All of a sudden Shaami dived into the lagoon and astonished Kate with his transformation. The radiating fronds sprang erect on either side of his head, even as he moved away with lightning speed. The ocean was his natural habitat. The fan-like fronds over the dome of his head were gills.
‘You’re amphibians!’
She had lost track of where he went underwater until his head broke, just yards away from where she had wandered knee-deep in the shallows. ‘Such delights do we maintain and cherish – but even this legacy is threatened. Only you, Greeneyes, with your power of healing, can help us.’
‘What do you mean?’
He smiled wanly. ‘Kate – girl-thing!’
A chill invaded her. ‘You’ve been watching me – me and the dragon!’ She would never have seen them, even if there had been hundreds of them present. She recalled her dream-like experience on the island, when ghostly figures had taken her down onto the riverbank and removed her spidersweb rags, dressing her in the soft underwear and the silky dress.
‘It was you,’ she whispered, ‘the Cill, who cared for me while I was sleeping that time. You dressed me.’
‘The Momu took care of her beloved Greeneyes.’
Beloved!
Kate stood there, staring down into his turquoise eyes, her mouth gaping wordlessly as the gills shrank to the stubbly rills.
‘But now Greeneyes must take care of the Momu!’
Into the Chasm
Within a few hours of their picking their way through a lava field, Shee scouts led them to the edge of a deep ravine. Black boulders lay scattered all about them from some past volcanic explosion. The leaders approached the edge, which fell precipitously downwards, perhaps borne up by the same forces that had raised the surrounding calderas. They peered down into the enormous fissure in a thoughtful silence. Mist cloaked the valley below, grey and dense, and it rose like a lapping tide against the wall of the chasm. Gazing further out over the valley itself they glimpsed snags of rock protruding out of the rolling grey, like reefs in a perilous ocean.
‘Is there no other way?’ Qwenqwo growled.
‘None,’ the Kyra replied.
Alan adjusted the straps that secured the Spear of Lug to his back. Half as long again as he was tall, the spiral blade with its cutting edges warded with Ogham reared more than three feet above his head. If they had reckoned it correctly, the Tower of Bones was no more than four days’ march from here, directly north, through the mist-cloaked valley at the bottom of the ravine. He wiped his hands down over his face with the thought: four days! With any luck, that was all that separated him from finding Kate.
Some of the Shee carried coils of rope looped over one shoulder, while Aides bore packs of provisions and weaponry. The Kyra signalled one of her most experienced trackers – a tall, grey-haired warrior named Xeenra – to assess the drop, and she uncoiled an enormous length of rope with a heavy lance head attached to the end of it. Fixing the free end of the rope to her own waist, she cast the lance head far out into the chasm, holding her body taut against the pull of the rope, all the while observing the wide sector of its arc until the rope stopped running.
‘It is very deep,’ she spoke calmly to the Kyra. ‘Almost three hundred paces!’
Alan saw how Mo squeezed the bog-oak figurine that dangled on a thong around her neck. He gave her a gentle hug. ‘Keep close to me – okay?’
They had set out at daybreak, the expeditionary force amounting to roughly a hundred Shee together with half as many Aides. A secondary force of Shee would set up camp here at the lip of the chasm, linking with the main force by the bay, and making preparations as if to follow. Much would depend on what the expeditionary force encountered along the way. But even if contingency decided that the expeditionary force would go it alone, this secondary force, and the main army back at the bay, were to show every sign of imminent departure. This way they would conceal their weakness of numbers right up to the moment of attacking the Tower.
‘You realise,’ the Kyra muttered, for Alan’s ear alone, ‘that we are heading into an obvious trap?’
Alan stared into the sky, where the Gargs were still circling while keeping their distance.
‘You anticipate an attack?’
‘Why bother to attack us when we are heading, with a wanton alacrity, for the Great Witch’s own fastness?’
They had no need for a compass. There was no mystery as to the direction of the Tower of Bones. Alan and the Kyra could sense it through their oracula, like a baleful lighthouse at the heart of their inner visions, incandescent with dark spiritual power, lurid and moiling against a sky of darkness.
