Glass Town Wars

by Celia Rees

  “We must not be caught out in the open!” Augusta shouted.

  As she spoke, the columns leant out, fingers of flame, fingers of darkness growing and stretching, groping, searching, reaching like grasping hands. Fear was spreading through the camp like a contagion. Everywhere, men were running. The air was filled with their shouting and the whinny of panicked horses. They all knew what the Jinn could do.

  “Every man for himself! Get as far away as possible,” Augusta ordered. “And seek cover! You, too,” she said to Webster and Roberts. “You must get far away from me. I’m the one the Jinn are seeking.”

  “We’ll not leave yer, milady.” Webster stood square, arms folded.

  “That we will not,” Roberts agreed.

  “What about the boy?” Webster looked to the command tent. “We can’t leave him.”

  Augusta felt tears prick, at their loyalty and the sudden relief that she would not have to face this alone.

  “We’ll have to take him with us. Webster, go and find a cart. We’ll make for Shucksgill Gape. Head into the Deeps.”

  Augusta helped Roberts to dress the boy, binding his arm tightly to his chest and draping his coat over him. They carried him out between them and loaded him on to the back of a cart piled up with canvas and bedding to try to make him comfortable.

  They left the camp, Webster driving the wagon. The moorland ponies instinctively turned to the old track across the moors.

  Taking the boy would slow their progress but Augusta could not leave him. She rode with the cart, Keeper loping along beside her. The boy was still unconscious, pale as death, pale as milk, but still breathing. He must have been sent for some purpose; the part he had to play still unknown. He was a mystery, and mysteries added the unexpected—the unexpected could give her an advantage in the intricate point-counterpoint of the Glass Town Game.

  And she needed something. Her enemies had evoked the Jinn, the Genii, and were using their terrifying physical manifestation to hunt her down. She could feel the power and malice, scorching the back of her neck, pitiless as the desert sun. She risked a look behind. The columns were growing steadily, gaining more substance, becoming more solid, moving ever nearer. When they were close enough, the columns would dip and swoop, fingers spreading out to trap anything underneath in giant fists of darkness and fire.

  The old track was paved with great slabs placed there by those who had built it a thousand years ago and more. It was wide enough to take a cart easily and it cut through heather and bracken straight as an arrow shot. The top of the ridge was marked by a line of stunted thorns, their branches bent and twisted away from the direction of the prevailing wind. They were black and ancient with no sign of greening, but here and there white flowers showed. Augusta picked a clump of tiny blossoms as she went, avoiding the long, vicious thorns that grabbed at her fingers. These trees were planted by the Fairish and still offered protection.

  Augusta felt easier once they had crossed the invisible border into their lands.

  At the base of the hillside, the track ran beside a fast-running stream joined by tributaries from smaller valleys to left and right. Shucksgill Gape lay up one of these valleys, but which? They must gain it, and soon. The Jinn were getting ever closer.

  The Gape was named for a mouth wide enough to take a horse and cart—and deep enough to save them from the Jinn. It led to the Deeps and was one of the ways into the Fairish realm under the hills. It promised a place of safety, but Augusta had never come to them by way of Shucksgill Gape. She’d always stumbled into their realm without knowing quite how she’d got there. She’d been a child then. There was no knowing if the Fairish would welcome her now. The Fairish were notoriously fickle. The way might be closed against them, or worse, but that was a worry for later.

  Roberts had visited the Deeps with his grandmother. He rode forward, looking for signs. He thought that the Gape was off to the right but the ways to the Fairish were never easy to find and he hadn’t been there since he was a lad. They had to make the right choice. If they took the wrong valley they would be trapped, with no way out, at the mercy of the Jinn. Behind them, the sky was dividing, one side the deep red of a summer sunset, the other as dark as a winter storm.

  “Up ’ere!” Roberts beckoned.

  Webster whipped the horses on, using the wide, shallow stream as a roadway. The boy was still sleeping, which was probably a blessing. The jolting and jauncing would hurt him cruelly.

