by Morris, Dave
He shrugged and threw his sword at the Lady in Grey’s head.
Her eyes, following the arc of Caelestis’s sword as it hurtled across the room, shone with cold hatred. Magical energy pulsed, leaving an acrid taste in the air, and the sword rebounded from an invisible shield.
Rapid clanking footsteps came towards Caelestis. He turned to see the second suit of armour advancing on him, spear levelled to impale him. Unarmed as he now was, he could not parry—and it was too late to dodge. ‘Oh well,’ he said. ‘It was worth a try.’
But his gamble had not been in vain. While using her magic to deflect the thrown sword, the Lady in Grey had forgotten about Sir Varadax. Without her concentration to maintain them, the stone tendrils holding him fast went slack.
Varadax didn’t waste time wondering about this turn of events. His sword lashed out towards the Lady’s neck. She had no opportunity to summon up another magical shield. The old knight’s stroke cleaved her head from her shoulders. Still wearing the same evil scowl, it fell with a crunch to the flagstones.
At the same instant there was a soft howl as something escaped from inside the suits of armour. They swayed and slumped forward like broken puppets.
Altor reached out tentatively and prodded the nearest one. It rocked back on its heels and crashed lifeless to the floor.
‘Just in the nick of time,’ said Caelestis, delicately pushing aside the spear that the other suit of armour had been about to drive between his ribs.
‘We’re lucky it worked at all,’ said Altor. ‘Was that the best you could come up with, Caelestis? Throwing your sword at her? Couldn’t you have called the Faltyn or something?’
‘Sure,’ said Caelestis, glancing at the magic ring he wore. ‘And I’d have still been bargaining with it when they were hanging our bodies out for the crows. Stop complaining—we’re alive, aren’t we?’
Varadax stepped free of the tendrils which were now shrivelling back into the floor. The Lady in Grey’s head lay at his feet. Her eyes were still open, but the light had faded from them. Now they just looked like old pebbles. And it was grey dust, not blood, that seeped from her severed veins.
Caelestis and Altor looked in mingled disgust and horror at the spreading pool of dust, but Varadax mustered a smile.
‘Now my brother’s soul can rest in peace,’ he said. Striding contemptuously through the grey dust, he went to the back of the room to where an ivory plaque bore a faded coat-of-arms.
‘Your own crest, Sir Varadax?’ said Altor.
‘My brother’s, in fact, as he was the elder. Mine now, of course.’ Varadax reached out and touched the plaque wistfully—only to jump back in surprise as it gave a click. With a heavy grating sound, a section of the floor tilted down to reveal a narrow stairway.
All three stared in silence.
‘I think we just ought to leave now,’ said Caelestis after a few seconds, although he didn’t expect the others to take any notice.
‘A secret door...’ said Altor. ‘What other dark mysteries has the witch got hidden away?’
Varadax stood gazing open-mouthed into the stairwell. They noticed he was trembling in the grip of overwhelming emotion. ‘Can it be? After all these years...’
He started down the stairs. Altor and Caelestis glanced at each other and then reluctantly followed.
They went down and down until they realized they were somewhere beneath the tower’s foundations. Bare rock sweated dankness into the musty air. The stairs were cramped into such a small space that Altor’s broad shoulders almost became wedged tight at one point. Caelestis waited a few seconds while his friend twisted to and fro uncomfortably, then gave him a shove with the heel of his boot.
‘Ow!’
‘Sorry. But it did the job.’
The stairs had ended. They were almost in darkness. Then a gleam of light spurted from a passage ahead. Varadax stood haloed by a lamp he’d found.
Altor and Caelestis hurried to catch up. The elderly knight was standing in front of a narrow oak doorway. The handle was a ring of black iron. Varadax kept starting to reach for it, then nervously pulling his hand away.
‘What is it?’ asked Altor gently. ‘What’s in there?’
‘And can it just stay there, whatever it is?’ chipped in Caelestis. Although normally as curious as a starved cat, he found the eerie atmosphere of the place was getting to him.
Varadax drew breath in a deep sob, like a man about to plunge into freezing water, and turned the handle. The door swung inwards with a groan of rusted hinges.