The Witch must be well aware of their presence. They could anticipate danger at every step. While Alan and the Kyra would be able to detect a deathmaw there would be additional perils, including some that might not signal themselves through any oraculum. Turkeya might yet prove helpful to them, with his unique knowledge of nature. Siam, having failed to dissuade his son from joining the expedition, had belatedly insisted that an Olhyiu warrior named Kataba – the son of his late brother-in-law, Topgal – should accompany them. Kataba was the stoutest of the warrior Olhyiu, a man in the bear-like mould of Siam himself. The Kyra didn’t like it any more than Alan; Kataba looked as if he would give a brave account for himself in battle, but he was hardly suited to a mission that called for dexterity and cunning.
Siam’s final warning had been addressed to Kataba: ‘My son is apt to fall into mischief without seeing it until it bites him. Make sure that he keeps his day-dreaming eyes and ears open.’
Xeenra now led the descent, the upper end of the long rope secured by the guardian Shee and the lower end looped under her arms as she abseiled down into the pit, yard by yard, until her distant figure was lost in the mist. The wait seemed interminable before she signalled the bottom with three pulls on the rope.
Qwenqwo whispered into Alan’s ear, ‘Difficult as this descent may prove, any retreat will be ten times so.’
‘There will be no retreat,’ hissed the Kyra, whose heightened hearing had easily overhead the whisper.
Strong arms cast more ropes into the void. The Kyra was the next to go, disappearing into the abyss with impressive agility.
‘Me next,’ declared Turkeya.
‘No – you follow me!’ Alan was mindful of Siam’s concerns about his son. ‘I’ll follow the Kyra, with Mo close behind me. Then you, Turkeya!’ So saying, Alan nodded towards the watchful Qwenqwo, to suggest he keep an eye on the shaman.
Kataba insisted on following after Turkeya, to make certain of the young shaman’s safety. Alan exchanged a look with Qwenqwo. Then Ainé’s voice called back up from somewhere in the mists below: ‘We must hurry. We cannot allow the descent to take up the entire morning.’
Alan fixed a loop around Mo’s chest, tested it under her arms, then fixed the end of the rope to his own waist. He took a firm grasp of the rope and headed on down, with Mo only yards behind him. They got into a rhythm of allowing their body weights to slip down the rope, pausing at ledges strong enough to bear their weight before finally coming to rest on the shale-strewn floor at the bottom. Here, as Turkeya arrived to join them, they freed themselves and assessed their surroundings. A dank, humid mist congealed over their skins. In the crevices strange plants captured Turkeya’s attention. But the young shaman’s inspection was interrupted by the clumsy arrival of Kataba, who had managed the entire descent without problem but then slipped on scree at the bottom and twisted his right ankle.
The Kyra’s gaze met Alan’s. They hadn’t progressed a yard into the valley and yet here was Kataba already groaning with pain. The sensible solution was to leave him here to be rescued by the cliff-top guardians. But the brawny young Olhyiu wouldn’t hear of it. He shrugged off any advice and refused any offer of attention from the Aides. Alan could only exhale with annoyance.
All around them streams of bodies were arriving along the various ropes, before forming ranks about the Kyra, and peerin
g into the mist. The valley led away from them, rock-strewn and mist-drenched, with shrubby trees forming coppices where the volcanic rock gave way to a meagre, cindery soil.
‘Let us waste no time,’ called Ainé. ‘We should make the most of the daylight, murky as it appears to be.’
‘Agreed,’ said Qwenqwo, with a protective arm around Mo.
The Kyra flashed an alert to the Shee through her oraculum. ‘Visibility is poor. We march single file, but stay constantly within sight of the one in front. It would not do to get separated.’
Although the Kyra spoke to the company in general it was obvious that her warning was directed in particular at Kataba, who was now limping over the uneven ground. Progress was difficult enough through the treacherous rocks and the obscuring mist but then, after no more than a few miles of difficult progress, the heavens opened. A relentless downpour inundated the company, rain so heavy they could see no more than a dozen yards ahead. There was no sheltering from such a torrent. They had no desire to huddle in the gloom of the twisted trees, not knowing what lurked in their shadows. Alan, with the Spear of Lug now serving as a staff, kept within close touch of Qwenqwo, Mo and Turkeya.
