The Cloven Land Trilogy

by Simon Kewin

  “But where are we taking them?”

  Fer smiled up at Catherine as, reverently, she added another bone to the collection. “To the one place where they can do some real damage. To the one place where our enemies might welcome them, where they actually go out of their way to acquire bones.”

  “You mean the refinery?”

  Fer nodded. “The refinery. Perhaps we might be able to break back in with the bookwyrm's help, but we won't be able to do much. The angry spirits, on the other hand, will be able to cause havoc. If we can get their bones into one of those metal lorry containers Genera uses, the ghosts can get right to the heart of the enemy's fortress without them even knowing they've been invaded.”

  “But there are already countless bones there. What difference will these few make?”

  “These remains are old, and the spirits tied to them have grown angry, grown strong. They know how to work together. The recently lost can be so confused; they don't understand what has happened to them. They need a voice to summon them, show them the path.”

  A heavier boom thudded through the air, Fer could hear snarls now, mingled with high-pitched animal screeches from beyond the door.

  Will the doors hold? she asked Bethany in alarm.

  The dead of this place have poured their fear and rage into those nails and planks for many years, building up the barricades, said Bethany. But the Masters are terribly strong. It won't be long.

  “We can't get out that way,” said the Lizard King, as if he were aware of Fer's conversation with Bethany. Gently he lifted up a tiny finger-bone and placed it with the others in Catherine's garment. “Are there are other ways out?”

  “Bethany says there's another door, on the opposite side of the cave.”

  “Where does it go?”

  “I don't know. Underground.” Fer stood. They had a small pile of bone fragments. There were many more left trapped under the rocks, but perhaps they had enough to draw the unquiet spirits with them. They couldn't afford to wait any longer.

  “Catherine? You said you'd studied the old maps of the tunnels and workings beneath the streets of the city, when you and Jaiin were planning your escape route?”

  “Well, yes, but this place wasn't marked on any map I saw. Sewers, aquifers, storm drains, mines, caves – they were there. But no Shadow Town Hall.”

  “We're so near the Library though. There must have been, I don't know, a gap in the maps. A space around which the tunnels led, without it being made clear why.”

  Catherine's forehead knitted in concentration as she thought back. “It's … possible. No one ever put all the maps and drawings together, but thinking about each one … it's possible there was a space around which the tunnels wound.”

  “And any passages nearby that seemed to stop suddenly, go nowhere?”

  “It's possible, yes.”

  “Excellent. That's our way out. Hopefully you'll know where in the maze we are when we get through the other doorway. If we can open it.”

  Another shuddering boom resonated through the air of the cavern, followed by piercing shrieks.

  “Come on,” said Fer. “That will have to be enough. It's time we went.”

  15. A Maze of Streets

  The second door, in the opposite wall of the cavern, looked even older and more dilapidated than the first they'd come through. Its timbers were green with rot, stained brown where the water had dripped from its rusting nails. But it was as solid a barrier as the first door when Fer tried to barge it open with her shoulder, strong threads of magic running through its grain.

  Once again, with Bethany's help, Fer's fingertip touch upon it made it yield. The three hurried through, leaving the spirits of the Shadow Town Hall to their long darkness. Fer took care to close the door behind them, her touch putting the iron-strong wards back in place on the ancient doorway. The massed undain were still hammering their way through the first entrance. Perhaps the two doors between them would give Fer and the others time to get away.

  Catherine lit a werelight, but it sputtered out almost immediately, like a candle flame in a gust of wind. She tried again, but this time managed only a brief spark. The older witch was spent. She muttered something under her breath. Fer didn't recognize the word, but she knew a curse when she heard it.

  “Let me,” said Fer, sending a yellow-white flame flickering into the air.

  “I'm sure I can manage a little light,” said Catherine. “I've been working them since I was six.”

  The older witch's face was a frown, frustration at her own limitations, her own weariness, clear.

  “The light doesn't matter,” said Fer. “We need you to work out where we are. If we can't find a way out of this maze they'll corner us and capture us.”