Reverently they stepped into the chamber beyond. There was a sense of portent in the air that silenced even Caelestis’s garrulous tongue. Varadax raised the lamp, and it is light they saw an open stone casket and, in it, a figure who lay as pale as an effigy of wax.
‘It’s her—!’ gasped Caelestis, the words catching in his throat. ‘The Lady in Grey!’
Varadax shook his head. ‘No,’ he said in a melancholy voice. ‘It is the form she stole. This was my brother’s bride, Seresha, who on her wedding night these many years past was struck down by the witch’s curse.’
He knelt beside the casket. Altor crossed himself and muttered a quick prayer, then threw a disapproving glance at his friend.
Caelestis, who had been scanning the chamber for any loose gold fittings that the Lady in Grey might have left lying about, coughed and tried to look suitably sympathetic. ‘A sad tale,’ he said. ‘But after all it was a very long time ago.’
Despite the stern discipline learned in a lifetime of warfare, Varadax wept uncontrollably. Altor put a hand on his shoulder.
‘At least her body is unblemished by decay,’ he said. ‘We can lay her in the ground as pure as she was on that long-ago night.’
‘Yii!’ Caelestis said suddenly and jumped back several feet.
Altor glared at him, but Caelestis was pointing at the body. ‘Her lips moved,’ he insisted.
Varadax rose at once and leaned across the casket, pressing his ear to the maiden’s white breast. ‘I hear the flutter of a heartbeat!’ He turned to them, his old face twisted into a pathetic grin of joy. ‘Help me to raise her up.’
Altor put an arm behind the Seresha’s shoulders and lifted her to a sitting position. A long dreadful moment passed in which they all feared they had been mistaken, and that it really was a lifeless corpse that they were handling. But then she took a swooning breath and a little colour came into the pallid cheeks.
The eyes fluttered open—the beat of tiny birds’ wings—to reveal eyes so blue that they looked like amethysts.
She raised her head to look at them. Soft blond hair fell to frame the same face that on the Lady in Grey had looked frightening, but which Seresha’s innocence transformed into beauty. She looked from Altor to Caelestis without recognition, but when her gaze fell on Varadax she stared in amazement.
‘Surely...’ she began, then faltered. She could not believe her eyes.
‘Yes, yes,’ sobbed Varadax through happy tears. ‘It is I, Varadax.’
She reached up to touch his old lined face. ‘I dreamt you came to waken me. You and two others, who each bore half of a broken blade. But Varadax—what’s happened? You look so old.’
‘It’s been thirty years,’ he said. ‘I returned from my travels only recently only to discover the evil acts the witch had perpetrated. I should never have gone away. I blame myself for all that’s happened to you.’
She shook her head gently. ‘No, it is not your fault. And, Varadax...’ She hesitated. ‘What of my husband?’
‘Dead.’
The look in her eyes showed she had expected it. ‘Poor Jodax. But I am forgetting your friends...’
Altor and Caelestis both bowed—one with respectful formality, the other as flamboyantly as ever.
‘My lady, we are merely glad to have been able to serve you,’ said Caelestis grandly. ‘Risk means nothing to us. Reward is a thing we spurn. Righteousness is our only watchword.’
‘You�
��ve changed your tune,’ said Altor out of the corner of his mouth.
Ignoring him, Caelestis stepped forward and offered Seresha his hand to help her out of the casket.
She looked from his face to Altor’s and smiled. ‘In my dream you were different. Not so young—not so carefree. Evil stars were set against you in your quest.’
Caelestis shrugged this off, but Altor took it more seriously. ‘There is often truth in dreams,’ he said.
‘The more so in Seresha’s case,’ put in Varadax, ‘since she was once a seeress of Wyrd.’
It meant nothing to Caelestis and Altor. Seeing their puzzled looks, Seresha said: ‘May we go up into the daylight? Then I’ll explain what I can.’
A few minutes later they were standing on the grassy slope below the tower. Though it was a winter’s morning, the cold was nothing compared to the icy interior of the tower and the pale sun gave a little cheer.
