kind of help?’ said Fenella. And then, ‘Caspar, have you ever actually seen the Robemaker? Really seen him?’
‘Well, no.’
‘I have,’ said Fenella and repressed a shiver. ‘And he’s evil and merciless and terrible. He’d fell you with an enchantment in an instant. And he’d never be defeated just by strength. If you sent a great army against him, he’d simply cut it down with his sorcery. It’s stealth and trickery that’s needed to outwit him.’
The place that Fenella thought might be a fuelhouse was a small, added-on section, jutting out from the main body of the Workshops. Fenella remembered the houses on Renascia and how they had nearly always had sculleries and washing houses jutting out from the main rooms. This had the same kind of look to it. It was a part of the main building, but it was not a central part. Probably it was not used very much and probably they could climb through the window and be inside without anyone even realising.
‘I suppose you want me to go first,’ said Caspar as they stood looking up at the open window, which was grimy and smeary, but much lower than the other windows.
‘I’d go first,’ said Fenella, who would do so unhesitatingly. ‘I’m perfectly capable of climbing through a window. But I can’t reach the window by myself. You go up first and then help me.’
‘Let’s not be hasty,’ said Caspar, moving to the window. ‘Let’s just take a look first and wait till we see what’s inside.’ He grasped the narrow sill and hauled himself up
so that he hung, partly suspended by his hands, his chin level with the lower sill.
‘Can you see?’ Fenella was standing on tiptoe alongside him, but the window was too high and she could not see. ‘What can you see?’ said Fenella. And then, as Caspar drew in a shocked gasp, ‘Caspar, what’s in there?’
Caspar let go of the sill and slid rapidly to the ground with a bump, looking a bit sick.
‘Oh, dear me,’ he said, standing back from the window and dusting himself down, wiping his face with a handkerchief. ‘Dear, dear me! I never thought to see such nastiness, not even serving the Gruagach, I didn’t. Well, it’s no sight for a lady, that I do know. I think we’d better forget the whole idea.’ He eyed Fenella uncertainly and Fenella, who was becoming impatient, said, ‘Well, for heaven’s sake — ’ which was an expression she had picked up from Snizort and Snodgrass and which was as meaningless as most of their expressions, but descriptive of strong emotion.
‘Do come away,’ said Caspar, taking her arm. ‘I promise you we’d be much better to go quietly back on to the road and make our way to the Fire Court.’
‘You can go to any number of Fire Courts,’ said Fenella, crossly. ‘But I’m going in there whether you come with me or whether you run away. I don’t much care which,’ said Fenella, who did not really want Caspar to ride off and leave her alone out here, but who was not going to get so close to Nuadu and then ride away and leave him. ‘And first of all, I’m going to climb through the window,’ she said and reached for a stack of sacking which had been thrown down near the wall and which, piled carefully, might enable her to reach the sill.
‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ said Caspar, but Fenella took a deep breath and clambered on to the sacks and grasped the window ledge, rubbing a bit of the window pane clear. And looked in.
The storeroom (yes, she had been right about that after all) was not very big and not very well lit. There seemed to be a door cut into the wall that was farthest away from the window; Fenella, trying to get her bearings, thought it would lead more deeply into the Workshops, perhaps even back and back into the cave part. Odd pieces of broken and split machinery were strewn about or propped against the walls.
The room looked to be what they had thought; a store or perhaps a fuelhouse which might be left unattended for most of the time. The sort of deserted outbuilding that might easily be forgotten, until a fresh supply of fuel was needed. The twisted machinery pieces cast shadows on the floor, weird and grotesque, so that, for a heart-stopping moment, Fenella thought that strange beast-things were crouching in the comers and remembered that Caspar had said something about Sentry Spells; minor enchantments that the Robemaker might have left on guard in his absence.
But light was spilling in through the seams of the door at the far end of the room; crimson, glowing light from whatever lay on the other side. After a moment Fenella’s eyes grew used to the dimness and she could see quite plainly into the room. She could see what had made Caspar turn pale and sick.
A great pile of felled Trees. Trees which had been hacked and chopped and mutilated, which had had branches tom away so that they could be roughly stacked against the wall. Fuel for the Robemaker’s roaring furnaces that must never be allowed to cool …
But the Trees were not just Trees. They were people, beings, half-formed creatures who might have been strange and beautiful and filled with wild, woodland magic. Beings who were now dead or dying, and who were lying in tangled, dreadfully mutilated heaps.
Fenella, clutching the narrow ledge, standing precariously on the piled sacks, thought, in horror: Miach’s spell. The emerging of the Tree Spirits. What had Miach called them? Naiads and Diyads and Hamadryads. Nymphs and oreads and nereids. Beautiful, half-human forms, partly emerged from the ancient beeches and oaks and elms and birches and ash Trees, taking shape under the summoning of Miach’s magic.
