‘Where are you?’
‘The Black Shore,’ the voice repeated. ‘It lies between the sea and the line of weed left by the high tide. This is a refuge for huldre, and here may we pass into their world and emerge on Melhus.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘It’s been a long time since I had any dealings with Jagt – a long, long time. But if Chance has the whim to smile on us on this day, I may be able to secure our passage.’
Methuselech closed his eyes and then simply ignored the company.
Gapp wrapped his Oghain robe tightly about him and gazed out over the flat lifeless grey of the Jagt Straits. Though now the twilight and the fog combined made it hard to see further than ten yards, just half an hour ago they had enjoyed a clear view many miles out across the ocean and had seen no boat, raft or ship, or indeed anything at all, upon its surface. He turned back to Methuselech, who was facing out to sea with a look of intense concentration on his face.
‘But there’s nothing there,’ the boy protested, trying hard not to sound as if he thought his companion was insane (which he did). He had no wish to antagonize this lunatic, especially now that he had begun to move his shrouded stumps about in a peculiar, trance-like manner reminiscent of those gin-crazed Torca vagrants in Lower Kettle Bazaar back in Nordwas, who would suddenly decide to dance, glassy-eyed, with their arms waving vaguely.
‘There will be,’ Methuselech murmured, still gesturing. ‘Trust me. I’m a necromancer.’
Gapp ground his teeth in frustration. Why had he followed the creepy old spectre this far? He looked at the faces of the Vetters, the Paranduzes and the Cervulice ranged around him. They were clearly fearful, it was true, but their fear was induced by this place and the rumour of the horrors on their tail. Of Methuselech himself, however, there was not a trace of distrust in their eyes.
It seemed to Gapp that Englarielle, even though he was high chief of Cyne-Tregva, considered Methuselech to be the leader here, and trusted him as blindly and faithfully as he would a prophet or even a god. Though he was as intensely curious as any of them as to what the great one was up to, it never occurred to Englarielle to question Methuselech’s motives.
Gapp could not decide which irked him more, Methuselech’s reticence or the naivety of an entire community. Or perhaps he was most annoyed by the fact that he was going along with it just as dumbly as they were.
In any case, things did not bode well.
Then Methuselech opened his mouth wide, and from it blasted a sound as loud, deep and reverberating as that from a foghorn.
Just as the screeching of the Children had oppressed every citizen in Wrythe two days ago, so did Methuselech’s trumpeting wail now flatten all those near him onto the ground in cowering dismay.
‘Wuih!’ Gapp breathed, ducking also.’I never expected that!’
Then, without warning, the air changed. Or something changed. There was now a definite otherworld presence close at hand. As Gapp strained to penetrate the enveloping murk, he suddenly discerned a darker shape out there upon the sea. Slowly, noiselessly, it approached them, gradually growing more distinct.
It was a figure – could it be a man? – floating on the waves, or even on the fog above them. Some of the Cervulice snorted and backed away. The others held their ground but could be heard panting heavily, occasionally stamping their great velvety toes into the sand.
Methuselech ceased his incantation and stood silently waiting, swaying slightly. Gapp edged surreptitiously away from him and continued to watch the approaching figure.
It travelled upon a round platform, he could see now. At first this appeared to be some kind of coracle, but as it drifted closer it was revealed as no boat but a disc of floating ice, like a tiny floe, carved with grotesque reliefs and draped with sludge-grey seaweed.
Gapp felt increasingly agitated with each passing second. Whoever Methuselech was underneath it all, hadn’t he just confessed to them he was a necromancer? And didn’t they summon the dead? But as the floating figure beached upon the sand, it became more and more apparent that it was far from dead. It might not be part of the human world but it was very much alive.
So if the dead are summoned by living necromancers, surely the living then are summoned by . . .?
‘Bilge!’ the boy muttered to himself. ‘Old Xilva can hardly raise his arms, let alone anything else.’
Then a soft voice drifted towards him on the still air. At first he assumed it was that of the newcomer, till it became clear it was Methuselech’s. No longer hoarse, his voice now sounded as velvety-smooth as an altar cloth, entering Gapp’s mind directly rather than through his ears.
