by M. L. Brown
I would make this trip alone, or so I thought.
15
LANCE ELIOT LOSES A FRIEND AND GAINS AN ENEMY
NIGHT FELL. UNWILLING TO stumble through the dark, I stopped in a grove of pine trees and tried to set up the tent. In my travels with Regis and Tsurugi, they had always pitched the tent and built the fire, leaving me with the uncomplicated tasks of finding water and gathering firewood. Now that I had to make camp by myself, I realized I hadn’t the slightest idea of how to do anything.
I finally managed to build a small fire, though it was nearly smothered when a mound of snow fell into it from an overhanging branch. I fed my hund, covered it with a cloth and resolved to pitch the tent. After wrestling with the tent cloth, poles and pegs for half an hour, I changed my mind. I rolled myself up in a blanket, wrapped the tent cloth around me and lay down on the hard ground.
It took a long time to fall asleep. Snow sometimes slipped from the pine branches and plopped onto the ground. The frigid air made my face hurt, but I couldn’t breathe when I covered it with the tent cloth. I hardly slept. After a miserable night, I crawled out of the tent cloth like a bedraggled moth emerging from a cocoon. I smoked a pipe of tobacco, stuffed the damp tent cloth into my pack and nibbled on some bread. Then I sat staring at the fire, wondering whether it wouldn’t be better to return to Valdelaus and leave Maia in the hands of fate.
I heard a noise, started and turned around. There stood Tsurugi, a pack on his back, holding the reins of a hund.
“Hang it, don’t startle me like that,” I gasped.
“You should’ve been listening,” he said. “You won’t go far unless you learn to pay attention.”
There was something different about him. He looked like an actual human being. The mask was gone. The vacant look had vanished from his eyes.
“Tsurugi, why—I mean, how the deuce—what are you doing here?”
“Helping you.”
“But you said you wouldn’t take me to Akrabbim.”
“That didn’t stop you from leaving.”
“How in Tartarus did you find me?”
“You left footprints. Now pack. We travel while there’s light.”
Tsurugi euthanized the dying fire with handfuls of snow as I finished packing. After breakfast (his arrival had restored my appetite) we departed. We traveled in silence, occasionally checking the map to make sure we were on the right course. At first we passed through the towns and villages that clustered around Valdelaus. Tsurugi had brought along a good supply of money, which we spent on warm clothes, extra canteens and nonperishable food.
Then we passed into the wilder lands southeast of the capital. Mountains grew on the horizon. According to the map, there was a gap in the range some leagues away. Beyond the gap lay plains, which were covered with farmsteads and grain fields. The region now lay beneath the Darkness. Akrabbim lay within these plains.
We reach the mountains after a week and a half of travel. They towered above us, bleak and grim. My misgivings multiplied. It was a relief to have Tsurugi as my companion. He had changed. I could not describe his demeanor as cheerful, but he seemed less morose. He was certainly more talkative. In fact, he sometimes went so far as to respond when I asked a question or made an observation, leading to a tentative conversation.
One evening we made camp in a cave near the gap in the mountains. I suppose it would be a little misleading to call it a gap. It was more of a saddle, a low ridge between two peaks. Reaching the top of the ridge took a good deal of climbing, and my hund sometimes slipped and threw me into the snow. On one terrifying occasion, I fell off the hund at a steep point and rolled thirty or forty feet before crashing to a stop in a bush.
As night fell, we found a cave among the rocks. Heavy snow gave way to rain.
“It’s raining, not snowing,” I said, spreading out our supper on a blanket on the cave floor. “Does that mean we’ve almost reached spring?”
“It’s still a month away,” said Tsurugi.
“Thank God it’s not more. I hate winter. I always have, but more than ever since we left Faurum.”
Tsurugi brushed away his hair from his face, and I glimpsed the three stars on his forehead.
“What’s that mark?” I asked, surprising myself. I expected him not to answer, but my surprise grew into absolute shock as he answered without hesitation.
“A reminder.”
“A reminder of what?”
