Running footsteps approached from up the corridor.
‘No, no, wait,’ said Case, backing into the corner. ‘Look, I just wanted to cheer you up, is all. I’m not going to hurt you. What’re you so sad about, crying like that?’
She watched him as though he might turn into a snake or maybe already had, but at least she’d stopped yelling for help. Too late: there was the sound of keys clanking in the lock. Guess I’m screwed now, he thought, before it occurred to him to put the charm back around his neck.
He did it just as the door knob twisted and a dumpy older woman stood in the doorway, wearing an apron and what looked like a plain nurse’s outfit beneath. Her face was mean, Case could tell, the kind of mean that hides behind big insincere smiles.
‘Aziel?’ said the woman in the doorway. ‘You’ve stopped your wailing. Now why do a thing like that?’ She looked at the clock. ‘Not even halfway through! You know he’ll have shut his window already!’
‘Someone …’ the girl began, but she looked from the woman to where Case had been and back again, and seemed to doubt that she should speak.
‘Someone? Yes, someone’s for it, all right. And now I’ll have a mess to clean up next door. You’ve been so good for so long, Aziel, doing your wailing every day like your father loves. Too late now! Without pause. Those are the rules.’
Something seemed to have occurred to the girl, Aziel, and she forgot all about Case. ‘No. Oh no, please, don’t! Don’t let them, nanny!’
The woman’s smile was sympathetic but her eyes were cold, and sucking up the girl’s distress, every bit of it. ‘Don’t let them?’ she cried. ‘Well! What am I supposed to do? Pick up a sword and start cutting off heads? You were the one who could have stopped them. Think about that, when you hear it all. It’s been too long since you did, I’d say.’
The nanny began to close the door. Case didn’t know if he should stay or go, but the closing door was, for all he knew, his last chance to slip out. He did so just as the nanny paused to take another hungry look in at Aziel’s distress. ‘So sorry for yourself!’ the woman said. ‘Spare a thought for me. When they’re done, I’ll be in there with mop and bucket, not you.’ She shut the door and turned a key in the lock, then held her ear to the door, that hungry look still on her face.
Case stood behind her in a wide, curved hallway. Staff in robes of bland grey, male and female, walked past in a slow shuffling gait. They didn’t look twice as two burly guards dragged a naked man, bound and gagged, down the hallway towards Aziel’s room.
‘He’s a big one,’ said the nanny, turning away from Aziel’s door. ‘Going to be a bleeder, isn’t he?’
The guards didn’t respond to her at all. They carried the man into the room next to Aziel’s. There was a large stone bench in there; that was all Case saw before the door slammed shut.
‘They’re about to begin!’ the nanny called through Aziel’s keyhole.
Aziel’s voice could be heard, screaming out her window: ‘Father, don’t! Stop them! Don’t do it! Don’t!’
‘You did it,’ the nanny called through the door. ‘Your wailing, girl. You know how he loves it. You’ve been so good for so long, and your voice is so lovely.’
Case didn’t quite know what was going on here, but he knew that right then he wanted to put his foot to that woman’s rear end more than he’d ever wanted a drink in his life, and only his utter bewilderment stopped him.
When the prisoner dragged into the room next door began screaming, Case thought at last he understood what was happening. He knew that for the rest of his days he’d never understand why, not even if someone told him. Some things, he guessed, you simply couldn’t know, and it would ever afterwards throw his mind sideways to think back on it and try to comprehend it.
He ran from Aziel’s door to get the sound of the slowly dying man out of his ears, and that poor girl’s wailing as she heard it happen, and the woman telling her through the door to listen close, because she’d done it all herself. By the time he was out of reach of those awful sounds, the whole thing seemed too strange to be real, even in another world, and he seriously began to doubt he’d witnessed anything of the kind at all.
14
Finally, blessedly, the cavern narrowed and there were no more creatures either side of the path. To be safe they kept on their hands and knees for some distance beyond. Kiown stood and Sharfy slipped to the ground, wiping off sweat. ‘What took so fucking long?’ he demanded.
Kiown and Eric rubbed their tortured knees. ‘Perhaps I enjoyed the pleasure of your body pressed against mine?’ Kiown snarled back. ‘Your weight on my ribs? Do you know how many there were? I was expecting four or five! There was a whole horde.’ Kiown was pale and shaken. ‘If I’d known there were that many, I would’ve chanced the traps.’
‘We seemed safe enough,’ said Eric.
‘Oh no we were not! Try to appreciate our luck. They sometimes work as a pack, but more than a few in one place and it’s time to scrap for turf. As newcomers, we would’ve been prime targets.’ Kiown paced anxiously, the cone of red hair flopping side to side. ‘I can only guess they had other natural enemies nearby, recent contact, so were teamed up. Why here? Any more riddles today and I will be quite full.’
Sharfy said, ‘Here’s one, then. Hope it makes your filthy guts bust open. There was a cavern, not far from the door. Newly tunnelled. No lightstones in it. Smelled rotten. Worse than rotten. Something in there. Not devils, but something.’