‘This is Jagt, the pilot of the waves,’ that voice intoned, ‘and no, rest assured, he is not dead.’
Jagt now stood before them on the strand, and all sound was stilled as he began to speak.
‘Your day is long gone, Mauglad.’ He addressed Methuselech in a voice as profound yet unsonant as a gale that shudders the timbers of a house. ‘Drauglir died an age ago, along with all his spawn. His halls ring hollow with empty air now.’
Jagt stood tall before Methuselech, unbowed by the power of the necromancer whose same power had summoned him here. Of the rest of the throng he remained as heedless as he was unmindful of the glamer he induced in them. In the dark it was difficult to make out his form, but Gapp was aware of a tall figure clad in a trailing mantle of grey-green seaweed. Oddly jointed limbs there were, one of which held a staff fashioned from barnacle-encrusted driftwood. Between curtains of matted seagrass hair could be glimpsed a pale face whose skin reminded Gapp of a jellyfish, running with water constantly, bulging and palpitating. Of this slick visage, little could be discerned but two lifeless fish-eyes.
Gapp was as unprepared for this apparition as any of them, save Methuselech, but like the necromancer’s words, those of Jagt permeated into the consciousness of all, and Gapp could understand every one. And in his mind joy surged on hearing what Jagt had just said.
‘Drauglir died an age ago.’
Jagt washed up against the line of wrack that marked the periphery of huldre-home – beyond this he would not pass – and gazed upon his summoner with scantly disguised loathing. He was a creature of the sea and had no love of the land nor anything that dwelt upon its surface. But here, along this narrow belt of wrack-strewn strand that Methuselech termed the Black Shore, he was still within his realm and walked with the flowing ease of one comfortably in his element.
‘You’re in the wrong place and time, black conjuror,’ Jagt hissed. ‘There’s nothing for you here now. Get back to your cow-dung sepulchre; let the earth plants infiltrate their roots into you and feed upon your desiccated flesh. Go now, just GO!’
‘Say what you will,’ Methuselech responded with that silken mellifluence that spoke to the mind rather than to the ears, ‘for all the good it’ll do. You know as well as I that you have no power to refuse me. I have the binding over you, and you will do as I bid.’
Huldre and necromancer held each other with their eyes, unmoving.
‘For all its size,’ Methuselech continued, ‘your ocean might as well now be a puddle of piss in a cowshed. I can hook you out as easily as a boy plucks mussels from a rock pool at low tide. Though you might skulk in the deepest iciest cracks in the ocean floor, it will avail you nothing, for even there I can burn you like a lobster in a pot, or shrivel you like an eel thrown upon a bonfire. The only difference being that your torment would last considerably longer than theirs.’
Between the two great powers the night air crackled with tension. None watching dared make a sound. Then, abruptly, Shlepp broke wind. It was not loud, but it broke the suspense of the moment (and caused the hound’s head to spin round in surprise at his own posterior, as dogs do).
Jagt’s secondary eyelids drew over his blank fishy eyes, turning them white. He did not move, but it was clear to all watching that he had been brought to heel. Shambling rather than drifting now, he turned and w
alked back into the sea.
‘Come,’ Methuselech rasped, in his real voice again. ‘Follow him quickly; his power will get you all across to Melhus only if you stay close to him. Let’s go!’
None of them knew what was going on, but such was the force of Methuselech’s exhortation that all found themselves charging without hesitation into the sea. Spray flew about as fifty mounted Vetters floundered about in an element that was baffling to them, but none cried out in alarm.
Gapp stood like a frozen pillar upon the strand, a single point of immobility amid the whirling, unthinking herd that stampeded headlong into the freezing sea. His world, never quite in phase with reality since he had met again the one that called itself Methuselech, had now collapsed into meaningless chaos – a melee of leaping, plunging, horn-headed creatures screeching insanely in that white fury of sea spray.