Varadax gave Seresha his cloak and, seeing her shiver still, put his arm around her shoulders. She smiled at him. To Altor and Caelestis she said: ‘I was born in the Kingdom of Wyrd, an island far to the north. The island is ruled by the Warlock King...’
‘I’ve heard of him,’ said Altor, frowning. ‘I thought he was a myth made up to frighten children.’
‘He’s real, and it is not only the children of Wyrd who fear him. He has the power to enter dreams and he sends terrible nightmares to those who oppose his rule. Sometimes people don’t wake up.’ She could not help looking back at the tower where she had lain so long.
‘Did he send the Lady in Grey to punish you?’ asked Altor.
‘I don’t know. The Warlock King isn’t supposed to have any power outside his own realm—that’s why I fled here across the sea, to put myself beyond his reach. The Lady in Grey might have been his agent. Or not. We’ll never know now.’
Caelestis tugged at his chin thoughtfully. ‘Lady, Sir Varadax said you were a seeress. Does that mean your dreams might have some hidden significance?’
Seresha smiled. ‘That is something you will have to tell me. If a broken sword means anything—Ah, I see it does. Well, in my dream the two of you were bound for Wyrd.’
Caelestis mouth drooped. ‘For Wyrd? North, you say? In the dead of winter? A dismal prospect indeed. You couldn’t have been mistaken, I suppose?’
Altor laughed and clapped his friend on the back. ‘You’re always one for checking a horse’s teeth, Caelestis! Can’t you see that this clue is a gift from heaven? We need to find the next part of the Sword of Life. From the Lady Seresha’s dream it seems we’ll find it in Wyrd.’
‘Be careful, then,’ said Seresha. ‘Once you enter the Kingdom of Wyrd you’ll come under the Warlock King’s power. If he notices you’ve come, he’ll kill you in your dreams.’
Three:
The Meteor
‘Let’s face facts,’ said Caelestis. ‘We’re lost.’
It had been quite a few hours since he and Altor had said goodbye to Seresha and Varadax, with the assurance that they could not fail to find their way to the inn in Misdren village before nightfall. But they had taken a wrong turn on the forest road and found themselves on a twisting path that grew steadily narrower and at last petered out altogether. By the time they had realized their mistake and started back towards the crossroads, darkness had begun closing in behind the branches overhead.
To make matters worse, snow now began to fall—huge feathery flakes that danced in the air. A biting cold descended with it from the evening sky. Caelestis pulled his cloak around him and cursed through gritted teeth.
‘You should’ve spent your money on sensible travelling clothes instead of courtly finery,’ said Altor unsympathetically.
‘Bad enough that I have to risk my life on some foolish adventure,’ complained Caelestis. ‘Do you also expect me to go about looking like a peasant on his way to a cattle market?’
A dim sickly light seeped down between the trees. Altor pointed to the green disk swiftly rising over the treetops. ‘See, the comet that the Krarthians call Green Flame. It’s one of the Five.’
‘I know. It was me that told you about them, remember? It’s a planet of ill omen, Altor—the more so for us, since the Five are our foes.’
‘Men make their own luck. In this case, Green Flame may ironically give us aid. Now then...’ he turned, getting his bearings... ‘it always rises in the north-west, so the path ought to be somewhere over this way.’
Altor strode on with cheerful vigour, oblivious of the glare that Caelestis directed at his back. Still more infuriatingly, it was only a few moments before Altor called out in triumph. ‘And here it is! Come on, Caelestis. Only an hour or so to go and we’ll be warming ourselves with hot broth at the tavern fireside.’
They threaded their way through the darkened woods. The snow soon stopped falling but the temperature continued to drop. The air became crisp as a light frost formed on the bark of the trees. They could see nothing but the thin snow-dusted ribbon of the path just ahead. Everything else was lost in the gloom. Through the overhanging branches they caught glimpses of the green comet sailing like an emerald through the star-filled night sky.
An hour’s slog through frost-brittle ferns brought them to a clearing that they had not passed before. Neither had spoken in all this time. Caelestis stopped and blew out his breath in a long indignant puff. ‘You know the story of Pandora?’ he said. ‘How she let all the ills in the world out of a jar?’