  The wind was getting up; a hot wind, carrying twigs and leaves, grit and dust. They pulled their cloaks up over nose and mouth as they rode on, eyes narrowed. The deep, narrow-sided valley might save them but there was no surety. They hurried now, the fierce wind pushing them on.

  “Round the next bend!” Roberts shouted.

  Augusta hoped he was right. The Spirit Wind was increasing in strength, howling in their ears; branches and heather bowled past them, catching on rocks and wrapping round their horses’ legs. The Swooping was near.

  “It’s up ahead!” Roberts yelled above the shrieking voice of the hot wind.

  The valley was a dead end. A cliff face frowned down at them, the cave at the base like an open mouth. A stream issued from it, the fast flow chattering and clacking over the rocky bed. The rock above the entrance was worn smooth by running water that dropped down like a beaded curtain. Effigies and offerings hung on strings in the dripping fall: gloves, boots, dolls, hats; all had petrified into shapes strange and sinister: a head, a hand, a foot, a human child. Some were shapeless lumps, unrecognizable as anything. Folk had been leaving things here since time out of mind as gifts and offerings left in thanks, to ask for attention or turn it aside, for this cave was known to be home to the Fairish, an entrance to their land.

  Webster drove the horses on and they gained the opening just in time.

  Behind them, the strings of objects clanged together, creating a weird, discordant music as the fierce wind passed through them, howling like a thing denied.

  The sound funnelled down the cave and echoed back, amplified.

  Webster crossed himself. The noise might penetrate deep into the cave, reaching the Fairish, and they didn’t like to be disturbed. The wind was screaming, searching; the strings swung wildly, as if pushed apart by a giant hand reaching in for them.

  “Never mind the Fairish, Webster! They’re the least of our worries,” Augusta shouted. “Get further in!”

  AUGUSTA DISMOUNTED. Roberts and Webster uncoupled the horses from the wagon. They would have to leave them here. There were torches by the entrance for those who visited and wished to venture inside. The two men fashioned a makeshift stretcher to carry the boy between them while Augusta lit a torch to guide them deeper.

  The roaring diminished. The Jinn wouldn’t be able to reach in here, but the phantom wind moaned around them and bent the torch flame. Augusta wouldn’t feel entirely safe until they’d gained the innermost cavern. The roof disappeared into darkness. Stumps and pinnacles dotted the floor like melted candles. The torch illuminated walls ruffled and fluted like petrified curtains, slender columns of pearly deposits that had been laid down since the world was young. Local folk called this the Gallery, for the shapes that the rocks made and because, here and there, the walls were scratched and etched with the shapes of animals swept away in Noah’s flood, put there by a people older even than the Fairish.

  “We’ll stop here. Put the boy down.” Augusta knelt next to the stretcher. “How is he?”

  “Still sleeping.” Roberts scratched his head. “He lost a deal of blood but his pulse is strong. I’d have thought he’d have woke by now, what with all the bouncing about.”

  “’Appen he’ll come round in his own fair time,” Webster said as he looked down.

  “’Appen he will.” Augusta frowned. His condition was strange. She’d never known a swoon last much of a day. It was as if he’d taken laudanum, or some drug that had rendered him insensible. “Make sure he’s comfortable and build a fire.” She clutched her cloak
to her. “It’s cold in here.”

  The fireplace was marked by a heap of grey-white cold ash surrounded by baked and blackened stones. A supply of wood and torches had been left by outlaws and others, who used the cave as a hiding place or refuge. Augusta wondered how her own folk were faring. She should have been out there defending them, not skulking here, as much a fugitive as they.

  “You did what you could, lady,” Webster said, as though he could read her thought. “We saw ’em off, a right bigger force. Who’d know that they’d summon the Jinn, or that Rogue lot would go skirmishing behind the lines?”