But here were hacked limbs and truncated bodies. Strange, greenish-gold fluid staining their skin which was not quite skin and not quite leaf. Tree-blood flowing down, mingling with the rippling bronze hair of the copper beeches and the pale, frond-like arms of the ash Trees and the poor, split, high-arched feet of the silver birches. There was a deep, thick blood from the old oaks, still trickling slowly out here and there, as if the Trees might not have been cut down so very long since, or — and this was much worse — as if there were still vestiges of life in them. Branches and limbs and hair and eyes all jumbled and mixed, so that you could not tell where the Tree part ended and the naiad part began.
The ancient Tree Spirits, awakened by magic after their centuries-old sleep, captured and taken by the Robemaker. Bound and held by his terrible evil magic, thought Fenella, sickened. Held, perhaps, by the crimson rope-lights, as Nuadu was held, and then butchered and slain and thrown into a dark woodshed, to await burning in the heart of a necromancer’s fiery furnace …
‘I’m going to climb in,’ said Fenella, at last, and pointed to a thick chunk of dried-out wood. ‘We can drag that underneath the window and then I’ll be able to get through the window.’
‘Best oak,’ said Caspar, looking at the log and shaking his head. ‘The Robemaker must have been taking the Trees for years.’
‘Well, we mustn’t think about it now,’ said Fenella in a practical voice. ‘It can’t hurt the Oak now if I stand on it to get in, can it? No, I didn’t think it could. Would you help me up?’
But Caspar, belatedly gallant, said that it was for him to lead the way. ‘I’ll go in first and then pull you up.’
‘It would be much easier if I went in first and then you could push me up,’ said Fenella.
‘It doesn’t seem right,’ said Caspar, half to himself. ‘It doesn’t seem polite if you know what I mean.’
‘We can’t worry about manners. Do hurry,’ said Fenella impatiently.
Fenella clambered cautiously on to the oak log and grasped the ledge. If the Robemaker had left any Sentry Spells, then surely this was the moment for them to come rearing out to challenge the intruders. She sat for a moment on the narrow window ledge, scanning the shadows in case shapes, creatures, sentinels should materialise. But nothing happened and Fenella felt a small, frail spiral of confidence and thought that the very suggestion that the Robemaker needed sentries at all indicated that he was not as all-powerful as they had feared. And if he has left any to catch us, then they aren’t very good, she thought. We’re partway in already.
‘Hurry up!’ said Caspar urgently, from outside. He hauled himself after her and Fenella gasped and half fell, half pulled herself over into the Robemaker’s wood-store, to be followed, a minute later, by a rather out-of-breath Caspar.
They stood silently together in the dim, rather narrow room, with the sharp scent of the butchered trees all about them and, underneath it, a soft, sad scent that Fenella thought must be the spilled Tree-blood. In the red-lit dimness it was possible to see the mutilated Tree Spirits more plainly now and Fenella thought there had never been anything quite so dreadful.
They were not all quite dead. Fenella and Caspar could see this clearly; they could see that some of the Tree Spirits were still breathing, shallowly and painfully, their strange, wise faces shuttered and suffering, their branches tom from their bodies and great, gaping wounds still bleeding.
‘Terrible,’ said Caspar, rather pale.
‘Can’t we do anything for them?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Caspar. ‘I think they are too — too cruelly hurt.’
‘We’d better try to find the prisoners,’ said Fenella at last, although she did not really want to leave the comparative safety of the wood-store. ‘Through there, do you think?’
‘As well there as anywhere,’ said Caspar.
The door that Fenella had indicated was the one with ill-fitting seams that permitted the red glow to seep through. It was wider than it had looked and Fenella thought she had been right to think it led away from the road, deeper into the hillside.
‘Can you hear anything?’ she sai
d as they stood looking round.
‘I can hear the Looms,’ said Caspar. ‘But then, they never stop.’ He listened for a moment. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ he said. ‘Ready?’
‘Ready,’ said Fenella.
‘We’ll leave this door propped open,’ said Caspar. ‘In case we need to — ’
‘Escape quickly.’
‘Yes.’
And then, because there did not seem to be any reason to wait, they moved cautiously to the door at the far end of the wood-store and inched it open.
The noise and the dull angry light of the furnaces poured in.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Caspar and Fenella stood in the Workshops, with the wood-store behind them, their skin shrivelling and flinching and every sense assaulted by what was before them.
The room they were in stretched back and back — Into the hillside, thought Fenella — and far above them. In the evil, glowing red light they could see that the walls were not of brick or timber or of anything that walls were normally made of. They were earth; dark, hard-packed earth, here and there cracking with the endless dry heat. There was the feeling of being in a dark, hot cave and there was the sudden swift impression of ancient malevolent creatures that dwelled here and slept for decades, or sometimes centuries, until they were disturbed …
There are things in here that are sometimes asleep and sometimes not asleep, thought Fenella. Sentry spells? Yes, perhaps. I can feel them, thought Fenella, standing very still just inside the huge, high-ceilinged, firelit room. I can feel that there are forces in here that could very easily be woken and, if they are woken, they would come crawling and slithering out from their lair and we would not have very much chance against them …