Silence.
“A reminder of what, Tsurugi?”
“Mistakes.”
“What mistakes? I’ve never seen you do anything wrong. Well, there was the one time you snapped at Miles, but apart from that you haven’t—”
“Let me tell you a story,” said Tsurugi, uttering what may have been the last words I had ever expected to hear from his mouth.
“All right.”
“It’s not a true story,” he said, staring at the fire. “It’s a fable the old women in my town told the children, but it’s close to being true.
“There was once a boy who was very wicked, though he tried to be good. The children in his village shunned him. His parents were ashamed of his wickedness. The boy wanted to be good, but it was too hard for him.
“A witch lived in a cave in the moor outside his village. One day he went and begged her to take away his wickedness. She advised against it. ‘Forgiveness and virtue are stronger than magic,’ she said. ‘If you hide from your sins, they will find you. The only way to be free from your sins is to conquer them.’
“The boy ignored her warnings. The witch finally agreed to remove his wickedness with magic, and drew it out of him. It was a shadow, dark and cold, blacker than night without stars. It was pure wickedness.”
Tsurugi paused. I watched the firelight flickering in his eyes. The vacant look had returned to them. “Pure wickedness,” he murmured. “What an idiotic phrase.”
“Tsurugi?”
“The boy saw his wickedness gathered into a shadow. It advanced on him. He backed away. The witch told him to run, and he ran. The shadow pursued him. From that day on, the boy did nothing wicked. He did nothing virtuous. He did nothing but run, always looking over his shoulder, his shadow close behind him.”
Tsurugi spoke no more, and we spent the rest of the evening in silence.
I wondered why he had told me this story. It may have been that even he didn’t know. Perhaps he was the boy, fleeing from the shadow of past mistakes. Perhaps he was the shadow, chasing his lost innocence. I never asked.
A few days later we found ourselves in a little forest. The trees looked sickly, grasping vainly at the sky like shriveled hands, and the grass was withered. “I can’t wait for spring,” I said. “It will be nice to see life breathed into these old trees.”
“Winter didn’t kill the trees,” said Tsurugi. “The Darkness is close. We’ll enter it tomorrow.”
My friend, I must digress for just a moment to inquire whether you’re afraid of dentists. I am. They are often kind, gentle professionals, but I can’t help but fear anyone who prods my teeth and gums with drills and needles. Drills were made for mining, needles for sewing. Neither should ever be inserted in the human mouth. I haven’t much longer to live, as you know, but there is one great comfort: I shall never again visit the dentist! Every session in the dentist’s office was marked by paralyzing fear.
I can give you no clearer picture of my feelings than by informing you that my dread of the Darkness far, far surpassed my fear of dentists.
That night fled away, and on the following day we came to a place where the sun stopped shining. It was unreal. We stood in the sunshine of a beautiful morning. Just a few feet before us lay shadows. It was like the darkness in a tunnel: we could see clearly for about six feet, and then things were hazy for another six feet, and then there was utter blackness.
Our hunds refused to enter the Darkness. In the end, we had to load our supplies onto our own backs and continue on foot. Tsurugi was the first to cross over the l
ine between light and dark. I half-expected him to choke or gasp for air. Instead, he turned and beckoned me to follow. Holding my breath, I entered the Darkness.
At first it wasn’t so bad. I stubbed my toes and tripped over my own feet, but my eyes soon adjusted to the dark. Only after an hour or so did the laughter begin. It was an unceasing cackle like the cry of a hyena. Like any prolonged noise, it faded into my subconscious, setting me on edge. It wasn’t difficult to imagine how someone might be driven to commit murder under the influence of such a sound.
Other noises joined the laughter in a kind of diabolical orchestra. There was a scything sound like a guillotine blade rising and falling. There was a dull clank clank clank like a prisoner dragging chains behind him. There were moans and howls like dogs in hunger or pain.
Then night fell.
