by A J Dalton
‘I tell you what, I’ll send my boy to lead you through the pall. He has the eyes of a rat and will always find his way. He is a good boy and has brought me much comfort in these latter days. Look after him for me.’
‘Won’t you come with us?’ the Scourge asked with a rare and gentle care.
Trajan shook his head, the glowing ash in his pipe flaring in the wind to reveal a grateful but tired smile: ‘I would slow you down. Besides, I need my bed. The hour is late and I am old. I look forward to a rest. There is something more you can do for me though. Lucius!’
A gangly man emerged from the house, having to duck to pass under the door lintel. As he straightened up, it became clear that he was taller than anyone else there. He had shy eyes and clutched what appeared to be a stringed musical instrument to his chest.
‘Take this one with you.’
‘Trajan, what’s this?’ the Scourge asked impatiently, his reverence of moments ago forgotten. ‘If our blades become blunted, are we then to serenade our enemies into submission?’
Trajan looked at the Scourge without speaking. Young Strap was sure that if it were not for the darkness, he would have seen the Scourge blush for the first time in his life. Once the Scourge had readjusted the position of his feet in obvious embarrassment, Trajan said: ‘Two of the gods came knocking at my door. They came in for tea. They asked that I make sure Lucius goes with you to be there at the end. I now pass on that charge to you. Do you have a problem with that, young Guardian?’
Young Strap had to stifle a giggle at hearing his grizzled commander being addressed in such a way.
‘It is not a problem,’ Saltar spoke up. ‘We are grateful for any aid that is offered. I fear that we must be leaving you now.’
‘Yes, quite so. I will be waiting here in the dark should you return.’
‘Sleep well, good Trajan,’ the Scourge said hoarsely.
The boy stood looking at the old man, eyes wide with loss. He gave a small wave, which Trajan answered with a paternal smile, and then the boy turned away towards the catacombs, watching the ground so that none of the rocks tripped him up. He scampered forwards and the others had to hurry to avoid losing sight of him.
‘Be good, lad!’ Trajan whispered and shuffled back inside his house. He closed the door and began to extinguish the candles within.
‘You,’ the Scourge instructed Lucius in his most no-nonsense manner, ‘will walk with Mordius between us. Saltar and Kate will take the front, Young Strap and I will take the rear. Let’s get going.’
Lucius knew the aggressive Guardian had decided the marching order so that Lucius could be watched at all times. He didn’t mind. These people would get him into the palace and might even be able to reunite with the woman he loved. Even if it was his fate to die, he would do so without argument if he could but see the white sorceress one more time. Besides, travelling in the middle of the group meant he had a degree of protection, and he needed all he could get now he had a permanent weakness from his time in Voltar’s dungeon. His affliction wasn’t just physical either. He’d suffered night terrors ever since he’d been freed from that place. Again and again he relived the knife cutting into his eye and all the aqueous fluid running down his cheek. How it burned, as if a hot coal had been put in his eye socket instead of the eyeball! He’d begun to fear sleep because of the horror, and forced himself to stay awake. Inevitably, then, he’d begun to have waking dreams in which his relatively normal surroundings would warp without warning as the horror tried to break through. He began to mistrust everything he saw, no matter how innocent it pretended to be, no matter how beautiful it might seem… particularly things of beauty, for they concealed better than anything else the horror, rot and ugliness that lurked just beneath the surface of things.’
He’d begun to flinch away from the old pander and rat-boy. He covered his ears whenever they spoke; and it was only worse when they tried to coax him with gentle voices, because then they sounded as reasonable and soothing as Voltar had been just before he’d pushed the blade into Lucius’s naked eye, to skewer the organ that was guilty of perceiving and lusting after beauty. Whenever the crow and the rat were present, he’d hidden under his blankets and squeezed his one good eye tight.
Where the crow had found the greater lute, Lucius couldn’t say. He’d probably had the rat steal it for him. They’d offered him the instrument and he’d tearfully begged them to take it away. Finally, the crow had decided to drag his own talons across the instrument’s strings. The resulting cacophony had actually calmed Lucius somewhat, because it was a sound without any pretence towards harmony or beauty. The rat had clapped its little paws and capered around their little house in a mockery of dance and sophistication.
