The Shifu Cloth (The Chronicles of Eirie 4)

by Prue Batten

  Behind them the kizmet moaned, that sound alone enough to scare a man half to death, and underneath it a hissing sound as if hundreds of voices whispered. The sound closed in behind his horse, the animal pulling, trying to canter past Poli.

  Nicholas wanted to shout to Poli, ‘Go, go! Gallop!’

  But there was little need.

  In his intuitive way, Poli yelled, ‘We’ve got to get out, something’s behind.’

  The sunbeam became crushed on all sides by the swirling cloud and snow began to fall, sifting through the slit that the bottleneck had become. Nicholas swept his hand again as his horse stumbled in the dark and a light from nowhere illuminated the last curve of the pass, a blind corner. The horses galloped around that bend, their hooves slipping and sliding and then with a final burst, they leaped toward an entrance that gleamed brighter than anything inside this miserable place.

  Poli and Nicholas burst out of the pass like cannonballs, pulling their horses up on a wide walled terrace, the veiled mutterings fading at the exit as if a door had shut in front of a thousand faces.

  *

  ‘Heavens above,’ muttered Poli as he jumped from his horse. ‘That was worse than the most vivid violence. I had lost all hope of us getting out alive.’

  Nicholas slid off his horse, looking back at what seemed so benign.

  Such is the Other world, my friend.

  ‘Insidious.’ Poli smoothed his hand over his horse’s neck. ‘Aine, will you look at that.’ He had turned to face over the terrace wall. ‘I thought the Vale of Kush was a deathly place where nothing grew. I imagined rock and shale, skeletonised trees, no life at all. This is magnificent.’ He dropped his horse’s reins and walked to the wall, leaning on his hands and gazing out with a smile on his face as if he had found Paradise. ‘Who would have thought,’ he muttered to no one in particular. ‘What we have just passed through made me feel as if there were no hope left in the world, but then you see this and you know there is more than hope.’ He turned back to Nicholas. ‘I can’t wait to get down there.’

  But Nicholas saw nothing over the terrace walls, nothing to inspire hope. Poli saw his expression.

  ‘You don’t see it, do you? You don’t see what I see.’ Disappointment coated his words.

  Nicholas shook his head. He pointed out over the Vale and then at Poli.

  ‘There’s no point,’ the other man said. ‘It’s not real so why bother?’

  Nicholas touched his arm to encourage him.

  He sighed.

  ‘The valley is wide and green, impossibly lush with pasture and trees of all kinds. I can smell apricots on the breeze and there,’ he pointed, ‘a stream. And there are swathes of the most beautiful wild flowers and birds everywhere. The antithesis…’ he dwindled to a halt.

  Of what legend says. And yet I see exactly that.

  ‘Write it down, Nicholas. Tell me what is really there. This is another enchantment, isn’t it?’

  Swiftly Nicholas wrote on a piece of paper and Poli read aloud.

  ‘A stony desert, harsher than Raj. No trees, no stumps of trees. Nothing. No water. No birds. Not even kites that haunt mountain crags. Grey forever with a sprinkling of snow. Freezing.

  ‘And yet I’m warm because the sun shines so brightly. I want to pull off my coat.’ Poli visibly struggled with what he perceived his senses told him and with Nicholas’s observations. He turned his back on the view. ‘Silver weapons are going to mean nothing. This is a battle of minds. Aine, Nicholas, I don’t know if I can do it. That,’ he gestured over his shoulder with his thumb, trying hard not to look back, ‘is so real.’

  Nicholas scribbled words.

  ‘I will lead you somehow, shut down your view.’

  ‘You’ll lead me? Huh, I suppose it might work but I’ll be such a liability.’

  Nicholas shook his head and kept his thoughts to himself.

  No more than my lack of voice is to you. I owe you this. For what my father did to you and for what you are trying to do for me.

  But he couldn’t say it and just reached forward and clasped Poli’s forearm.

  ‘Let’s have what little food is left,’ said Poli. ‘And I have some brandy. Been saving it. Bit of liquid courage. It’ll be our battle banquet.’

  He grinned and moved to his saddlebags but kept his back firmly to the view.