We couldn’t build a fire, no matter how many times we struck sparks to the tinder. In the end, we pitched our tent to keep out the dark and lit a lamp. I tried smoking, but the tobacco was bitter to my taste. I put away my pipe and stared at the lamp. It glimmered with a pale flame. Neither of us wanted to put it out, but we had to conserve the oil. With utmost reluctance, we extinguished the flame.
The darkness flooded our tent and lay upon us like a heavy blanket, shutting out light and cheer and hope. We hardly slept. The next day was the same, except that I began to see things. Dim figures from my memory were resurrected and dismembered before my eyes. Most of it was too grotesque to write about. It was enough to drive a man insane. If I hadn’t had Tsurugi’s steadfast company, I might have been.
I jerked out of a feverish doze one night to hear someone moaning. I assumed it was the trickery of the Darkness until I felt Tsurugi writhing next to me. He rolled over and began thrashing around. I thought I heard the words sorry and ashes among his groans.
I shook him and shouted, “Tsurugi!”
He did not awake.
At last he dislodged a tent pole and brought the tent billowing down on our heads. For a moment I felt a terrifying sense of having been eaten alive. Then common sense prevailed, and I groped about until I found an opening. I extricated myself from the tangled cloth and pulled out my companion.
He was now awake, and shaking with fear or shock. I propped him upright, sat next to him and put an arm round his shoulders.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You began to groan and thrash. You brought down the tent. Were you having a nightmare?”
He said nothing.
At length I said, “You know, this reminds me of The Lord of the Rings, when Frodo and Sam go wandering through Mordor together. I suppose you’ve never read about them, have you? It’s a pity. The Lord of the Rings is a classic. Of course, speaking of classics, P.G. Wodehouse wrote some of the finest. Jeeves and Wooster deserve a place with Hamlet and Huckleberry Finn—but I guess you’ve never read about them either.”
I have made many mistakes, my friend, and yet I occasionally did something right. As Tsurugi slowly stopped shaking and sat still, I talked until my throat was sore. I told the story of the Great War—the so-called war to end all wars—and of the World War that erupted twenty-five years later. I explained how to play football, reminisced about my childhood in California, recited every poem I had ever learned and described my frustrations with literary criticism.
I was just putting the finishing touches on a colorful description of the Skeleton when day broke and the shadows lifted—well, diminished slightly. Tsurugi stood and stretched, and then spoke a phrase he uttered only twice in our long acquaintance.
“Thank you, Lance.”
A notable incident occurred a day or two later. We came upon a farmhouse standing grim and silent as a sepulcher amid empty fields. There was a well beside the farmhouse. I took a canteen and ran to fill it. Tsurugi cried for me to stop. I ignored him, plunged both hands into the water and instantly felt searing pain.
I withdrew my hands, shoved them into my armpits and squeezed them against my body, trying to dull the pain. Tsurugi had me sit down so that he could inspect my hands. They had been bleached white. (I don’t know whether you ever noticed, my friend, but my hands have been pallid since you’ve known me.) They also hurt as though they had been burned.
“The Darkness defiles water,” said Tsurugi.
“What are we going to drink?” I asked. “Drat, it hurts! What are we going to drink if the water’s gone bad?”
“Water sealed in containers isn’t affected. The water in our canteens has been fresh. Let’s check the house.”
The house was abandoned. Most of the food had long since spoiled, but we found preserves sealed in jars, meal in an unopened barrel and fresh water in a cistern. After replenishing our stores, we left the house and continued our journey eastward.
I won’t write much more about those days. They were wretched, though my Thursday Afternoon of the Soul was worse.
You see, I was hopeless and alone during my Thursday Afternoon of the Soul. My hope of returning home was gone. My companions, lost in their own grief, were like strangers to me. Things were different now. Though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, so to speak, I was not alone. Tsurugi and I had somehow become friends. I had hope, moreover, that Maia was alive. With hope and company, even the Darkness could not drive me to despair.
At long last we arrived at a great gorge. In the dark, it looked like a giant had torn the land apart as you might tear a piece of cloth.
