32 Their Own Carr Sceld
The tarpaulin came away quickly and smoothly from the aft deck, its ropes ringing through their anchors points and twisting about one another like the tentacles of a jellyfish as the winch lifted it all clear. Beneath hanging folds and swinging ropes, a huge contraption now glinted in the dying light.
It soon swarmed with crewmen, all working quickly to release its stays and reattach the winch-chain to the cradle already around its body. Speed was of the essence, that they all knew, but the task needed care to avoid damage.
It was to be lifted by its body, a long blue tube set at intervals with small portholes but fronted by large windows. Great leather wheels hung like dumplings from its spindly limbs, making it look like some sort of huge insect. A door in its side, though, already hung open, ready and waiting.
The whole thing jerked and then swayed against its static feet as its legs squeaked and flexed. The winch strained yet harder still, gathering the straps tautly above the body, but the craulena seemed intent on staying aboard.
Phaylan watched some of his crew working together at the capstan, pushing with all their might to drive the winch, and it worked at last. The craulena began to rise, its legs still drooping to their softly-shod feet, but even they soon began to lift, threatening to turn and twist the body.
Other crewmen staggered back and forth, pulling on ropes, keeping the craulena from swinging round into the ship’s mast or knocking its cutter free. The remaining crew soon came into their own, cranking the great boom out towards the quayside. Their own efforts were more readily rewarded, bringing the craulena jarringly against the wharf before the winch had gained the carriage enough height.
A few crewmen leapt from the ship to the quayside, taking their ropes with them, straightaway pulling the load towards its landing place as the craulena’s wheels finally cleared the edge. Urged on by the first mate, the huge insect was soon brought into position and lowered to rest. Finally, it stood gleaming on the quayside, bright against the decrepit city behind.
Already well-equipped, its own naphtha tank brimmed full, it wasn’t long before they were all aboard, its engine noisily shaking and coughing as it warmed to its task. The crew may have been crammed in behind, but even Phaylan, Dialwatcher and Breadgrinder found their seating well cramped at the fore. At least they’d better light from their larger windows, the space aft little more than a dingy cave.
“Well,” Phaylan said, when they finally got themselves settled, “let’s hope you’re right, Master Dialwatcher, and there really is a way up.” He doubted it, and so regretted being overruled earlier, although he kept that to himself.
He’d wanted to retreat back along the canal and out of the trap the close mountains had sprung. Dialwatcher, though, wouldn’t be swayed. So be it, Phaylan had thought, he’s one of the steward’s men after all, and so his say goes.
They’d lit naphtha lamps mounted below the windows, and so a weak spread of yellow light now lit the darkening quayside ahead. Phaylan stoked the engine and pushed a lever forward, and like a small boat in a large sea, they lurched forward.
The craulena eased along the last few hundred yards of the pool’s quayside and into the darkness of a crumbling defile. To the sound of the wheels squeaking their new leather treads on ancient flags, the ketch fell behind, soon lost to the poor light of a descending dusk.
“So?” Phaylan said. “Which way do we go do you reckon, Master Dialwatcher?”
“Keep to t’widest way I’d say,” and he peered through the window at the blank frontages of the buildings now dimly slipping by. “And stay on t‘level if thee can. At least while we’ve got t’steep rise o’ t’ridge to our left.”
Somehow the city obliged. It kept them on the level for some way, the straight street wide enough to suggest a main thoroughfare. By the time dusk had given way to nighttime, and all they could see lay within the little pool of lamplight, they’d reached a fork and had come to a halt.
“Well, which way then?” Breadgrinder said.
“Keep left,” Dialwatcher snapped. “I’d say t’one on t’right would take us around t’other side o’ t’canal, and anyway, one on t’left looks to rise a bit. We should be going up by now I would’ve thought.”
The left way indeed began to climb, if only slightly, but before long they came to an arch, as though a bridge straddled the road. Their advancing pool of light soon revealed an entrance to a wide tunnel, seemingly cut into the very rock of the mountain. As soon as they saw its black, blind and gaping maw, they knew there could be no other way.