The downpour stopped as quickly as it had begun. As they pressed on through a stretch of boggy mud it became clear that they were descending into a swampy abyss, with visibility dangerously obscured by the mist. Indeed the mist appeared to be drawn to them, creeping up out of the shadows, coiling and twisting and sliding over the rocks before brushing against them like giant tongues. The humidity was oppressive. Alan could see droplets of moisture in his eyelashes and he felt it clogging up his lungs. All about them was a continuous rush of water, hissing in the streams, rushing in the torrents, roaring in cataracts over the broken rocky surfaces, a sound that, in other circumstances, might have provoked more pleasant emotions but here seemed only to threaten.
‘Hsst!’
Qwenqwo’s whisper shook him out of his ruminations. The dwarf mage nodded to a spot nearby where, highlighted in the foggy light, twisted boughs and leafless twigs were petrified, as if frozen in the agony that had killed them. Alan was about to move on but Qwenqwo shook his head. There was something alive in there, skulking in the shadows – something big as a crocodile, yet slippery and dark, that was creeping over the surface nearby, following their progress while keeping silent as a snake.
‘They’re everywhere,’ Qwenqwo whispered. ‘The entire landscape is infested with similar creatures. And they look hungry.’
A sudden scream from further back in the single-file column chilled Alan’s heart. It had sounded so full of pain and terror.
‘Keep moving!’ the Kyra barked.
‘What’s happened?’
‘We have lost the Aides, Éineas.’
Alan glanced at the Kyra, wondering if she could sense individual injury or loss among the Shee or the Aides through her oraculum. ‘Weapons ready,’ she barked. ‘Close ranks to within arm’s length of those in front and behind.’
Immediately ahead Alan saw Xeenra put her arm under the limping Kataba, to take some of his weight. They pressed on through gushing rapids, then a muddy stream, their legs immersed to mid thigh.
When forced to stop for the night Alan approached the Kyra, who had elected to mount guard while others sat or lay down among the wet rocks. ‘I’m sorry about losing Éineas. It must have been a tough decision for you to just abandon her, without any ceremony.’
The Kyra’s eyes gazed evenly into his own. ‘Like we Shee, the Aides are born for war. They accept sacrifice – it is their being. You come from a different world. In so far as I have been able to determine, you were not born to fight. No more do you have a land, or a people, to die for here. Yet you risk your life in fighting our battles.’
‘The Tyrant murdered my parents.’
The Kyra nodded before turning to address the company. ‘Take what opportunity you can to rest. Two hours – no more!’
From inside an emptied slatted crate a bedraggled Snakoil Kawkaw searched for a refuge within the Olhyiu section of the hastily erected camp. His swollen toe throbbed as if it had been scorched by a flame, his stomach contracted on several days of near starvation, his hair stuck to his body with malodorous algae from his swim ashore, and his red-rimmed eyes were so gummy with the same vile vermin of the oceans he could barely squint. ‘Tried to drown me, you did. Tried to finish me off!’ His surviving hand was clenched in rage at the devilry that was consuming the Ship.
He had watched the camp for two nights and a day. And now a single target had become the focus of his spying. He recognised a small, miserable-looking woman who had been press-ganged back at the docks of Carfon, and hauled aboard one of Ebrit’s escorts for the rough pleasure of the sailors – a doughty face, with its ring of matted black hair, meaner in the eye than a tinker’s cur. They had found a second task for her here, that of stirring up a great cauldron of soup with a ladle half as big as herself, and with this she fed all and sundry within the camp, which she did with a baleful rancour. He took the measure of her as one after another demanded the free bounty of her ladle, with not one of them looking her in the eye or uttering a word of thanks, and the lady herself no recourse but to counter with oaths and a flow of fine arcs of spittle directed at every departing back. In his studied assessment, here was a slow-witted receptacle of fermenting malice, ready for a companion with whom she could share her misfortune.
He tested the greeting: ‘Ah, we meet again – my lovely!’