He had only this minute received the joyous news that Drauglir was truly dead, and that they could all go home again and never return to this land again. So what were they all doing now? It had ceased to make any sense to him at all, and he felt like shouting out to them that they were all heading in the wrong direction.
Even if they had decided rationally that they must follow their spectral leader over to Melhus, it still made no sense. This was their first contact with the sea, something otherworldly, terrifying, too immense to comprehend. Every nerve ending in Gapp’s warm, oversensitive flesh drew back, repelled by the mere thought of contact with that freezing, salt-poisoned element. This was not their world; theirs was one of loamy earth, warm air and sun on leaf, and it ended here on this beach. To merely sail upon the surface of the ocean was a risk undertaken only by the bravest of heroes, but to plunge beneath it was nothing less than equivalent to throwing oneself over the edge of the world.
Yet there they were, following the lead of the Methuselech-thing, himself as rotten as the sick air of this place, plunging mindlessly over the edge of the world.
He was alone now. The last of the Vetterym had just disappeared from sight.
How is it that they can do such a thing but I can’t? It’s as alien to them as it is to me – more so, in fact. Am I still such a coward after all I’ve been through?
Then a howl that turned his bones to jelly erupted from behind him. The wire-races had arrived! Over two score of them, charging down to where he stood alone by the water’s edge, their garrottes almost singing in anticipation.
After the briefest moment of frozen terror, he scurried down to the water and flung himself into the mercy of the sea – or of Jagt or the necromancer. A second later, he too was off the edge of the world.
‘GOD’S POLLUX!’ he gasped as the freezing water clamped around his torso, squeezing the air from his lungs. For a moment he believed the sea had frozen solid around him on first contact and was attempting to crush the life out of him – as if caught in a Marmennil’s icy grasp – as his punishment for entering this alien world. For several seconds he thrashed about in despair and truly believed he was about to perish.
Then the strangest, most unexpected thing happened.
He found he really had entered another world, a suddenly quiet world where all the noise and commotion and his own panic were gone, and where the cold, though undiminished, caused him no discomfort at all. As Bolldhe, miles to the east, had discovered under the influence of Wodeman’s spell, even extreme cold could be accepted into oneself and become as natural as breathing. But breathing, Gapp realized with astonishment, was not of this world. He neither held his breath nor took water in through gills, for breathing was simply not a necessity any more.
Suspended there, he looked around. The ocean that from the land had appeared as dead and colourless as stagnant ditch-water now swirled with a thousand different sea-hues: every shade of grey between iceberg-white and shark’s-eye-black appeared around him, from the scintillating silver of a mackerel’s belly through to the dark blue-grey of a dolphin’s back, and all bespeckled with the shimmering, ever-changing hues of a rainbow. Gapp had never imagined mere water could be so dazzlingly colourful. This was something not even the skalds had sung about. The boy also found to his wonderment that he could actually see the patterns the water made: every swirl and eddy from the tiniest vortex caused by the twitch of a minnow’s tail to the rise and fall of warmer or colder water, and on to the vastness of the tide itself. If he ever returned to Nordwas, he would have to have a few words in the skalds’ ears before they thought about their next composition.
If he ever did return to that flat drab world, that is . . .
Through the grinding of remote icebergs and the haunting whale song that echoed with aching sadness throughout the ocean, Gapp became dimly aware that Jagt and his company were somewhere ahead of him, a distant flurry of movement. How far away, though, he could not tell, for relative dimensions in both space and time were unfathomable in this new world and held little interest for the boy. Nevertheless, with a quick flick of his feet, he soared after them, darting through the water with eel-like fluidity, faster than he could have believed, and with effortless ease and grace.
The very ocean and its wondrous inhabitants seemed to smile with him in exultation and exuberance: languorous whales; spear-nosed narwhal; battalions of mandarin shellfish, each as big as a Sailam horse, marching in lines over the seabed; sly Marmennil with scales that glistened electric-turquoise and psychedelic-yellow; forests of multicoloured seagrass expanding and contracting with each breath, swirling like a drowned maiden’s hair; creatures that flew upon vast wings; tiny specks of incandescence that surged as one in shoals of billions, changing colour with each turn.