Lucius had smiled at that. He’d watched the nightmarish parody with something approaching pleasure. ‘Make it worse!’ he’d shouted excitedly. ‘Let me!’
The crow deposited the greater lute into his hands. Lucius raked his fingers across the strings savagely. The discordance was a sweet balm to his nerves. It kept the horror at bay, it crowded it out. It stopped his thoughts from making sense, prevented any images in his mind’s eye from becoming a coherent narrative.
Then it had all gone wrong. As if working with a will of their own, his fingers had formed a harmonic chord. An accident surely? A chance combination of notes! Then, another. No! Stop it. He’d lost command of his own hands. Had a djin in the music taken control of him? Or Mellifluer, the god of music?
‘Take it away!’ he’d yelled and tried to cast the cursed object from him. But it stuck to him and demanded he played on. And play on he had, until the tips of his fingers had cracked and bled down the strings, until he’d finally swooned with exhaustion.
‘He is a magician!’ ratboy whispered as he wiped away the tears of ecstasy and misery the bewitching music had made him experience.
‘You may be right, lad,’ Trajan answered. ‘A man with such ability could sway whole armies, perhaps make the gods themselves weep. Who knows what he could do with that power?’
When Lucius had awoken, he knew himself once more. The old agonies were still there, but they no longer had the power to undo his rational mind. The simple safety of the crow and rat’s home had given him a small, quiet space from which he could rebuild himself. Their home was the still peace at the centre of his being, a place where the darkness and the storms could not get at him. He’d rediscovered the mastery of his soul’s music thanks to them. He owed them everything. He even forgave the rat for wanting to eat him.
***
‘This way the soldiers will not be able to follow. They will get lost,’ ratboy said with a twitch of his nose.
‘Good, as long as you take us by the quickest route,’ Saltar rattled in response. ‘The darkness will certainly have no trouble following us. It comes on apace.’
‘The quickest route is the more dangerous,’ their guard warned them. ‘And you are big. You will be seen.’
‘We have no choice, lad,’ the Scourge called up to him. ‘Just get us as deep into the palace as you can. We will take care of the rest.’
‘The spider will know we’re coming,’ the boy said with obvious fear in his voice.
‘What do you mean?’ Kate asked.
‘The man-spider always knows. Sometimes he takes the bigger outdwellers in the dark. He leaves the small ones like me alone. But he will sense you coming.’
‘Is the boy crazed?’ the Scourge asked.
‘No, I know exactly who he’s talking about,’ said Young Strap in a way that made their hairs stand on the back of their necks. ‘He can only mean the Chamberlain.’
‘And how can he know of our approach?’ Saltar asked curtly.
‘He is Voltar’s creature but seems older somehow. He must have crawled from the pit when the world was still young,’ Lucius said in a high voice that spoke of terrible experience.
‘Let’s stay calm!’ Mordius trembled. ‘It just sounds like someone who has magic enough to set up
wards around the palace.’
‘He will pose no problem. We have killed demons between us, remember. Boy, lead on!’ Saltar commanded in his flattest tone.
Ratboy scampered and skittered across the tops of the rocks to a low cave entrance. The others could only clatter and clamber after him, too big and blind to find any balance on the jagged teeth all around them. The boy watched them with a mixture of amusement and concern:
‘You would not survive amongst the outdwellers. And you will need fire to see you way in the caves, yes?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so,’ Mordius said apologetically. ‘Unless we link hands and feel our way through the darkness.’
‘No time for such stumbling around,’ said Kate with a worried look back at the sheer wall of midnight that was about to swallow Trajan’s house. ‘Boy, get us a torch and let’s get through this mountain as fast as we can.’
The boy dipped his head in assent, gestured with his hand for them to follow him and ducked into the cave. The entrance was almost impossible to see, and for a moment it seemed as if the boy had simply winked out of existence. Then Saltar disappeared, followed by Kate, Mordius and Lucius.
