‘JUSTICE!’ Methuselech hissed. ‘Once and for all! That’s what I’m talking about! And I will not have a little turd like you slowing me down, understand? No one will get in my way. Finwald’s sword must not go to the Maw!’
He dropped the boy and spun away. ‘Pox, that squeaky voice! Like angels scraping their nails on the inside of my skull!’
The Hauger emerged from his dwelling to see what the fuss was about, but Methuselech merely waved him a curt farewell and mounted Hwald. Gapp managed an apologetic smile and followed him on Finan.
What an armhole! he thought sullenly. I can’t believe he was ever a friend of Nibulus. Gapp did not see why he should have to put up with this sort of treatment. He had come through much worse than Methuselech had endured on this trip. He was better than him. In fact, if he had thought Finan would agree to it, he would have walked out now on the miserable old sod. Gone back to Cyne-Tregva, or Yulfric’s.
But he felt so unutterably tired, and he knew with certainty that it would now take all his failing reserves just to get him as far as Wrythe.
Come what may, for the foreseeable future he was stuck with Methuselech Xilvafloese.
It was the darkest part of the night, and Methuselech, alone with his inner ponderings, was standing alone in the darkest part of the forest.
He breathed in the cold night air deeply and smiled. He liked this place – in as much as he could like anything in this detestable existence. Yes, breathing could be good sometimes – in the right place. Back there where he had climbed back out of the darkness, he had breathed profoundly, sucked the mountain air deep into his lungs. He had smelt it, tasted it, held it there a while and essayed to experience its earthy warmth and wholesome vibrancy once more, and all the good it might do him. And for a moment he had indeed believed it to be something of worth.
But that had been a lie. For there was no sensual pleasure for him to delight in. Nevertheless he had held it in for nearly an hour – determined to enjoy it after all these years – before remembering that such was not the way with breathing: one was supposed to expel again, then repeat the whole process, again and again and again . . . In the end he had simply stopped trying. So much effort for so little gain.
Like so many other things: food, drink, the simple act of chewing or swallowing. All these things he had missed at the very beginning, yearned for them achingly. But after the first hundred years or so the desire for such corporeal delectations had faded.
But at least on this night, here, he could enjoy a breath or two, for old times’ sake. This forest clearing reminded him so much of home, so unimaginably long ago now; the darkness, the closeness, that sense of something unhallowed. Trees stood like the stone columns of his subterranean temple, their bare limbs arching out above to form a fan-vaulted ceiling, dripping with the mist that hung heavy in the air like the cardamom incense from his sacred braziers. Here and there the occasional screech of a bird or beast: lives snatched away in the night, devoured – sacrifices to the inhuman god, the Rawgr he had once served but would now defy. The black loathing and insanity distilled from aeons of inconceivable torture were fuelling a weapon soon to be unleashed upon a world grown sleepy. He was mere days from the Maw, and then, after all these ages, justice would be meted out, and meted out in full.
If – and only if – he could reach the Maw before those meddlers from the south.
Ah, how things changed! His old purposes, desires, loyalties. They had died years ago, as had his former life. And judging by the increasing pungency from beneath his robes, so would this new life if he did not do something about it.
He looked down at his robe. Stiff with filth, it was wrapped tightly about him like the rough sheath of a chrysalis. He opened it and was straightaway assaulted by the sickly sweet stench of his wounded body. The voluminous shirt and trousers that had once billowed out in the wind like the crisp white sails of an ocean-striding bison were now the hue and texture of an ulcer. Like a heap of disgarded septic bandages in a derelict hospital, they were caked with dried blood and pus, and stank of infection and death.
Back then he had always feared death, feared it with an obsession, and it was this obsession that had chosen for him his trade. Yet now, in his wisdom, he knew there were things far worse than death.
Take life, for example.
‘A life in death, and days that will soon be no more . . .’
Or so that bard had once sung. Maybe he should have listened more to the bards, instead of merely hooking their lungs out through their mouths. Those lyrics certainly seemed to speak true of his current situation. He peeled back his clothes further and gingerly prodded the skin beneath. It was going bad. Very bad. Methuselech frowned in consternation as his finger sank in a full inch. The decay was worsening with each day that passed and, despite his best efforts, it was spreading.