  *

  ‘We have to find another way for our return,’ he said as he quaffed the brandy, that same grog that spread much-needed warmth into Nicholas’s own belly. ‘Once in a lifetime is enough for anyone. And if we are bringing Isabella back, it would be unfair, cruel.’

  Nicholas nodded his head in robust agreement.

  Ah Poli, so sure we will find her.

  He quickly wrote a note.

  ‘Along the mountain ridge to the Celestine Stair and down into Trevallyn through Star.’

  ‘And visit a few of the Happiness inns across the range while we are at it,’ agreed Poli.

  He referred to the six inns positioned across the mountains between Trevallyn and the Raj. Each inn was identified by a sign – a jolly innkeeper sitting at a table with a descriptive number of ales spread in front of him. In Star, the Inn of the First Happiness was owned by the Buckerfields, friends of Adelina’s from times past and marked by a sign depicting a rosy cheeked innkeeper sitting with one mere mug of frothing ale in front of him.

  Nico’s memory of the place was the antithesis of this hellhole for sure. Laughing, warmth, conviviality – all conspiring to create a sense of joy and hope, where the truth of the matter was as simple as where the next ale would come from.

  Truth. That’s what the Moonlady had said. Well, the truth of the matter is that Poli sees Paradise and I see Hell. And where is the veracity? Surely my vision…

  He watched his friend crawl under his coat and with his back to the fire, his face confronting the Vale, his hand holding the silver dagger firmly as if he were afraid of nothing.

  ‘Need some shut-eye, Nico,’ he mumbled, his words the worse for the brandy. ‘Just a moment or two. You keep watch.’

  *

  Nicholas wondered if his own magick, that half-time, readily disparaged magick, would be strong enough when needed. Not merely strong enough to fight off any demons, but with guts enough to be able to enchant Poli, because whatever spell caused Poli to see Paradise could just as easily pull him away and destroy him.

  Now was assuredly not the time for lacklustre self-belief. It was simply a question of doing it, he thought, and worrying about consequence later.

  Easier said than done.

  His hand glided, a mesmer that seemed as if it slowed time – as though he wanted some spirit, maybe the Moonlady, to say ‘Don’t. It is unnecessary.’

  But nothing appeared, no voice responded and he knew in his heart that his hand moved slowly because there was not a single margin for error, that every part of Poli had to be mesmered incontrovertibly.

  He leaned over his friend – the vibration from the silver dagger almost lashing him in circles of wire. Stunned that he should feel such cruel power, he grunted.

  Perhaps it is the Vale. Maybe that is why I feel more.

  He girded himself for another surge of pain and touched two fingers to Poli’s neck, to where he should feel the regular beats of a staunch mortal heart.

  Nothing!

  He had mesmered his friend into a state as close to death as it was possible to be.

  He had a plan.

  It had to work.

  He had no desire to wait for whatever passed for dawn in this place.

  Moonlady, I am about to begin a perilous path and I ask you, if you have ever cared anything for my family, even for me, please intercede if you are needed.

  She was needed, right now, because although Nicholas tried valiantly to believe all would be well, the legends of the Vale of Kush and what it represented were too dreadful and he longed for the Celestial’s support. For once he was glad he couldn’t speak because he thought he
might just howl with fear and frustration.

  He saddled the horses, making sure the barding was secure, checking and re-checking every strap, every buckle. He touched the animals between the ears, mesmering a deafness, he magicked blinkers on their bridles, all the time wondering how he knew to do such things. And as the minutes ticked by, he knew the mortal in him shrank that little bit more and the Other grew in its place.

  Thus, in one grandiose gesture, he ran his hand around and over the horses, protecting them, a shield mesmer that must surely stop any from disabling or killing the mounts.

  For himself he couldn’t worry, there was no time. Which was why he longed for the protection of the Celestials. Mesmering was one thing, getting through this Vale alive was another thing entirely. What would they try to do to him? Kill him? A bloody, violent demise? Or merely suck him into their never-ending sadness. A kizmet slid past his neck and his urge was to run far, to take Poli and run back the way they had come.

