What’s really going on?
He had no satisfactory answer to his own question. And yet soon – glancing up at the sky he judged that dusk was no more than two hours away – he would find himself talking with the ghost of his friend. Meanwhile he had other things to think about.
Qwenqwo’s pipe had reminded Alan of the conference on the beach at Carfon when his eyes had followed another shower of sparks that spilled into the night air from a sudden flaring of the bonfire. Nightfall had been accompanied by icy sea breezes yet a sweat of worry had broken out over his brow. It was enough to make him shiver before he raised his voice above the murmuring. ‘Is there anybody here who can describe the country we’ll encounter?’ He gazed about him, blinking in the firelight, as if needing to clear his own mind of unease.
Siam peered across at him, frowning. He cleared his throat, reluctant to speak until Alan nodded to him in encouragement. ‘I do not know the land. But I have spoken to sailors in the harbour here who have described the coastline to me, with some of its dangers.’
‘Can you show us what you’ve gathered?’
The Olhyiu chief climbed to his feet and came over to squat by Alan’s side, using his broad hand to smooth an expanse of sand. Using a piece of kindling as a pencil, he drew a rough sketch of the coastline of the Southern Wastelands. ‘There are rocky outcrops. Reefs aplenty. Strong tidal movements and currents that might trap the unwary, and with no lighthouses or guides of any sort that might alert us to danger. The climate is said to be changeable. Yet still will I guide you, if this is what the Mage Lord wishes.’
‘Stoutly spoken, Olhyiu warrior!’ Qwenqwo shouted his words with a drunken flourish before taking another draught from the now largely empty flagon. He pulled a ceremonial dagger of Magcyn Ré, former king of the Fir Bolg, from his belt and drew a valley inland of the shores that Siam had sketched. ‘Here!’ He finished the flagon and threw it aside. ‘This is where we will discover the Witch’s lair.’
A buzz of excitement entered the clammy night air.
‘Where is that?’ Alan demanded to know.
‘Once,’ Qwenqwo hiccupped, ‘if legend be true, it was the land of an empire from long ago – a very great empire that rose and fell before ever the walls of Carfon, even the old city, were built. Indeed there are said to be ruins still standing that date to beyond any history of men – or witches for that matter!’
‘The legendary City of the Ancients!’ murmured Bétaald, with a wary glance in the direction of the young Kyra.
‘Such is it called,’ agreed Qwenqwo. He hiccupped again, more loudly, his hand patting the sand by his side, as if searching for the now redundant flagon. ‘Indeed, many are the tales I could I tell you, of brutal divinities declaring war in the very heavens.’
The young Kyra had laughed deprecatingly, her words addressed to the gathered company but her eyes directed at Alan. ‘Loath though I am to agree with the drunken dwarf, yet if the histories are to be believed the scars remain in the landscape of these terrible conflicts from long ago, with what is left of misbegotten giants in a graveyard amid brooding ruins of stone. Yet it is to this fearful landscape that this quest is now leading us.’
Qwenqwo Cuatzel had struggled back onto his feet. ‘Do you question the wisdom, and purpose, of the Mage Lord?’ He shouted the words at the young Kyra, as if to be heard about the hubbub of voices, but at that same moment the hubbub had fallen silent so his roar filled the air. He belched, then placed an apologetic hand before his mouth as if in a belated effort to suppress it.
Alan glanced across the flames to where the young Kyra was also on her feet, her face glowering with anger.
He joined them in standing. ‘Pay no attention to Qwenqwo,’ he spoke calmly to her. ‘When he is sober you will discover, as did your mother-sister, that he is as faithful as he is fearless.’
The youthful Kyra looked from Alan to Siam, her eyes cold as winter. ‘Is it unreasonable that I should demand to know why so many lives will be risked, and very likely lost, for one female, no matter that she is a friend of the Mage Lord?’
‘What,’ countered Qwenqwo, ‘would you know of friendship?’
‘More, it would appear, than you know of sobriety and common sense.’