Kiown shrugged. ‘There’s a saying: “Consider the source.” Of information.’
Sharfy didn’t pick up on the insult; he looked troubled. ‘Something’s wrong down here. Shouldn’t be one pit devil, not this far north. They’re here for a reason.’ Sharfy lapsed into thoughtful silence.
Eric wondered if he should say it. ‘I could hear the devils talk, you know. They must have their own language too. Did you know that?’
Kiown looked at him, startled. ‘What were they saying?’
‘Nothing that made much sense. Only what you might expect animals to say.’
‘You are a most intriguing little trinket,’ said Kiown. ‘Believe him yet, Sharfy? Or is he still a liar?’
Sharfy muttered to himself and walked off ahead. They followed him. Eric said, ‘Is he as good a swordsman as he says he is?’
Kiown laughed. ‘Nooo! Not a soul who ever wielded blade possibly could be. Still, you’d have him with you in a fight. Knows some tricks, throws a good knife.’ Kiown considered. ‘And it is true you can trust him. He just doesn’t look like it. Me, on the other hand? Who knows. And it’s time we plunged onwards.’
The draught suddenly picked up. They became aware of a distant rumbling sound, becoming more defined as they neared it. Then light poured through their tunnel, which opened out to the side of a vast paved road, with a huge cavernous roof overhead and sheer walls. Big slabs of lightstone in the walls and roof made it better lit than the ways they’d come through, helped by brands and braziers of orange fire along the roadside.
At walking pace down below passed truck-sized metal containers on wheels, stretching in both directions as far as sight, filled to the brim with grain, livestock and mined ore. Men in grey robes rode small platforms jutting from the vehicles’ sides. A cart passed, full of shaggy cattle-sized animals, some of which stood on two legs. The sight of the alien beasts made Eric forget, momentarily, his tiredness. Another world, he marvelled. And yet there passed other carts with familiar sights: horses, cows, and poultry in cages.
‘These are going to the castle,’ said Kiown for Eric’s benefit. ‘See? That’s the ramp up, where the road starts to rise. All this came from farms down south. The castle takes it, counts it, then sends it back to Aligned cities. Or not, if they deem people need to be starved. A citizen in Aligned cities is advised to behave himself, and not do silly things like organise resistance, because dinner is nice. In any case food often rots before it gets to places further away.’
Station
ed by the roadside were soldiers in metal breastplates with swords at their sides. The two directly beneath them sat playing a game with round pieces on a striped board. Sharfy’s eyes gleamed. ‘We used to raid these carts. Can’t, now. Those guards, down there? Because of us.’ He sounded like a proud father. ‘Kiown, look! Dirt cart from the mines! Ah, those were the days. Used to make a fortune, raiding dirt carts.’
‘We can still raid them,’ said Kiown. ‘You just need a little help.’ With that, he dashed back up the tunnel, leaving Sharfy confused behind him. A minute or two later, Kiown’s squealing voice reached them: ‘Yoooo hoooooo! Pit devils! I have a surprise for youuuuuuuu! HEY! HEYYYYY!’
Sharfy looked stricken. ‘Get down, now! Down to the roadside. If we stay here he’ll get us killed.’
It was a steep drop down the embankment and they had to slide most of the way. The guards below had their board game sprayed with rubble. They stood and drew their blades as Kiown made it back through the tunnel at a mad sprint, whooping. He plunged right down the drop towards Eric and Sharfy. ‘Here they come!’ he screamed. ‘I threw rocks! They’re coming! Raid! Plunder! Go go!’
The guards jogged over, yelling orders lost in the rumbling of the goods train. ‘Forget us,’ Kiown told them, pointing overhead. ‘Look up there. I suggest you panic.’
Five of the red-skinned pit devils loped out, jaws open wide as they went heedlessly down the drop, two overbalancing and sprawling to the roadside with a thud. The surprised guards screamed for help. The men in grey robes shrieked and leaped from the carts’ platforms. More guards rushed over, no longer interested in the bandits. ‘Go! Loot!’ Kiown yelled, hopping up on the side of a passing cart.
Behind them, the guards tried to stand in formation while the devils frenzied. They had loped along slowly, but their long thin limbs now thrashed like striking snakes, claws slicing through armour. The guards fell screaming, with breastplates cracked open, arms sliced off still clutching swords. Their frenzy mounting, the pit devils swarmed over grain carts, chewing and swiping at the carts themselves.
Up on the side of the ‘dirt cart’, Sharfy and Kiown stuffed their pockets with what appeared to be hard lumps of black soil. Urgent to make room, Sharfy took the gun’s clips from his pocket and tossed them clattering to the ground. Eric rushed to pick them up, unnoticed by the others.
‘Take some!’ Sharfy called to him and tossed a few pieces down, one of which broke apart. Gleaming gems scattered left and right. Only they weren’t gems — they were flat as coins.