  Isabella…

  He sighed, imagining Phelim, Gallivant; thinking of Adelina in her own never-ending sleep if they were not back in a month.

  Everyone awaiting the outcome of this vacuous rescue mission.

  Vacuous? So it seems.

  He lifted Poli and threw him over his shoulder, forgetting how muscle bound his friend was, easing him over the saddle so that he draped, his head and his arms hanging down one side, his feet and legs the other. With care and hating himself, he slipped a rope around wrists and ankles, binding the man firmly to his mount. Already Poli’s face was pale, his lips almost lavender with the cast of death and Nico swore in vicious silence.

  My friend…

  He mounted his own horse, taking up the leading rein, clicking the animals on and they began the steep descent from the plateau to the floor of the valley.

  *

  The air was still and moist, as if it were bog land.

  Perhaps it was.

  Odd, when from above it had looked like a desert.

  Nicholas now realised his decision to travel through the night was ill-considered. That he needed light before he and Poli stepped into some life-sucking mire.

  But too late now.

  Aine, I hate this silence.

  His skin crawled as if some malfeasant stalked at his back, and he turned swiftly.

  Nothing.

  Only a dense blackness whereby he could see no way back.

  No question but to continue on.

  The air was freezing, a dampness that ate into the skin, the nose, the eyes, even the ears where it was as if sound was deadened in perpetuity. He pulled at warm thoughts, of sun and sea, blue skies, apricots and strawberries. Of Isabella’s laugh as she splashed him when they swam…

  He kept Poli’s horse tight by his side. He wanted no unseen hand to cut a rein and spirit his friend’s body far from care. The horses plodded on, calm, steady, oblivious to any incipient danger but his own mind began to weaken, like a wall that develops a hairline crack. His left leg chilled as if ice-frozen, and he rubbed at it, longing for a fire, for furs…

  He glanced down and a woman looked up at him.

  A mirage of a woman – frozen in time, youth incarnate but a pastiche of it, empty, as inanimate as a corpse, her eyes dull.

  ‘Nicholas of the Færan, give him to us. You will journey much faster unimpeded.’

  ‘Get you gone,’ he mindspoke.

  In a heartbeat he was surrounded not just by a few others of her ilk but by an army of dead. Hundreds and hundreds of shades – mortal and Other, the never-ending population of the Vale of Kush killed in the Wars of Chaos centuries ago and who refused to allow Kush to mend, to cleanse, to submit to the caress of Nature. The horror of it began to leach into Nicholas through that tiny crack.

  Not a word issued from the blue lips surrounding him but the eyes were filled with lascivious hunger for what he represented and deathly envy that he should be so. The lack of hope thundered down on him like hundreds of stones battering him to a pulp.

  ‘No!’ he mindshouted, absolutely desperate. ‘I am hope. It is why I am here. I live so much in hope that it propels me onward past your machinations, beyond your despair, even with the dead body of my friend beside me. I would not let him lie here where grief and loss festers like a rank wound. I would that he lies surrounded by trees and flowers. The truth of it is that you are shades, mere memories of what passed, and I am vital and real and am everything that you are not and you shall not hold me back.’

  The thousands that filled the Vale said nothing and it was worse than if they had shouted and beaten spears against shields. They shuffled into place, forming an impenetrable barrier, the noise of the action like the flutterings of a plague of moths. But Nicholas clicked the horses on, their noses pushing at the shades, the freezing cold that was the Vale’s enchanted breath coating him in rime so that his teeth began to chatter and he almost dropped Poli’s rein.

  The woman glided between the horses and the battalions.

  ‘Give him to us. He is dead.’

  He girded his mind, allowing them no ingress to his most private thoughts and fears. Sweat coated his freezing forehead and his breath sucked in and out with uneven rhythm.

  ‘I shall not. He is returning to his family so they may grieve for his loss in the accepted way and kiss him goodbye.’

  The cohorts howled like the Caointeach, resenting the idea of grief and kisses and Nico’s bowels almost ran – this was the sound of intimidation and fear.

  But then a shaft of pale light fell from the sky directly between the horses and the woman and she cried out, stepping back as if a sword had arced across. A stepping-stone of moonlight lay upon the ground and another and another, so that the battalion divided, forced aside, split asunder.

