The Wanderer's Tale

by David Bilsborough

  Across the platform they went, and soon arrived at a belvedere positioned on the north-west curve of the platform’s outer rim. It was guarded by four sentinels, lightly armoured but heavily armed, who were currently relaxing at a foot of the short ladder that led up to an open doorway. They beamed at the company approaching, then stood aside to let them ascend.

  Seated at a table all alone was someone that the leader seemed very eager Gapp should meet.

  Dressed in soiled white rags and covered in bandages, the stranger slowly, stiffly, turned around. Hands bedecked with antique golden rings reached up and pulled the hood away from his face.

  ‘Hello, Radnar,’ he said in cool surprise. ‘I thought you were dead . . .’

  It was Methuselech Xilvafloese.

  TWELVE

  Cyne-Tregva

  ‘YOU . . .’ GAPP BREATHED.

  Gapp’s hazy vision swayed, and with it his equilibrium. The entire platform seemed to be moving beneath his feet, lurching as though being tipped over slowly by a relentless gust of wind.

  No! Not that!

  A small hand gripped him by the arm, held him steady, and slowly Gapp’s world regained some stability.

  He looked into the big, green eyes of the Vetter hunter – R’rrahdh-Kyinne, his name was – and saw no alarm there, only concern for his new charge.

  What had happened just then? Had there been a gust of wind? Had the platform really lurched?

  A lightness filled Gapp’s head. None of this felt real any more. He could not even be sure what he was seeing now. If only he could focus properly again . . .

  Xilvafloese? He did not yet believe it, but . . . it was true. Methuselech Xilvafloese was sitting in front of him, as large as life. A little battered and torn, and all the lustre gone out of his raiment, as though he had been used as a rag to slop out a latrine, but alive, and by the look of it, kicking.

  ‘You’re here . . .’ the boy said with a congested croak to his voice and an asinine gape to his mouth.

  In that one moment, all that had gone before – all those tortured miles of suffering, abandonment and fear, all the tribulation that had befallen him along the way, indeed the entire memory of his separation from the company – all was forgotten. He staggered over to his comrade and, to the clear delight of the Vetter chief (and applause from the hunters) embraced him closely.

  It was as if he and his former companions had never been sundered.

  Methuselech, however, winced in discomfort, and gently eased the boy away from him.

  ‘Oh, Shogg, your injuries . . . i forgot,’ Gapp apologized.

  Methuselech merely forced a smile, with hooded eyes. ‘Take a seat,’ he ordered, gesturing towards one of the nearby stools and sounding surprisingly calm.

  Gapp did as he was told. The Vetter and his hunters did likewise, and watched the scene with undisguised fascination.

  Gapp paused a second to appraise his quest mate. The man looked far worse, now he came to think of it, than when he had last seen him. That beautiful head of hair now looked as though he had spiked it with horse dung, as the barbarians did, and most of the braids once decorating his hood had come off. In all, he resembled a half-plucked, hedge-dragged buzzard.

  ‘But, Methuselech,’ he said, his voice as small again as it had been before the separation, ‘i don’t understand this at all . . . How is it you come to be here? Have you been tracking me all this way? That is—’

  ‘—Have I been tracking you? You sure you got that the right way round?’

  ‘What? But that horrible place in the mountains . . .’ Gapp was completely at a loss. He half-expected to wake up any moment and discover this was all a dream. ‘And the others, did you find them? Are they here too?’

  Methuselech rose stiffly to his feet – followed by the boy and the Vetters – and laid an untidily bandaged hand upon Gapp’s shoulder. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘I am in as much perplexity on that subject as are you, but our stories will have to wait. There is someone here who would like an explanation.’

  He pointed to the Vetter chief, who all this time had said not a word. ‘For the past week now, I have been under the care of Cynen Englarielle Rampunculus,’ he explained. ‘As you too are now, and I’d guess he would like a little chat about us.’

  Gapp had temporarily forgotten that the Vetter and his world existed.

  ‘i’m sorry,’ he stammered, turning to the chief, and bowing quickly.

  Then the leader moved over and joined them. Gapp glanced doubtfully at Englarielle, then whispered, ‘Xilva, i don’t speak his language, i doubt i can make myself understood.’