  Catherine nodded and turned to study the passageway they stood within. The walls were bare rock like those of the Shadow Town Hall, but there were horizontal gouge-marks that suggested people unknown had cut the tunnel from bare rock at some time in the past. The floor sloped downward into utter darkness. From below came the babble of running water, along with the acrid stench of human waste. In a way that was good. Wherever they were, the tunnel appeared to connect up with the sewers beneath the city, and sewers had hatches and grids to allow access to them. That had to be as true in Manchester as it was in Guilden.

  Catherine went first, one hand on the rock wall as if she knew the caverns by touch. They had to stoop as they shuffled along to stop their heads bashing into the rough rock of the roof. After perhaps thirty paces, the tunnel bending always to the left, they emerged at a junction with a larger passage. This was hand-crafted rather than natural, its arching walls constructed from bricks the colour of dried blood.

  Catherine stepped down into the stream of water running along the centre of the new tunnel. The smell was no stronger, nothing more than a miasma in the air. The water appeared to be fresh: rain run-off perhaps, or the course of some ancient, buried brook channelled beneath the streets. The older witch turned backward and forward, head cocked, as she attempted to orientate herself. Fer sent the little werelight darting up and down the tunnel in an attempt to keep up.

  “But we're … we're here,” said Catherine. “I'm completely disorientated, I thought we were on the other side.”

  Fer stepped down beside Catherine. Fer wore good, stout boots, Andar leather, but they'd developed a few cracks on the long walk north that she'd utterly neglected to repair. She regretted her carelessness immediately as icy water seized hold of her feet.

  “You know where we are?” she asked.

  Catherine nodded. “As should you. Here, put your fingers to the wall. Feel anything?”

  Fer touched the square-cut stones of the wall. She suddenly knew what she'd find. The marks were faint now, but the kick of the hind-legs and the swept-back line of the ears were clear enough as she coaxed the magical sign on the wall to give up its meaning. One of the hare witch-marks Catherine herself had left as she fled from the Library. Marks that Fer, Johnny and Ran had followed when they arrived from the Tanglewood.

  Fer nodded and smiled at Catherine as the picture of the kicking, leaping hare filled her mind.

  The older witch said, “At least I can manage a witch-mark that doesn't immediately fade.”

  Fer placed a hand on the woman's arm. “These marks saved our lives when we came to this world. I never thanked you for them.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Catherine. “At least we know where we are. Jaiin and I counted these side-tunnels carefully, terrified we'd take a wrong turn when the time came to flee. But this one was a dead end, just bare rock at the end as if the tunnellers gave up on it after thirty yards.”

  “A doorway only visible from one side perhaps,” said Fer. “A way out rather than a way in. It makes sense.”

  The Lizard King splashed into the stream to join them. He peered up at the wall, shoulders hunched in the cramped space. “So which way is the hare running?”

  “Down there,” said Catherine, pointi
ng into the darkness. “We'll head away from the Library basement. Again.”

  “Should we erase the marks?” asked Fer. “So the undain can't follow us?”

  “No time. Besides I doubt they noticed them last time, and they're much harder to see now. Let them look if they want.”

  Catherine splashed forward and Fer waded after. With her neck bent over it was awkward to keep the werelight bobbing ahead of Catherine. They passed another side-tunnel and then another, the wall at each turning marked with its magical hare imploring them to follow, follow, hurry, hurry!

  As well as maintaining the light, Fer tried to sense the whereabouts of the undain and the human soldiers of Genera. There was only an unfocused, looming presence above their heads, their pursuers on the streets. She wondered what was happening in the cavern. Had the enemy broken down the first door? Had the spirits fled or fought? She could sense nothing save a voiceless dread seeping from the stone. She could detect no immediate threat, no nightmare horror about to leap from the darkness to devour them. If one was there, it was so well hidden she couldn't sniff it out.

  She called over her shoulder to the Lizard King. “Is your phone working again? Does it have contact with the other machines? With the … network?”