As a necromancer, of course, he should have been fascinated by this process, eager to see what happened next. But time was running out, and his exigency brooked no delay. As it was, had it not been for the timely arrival of the boy, his skin would probably have begun sloughing off him days ago. The wounds from the fall back in the mountains had been terrible, and even with the sustenance the boy provided, this body would not last him much longer.
He glanced over at his companions. They were fast asleep, of course, and how could it be otherwise? He had driven them harder that day than ever before. By the Rawgr’s ichor, how those Paranduzes could run! Did they never tire? Both Hwald and Finan lay nearby, legs folded beneath them, heads upright, arms folded before their chests. Each faced in an opposite direction, out into the night, guarding the campsite like a pair of sphinxes. But they were asleep, or at least as asleep as a Parandus could be. There was still a subconscious vigilance behind those lidded eyes. But, Methuselech thought with a smile, it was directed outward, not to any dangers within the camp. Short of an attack by predators, nothing would wake them now.
The desert mercenary’s black eyes flicked from them to Gapp, who lay inert, sprawled face down upon the ground where he had dropped as soon as they had halted for the night. Since then – hours ago now – he had not moved once. Not even twitched. It was only the faint stir of his breathing that confirmed he was alive at all.
Methuselech smiled. Would the poor fool have been able to sleep so well knowing that his ‘friend’ here had once been what he was? Or the real reason why he had been dragged along on this journey?
No, the boy knew so little. But despite the strength being leeched out of him almost daily, he still retained enough wit to wonder. Oh yes, he never ceased wondering! Always asking questions. especially about the mage-priest’s affairs. Fleetingly Methuselech wondered whether he ought to tell the boy the truth about Finwald’s little adventure two years ago. It might work to his advantage . . .
But no – better not to open that can of worms. Not yet, anyway. Who could tell what the morrow would bring? What was Wrythe like after five hundred years? No, there were too many unknowns to consider still. Best to stick to his plan for the time being. The boy was useful and might prove useful for a little longer yet.
And healthy! He and that great slobbering brute that slept by his side (mercifully exhausted too) were true forest dwellers. Gapp’s juices were young, hot, salty, charged with vitality, pulsing with life.
Methuselech’s face curled into a grin.
‘Ready when you are, Master Greyboots,’ he said, and crouched over him like a bat.
‘Remember,’ Methuselech was saying, ‘the Oghain do not trust outsiders, and they will not tolerate anyone disturbing what they consider is best left alone. Our mission must be kept secret, so we’ll have to go in the guise of skin traders. And if Nibulus hasn’t passed through yet, we will have to stall for time, maybe a long time . . . I say, are you listening to me?’
Gapp clearly was not. The younger man rode by his side as if in a trance, his eyes port-red in a death-pale face, alternately nodding forward and jerking back upright. Methuselech, n
ow that he had an idea of how close they were to Wrythe, was allowing an easier pace. Even so, Gapp was spent, his head fuzzy with exhaustion. Earlier that morning he had vomited until his insides were hollow and sore. Even now he could not rid himself of the taste of bile.
He had no idea of the time of day. He was not even certain if he was awake or not. Sometimes he seemed to be, for he could see the trees, a ghostly hardwood army marching silently towards him out of the mist, passing by on either side in never-ending ranks. But even when he knew his eyes were shut, still this vision continued.
At other times he did not even know where he was. And on one occasion he had struggled to remember why he was here. Something about a mission? Yet even in his more lucid moments when he did remember, none of it seemed all that important. Not even his family, his friends or his own life. He felt he was losing himself bit by bit. Like a drowning man drifting off into peaceful unconsciousness.
The cold though, he could feel: it was bitter. But, like his mind, his body was numb, and he was past discomfort. Past all human feeling. Almost all vitality had been drained from him, and he was wandering in the world of the half-living, neither in this world or the next.