  ‘That is exactly why he brought you to me,’ the mercenary replied. ‘I do speak his language. Or at least, we share a common tongue. The Vetters’ language is unique, unknown to the rest of the world. Not that you could expect otherwise, really, since this is a rather isolated spot. But they do seem to have had some minimal contact with the outside world . . . The Polgrim? It appears those adventurous little wayfarers have paid a few visits to Cyne-Tregva over the centuries, and there is still a certain tie between the two races, albeit a somewhat tenuous one nowadays. The Vetter-chiefs – the Cynen – are brought up to speak an elementary form of the Polg’s Rainflat dialect. It’s a sort of trading language, if you like, but “court language” might be more accurate . . .’

  As Methuselech talked on, Gapp began to feel the agitation tighten within him. He had gone almost past the limits of his mind and body today. Why was Methuselech going on about all this stuff when he could just as easily be telling him how he came to be here? The boy was not expecting a detailed account; just one sentence would suffice.

  A slight sigh of irritation and impatience escaped him. Why didn’t anyone tell him anything, ever? Was he still that unimportant to them? He saw the look in Methuselech’s eyes as the mercenary prattled on about what he wanted to talk about – oblique, offhand, not even looking at Gapp directly – and realized that in spite of all he had gone through to be here, he was still just the esquire . . .

  Images of his siblings’ mocking smiles came back to him. A silly little boy. A complete prat. Of course, how could he be so stupid as to think it would ever be otherwise?

  ‘. . . Anyway,’ Methuselech was saying, ‘it seems I’m to act as your translator. I don’t suppose Englarielle even realized that we knew each other, up till now . . . But then I doubt he has any idea how many humans there are in the world out there, or even the slightest inkling of just how big the world is, for that matter—’

  ‘You don’t speak Polgrim,’ the boy cut in irately.

  Methuselech regarded him indignantly. ‘I speak Aescalandian, do I not? Remember, boy, I am from Qaladmir, the city of a thousand tribes. We speak many tongues.’

  But Rainflat-Polgrim . . . ?

  ‘Anyway,’ the mercenary declared, obviously impatient with the lad’s wittering, ‘we mustn’t waste time like this. I think the Cynen’s getting a little impatient.’

  So, with the help of Methuselech, Gapp related his story to the royal Vetter. And in doing so, enlightened his old companion. He began at first to tell tales of a mission to Wrythe, then switched to the truth after Methuselech informed him that he had already disclosed their real mission earlier. (This alarmed Gapp, but he assumed the mercenary must know what he was doing.) He told of Nym, of his fall down the well, and of his subsequent ordeal in the subterranean tunnels, until finally emerging and befriending the forest giant Yulfric. At this, Englarielle smiled and nodded – the Gyger was clearly known to him and his people. Then Gapp went on to describe how he had been waylaid by the Jordiske and how he finally escaped, only to fall into the hands of the Vetterim. The Cynen showed particular interest in Gapp’s description of the lair of the Jordiske, and questioned him at length, wanting to know every detail.

  But as the air grew frigid and the night sky rolled over, he seemed satisfied. Making a rasping noise between his fingers, he summoned a flunky and issued orders for a sleeping pad to
be made up for their new guest, and for food and wine to be fetched.

  At blinking last, thought Gapp. He was famished.

  After finishing a large meal of some shredded, pale, pulpy stuff that smelt like peppery flowers, Gapp washed himself in the wooden basin provided for him and then begged leave to rest. His sleeping pad was in the same place as his companion’s: the wide, roofed veranda of that same belvedere. Several Vetters had been posted in the adjoining room ‘just in case they needed anything’, and Shlepp took up his position in the doorway between these two rooms. For the first time since he had left Yulfric’s house, the boy felt he could sleep safely.

  It felt so good to recline upon clean furs, to be free from clinging dirt, and to be back with his own kind – and, moreover, one of the company – again. He looked about himself through drowsy eyes.