  His words were kind but he’d left the greater truth unsaid: hers would always be the smaller force; they would always be at a disadvantage. Beneath that, a small voice whispered, You should have known that is precisely what he would do. Letting her think that she’d won would make her consequent defeat more bitter and sweeten his triumph.

  They set up camp, not knowing how long they would be here. There was precious little to eat but what they had they put together. Webster collected water from the pools on the floor of the cave and put a pot over the fire. In it went dried beef and beans, barley, a few withered roots, a handful of salt and a good pinch of red pepper—one of Parry’s gifts. The result was palatable enough. They sat together to eat from rough bowls with wooden spoons.

  The boy stirred. Perhaps the smell of food had woken him.

  He looked round, bewildered, and struggled to rise. “What’s wrong with my arm?”

  “You were shot.” Roberts went over to him. “A ball in the shoulder. A right big ’un. I’ve taken it out, lad, and treated the wound wi’ a poultice of comfrey, but you’d best not move around too much or you’ll set t’ wound a-bleeding again. Here, have a bowl o’ this. Put some strength in you.”

  “Thank you.” Tom sat up with Roberts’s help, the bowl balanced on his knee. He was surprised at how good the soup tasted, at how hungry he was. “What’s happening? Where are we?”

  “We took refuge here,” Augusta said. “Fleeing from enemies.”

  She didn’t say what sort. Best not mention the Jinn. He was a stranger and unlikely to comprehend the danger they posed.

  “Fleeing?” He frowned. “I don’t understand. I thought we won.”

  “We did, too! You fought bravely, but there were other enemies, other threats, that took us unawares. We are safe here.”

  “For the time being.”

  “As you say, Webster.” The Jinn must have passed by now. “Go to see what’s happening outside. Take Roberts with you.”

  As the men set off towards the entrance to the cave, Augusta took out a small black bottle. Another gift from her man Parry.

  “Have some of this. It will help with the pain. Not too much! That’s enough.”

  “That’s good stuff.” Tom passed the bottle back. The pain in his shoulder was easing, the stiffness going.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Better. Stronger. It’s cold in here.”

  He tried to pull his coat around him. She reached to help him. There was something about her touch, her closeness as she leant across him, like a current passing between them. Her sudden shiver showed that she felt it, too.

  “I hope I didn’t hurt you.” She stepped back, for once uncertain. Her smile almost shy.

  “No, ah…” He smiled back. “Thank you, Augusta. Or should I call you my lady?”

  She coloured slightly. “Augusta will do.”

  “Can you help me?”

  She offered her hand to pull him up and their eyes met. Hers changed all the time, like clouds on a windy day.

  “You’re right.” She turned away, wrapping her arms around her. “It’s cold in here.”

  The dog at her side gave a gruff, growling bark.

  “Quiet, Keeper!”

  “I’m a friend.” Tom reached to scratch the dog’s broad head. “No need to be jealous.”

  “I don’t think he’s growling at you…” The dog’s short ears flicked up and he gave a yelping whine, stationing himself at the entrance to the cave. “He must have heard something.”

  “Webster and Roberts coming back?”

  “Perhaps…”

  The dog let out a sharp, deep-throated bark.

  “Hush, Keeper. I’m trying to hear…”

  She stepped away as Webster and Roberts ran back into the cave.

  “Jinn’s gone,” Roberts panted, hands on his knees. “Webbo climbed up t’ bank. Tell ’m what you saw.”

  “McMahon and his dogs.” Webster shook the rain from his hair, his eyes. “They must’ve picked up our scent by the river. They’re coming this way.”

  The belling of hounds reached them, faint but distinct, carried by the cave’s peculiar acoustics.

  “They’ve gained the entrance. They’ll be here any minute!”

  “McMahon will be tracking for Rogue,” Augusta said.

  “Aye,” Roberts agreed. “His forces won’t be far away.”

  “We’ll have to go further,” Augusta directed. “Into the Deeps.”

  It was the way to Fairishland.