Altor nodded warily, because he knew Caelestis was only setting him up for some elaborate reprimand.
‘After all the ills had flown, there was one thing left and it was Hope,’ went on Caelestis. ‘Now, the question that I find myself asking is: was this a good thing? One point of view is that Hope makes the world’s ills tolerable. I reject this thesis. My own experience has been—‘ and here he rounded on his friend angrily ‘—that a false hope makes a miserable situation ten times worse!’
‘We must have found the wrong path,’ said Altor. ‘The only thing now is to build a campfire and wait till dawn.’
His calmly efficient tone that only annoyed Caelestis all the more. ‘If, if mind you, we had not dilly-dallied around with Sir Varadax and the admittedly charming Seresha then we would have passed through the woods before sunset and reached Misdren hours ago.’
‘The old gentlemen wanted to tell us about the exploits of his youth,’ Altor said adamantly. ‘It would’ve been rude to leave sooner. In any case, you were so attentive to the lady Seresha that I began to think I was going to have to physically prise you away from her side.’
‘Pah! I was merely rubbing the circulation back into her delicate hands after that long sleep.’
‘Not just her hands, I think, Caelestis,’ chided Altor.
Caelestis rolled up his eyes. Then he caught sight of something. Pointing up into the night sky, he grabbed Altor’s arm. ‘Look!’
A flare of light stood out from the Green Flame for an instant, like a cinder breaking off a burning log. They both stood squinting into the darkness. Caelestis put up one hand to cover the Green Flame itself, and could now make out a speck of light falling earthwards. At first no bigger than a firefly, it grew rapidly in size and brightness. A high-pitched whistling was audible in the still night air.
‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ said Caelestis.
Altor drew him back silently into the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing. The green flare swept low, skimming the treetops. Branches broke into splinters. The flare hit the centre of the clearing and exploded in a jet of emerald sparks.
Caelestis poked at his ears. The high-pitched whistling had stopped, but now he could hear an ominous hissing. Steam rose from the place where the flare had struck.
Altor pointed to a large black stone lying in the centre of the crater. ‘It looks a bit like an egg!’ he whispered.
‘I do wish you hadn’t said that...’
There was a deep cracking sound. Darkness spread suddenly from the met
eorite, filling the crater like a black pool.
The stark light of the Green Flame shone down over the pine trees. The surface of the shadowy pool pulsed and swirled. Then a hunched figure rose slowly as though forming out of the earth.
With a dry crackling of its joints it shrugged off the dank soil and straightened up. Black robes hung around a body that was like the skeleton of an alien being. It stood poised in the middle of the clearing, glowing green eyes slowly scanning the surrounding foliage. Caelestis could not help shrinking back as he felt its gaze sweep over their hiding-place.
A frozen twig snapped under his heel. The creature swung to face them, instantly alert. It raised two hands of fleshless bone and, uttering a long screech of triumph, came charging across the hard ground straight towards them.
Altor jumped up. His sword swept around in a glittering arc. As it struck the creature there was a pulse of dazzling green light. Both Altor and Caelestis shielded their eyes. When they looked up, the creature had vanished.
‘Perhaps it wasn’t real,’ said Altor. ‘An illusion of some kind.’
But Caelestis pointed to the footprints in the snow. ‘It was there all right—whatever it was. I guess we’re just lucky you’ve got a magic sword.’
‘Hmm. The sword doesn’t usually have such a spectacular effect.’ Altor looked at the crater, which was still belching steam up into the icy air. ‘I don’t think we ought to camp here after all.’
Caelestis was not about to disagree with that. They hurried away from the clearing. Frosty pine needles crunched underfoot. The cold orb of the Green Flame glared down through the black forest canopy like an eye gazing from the centre of a spider’s web.
After a time, feeling they had put a safe distance between themselves and the spot where the meteor fell to earth, they stopped. Nothing stirred in the green-limned darkness. The forest was shrouded in snow and dead silence.
Altor gathered some twigs and tried to get a fire going, but the wood was damp with snowflakes and refused to light. Caelestis huddled down beside the trunk of an ancient pine, gazing disconsolately into the darkness.