“I don’t like the look of it,” Breadgrinder said. “What’s the likelihood of it being clear all the way through? I don’t fancy getting stuck in there.”
A crewman called forward, asking for the steermaster, and Phaylan granted him permission to speak. “Sir? Seaman Slayk’s not feeling too well, sir. Nor a couple of the others, though they’re not as bad, sir.”
“Ah, where Leiyatel cannot gaze,” Phaylan mumbled to himself and then turned to Breadgrinder. “We’ve no other choice. We need to rise out of the mountain’s shadow, and quickly.”
He called back to the seaman, and to the others behind, telling them to manage as best they could, but to hold on tight. With that, the wheels scrabbled at the ground and they lurched forward into the tunnel.
It suddenly felt as though they were flying through the nighttime sky, the walls of the tunnel as near black as they could be, the pool of light doing little to give warning of what lay ahead. Despite it, Phaylan pushed on as fast as the craulena would go. The tunnel gave little leeway, though, a mere few feet to either side of the thundering and squeaking wheels.
What then suddenly passed briefly through the pool of light ahead Phaylan couldn’t say for it vanished so quickly beneath. The craulena lurched and bucked and slewed against its arching legs as an almighty din echoed along its belly.
Phaylan held tight to the steering wheel as he braked hard, so saving himself from a more common fate. Most had been thrown from their places, variously bruised or scratched, nearly all tumbling amongst the many groans and displaced items now strewn across the floor.
Breadgrinder slowly removed himself from Dialwatcher, allowing the stick of a man to moan, “What the bleeding ‘eck was that?”
Phaylan was too stunned to answer.
“I told you so,” Breadgrinder managed to say. “It looked like a bloody great rock.”
Having made sure they were all in one piece, and loose items returned to their places, Phaylan climbed out to check for damage to the craulena itself.
He found nothing serious, fortunately, and so was soon back in his seat, feeling a little chastened. When they moved off again, it was at a much more leisurely pace up the steadily steepening tunnel.
“It was a rock,” Phaylan eventually said. “A damned big one at that.” He wiped his brow. “We can do without a repeat performance, so all eyes for’ard if you would,” which they did for some time until the strain grew too much for Phaylan.
He drew the craulena this time to a gentle halt and applied the holding-brake. “Time to swap over, Master Breadgrinder. I’m getting too tired to be safe.”
The look on Breadgrinder’s face said it all.
“Come on, Master Breadgrinder, you’ve had the same training as me.”
Clearly there was no avoiding it, and so Breadgrinder reluctantly swapped places, not without the inevitable humorous moments due such a confined space. The application of too much engine vigour and a heavy foot made the craulena leap forward a few times before Breadgrinder eventually found a steady pace, albeit that of a snail.
Phaylan would have hastened him had his own earlier embarrassment not been so fresh, and the heaviness of his eyes not conspired to keep him mute. Despite the hard seat, he soon found himself softening against it. Instead of watching for rocks, he found his attention drifting to the lamplight, its meagre glow slowly raked by his lowering lashes.
Presently, in the di
stance ahead, Phaylan watched a wavering pool of whiter light draw near as the rumble of the craulena’s wheels somehow thinned to the sound of hurried feet. He realised his arms felt heavy and so looked down. There he found Lord Nephril’s cold body lightly weighing upon a stretcher upon which they bore him along.
They soon passed beneath the light, channelled from a high mountain sun, and it rippled a watery blur across their shrouded charge. Tears, Phaylan realised, running their stinging course down his cheeks. Tears for a loss, for the saddest loss of all, for the first one ever suffered.
Death it was, a death delivered of a tunnel’s carr sceld, snuffing the light of his lordship’s weft and weave. Poor old Nephril, so weak by then; that such a thin granite shield should steal his flame.
Almost, that was, almost, but for the breeze of a new gaze that would blow his embers afire, that would give a fresh embrace to succour his life anew. Grunstaan had saved him, although they’d not known it until later; Grunstaan, ah yes, a sister to Leiyatel.