  A single, sard-flamed oil-lamp sat on the floor planking, and sent up its thread-line of herbal smoke to curl amongst the sprigs of dried grasses and ericaceous flowers that hung from the crossbeam above. The ocean of trees moaned far below, and a soft wind sighed through the gently creaking frame of the hut. Methuselech was leaning on the railing of the veranda, either gazing out over the lands below or staring up at the stars. The light of the full moon bathed the whole room in a clean white light, laved the visage of the mercenary in a wash of death-white and struck sharp shadows that shrouded his eyes.

  Come to think of it, Gapp considered, here he felt as safe as he had even in the loft of his family’s house. Safer, perhaps, for he did not believe the desert-warrior would get up in the middle of the night and sprinkle him with urine or put stag beetles in his socks, as his brothers often did. He looked up at his companion and studied him.

  ‘Xilva,’ he said eventually, stifling a yawn, ‘you still haven’t told me anything about the others – why are you here on your own?’

  Methuselech was still gazing out at the stars above. He turned away from the balcony and sat down cross-legged upon his sleeping pad, but remained silent.

  ‘In fact,’ Gapp persisted, ‘how are you even here at all? We thought you’d died back there, in that – what did Paulus call it? – that Sluagh place or something. That sound, that scream, and the awful—’

  ‘I won’t talk about it.’

  Gapp stared at the man in surprise. Methuselech’s voice sounded so strange all of a sudden; muted somehow, or veiled, in a way that passed a cloud over Gapp’s soul, though he did not know why. Old Xilva had certainly changed, that was for sure.

  But he had to know. ‘Xilva – what happened back there?’

  ‘Are you deaf?’ Methuselech cried out shrilly, ‘I said I won’t talk about it, d’you hear? How dare you?’

  His voice stung Gapp like an acid whiplash of vituperation, and the boy instantly lowered his eyes. He had overstepped the mark, forgotten his rank. But, beneath his shame, Gapp also shuddered, for he recognized something in his companion’s voice that had never been there before: hysteria. It was a tone he had heard previously among certain war veterans of the Wintus household. Nibulus had referred to such individuals as ‘half-men’, in that they were no longer wholly of this world, but somewhere between this one and the next. Just like Paulus’s description of the amphibians in the marshes.

  Then, as suddenly as he had flared up, Methuselech was back to normal again, and began relating his story at a point that suited him:

  ‘I followed along the cliff path as soon as there was light enough to see by. But by the time I reached your camp, you had departed. I tried to catch up, but my wounds . . . And with each day that passed, the cooler grew your trail. I stumbled on in a daze, trying to find you, any sign at all. I tried for days to find Myst-Hakel, but in the end I found I had come instead to the marches of Fron-Wudu.’

  ‘So you entered?’ Gapp asked dubiously, ‘You didn’t turn back?’

  ‘By then I’d given up all real hope of finding our companions, alive or dead. So I continued through the forest. I continued because I had to, if I were ever to get to Melhus.’

  ‘What, you went on to Melhus on your own?’ Gapp exclaimed, not bothering to disguise his incredulity, ‘In your condition, with no horse or rations?’ His head felt light once more, and there was that lurching feeling beneath him again. In the silver light of the full moon, his old companion appeared still and colourless, like those effigies carved on the sarcophagus-lids in the vaults of Wintus Hall.

  Methuselech paused for a second, as if reading the esquire’s thoughts. Then he said, ‘I am not you, young man, remember. I was – still am – driven by great need. Our Quest does not die just because its leaders fall . . . And, in any case, there was always the chance of meeting up with the others once again. If I could reach Wrythe, I might find them there, or be able to wait . . . or go on after them. There is always some hope. I knew how difficult it would be trying to get through these lands on my own—’

  Oh no you didn’t, Gapp thought.

  ‘But what choice did I have? Anyway, I stumbled on for several days, the thought of reaching Wrythe the only thing keeping me going. I travelled along forest trails guided by instinct alone . . . and of course became hopelessly lost. Then I met up with a band of hunting Vetters, and the rest you can see for yourself.’

  With that, he finished his story, got back to his feet and went to stare out at the moonlit forest below.