  The moonpath formed ahead, leading Nico in a gloriously lit trail to somewhere on the other side of the Vale. The horses moved on, amiable, unaffected, heads nodding and he let out a jagged breath.

  The Lady Moon came down one night,

  She did, you shouldn’t doubt it.

  A lovely lady dressed in blue,

  I’ll tell you all about it…

  His face settled in a grim rictus of a grin and the twigs of a tree touched his cheek, the leaves smelling sweet and filled with the hope of spring and the truth that life existed, even on the fringes of this rotten place.

  Then another tree and another, and he knew he was safe.

  I owe you my life, Moonlady. You and every Celestial in Eirie!

  *

  He flung himself from the saddle, untied Poli and laid him on the ground, sweeping his hand over the body.

  Touched his neck.

  Nothing.

  Please!

  He sat by Poli. The man’s colour was no better than those back in the Vale, as if they had infected him with their demeanour.

  An extra jacket, warmth, a fire?

  Nico slumped, head in hands.

  What use is heat to a dead man?

  The horses chomped on their bits, resting a hoof each, content as the moon drifted away, dawn approaching the mountains.

  Nicholas’s brave friend lay dead. So, he thought, no better than his father now for sure. His father had caused the death of the older Poli and now he had killed the son.

  He wept.

  Is Isabella’s life worth this? An innocent dead?

  Silent, his shoulders shaking, tears fell to drip onto Poli’s calloused hand which lay in his. He closed his eyes as the weight of the last year settled on him as heavily as the hopelessness of the Vale.

  *

  ‘Bloody ballocks, Nico. I like you and it’s kind, but I’m not so afraid of the view that you need to hold me.’

  Nico dropped Poli’s hand as if it were poison, his mouth falling open, shock, delight, even anger at being so fallible, all ripping through him like a maelstrom as he stared at the healthily flushed face of life, amusement and let it be said, bemusement.

  Poli!

  ‘By the sea spirit
s, Nicholas,’ Poli sat up. ‘When I spoke to you, you looked as if you’d seen a ghost.’

  Thought I had.

  Nico ripped out another of his paper scraps and the charcoal stub.

  ‘You feel well?’

  ‘Of course. I just needed a nap, I told you…’ he turned toward the direction in which he had last seen that fateful view, to be confronted by trees, by the softly undulating foothills of the Goti – pines, cypresses, mountain ash – and high above, the snowcaps.

  He spun around to look behind, as full of surprise as Nicholas had been earlier.

  ‘The Vale…’

  Nicholas nodded.

  ‘You took me through.’

  Again Nicholas assented.

  ‘But I don’t, I can’t…’

  Nico scrawled.

  ‘Remember?’

  Poli’s eyebrows creased and he shook his head, staring behind.

  ‘You were mesmered.’

  ‘How? Asleep?’

  Nico nodded.

  Sleep is an easier concept than death, my friend.

  ‘Asleep. Aine, that’s what I call the sleep of the dead. I knew nothing. Astonishing! Was it dangerous?’

  Charcoal flew across the paper.

  ‘Later, long story. Not nice. Time passing, Poli. We have less than two weeks to find Isabella. Adelina…’

  Dawn was breaking, a magnificent opalescent sheen spreading in a stain across the snows. Birds chirruped and the sun was unaccompanied by cloud or mountain mist. Nico knew that birdsong would cease as they climbed higher and that there would be heavy pressure on their own bodies as they tried to breathe in the rarefied air.

  ‘Higher? North by northwest?’ he scrawled.

  Poli whipped out the little compass, settling it in his palm and turning his own body this way and that.

  ‘No. That way,’ he pointed to the forest of trees that hugged the foot of the mountains and which provided a deeply verdured skirt as far as the eye could see. ‘Nice forest but wouldn’t bet on an easy path. I can hear water roaring. Listen.’

  The sound of a body of water coursing between stonewalls was unmistakeable and a veil of spume indicated a waterfall or some such. The vapour drifted above the trees – be careful, this is not a tiny rill, it seemed to say.