Could it happen again, Phaylan wondered, as he turned his head on his pillow and drew a deep breath. Were all Certain Powers akin? Were they really?
He tried his best to answer but only found his slumber slowly giving way to sight. Dialwatcher’s eyes shone wide but inches from his own. Did Phaylan see guilt there, he wondered, but the thought soon slipped away, along with his dream.
“I can see stars ahead,” Breadgrinder startled them by saying. “I can see the sky. May Leiyatel preserve us, but I think we’re coming to the end,” and even he now pressed the craulena to speed.
They fair shot out of the tunnel, out onto the back of the northbound ridge. There, all was bathed in moonlight, its bloated, silvery source now full risen above a glittering ring of towers. Seemingly eight around, they all reached down, but to what? Phaylan wondered.
What lay at their centre? What lay there, hidden beyond the rise above? Would it, like Grunstaan, be a kin of Leiyatel? Could this one succour them where Leiyatel’s own embrace could not? Had they narrowly escaped their own carr sceld, as he dearly hoped, or would it all turn out to be but the deceit of a dream?
33 Moon Dust
“I wish we could tell how far away they are,” Falmeard said, trying to coax some response from Nephril. It didn’t work. “There’s nothing to give them scale really, Nephril. If we could only see the base of them, where they stood, it might help, or even how much of them we’re actually seeing.”
He peered at Nephril long enough to draw his ancient friend’s gaze.
“Eh? What did thou say?”
Prescinda tried, but laboured her words. “How far do you think they are, Nephril? Have we got enough naphtha?”
“I be not an idiot, mine dear, but neither am I all-seeing. I am afeared that I know not. We can only be patient, and wait until the view be fuller,” and again he gazed at the towers ahead.
Prescinda did the same but couldn’t decide if they were still herrings or not. They didn’t seem quite as solid now, although they remained glinting, as though sheathed in scales. Nor were they quite as pointed as she’d at first thought. It was probably the way they leaned in towards the centre of their circle, she reckoned.
“They’re a lot thinner than I’d imagined, and quite an odd shape really,” and she glanced at Nephril. “I wonder what they’re for,” but it was Falmeard who answered, and with a question of his own.
“You’ve never been to Baradcar, have you, Sis?”
“Baradcar?”
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever been near enough to see them.”
“See what, Falmeard?”
“The black towers,” Nephril at last rather ominously answered, “the ones that stand around the rim of Leiyatel’s eye.”
“Black towers?” Prescinda said, “but these aren’t black, they’re silvery, like fish scales...” and then she understood. “Oh shit. No, they can’t ... they can’t be ... it can’t be,” but she knew it was.
“I think,” Nephril said, “that we need to see far more than we can from here, before we risk growing the ears of an ass.” He resolutely folded his arms and nodded for them to proceed.
Eastern Walk continued to follow the gentle curve of the valley, still to the north of the plum-like hills. Their rounded range had diminished, though, now little more than a proud scab along the grey mountain’s otherwise dull ridge above.
When first they’d seen the towers, they’d risen directly beyond that ridge, but now, with the sun falling towards dusk, the road aimed the camper van straight at them. It also aimed it at what was now clearly the head of the valley.
Whilst the camper van’s shadow inexorably lengthened ahead, Nephril had silently and studiously stared that way, occasionally glancing up at the towers. Dusk had begun to fall when he eventually said, “I think they are still some way off. They have altered little in size this past hour.”
“Can’t you at least make a guess, Nephril?” Prescinda asked, but he only shrugged.
“I think,” Falmeard said, “that we’re going to run out of daylight before we get to see them fully, even if there is a clear view from the valley head, not just another rise beyond.” When they encouraged him to go faster, he rightly pointed out the ruinous expense in naphtha, and so they resigned themselves to another night of not knowing.
Falmeard had been right. At least another three or four miles remained when the road finally sank into darkness and forced a stop. They began their third night away from Dica as they had the previous two, around the table eating yet more of Nephril’s stew and talking idly about anything but what the following day might bring.