Alan didn’t want to hear any more of this. ‘Qwenqwo – that’s enough! What do you really know of where we are headed, other than the myths and legends?’
‘You ask of the Southlands? I wonder how many among this gathering have ever ventured there?’
‘We have seen Nantosueta’s forbidden forests – what could be worse than that?’ declared Siam’s son, the Shaman Turkeya.
Qwenqwo hurled the dagger of Magcyn Ré so it was buried to the hilt in Siam’s rough-drawn map. ‘Here you will discover mires and swamps the like of which you have never seen before. Aye – and even stranger creatures.’
‘Creatures?’
‘Gargs will be the least of your worries. Yet hereabouts is the very homeland of those creatures of night.’
Alan sensed that strange feeling again: a sense of wrongness. ‘Nature is just nature, Qwenqwo. Can’t you be more specific?’
‘In the lore of the Fir Bolg it is said that the land gives forth both nourishment and punishment. And it is in the balance of such forces that the living come to be. So, in a valley of beauty, does beauty of spirit discover kinship with all that is wholesome. Yet what forces of nature might give rise to Gargs?’
‘You said they’d be the least of our worries.’
‘Aye. Gargs are not the worst of it. Here will we discover shadow creatures, a demon people said to haunt a man’s dreams. If the legends are to be believed they are a thousand times more dangerous than Gargs.’
A shiver passed through the company.
‘Not to forget the greatest danger of all,’ reminded Milish. ‘The Great Witch, Olc, who has made it her lair.’
‘A Witch,’ growled the Kyra, ‘who has made of the Mage Lord’s concern for his friend the most obvious trap.’
Now on board the Ship in full sail, Alan’s memories of the fireside discussion were interrupted by the clanging of the mid-ship’s bell. An elderly Olhyiu pulled on the rope above the central staircase, signalling the end of one of the working shifts and calling the sailors to their evening meal. Alan was glad of the distraction.
He had never quite understood how a great ship at sea became a village of nooks and crannies, where a community went about their different businesses. Of course the Olhyiu weren’t only sailors. The Children of the Sea, as Olhyiu actually meant, were ocean voyagers, and more specifically whalers. Siam looked comfortable in command when ordering men up the lines and rigging to the three enormous conglomerations of sails. Everywhere they worked in a marvellous togetherness, singing shanty songs to find a rhythm, reeling out lines, or scurrying over the three decks like ants all of a purpose, repairing lines, or tugging in chains, or spiders’ webs of ropes – big men climbing with the dexterity of monkeys, seeming to exult in their work high in the rigging as if their home was truly halfway between earth and sky.
As Alan admired the shipboard world about him, an immense figure emerged from below decks. All of the Olhyiu males were tall and broad. But Larrh had the towering figure of a polar bear. His snowy white hair was plaited at the back of his neck and further secured by a thong. A genial giant from all accounts, Larrh was the senior cook on board the Ship – and he ran a very efficient kitchen, preparing square meals three times a day and grog enough to fill the bellies of a small army. Now, making his ponderous way to the rail, he hung his flushed and perspiring face out to the wind, taking a breather from the sweltering ovens below. Rumour had it that his weight was so great no bunk could accommodate him, so he slept on the great slab of the galley table.
Turning back to face the ocean Alan felt the familiar anxiety flood his senses. He couldn’t wait to reach the Wastelands. And yet their progress could not be hurried, given that most of these ships were not warships but merchant craft, b
ulk carriers for ten thousand Shee warriors, together with the weapons, food, clothing and provisioning necessary for such an army. The thought of what lay ahead was enough to make him shiver as he stared once more into the never-ending vista of waves and sky, while the Temple Ship led the small armada that sailed fanwise in its wake.
Yet it frustrated Alan to know that had the Temple Ship forged on ahead alone, it could have taken him to his destination in the blink of an eye.