  “Nothing yet,” said the Lizard King. In the narrow tunnel his voice had a strange echo to it, a tremor almost. “We need to get up to the surface. As I recall it isn't far.”

  “You've been through this tunnel, too?”

  “I … no. Not in person. I was aware of you when you came this way.”

  Fer thought about that as they waded forward. “So you were expecting us that day we came to your hostelry. To the Golden Palace?”

  “I wasn't sure. I didn't know who or what you were. I'd caught glimpses of you before, but obviously never in this world. The visions didn't make a lot of sense. They were very brief, just snatches. Your fear burned brightly, blotting out everything else. I didn't know you were coming to find me until you walked into the restaurant.”

  Catherine stopped, her outstretched fingers touching the curving wall to her left. “This is the mark telling you to take the turning. The route we both took to escape is that way.”

  Fer recalled the tunnel sloping upward to end in a metal grid that they had to push against with their shoulders to open. Distantly she could hear the booming roar of the city and its machines. The air smelled a little fresher, a waft of cold, clear air blowing from some crack or gap in the grating. If they went that way they'd emerge among the buses and the hurrying feet of the city centre. The sight of it all – dizzying, confusing – was one that had stayed with her. Her first proper glimpse of the other world.

  “Should we go that way again?” she asked.

  “I'm not sure,” said Catherine. “They might be watching that exit now.”

  “You said you studied the maps. There must be other ways out.”

  “Many, yes. Jaiin and I plotted other routes through the labyrinth, including a tunnel that opens in the cellar of a disused mill. But it's a lot farther, and it isn't a good idea to stay down here any longer than we have to.”

  “As long as those doors hold the undain it seems safer down here than up there,” said Fer. “There are no cameras to see us, and this running water will stop them tracking us by scent. They'll be able to find us using magic eventually, but they might get lost in this maze a few times first.”

  Catherine sighed, trying in vain to sweep her grey hair back into some sort of order. She panted as she stood there, stooped and weary. “Perhaps, but there are other things down here apart from the undain. The farther we venture from the city centre the more likely we are to meet them.”

  “What things?” asked Fer.

  “There are lots of stories. Some of them silly myths, no doubt, but not all if you ask me. Creatures that live in this darkness. The worms that wind blindly through the deeper levels. The lost spirits, confused and angry. Bogles and boggarts and bugganes from the old tales.”

  The older witch's comments troubled Fer. Was what she said true? Could there really be such creatures skulking in the tunnels of this noisy, brightly-lit city? Somehow it seemed unlikely. Perhaps in Andar, but here in this world of machinery and glass and steel? The only monsters she'd seen were the undain and the people who served them. Catherine had been through too much. Fer caught the Lizard King's gaze. Concern was clear in his eyes.

  “Whatever we do, you need to rest,” said the wise man to Catherine. “I don't need to borrow your mind to know how exhausted you are. I mean, I'm exhausted too. We all are.”

  Catherine nodded. She still held the little bundle of bones in a fold of her woollen tunic. He voice sounded weak, cracked, as she replied. “Well, we can't rest here, but I think it's too dangerous to take the same exit as last time. We'll have to brave the monsters of Manchester's tunnels and head northeast. It's only half a mile or so.”

  “Are you sure you can make it?” asked Fer.

  Catherine nodded, but there was a pause before the words came. “Let's keep going. There'll be no more witch-marks, but I have the route memorized. Only, sing out if you feel an opening in the wall on either side, yes? That's how I remember the way, and if I miss one we could end up anywhere. These tunnels lead to some unexpected places.”

  As Catherine set off Fer glanced at the wise man again, who frowned his doubts at her. There was nothing either of them could do but hurry on as quickly as they could.

  Their trudge through the maze of passageways seemed endless to Fer. Her back and neck soon throbbed from the uncomfortable crouching position they had to adopt to scuttle through the tunnels. Occasionally they found a taller section, a modern sewer or river channel, and it was glorious to be able to stand up straight and stretch burning muscles. It never lasted for long enough.