“Akrabbim,” said Tsurugi.
“Where do you think Maia might be?”
“Probably at the bottom. We should look around.”
The darkness of day faded to the blackness of night. Having found no sign of human habitation, we decided to make camp. We had long since abandoned our attempts to make a fire. After setting up the tent, we crawled inside and tried to sleep. All around us rose the unceasing clamor of laughter. Then I heard another noise, a soft and innocuous noise.
It sounded like footsteps.
The tent was wrenched away from above us. I sat up and looked around, unable to see anything, and felt a cold arm wrap itself around my neck. Unable to breathe, I flailed and kicked. It was no use. The arm held me fast, and I slipped into unconsciousness.
Between fainting fits and attacks by unseen foes, I seem to have fallen unconscious quite a lot in my adventures, haven’t I? You would think that by this time I would have been used to it, but I was not. It was a complete shock, and an even greater shock to awake and realize I hadn’t the faintest inkling of where I was or what had happened.
The most startling thing was that the noise had stopped. All was silent. It was jarring to be surrounded by silence after so many days of noise. It was too dark to see anything, and very cold.
I lay on a floor of frigid stone. Easing myself to my hands and knees, I crawled until I felt a wall. By leaning against it, I was able to stand. I felt my way along the wall, reached a corner, turned and went on until I came to another corner. A metal door was set in that wall. Try as I might, I couldn’t open it. I turned two more corners and found myself at more or less the same place where I had begun. There wasn’t anything more to do, so I sat and rubbed my cold arms and legs.
The door opened with a screech of rusty hinges. I stood, squinting in the half-light flooding into the room. There was a silhouette in the doorway. It lurched in and stood to one side, motioning toward the door. When I took a close look at my visitor, I was paralyzed for a moment. Then I ran out the door as fast as my frozen legs would take me.
My friend, the person who had opened my door was dead—desiccated like a mummy of ancient Egypt, leering at me with dry teeth and empty holes where there should have been eyes. I ran down a dark corridor, convinced the Darkness was playing tricks on my mind, not pausing to consider where I might be.
I came to a place where the corridor branched into two hallways. One of the ways was blocked by a silhouette. I lost no time in taking the other. The sound of footsteps grew loud behind me. I ran
faster. Then I came to a place where the corridor was blocked by five figures standing shoulder to shoulder, all staring without eyes.
I looked around, sure the footsteps would catch up with me at any moment. There was an open doorway in the wall to my left. I ran though it, praying the footsteps wouldn’t follow, and found myself in a triangular chamber. Walls, floor and ceiling were all black stone. The room was lit by the same icy radiance as the corridor.
Upon a gleaming black throne sat something that looked like a man. While it was not a corpse, it didn’t seem to be alive. Its skin was waxy and pale, and its long black hair had an artificial look to it. It looked like the embalmed body of some long-dead king. Only as I drew near did I see its eyes. They were completely white—not the pure white of snow, but the dead white of salt.
“Welcome to the stronghold of Akrabbim,” it said. Its voice was calm and sure. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you in person, Lance.”
“Who are you?” I demanded. “Where am I? Let me go, dash it! I haven’t done anything to you.”
“Calm yourself, Lance. Let’s wait until your friend arrives, and then we can talk.”
It sat like a waxwork, looking at me with those unbearable eyes. I turned to leave and found I couldn’t move.
“Do stay,” it said. “I’ve been looking forward to this meeting for so long. It would be a shame for you to ruin it.”
“How do you know who I am?”
“I make it my business to know things. Ah, here is your friend.”
Tsurugi had entered the room, fists raised for a fight. When he saw the pale man, he lowered his fists, strode forward and stood beside me.
“Listen to me,” he said quietly. “Whatever happens next, don’t give up. Don’t give up.”
“If you’re quite done mumbling to each other,” said the pale man, “I think introductions are in order. You are Lance Eliot, and your companion is Tsurugi Kanben, erstwhile major in the Rovenian Legion. I am Maldos. It is my pleasure to serve as your host.”