Finally, Falmeard yawned and bade the others goodnight before opening the rear door on his way to the cab and his own makeshift bunk. He stepped out ready to feel his way in the starlight when he realised he’d no need. The valley swept away before him as a patchwork of silvery tints, a sweep of scrub and bare rock dusted with slanting moonlight.
“Hey,” he called over his shoulder, “I don’t think we’ll have to wait ‘til morning after all. Come and look at this.”
They did, albeit briefly, just long enough to marvel and raise their hopes. They were soon seated in the cab again, the camper van’s engine now growling at the moonlit night.
The road before them appeared to glow, as though made of moon dust, a bright line leading to the valley head where it vanished from sight. Directly above rose the now wanly glittering ring of towers.
“I hadn’t really noticed how full the moon had become,” Falmeard said as he crunched the gears and pushed the camper van on.
Despite the almost dreamlike rendering of the valley, Prescinda found her eyes wholly held by the towers themselves. She willed the valley top to give them a clear view, and perhaps because of it, time dragged by. Presently, though, something else caught her eye, a nick in the profile of the valley head where the road disappeared.
They climbed the last half mile in silence until the road took them into a cutting’s black shadow, the sheer sides now framing the nearest tower. More of it came into sight as they steadily surmounted the road’s gentle brow. Then, before them, they finally saw the tower’s stand, and Prescinda drew a sharp breath.
What lay before them beggared all belief. The road immediately fell out of sight down the precipitous slope ahead, but soon reappeared about a hundred feet below where it cut a straight line across a flat and featureless plain. At the far side, perhaps five or six miles away and in the moonlight’s pitch-black shadow, the road arrived at a steep slope on top of which stood the tower.
As best Prescinda could judge, the tower - or to be more precise the pair of slim, close-rising ones - must together have been a quarter of a mile across. It made their height at least four miles. As soon as she’d thought it, she doubted herself. It just seemed so ridiculous, if not impossible.
By now Falmeard had driven them out of the cutting and onto the start of the road’s steep descent, where he brought the camper van to a halt. From here th
ey could see that the tower didn’t sit on a hill at all but on a continuous ridge, curving away to the north and south. The other towers also stood on it, at least on the side they could see.
“Is it really another Certain Power, Nephril?” Prescinda finally asked, but it was Falmeard who spoke.
“You can’t go any further, Sis. It’s going to be far too dangerous. You’ve not got the protection Nephril and I have.”
Nephril at last spoke. “Nay, Falmeard, I think there be little to worry about. Remember Leiyatel’s ring of towers, how black they are, and look thee at these.” He sighed. “I suspect the danger be long past.”
“Past?” Prescinda said, “What do you mean past?”
Nephril turned to answer but then peered south. “What be that, there?” he asked, pointing, and they swung around to look.
They now realised that the slope on which they sat was itself a ridge, running as a ring around the plain below, an outer circle to the towers’ own. Beyond its southern arc, towards what looked like a distant range of hills, a faint speck of yellow light stood out.
“Oh,” Prescinda gasped, “now do you see? The place isn’t dead. There must be people here. Maybe the towers aren’t black for some other reason. Maybe this Certain Power’s working well enough, and over there’s where its city lies.”
“I suspect not,” Nephril said, plainly saddened. “I would hazard a guess that that be the steermaster in the steward’s craulena, that they have managed to make far better time than I imagined they would. They clearly have an advantage over us, though, but one that hast now worked to our own gain.”
“They’ve got lamps,” Falmeard marvelled, “lamps to light their way. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“In which case,” Prescinda enthused, “we’d better make best use of what moonlight we’ve got, hadn’t we, Falmeard? We’d better press on before we lose it,” and she smiled as she glanced once more at the white ribbon of the road. There, down on the plain, it almost seemed to point the way, as though saying, “Follow me in all haste for my end is truly nigh.”
An Artist's Eye (Dica Series Book 5) Page 14