‘Not afraid of the dark, are ye, lad?’ the Scourge asked Young Strap, clapping him on the shoulder.
Young Strap smiled tiredly and looked his old mentor in the eye. ‘You’ve shown me horrors I could never even have imagined. Tell me, Old Hound, what’s left to fear? What innocence is left to me? What is left of the realms of Shakri and Lacrimos that I still need to fear?’
‘That’s the spirit!’ the Scourge said with a fatalistic chuckle. ‘In you go then. I’ll see you on the other side.’
***
They pushed onwards through the dark, the way rising steadily. They came to a wide cavern that was dotted with small fires that floated in the distance like stars. The smell of cooked human meat was all pervading even though the thick smoke from the cook-fires was drawn away into the unseen heights of the place. There were groups of three or four people hunched around each cooking area, but they hung back from the light so that they could not be seen.
Ratboy pulled a burning stick from a nearby pit and carried it in front of him so that they had a bobbing target to follow. The place was eerily silent. Why don’t they speak? Mordius worried frantically. He felt their eyes on him and began to itch violently all over. Quickly, he found himself shaking with fear and claustrophobia. He wanted to scream or break into a run. He wanted to throw himself on the ground and beg them to stop. His chest hurt and he realised he’d forgotten to breathe.
‘Easy, Mordius,’ hissed the Scourge. ‘It’s just a panic attack. Give yourself a moment. It’ll pass. There’s nothing to fear.’
Mordius nodded and concentrated on putting one foot in front of another. If he could just carry on doing that, it would finally see him through.
They made it across the floor and there were several audible sighs of relief from within the group. Mordius had not been the only one in the group to find their passage difficult. Somehow, that made him feel better. Lucius’s greater lute bumped against a low ledge and there was a faintly musical thunk that provided them with permission to speak.
‘Trajan had prophesied your coming to the outdwellers. He’d ordered them not to challenge you in word or deed should you actually appear,’ ratboy explained. ‘We are all scared of what your coming betokens. Trajan’s prophecy about you has come true, you see, which means his other prophecies are probably also true.’
‘And what were his other prophecies, boy?’ Lucius asked gently. ‘You can tell us. You have no need to fear us.’
‘Trajan said it was the end of the world,’ ratboy said in a small, shaky voice. ‘It’s not really true, is it?’
‘You saw the darkness, boy…’ the Scourge began, but Kate spoke over him.
‘Of course it’s not true, boy! If we thought it was the end of the world, we wouldn’t be making our way through these catacombs, now would we? No, we’d sit with you outdwellers and wait for the end instead. Or we would make the most of the time left and look to make merry. We just need to keep being brave and everything will be okay. You can be brave for us, can’t you? And you’ll be brave for Trajan, won’t you? He is very proud of you, you know. He told me so. He clearly loves you.’
The small boy sighed. ‘I suppose so. Come on, then. This way!’
They were led us a steep, narrow side tunnel and Saltar perpetually had to check he wasn’t scraping any part of him to a bloody mess without feeling or realising it. He laughed silently to himself: what did a few grazes more matter when his body was already so much of a mess? If he was resurrected, surely he’d die again instantly! Was there some way he could be reborn instead? He had to have the Heart! If he could get it, then he could make Shakri accommodate his rebirth.
Despite the small nimbus of ratboy’s burning stick, Saltar could barely see anything. Who knew what existed in that darkness? He imagined that every soul amongst the living and the dead, from the present and all of history, waited out there for the inevitable. They waited to be judged, to know what their lives had meant, what worth their souls had. Like him, they would find either rebirth and value, or nothingness and extinction.
Even the gods were not exempt. They stood in their pantheon apart from the uncountable ranks of humanity. They had their own inner light, but were held in a balance with humanity so would also be weighed come the end of time.
There were monsters in the dark too, each of whom had their own number of limbs, faces and organs. They were the nightmare creatures of Lacrimos’s realm, the twisted imaginings and conjuration of the sick minds of humanity and their gods. The monsters would also be measured by the ending of days.