So miserable and angry was he still that he struggled to find suitable words of commiseration, suppressing the impulse to just step out and hug the bag of bones, whispering the imprecations those piggy ears had longed for all her life, meanwhile kissing those injured eyes shut.
Ach! Many a plan had been spoiled by hastiness.
‘Better a name first,’ he whispered to himself, ‘a little time spent in discovering me darling’s name!’
An hour and a half of such patience and he had it from a boy of perhaps ten or eleven years, screeching it at the top of his voice in the poor lady’s face after she had no more than reprimanded him, judging the coast to be clear to do so, with a hefty wallop of the ladle over his head.
‘Yah – Soup Scully Oops!
Soup Scully Oops indeed!
It was time for Snakoil Kawkaw to clamber out of the crate, spitting aside the hard marbles of corn he had been swilling around his mouth, and venture a bold and upright step in the direction of this maligned fellow victim. His stretched himself fully erect, then marched forward until he loomed tall and soldierly before her.
‘My dear lady,’ he shook his head before her cauldron, ‘I saw and heard for myself – such disrespect from a kick-deserving urchin! Would it be presumptuous of an old soldier to share a modicum of sympathy with one the world treats with such disdain – a lady, as I see, who has devoted her life, as did I, to its undeserving care?’
Her eyes narrowed and he witnessed, with a certain chagrin, how she ground what remained of her teeth.
‘What d’yer want, yer old tramp?’
‘Since the loss of my arm in the battle for Ossierel, serving these fish-gutters as you serve them daily, I have witnessed how their very bones are filled not with red marrow but with black ingratitude.’
‘Appears yer wants ter know if I agree,’ she hissed, ‘with wot little as ye be utterin’ as was true.’
‘Mmmm!’ he inhaled the aroma of the soup, then patted the dirt-engrained hand that draped over the ladle. ‘Did you brew it yerself, Scully?
‘It be soup, not mare’s piss.’
He laughed, with his good hand on his right hip. ‘How droll! I declare – if you were but to add a kiss to that ladle, it’d taste ten times as good.’
She spat into the soup before giving it a half-hearted stir. ‘How ‘bout that then? Ur goin’ about tastin’ me in that bowl a soup?’
‘Make it a double portion!’
She doled out two ladles into a bowl and handed
it to him, her eyes gleaming. ‘Next thing ur be a butterin’ ole Scully up.’
‘Mmmm! Delicious!” The honest truth is, Kawkaw was so starving, he couldn’t give a rat’s arse damn about the spit. ‘Scully – Scully, my darling! This old soldier would be willing to bet that if it was love and not soup you were doling out here, why the ocean’s own cauldron would not contain it.’
‘Maybe ur fancy a baked roll, ur useless rogue, if ‘is one arm is even capable a handlin’ ‘is soup ‘n ‘s sandwich ‘n not a droppin’ um both.’
‘If only if I could have you, lovely lady, as the main ingredient in my sandwich.’
‘Arrr, go button yer leery mouth.’
‘Comely lady, I might have a pretty something for you. Surely there’s a tent where such banter might be shared with this war-weary soldier?’
Her eyes turned to flint and her voice lost its patois. ‘D’you think I don’t know who you are, Snakoil Kawkaw? I’ve been watching you from the corner of my eye all the time you’ve been spying on me from that crate.’
‘Then you’re not half as stupid as you appear.’
His erect posture remoulded itself to the more comfortable stoop and his eyes scanned the vicinity, ensuring that there were no witnesses, while reaching for the knife beneath his shirt.
‘Don’t even think of it,’ she muttered, producing a dagger with a spiral blade from the folds of her apron. She kissed the triple infinity emblazoned in silver on its handle, her lips drawn back into a sneer.
‘A Preceptress,’ he groaned.
‘My master is not pleased – the brat still lives.’
‘I don’t give a bitch-bat’s teat. Do you imagine I would have taken his trinket on board had I known he intended to sink me along with the fish-gutters!’
‘Your miserable existence is of no matter.’
‘It matters to me.’
She observed him coldly. ‘I will be sure to communicate your devotion to my blessed Lord and Master, who, no doubt, will suitably reward you.’
The Tower of Bones Page 25