All the same, he had been forced to listen to the advice of Ainé, Milish, Siam and the elders. While Kate was uppermost in his mind, common sense insisted that this would be no smash-and-grab raid. The arriving army of Shee would hit hard, if they encountered shoreline resistance, and then establish a foothold in the Southern Wastelands and wait there for the much larger army that was to follow. Alan couldn’t deny the obvious consideration – that their purpose went beyond the rescue of Kate. The ultimate target was the Tyrant himself, and the destruction of his power, which was centred on the great Metropolis of Ghork Mega, at the reeking heart of the land he had made his own – the Wastelands, which occupied an entire despoiled continent.
As evening fell Alan headed for the wheel deck, a place studiously avoided at night by Siam and his sailors, who thought it haunted. Here he stood a while in contemplation of the great wheel, which was unmanned and yet appeared to move by itself.
In the gloom, surrounded by the crashing of the waves and the creaking of the taut-stretched rigging, he recalled his last memories of Mark. He saw the figures of his friend together with Nantosueta, the girl queen, now cast in stone, ten times life-sized, their bodies entwined in an embrace of love yet frozen for all eternity atop the great tower that dominated the island of Ossierel. In their brows he had witnessed the black inverted triangles that had sealed their fates.
Yet not dead …
Qwenqwo believed that Mark had been absorbed body and spirit into the Third Power. Alan could barely bring himself to think about what that might mean.
Something other than dead?
Mark’s voice, jerking Alan back to reality, was so clear in his mind he could have been standing next to him and talking into his ear.
Thank you for coming.
I think I owe you that much!
Their conversation, as usual, took place through the oraculum. But what did that mean? What did it tell him about his friend? Just thinking about it made Alan’s heart miss a beat and his throat feel dry.
Are you alone? I can’t sense any other presence, but I can’t be certain.
He couldn’t help but catch the resentful inflection in Mark’s words.
There’s only you and me.
It felt so strange, talking to Mark in this way. These conversations had begun three nights ago, about halfway through the voyage. They had been very tentative – experimental, at first – as if Mark was learning how to get through to him.
Alan watched the moving wheel.
Have you figured it out yet – exactly what, or where, you are?
I think it’s the place you call Dromenon.
Alan swallowed hard through his dry throat.
Sounds scary.
I’m petrified. Another of Mark’s jokes.
I can’t even pretend to know what it must feel like, being so alone!
I’m not alone. Nan is with me. We sense the presence of one another. But we can’t feel anything. Not even to hold hands!
Nan was Nantosueta. Alan was startled to hear Mark talk about the Dark Queen in such familiar terms. He recalled the only image of the queen he knew – the figure of wrath on the summit of Ossierel. But Kate had glimpsed that younger figure, a girl no older than Kate herself. She and Mark had met her … or sort of met her … in some kind of entranced vision. Mark and Nantosueta had fallen in love. But they existed only as spirits. Alan thought about that – to be able to sense thoughts and emotions, the thoughts and emotions of others as well as yourself, and yet never to feel, or to see through your own eyes, or touch, or to be touched … Not even to touch or be touched by somebody you loved …
Are you aware that Mo keeps looking for me?
She does?
She knows I’m here. She wants to comfort me. And that’s what’s really strange. She has no oraculum but I can read her mind clearest of all.
Alan was startled by Mark’s words. He wondered what they implied. I’ll talk to her – if you want me to.
Yeah, thanks.
I mean it!
Talk to Mo for me. Tell her that I’m doing my best from this side. Tell her I’ll never stop trying to get in touch.
Okay.
There’s something else you can do for me, Alan. I want you to tell me the truth. Look at me, through the oraculum, and tell me what you can see. No bullshit. Just say what you see, or what you don’t see.
Alan did as Mark asked him to do, studied the place around the wheel. I see something. Like some ghostly outline, kinda like smoke.
You’re telling me the truth?
Would I kid you?
You want me to answer that?
I see it. You’re twirling your hand around your wrist, a bit like a conductor does sometimes.
You really can see it? Like smoke?
Yes – I see you!
What it is … I keep wondering if we’ve died. Me and Nantosueta. What if we’ve really become ghosts?