  The route Catherine led them along became windier and harder to follow, so that Fer was soon utterly disorientated and couldn't really tell if they were walking round in circles or heading away from the city centre. She could do nothing but trust in Catherine. Fer's impressions of what was happening on the streets were too vague to properly follow. There were still no undain near as far she could tell, no creatures at all save the occasional quick-moving, pink-eyed rat scampering out of their way. Occasionally, distant scraping and scrabbling sounds echoed, but when Fer reached out with her mind's eye she could never find their source.

  She took to tracing her fingers along the left-hand wall while the Lizard King did the same on the right. Each time they found a turning they told Catherine, who simply nodded and pressed on. Two or three times, Fer stopped to sketch some witch-marks of her own, deliberately marking the wrong turning to take. A small thing, probably pointless. But if there were a necromancer among their pursuers, perhaps the subterfuge would throw them off the scent for a time, buy a few more minutes. It was all she could do.

  They came to a fork in the tunnels. One branch, its walls more of the red bricks, led off to the left, sloping downward. The right-hand passage was rough stone, damp and dripping, but rising gradually. Catherine hesitated, looking from one passageway to the other. “I … I can't remember which way to go.”

  Her voice wavered. Fer caught the troubled look on the wise man's face.

  “Take your time, there's no hurry,” said Fer, even though she longed to be free of the seemingly endless maze. A hollow, booming sound echoed up the passage behind them. Fer told herself it could be anything. Water flowing, a bus driving over a grid, anything.

  “I think it's right,” said Catherine. Her lips moved as if she were reciting the words of some song or rhyme. “Except … we've just taken a right. Perhaps it's left now. Jaiin would know for sure but it's funny, I suddenly can't remember.”

  “Do you have any signal on the phone now?” asked Fer.

  The wise man studied the glowing screen of the device and shook his head. “There's nothing.”

  “Do you have any idea where we are?”

  The wise man studied the dam
p stones above his head, as if some clue might be written there. “None, I'm sorry.”

  “It will come to me in a minute,” said Catherine. “I'm sure it will.”

  Another hollow boom found them, followed by a discordant squeal, metal upon metal. Peering into the darkness with her mind's eye, Fer saw them now, the undain amassed like a fog in the tunnels. One way or another, their pursuers had battered down the doors of the Shadow Town Hall. They were coming.

  She had to do something. They couldn't fight; they'd be slaughtered or captured in moments. They could only run. The tunnels were as much a maze as the streets. A labyrinth above ground and a shadow labyrinth beneath. She longed to be free of it all.

  Stepping forward she tried to see through the aether. It was impossible. She caught the occasional spark of life here and there, rat or beetle, but never enough to see clearly where the twisting tunnels led.

  Bethany? Do you know these tunnels? Do you know which way to go?

  The witch-girl's voice was faint, a whisper. These are old ways, far older than me. Roads I've never taken. I'm sorry.

  In desperation, Fer opened her eyes and sniffed. The air from the right-hand passage was musty and damp, bringing with it the cloying scent of mud and decay. No way of knowing if that was the correct way. Turning to the other passageway she sniffed again. This time, beneath the fug, she thought she caught the faintest taste of something colder, fresher.

  “This way, I think,” she said. “We go left.”

  “Are you sure?” asked the wise man.

  Fer wasn't anywhere near as certain as she sounded when she replied. “Yes.”

  The tunnel sloped downward, becoming damper and muddier all the time. Fer stopped smelling the waft of fresh air. Perhaps she'd imagined it. Perhaps it was wishful thinking and she was leading them in circles, or to some dead end where they could only turn to face their fate.

  They arrived in a low, roughly circular cave that looked natural rather than man-made. Stalactites of slimy stone, ribbed like the body parts of some unknown creature, clung to the roof. They had to be far underground. A pool of black, still water filled the space, the werelight reflecting off its mirror-surface perfectly, revealing nothing of what lay beneath. Four tunnels led off from the cave into the darkness.