The only ones that continued to move were Saltar and his small party. Who knew if they made any progress in the infinite dark? They were like grubs deep in the earth, who did not know up from down. They might spiral and circle in the excrement of humanity for all eternity, never to find a surface.
In the end, in such a place, at such a time, only belief in the possibility of a bright world of life and colour kept him going. He had to cling to the belief that the void had not already overtaken them and swallowed up the whole of Shakri’s realm, else his existence would be over. He had to believe there was a chance of Kate and he living out their lives in happiness together in a place that made sense of things. He had to believe in his love for her. Otherwise, there was nothing. Kate, the Scourge, Mordius, Lucius and Young Strap would simply become words spoken so long ago that no one would remember or even be able to guess what they might once have meant. No one would know how to pronounce such words. Actually, there would be no one left to remember, hear or pronounce any word whatsoever. In the beginning there was the word, and in the end there simply no more words.
***
‘By the bowels of Lacrimos, what is that reek?’ the Scourge shouted from the back above the coughing and spluttering of the others.
Ratboy thoroughly extinguished his burning stick and said in a serious voice: ‘It is the Soup of Plenty! Ware your weapons! Should one clip a jutting piece of rock beyond this point and strike a spark, then the noxious fumes of the plentiful stew will be ignited and we will be kebabs for the outdwellers below. Don’t worry, you will soon be able to see for the walls shine here.’
They emerged into a naturally domed chamber that was dimly lit by phosphorescent moss. High up on the walls were dripping pipe outlets. In front of their feet was a wide, sluggish pool that every so often released a slow belch and a near toxic stench. Even Saltar reeled, the olfactory assault was so strong. Lucius tottered precariously at the edge of the pool, and it was only ratboy’s quickness that saved him.
‘I have seen people die after coming into contact with just one drop of this unholy slurry.’
Lucius’s face was so pale that is was the most visible of all of theirs. ‘What is this f-f-foul miasma? H-how can such a substance exist and not undo the realm of Shakri?’
&nbs
p; Ratboy actually laughed. ‘This is the result of Shakri’s creation. It is the sum total of all the waste from the palace since it was first created. Outdwellers have always said that it proves the royals are just the same as us, for they shit just like the rest of us! Funny, yes?’
‘If you say so!’ Kate gagged. ‘Is there no other route we can take?’
‘The boy has done well,’ Saltar answered. ‘This is clearly where all the sewers lead to. We must be directly under the inhabited parts of the palace now.’
‘Oh, no!’ Kate retched and spat. ‘You’re not going to make me crawl through sewer pipes now, are you? Do you have absolutely no idea of how to show a girl a good time? Even the Scourge is shaking as if he has the palsy.’
‘Well, boy?’ Saltar asked, sounding as if he was actually smiling.
‘The pipes are better than this place,’ the boy promised. ‘…unless we get unlucky.’
‘Unlucky! What do you mean unlucky?’ Mordius wanted to know.
‘We should move on from this place quickly,’ ratboy answered, ‘before the things that lurk in the Soup become disturbed by our presence.’
Young Strap joined the horrified chorus. ‘You mean things live and grow in this stuff! Shakri truly does move in mysterious ways. Can such life really be holy to her?’
‘Who cares!’ the Scourge choked. ‘Can we please get moving before this cauldron of effluvia starts to boil over. We could get deluged with the stuff!’
‘I’ve never heard of it overflowing,’ the ratboy said reasonably. ‘That’s why they say it is a bottomless mire.’
‘Great! An infinite pool of shit!’ the Scourge swore. ‘Can we just please…!’
‘This pipe!’ ratboy relented, selecting a relatively dry outlet.
***
They crawled on their hands and knees through the dark. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t see where they were going, because there was only one direction to go in the pipe. Kate’s head bumped against the roof and she realised the way had narrowed. She was forced to lie flat and make progress by wriggling. Her crossbow became wedged as she pushed it ahead of her. She cursed foully. There was no room to pull it back past her, so it effectively blocked the way to all of them.