Methuselech regarded his companion briefly, then bade the Paranduzes slow down further. He leant over close to Gapp, and enunciated into his ear, ‘We’re traders, all right, just traders. Seal pelts, whalebone, walrus ivory, elk hide, that sort of thing. Who we really are, who we were, that’s in the past. Forget about it.’
Gapp made an attempt to wrap his cloak about himself against the forest mist. I know who I am, he thought, but I have no idea about you.
Yet to be honest, with each day that passed in the company of the mercenary, he was even beginning to forget who he himself was. He rubbed the itchy swelling on each of his wrists and rode on.
‘Stop!’
Methuselech’s hiss of command cut through the silence and jolted Gapp from his torpor as if an icy hand had slapped him across his red-raw face.
‘Mmm?’ he managed, blinking the frost out of his eyes, and gazed around at his surroundings.
It was an empty landscape, dreary and dead. The sun, which had reached its pitiful zenith only moments earlier, Gapp was sure, now sat just above the western horizon, cold and colourless in an iron-grey sky. Already the moon could be seen, a pale scimitar reaching the end of its cycle, insubstantial and ghostly. The black shapes of trees, lifeless and petrified, slick with freezing fog, stood all around, silent watchers unmoving in the still air. Gapp noted how much they had thinned out, and from that realized that they must finally be nearing the end of Fron-Wudu.
He was struck then by an overwhelming sense of isolation. They were actually now north of the great forest! It really did feel like the edge of the world.
‘Over there! See?’ Methuselech whispered, pointing off to their left. Both the Paranduzes were stamping in agitation and growling to each other in their strange language, clearly frightened at something, and even Shlepp was whining.
His eyes followed Methuselech’s pointing finger. He squinted hard.
‘Just trees,’ he said optimistically. ‘Nothing else.’
Then he too saw it. Though it appeared blurred from his shortsightedness, he could see a light moving unsurely among the trees. How far off it was, neither of them had any idea, so its size and nature was undetermined. At first Gapp guessed it to be some form of incandescent flying insect, for it flitted about in such a wayward manner. Then it became clear that it was still a fair distance away and must therefore be considerably larger.
‘A torch?’ Gapp suggested. ‘Or a lantern? Maybe we’ve arrived.’
Methuselech pondered. ‘No,’ he decided at length. ‘Too pale to be naked flame, and a lantern would need to be held much steadier . . .’
It was getting nearer, they could sense. Dancing through the trees, it came towards them: a white figure, blurry and diaphanous, but moving with a speed no human would be capable of.
Gapp’s brain was overwhelmed with terror. In his mind’s eye he saw again the Ganferd in the Rainflats. In rapid succession several other images flashed through his head: the look of terror and despair in his horse’s eyes as the poor animal sank to his death; Paulus hacking at the animated trees like an avenging black-souled harpy . . . the baby skings fluttering in the treetops . . .
A hand closed around his shoulder. With a cry he spun about and beheld the foreign mercenary, gaunt, rank and dripping, as much a part of the forest as the trees all about them, silent and expressionless.
Had he led him to this frightening place deliberately?
‘What is it?’ Gapp hissed, partly to break the spell of fear by engaging in rational talk with his strange companion.
But Xilvafloese’s reply did nothing to reassure him: ‘The people of Wrythe are human, but that thing is nothing human or anything like it.’
Here, as in the Rainflats, Gapp was smitten by that empty feeling of utter remoteness from civilization. This was wilderness, chaos. Hard, cold and brutal. He was no more than a naked candle-flame in the—
Gapp peered back into the gloom and gasped. The floating fire, or whatever it was, had disappeared. And with it the last of twilight’s gleam that only seconds ago had lit the forest. It was night-time.
‘Wh-what’s happening?’ he stammered, ‘Why’s it gone dark all of a sudden?’
Then he became aware that not only was it pitch dark, but all sound, save that of his own voice, had faded. Both Paranduzes stood stock-still, as if petrified; he could feel the stony rigidity of Finan’s body beneath him.
‘Methuselech,’ he whispered, ‘what is this darkness?’