  You gave up trying to find the company at Myst-Hakel, Gapp considered, to try to meet up with them at Wrythe? No, I don’t think so, Xilva . . . You’re an adventurer, not a zealot – even Wintus told me that, once. The only difference between you and Paulus Flatulus is your loyalty to Nibulus . . .

  ‘Hmn, perhaps that’s it. Maybe it is just loyalty . . .’ he muttered to himself. But still he was troubled.

  He looked over to the figure of Methuselech again, skull-pale in the cold light of the moon, staring out into the night. The mercenary was gazing northwards, and there was a hunger in his eyes.

  Despite the overwhelming exhaustion he felt after this longest and most taxing of days, it took Gapp some time to finally drift off. A thousand thoughts and images were still pirouetting around his brain, fizzing and popping like a tubful of wine-mulch, and they just would not leave him alone.

  Chief among these were his plans. Now that he had become separated from Yulfric, how exactly was he going to get home? In some rather weak way, once he had been reunited with his former quest-mate he had felt that these matters were no longer in his hands; Nibulus’s friend would be making all the decisions from now. Just as it had been in the beginning. But what the man had been saying about going on to Melhus to complete the quest had troubled Gapp in no small way. He had cast off that particular burden during his time with the Gyger, and was not about to take it on again.

  Now, however, he did not know what to think.

  During the night Gapp awoke suddenly. He did not know why. There was just some strange presentiment that had jolted him from his slumber. Without getting out of bed he rummaged about in the dark for his spectacles – forgetting they were lost – and had frozen rigid when his searching hand had fallen upon someone’s knee, right there by his side. A strange animal gasp had wheezed from his throat, and as he looked up he made out the unmistakable silhouette of the mercenary, kneeling down over him. The faintest glimmer of moonlight was reflected off the man’s sparkling eyes, and they were looking right at him.

  Just staring. Without a word.

  The following morning Gapp awoke with only the faintest memory of this strange nocturnal occurrence. To be honest, he was no longer sure it had actually happened.

  Methuselech was already up by the time Gapp awoke. He was out on the veranda, checking his bandages and chafing his limbs. There was also a rather unpleasant smell in the air, a bit like burnt meat. As soon as Methuselech realized that the boy was no longer asleep, he spun around and walked towards him.

  ‘Come on you,’ he said brusquely. ‘It’s late, and we’ve got plans to make. Come on, up!’
<
br />   Bossy bell-head! the esquire cursed, but dutifully did as he was told.

  As they made their way back to the pavilion, they were met by a messenger who seemed anxious that they follow him.

  ‘Ah, Radkin,’ Methuselech greeted. ‘Hail!’

  It was R’rrahdh-Kyinne, the same Vetter whom Gapp had first encountered on escaping from the Jordiske caves. He recognized him instantly.

  Following Radkin, they went, not to the pavilion this time, but to the central pinnacle of rock, and an external stairway that appeared to lead up to the very top of it.

  At last! Gapp thought; it looked as if today he would finally reach the very highest point of Cyne-Tregva!

  It would be an observatory, he assumed, like the ones Finwald had told him of which stood on the topmost level of Qaladmir: a Chamber of Devices for the augury of the heavens . . . Or a throne room in which he would meet the real king of Vetterhome, a sinister leper with spells of undreamed-of potency to control the whole of Fron-Wudu . . . Or then again, it might be the cage of a giant bird . . . The cell of a seer . . . The altar to an inhuman, multi-limbed deity . . . Was he really ready for this?

  Winding around the outer wall of rock, Gapp realized that the burnt-meat stink that he had noticed earlier was stronger here. They continued up, almost to the top, and then came to a wide arch. Through this they passed, and entered a hollowed-out chamber that occupied the top of the pinnacle; they had finally reached the peak of the karst. There was no roof, just walls all around, walls of rock breached by four wide arches, each facing one of the four points of the compass. Here the reek was almost overpowering, and now smelt strongly of rose petals being burnt on a charcoal fire. It made both the travellers’ eyes smart.

  Inside the light was poor, despite the open roof, and the low visibility was helped little by the smoke billowing out of the burner by the table. There were many Vetters within, all dressed in long robes made entirely from white bird-feathers, and all engaged in some activity around the stone table . . .