Qwenqwo doesn’t think so.
But what if it’s true?
These conversations were harrowing and Alan’s hands came up to brush his face, but then he allowed them to fall by his sides.
We looked for your body up there on the Rath. We didn’t find it.
I’ve been thinking about things. I’ve asked myself, if I could return to Earth …
Alan shook his head. What’s this really about, Mark?
I’ve been thinking about the Temple Ship …
What about the Ship?
Do you remember what it was like, how it felt, when we all came into this world?
How could Alan forget their arrival here through the portal on the summit of Slievenamon! It had felt like he was being ripped apart, reduced to the level of molecules.
Now tell me what it felt like when you were brought back out of Dromenon – when the robot was about to pulverise your bones?
Alan thought about it. You could be right – could have been something similar about how it felt … maybe.
I’m asking myself. Could we have come here from Earth through Dromenon?
I don’t know about that.
Like maybe Dromenon is a halfway between place – a kind of Limbo?
Uh-huh?
Do you remember what Qwenqwo once told us? How in legend the Ship was the Ark of the Arinn?
Alan recalled Qwenqwo telling them a whole bunch of stories about the Ship. Stuff about the Arinn – whoever or whatever they might have been.
What I’m asking myself is whether this Ark of the Arinn was made to travel between worlds.
Alan blinked.
If so, it could take us home. Mark paused. I mean, it’s worth thinking about.
Hey, I’m with you. I’m thinking about it. But this is just wild guesses. How in the blazes could you test that one?
That’s what I want to talk to you about. After the Ship has taken you to where you’re going, you won’t need it then – not for a while.
Aw, c’mon! We might need to get out of there, real fast. If things go wrong …
The way I see it, my need is greater.
You’re going to abandon us in the Wastelands? You’re going to try it on nothing more than a hunch – just suck it and see if it will get you back to Earth?
We’re thinking about it, Nan and I. Back to our bodies – back to life.
But your experiment could put us all at risk – including Mo!
I’m thinking of putting it to the Ship – see if the Ship agrees with me. When I figure out how to communicate the idea.
Alan exhaled hard, deeply shocked at what Mar
k was thinking. The loss of the Temple Ship could jeopardise their whole mission.
Couldn’t you wait – at least until we rescue Kate?
I wish I could.
You’re not really thinking this through.
Believe me, I am. A change came over Mark’s voice, a new urgency. We’ll talk again. Meanwhile you had better look to your back. You have a problem.
What?
Simultaneously Alan received an urgent summons, oraculum-to-oraculum, from the Kyra, who was forward at the prow.
Shiny Things
Kate woke to see that the sun was already penetrating the mists of the horizon. She recalled the whispered warning of Granny Dew:
Cha-teh-teh-teh!
Where was she? She felt utterly bewildered and lost. Panic rose in her. She had to make a move – discover a place to hide.
But the fierce intensity of the sunlight hurt her eyes, even when she squinted through eyelids that were smarting and heavily encrusted with flaky crud. She felt exhausted already, and she hadn’t even climbed to her feet.
What am I going to do?
When she lifted her head off the stony ground where she had slept her neck was excruciatingly stiff. Peering down at her body, which was still covered in a weave of cobwebs, she discovered that it was half buried in soft white sand. When she tried to move her arms, her back – even her jaw – every joint felt achingly stiff. It was as if she had slept for a hundred years …
Oh, heck – just how long have I been asleep?
If sleep was remotely the right word for what must have been more like a coma, brought on by exhaustion? She put all of her concentration into bracing her arms against the stony ground so she could struggle to a half sitting-up position. A premonition seized her, rendered her trembling with fright.
Faltana!
The chief succubus would be out there searching for her. The Witch would blame her for Kate’s escape from the Tower. Faltana’s second eye would be plucked from her head if she failed to get Kate back. She’d be frantic in her efforts to find Kate, using every power at her disposal – the succubi, the Gargs … the wolves!
The Tower of Bones Page 14