No answer.
He tried again, this time the panic trembling in his voice: ‘Meth—’
A low gurgling growl rattled at his side. He stretched his hand down and felt the bristling hairs of Shlepp’s raised hackles. Then he too froze in paralysis, as he heard what they had already sensed: laughter. Children’s laughter, shrill and playful, like demon claws scratching down glass, coming from the darkness all around them, bringing the darkness with them, turning his blood to ice.
Gapp’s eyes bulged sightlessly, and he could not breathe. He was shaking from head to foot. A sudden scraping at his side drew his terrified face around. He could see nothing. A further rasping scrape. What . . .?
A flurry of light danced about, and Gapp realized that Methuselech had lit a torch. The agony of his terror subsided a little. He, Methuselech, Hwald, Finan and even Shlepp now strained their eyes into the dimly illumined woods around them.
Nothing. No children, no floating lights, no ghostly apparitions. Just trees, their bark as pale in the torchlight as dead men’s skin. Methuselech swept the burning brand about, but still there was nothing to be seen. And the laughter had gone.
The silence was torn by a strangled gasp from Gapp. The torchlight had briefly alighted upon a face, pale and unnatural, not twenty paces from where they stood and gazing at them from the space between two trees. Methuselech heard the boy’s cry and brandished the torch in the direction the quaking youth was pointing to.
The face, however, had disappeared.
‘Move. Now. Quickly,’ Methuselech instructed levelly, and no one argued. They cantered through the awful darkness of the woods in the unsteady torchlight without any idea of the direction they were taking. Minutes of this guarded retreat passed. There was no sound of pursuit, but fear, though less intense, still filled their hearts. All Gapp wanted to do was reach the safety of Wrythe, but he knew with sickening certainty that they had no idea which way to go and were in all probability fleeing instead even deeper into the forest.
Soon they could feel they were heading uphill. Still resisting the urge to flee in panic, the Paranduzes nevertheless ploughed up the slope with great speed and effort. Gapp could smell the hot vapour of animal sweat rising from them, could sense their hooves sinking into the deep carpet of pine needles. At this incline he had to lean forward on Finan’s ba
ck to keep himself from falling back, but in doing so almost gouged out his eye on the unseen plume of antlers just before his face.
The slope levelled out, and in the light of Methuselech’s torch Gapp could see that they had come to an area of limestone karst. Ahead was a gap between two karst towers and into this narrow defile they rode. Just then, and without warning, Hwald reared up and let out an unearthly sound – something between a bellow and a whine, whether from anger, pain or fear Gapp could not tell. Methuselech was almost pitched from his back. In the ensuing confusion of stamping hooves, panicking cries and flashes of flame-lit images, Gapp looked up and saw the boy.
A naked boy, perhaps five years old, white and emaciated but unusually hirsute, was perched like a gargoyle part-way up the rock face to their right, mere yards away. He – it – was staring down at them, softly singing a childish rhyme to himself. Gapp shuddered convulsively; it was not the aberrance of this night-borne apparition that chilled his heart so, but more the look in those eyes. There was nothing feral, cruel or insane in their regard. It was simply the expression of casual interest that a hunter might show on witnessing the torment of a terrified prey.
‘GO!’ Gapp wailed, and spurred Finan on through the defile. Primal terror had taken full possession of him now. Down the cleft between the two karst towers they sped, down and down into blackness. No care had he for his companions, no thought for whether they followed, or even if they yet lived. The whole world was one of blackness, meaningless noise and horror.
On the two of them sped, guided only by the Parandus’s instincts. There was no thought for what lay ahead, no plan beyond flight. Then suddenly a diabolical cry pierced the air right beside Gapp, and a white shape flashed before his eyes. A skritche-owl, harbinger of his death. He was flung sideways from Finan’s back as the beast tripped and crashed to the ground. There was a momentary weightlessness as Gapp was hurled through the blackness; for a second that seemed much longer he truly believed he was dead and his tattered soul was floating through an eternal limbo of darkness.
A Fire in the North Page 10