  Webster frowned, his big face full of worry. “But we could get lost down there!” he protested. “The only folks knows them tunnels is the Fairish. Men going down there are never seen again. Lost their way or led astray deliberate.”

  “I used to visit here wi’ me nan,” Roberts said. “And I’m here, ain’t I?”

  “We have no choice, do we? We have to take our chances.” Augusta picked up a torch. “It will be as dangerous for them as us—perhaps more so. The Fairish have no liking for McMahon and his dogs. Roberts, you show the way.”

  They lit more torches and took extra, as many as they could carry.

  One by one, they followed Roberts through a smaller entrance in the opposite wall. The tunnel was lower, narrower, the walls rougher, leading sharply down and deeper. The caves ran for miles under the hillside, branching and branching, with no indication as to which might taper to a dead end and which lead out into the world again—or which world that might be. There were other dangers, too. In some places, the torches burned blue and started to gutter, showing that the air was foul, or scarce there at all. Heavy rain could turn the little freshets that ran everywhere into raging torrents, filling up the whole system of tunnels, drowning anyone caught there, leaving them to float lifeless in the water-filled space.

  It was raining outside. Webster had come back wet with it but it was best not to think about that as they moved from one tunnel to another, with Roberts as their guide. He seemed fairly certain that he was leading them in the right direction, but where that direction might be was less than clear and he had no control over the weather.

  The rain must have been getting heavier. The water was rising, flowing faster, up to their ankles with more pouring down the walls. They would be wading soon.

  They could hear splashing behind them. Keeper’s coat bristled; the growl in his throat erupted in a deep bark at red points sparking in the darkness. Augusta could hardly hold him. Whoever—whatever—was following was gaining steadily.

  Roberts was examining the right-hand wall of the cave, his torch shaking as he held it close to the rock.

  “The way to the Fairish is here, I could have sworn. Me nan showed me. Here, Webbo. Hold the torch.”

  Panic glittered in Roberts’s blue eyes as his hands fluttered like an old man’s over the rough surface. They were all drawn to what he was doing, staring at the rock face looking for clues, despite the splashing and the little red lights coming closer and the rising water and the prospect of them all becoming floating corpses.

  The dull ache in Tom’s arm was a reminder that this was no Tomb Raider. This world was for real; you could get hurt here. His shoulder was throbbing now. Despite the cold down here, he was burning up, the sweat trickling down his back and stinging into his eyes. He remembered reading somewhere about gunshot wounds, fragments of cloth and God knows what driven deep into the flesh, setting
up infection. He felt faint and a little sick at the thought of it, but maybe he was feeling sick anyway. A handful of leaves wasn’t the same as a dose of antibiotics. If you hurt here, can you also die here? How far do the rules of this game extend? Are there no limits, or is the limit death?

  To stop from passing out, he focused on Roberts exploring the rock wall like a blind climber searching for holds. It had got to be one of those puzzle things, like you get in some games, but they didn’t exactly have time to collect clues and figure it out. Either that, or…

  “Open for me.”

  There was a grinding of stone on stone and a whole section of wall began to move and pull apart, slowly at first, then like a lift door opening. As soon as the last of them was through, the wall snapped back, smooth and grey and blank with no sign of a crack. Wherever they were now, there was no going back.

  THE SMOOTH WALLS of the tunnel glistened with pearly opalescence streaked with shimmering colours, as if a rainbow had melted and seeped underground. A faint glow lit the way, making the torches unnecessary. The floor was completely dry. The dog’s claws skittered and clicked on the soft sheen of worn marble.

  Tom was wondering just who the Fairish might be. Are they fairies, as their name suggests? Would they be tiny with wings, their queen no larger than an agate on an alderman’s ring, or would they be big and scary?

  The passage opened out into a large cavern, the roof supported by slender pillars and columns sculpted from the stalactites and stalagmites that had joined together. The pillars branched and arched into walkways and bridges that crossed and recrossed, spanning the heights. Soft lights, silver and golden, gave the space a feeling of lightness and airiness, although they were deep underground.