Almost immediately, it seemed, Gapp was back with the main company. He could feel the ecstasy of the Vetters emanating in waves of blue electricity towards him, like new souls awakened into life on the first day of the world. No longer riding their steeds, they now swam with the playful fluidity of otters, their large splayed feet working like flippers. Through them, among them, twisting and turning, wide-eyed Paranduzes and Cervulice galloped upon fin-like hooves like a herd of sleekly glistening hippocampi. Shlepp, too, wriggled through the water like a great seal, enjoying every moment of this brilliant new game. Even Methuselech was among their number, a black poison spine darting harpoon-fast at the head of the throng.
And then there was Jagt.
Gapp gaped. It was Jagt, and yet a Jagt that was as different to his former manifestation as it was possible to imagine. In his own element that grotesque figure that had appeared so out of place upon the strand flowed with the grace and beauty of one wholly at one with his world. Gone was the pale jellied complexion, replaced by a skin as white, hard and shining as the smoothest pearl, and glowing with an inner light that shone from a high noble forehead. With the unhurried grace of one deep and ancient Jagt swam, cloak billowing around him like a manta ray, his clothes that had looked like greyish seaweed now swirling and furling every shade of green and blue. Even his staff, formerly a rotten stick scabbed with dead limpets, was now a fine black cane inlaid with mother of pearl, long as a narwhal horn.
A high song-like voice keened through the depths all about, and Gapp realized that Jagt was talking to them. Here, he sounded infinitely more musical than he had on land. And though there was no comprehension of the individual words or sounds he uttered, again all there could understand what he meant, just as one comprehends the message a composer conveys through his music.
U’throst, it seemed, awaited them; through that marine huldre-realm they had to pass if they were to reach their destination. But Gapp was already too glamered by this world to feel any trepidation. As Bolldhe and his companions had three weeks ago on entering Eotunlandt, Gapp felt nothing but breathtaking renewal, the pure joy of a child, a second birth. This was his baptism into huldre, and ever after he would yearn to return to its cold embrace.
Had he thought about it, however, he would have detected a certain slyness in Jagt’s voice, knowing, cold and dark as the ocean’s depths, unf
eeling . . . Exactly how much hold did Methuselech’s binding spell really have on him?
But evil? Who could tell? Is a fish evil? Who could know what thoughts lay in the heart of Jagt, if he even possessed a heart?
Meanwhile, U’throst still called. Down they plummeted, spiralling deep through a whirlpool that could not be resisted, awesome and – for the first time since they had entered the sea – frightening in its power. Down through a great hole in the seabed, twisting and twirling so fast the land-dwellers felt their frail bodies might at any moment come apart . . .
. . . Along tunnels of grinding ice . . .
. . . Speeding through vast underground caverns that teemed with the wraith-like shapes of pulsating, translucent medusae, lunging multi-legged monsters with scissor-like mandibles, leviathans so vast their size and shape could not be guessed . . .
. . . Amid fey denizens with faces that were almost human but sharply pointed, of hard dark-green shell, with eyes that poured forth beams of yellow light and expressions of such ghastly malice they would never be tolerated on land. With pincers bigger than their own bodies they snapped at the intruders, but Jagt’s power kept them at bay.
Now they cavorted through pillars of rock covered in needle-sharp spears of rainbow-hued crystal, faster, faster, faster still, a hyperdive through the aquakaleidoscope of the galaxy. A dull humming filled Gapp’s ears till he began to feel his eardrums might burst. Now, all sight became a meaningless blur of colour and light. It was impossible to tell even in which direction they were headed.
On and on it went, until even Time gave up, took a bow and fled, back to the surface where its services might be better appreciated.
Then it became dark and very, very cold. Time may have drifted back, slowly, hesitantly, still unsure whether it was wanted or not. That sense of huldre gradually dissipated, and they could now feel they were heading upward.
Up, up, up, but getting ever slower, losing momentum. A tight, uncomfortable feeling began to grip their chests, and with it came the first sensations of panic.
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