Kiown dropped down beside him, still panting from his sprint. Eric hesitated, not yet quite knowing his place among these bandits. Would a hero just go along with this? he thought, and said, ‘Whatever these things are, these scales, are they worth killing people for?’
Kiown blinked at him, baffled. ‘Killing people, you say?’ he laughed. ‘Poor little innocents? Those guards, they work for the castle.’ Kiown suddenly loomed over him, a hint of anger behind his mocking face and voice. ‘Did you think the war mages were little innocents, too? I hear they killed your people dead without a thought. Know who the war mages work for?’
‘The castle,’ said Sharfy, hopping down with his pockets bulging.
‘How does one treat enemies in Otherworld?’ Kiown went on, spittle flying from his lips. ‘Does one politely discuss?’
‘Enough!’ Sharfy said, standing between them. He pointed at the clumps of black dirt at Eric’s feet. ‘Grab some, quick. Then run.’
Eric did as told, and they ducked through the gap between two grain carts, up the far embankment, along a ledge where more small passageways opened up. No guards chased, not when they saw the entire horde of pit devils belatedly pouring through the hole on the other side like a red nightmare, swarming down the embankment. ‘Anfen says hello!’ Kiown yelled, waving to one guard who paused, looking up at them. The guard stared, but made no move to pursue them as they fled.
15
Through the wide hallways Case went. Bright and busy the place seemed, well ordered as a hospital. The human traffic was heavy enough that his footsteps need not be silent, but he was careful to sidestep the men and women in their bland robes, with their bland faces showing not much, saying nothing. When they did speak, it was seldom loud enough to be overheard, seldom more than a word or two. Some had paper scrolls in hand, or little notebooks slung about their shoulders. Many ducked in or out of the doorways on either side, all steadily going about some incomprehensible business like ants in a stump. There seemed something very wrong with them which Case couldn’t quite pinpoint: something was missing. Maybe it was the way their mouths hung open a little, the dullness of their eyes. Maybe it was the place’s quiet despite so many going back and forth, with only the tap shuffle tap of footsteps on the stone floor.
Sometimes the doors on either side of the wide hallways were open. Case paused to look in, once finding a store room full of plain-looking objects: cups, plates, tools, simple jewellery like the silver beads around his neck. It was all valuable, since there were serious-looking men with swords sitting inside, silently watching over it all.
In other rooms, seated around tables, were people who by their manner discussed matters of grave importance. Something separated these people from the rest of these castle dwellers. They were dressed differently, but that wasn’t it … there was clearly some ‘on’ switch that had been flicked in them, or maybe the others had been switched off. Case passed several such meetings before he stopped in a doorway to listen, thinking that in here might be the man he was supposed to find:
‘… if I may, to me, this is … I won’t say paranoid, but I have not ever detected a scrap of further ambition in that general than the next course of dinner.’
The others at the table exchanged looks of grave alarm. Said one very slowly, ‘Perhaps others have better foresight than we.’
The first speaker, stricken: ‘Yes, of course. I did not mean to say I was questioning—’
‘You already have questioned. Already questioned.’ He grinned like someone who was very much looking forward to a drink of the other’s blood.
Case listened a while longer then left the worried-looking bunch to their troubles and secrets. Further along, an open door blasted freezing air and mist into the hall. Inside was a spacious chamber, and placed over its floor were many large lumps of blue ice. Shapes were frozen within each block and, if he didn’t know better — yes, there were people in the ice blocks, horned men, identical to that monster that had set itself on fire, back near the door. The chamber was full of them, all frozen solid, their eyes open. Were they alive or dead? He couldn’t tell.
A block of ice nearest the door had water running from it in little rivulets, slowly thawing. The war mage inside had its eyes pointed right at the doorway where Case stood. He shuddered then hurried away, soon as thoroughly lost as could be.
It was endless, this maze of hallways and arches and doors to secret chambers. When one passage branched off, winding upwards, Case followed its plush red carpet, recalling that Aziel had seemed to direct her mournful cries to a higher window. The top of the steps was guarded by sentries, heavily armed with shields and spears, but they didn’t react in the slightest as Case very carefully crept past them.
He found himself in a lofty hallway without the background sound of shuffling steps to shield his own. Tall glass windows double a man’s height were embedded at intervals down either side. Before each of these sat people taking careful notes on paper scrolls with pencils. The windows looked out, but Case assumed they were televisions or something similar, for they didn’t show the sky, nor the landscape he’d expect to see from this high up. The one nearest seemed to give the view from in the midst of a town; there were buildings in the background, and what might have been a pub. In the next window along, women in rags walked by a marketplace carting a wagon full of hay, which kept spilling out, and which a young boy kept trying to put back in.
Some of the windows showed grassy fie
lds where nothing seemed to be happening at all, besides a little breeze. But the window-watchers stared at these just as avidly, taking as many notes as those monitoring the others. Case looked over their shoulders but couldn’t decipher anything … if he spoke their language now, he sure as shit couldn’t read it.
In another window was what looked like a big looming wall of glassy ice, its top too far above to see. In fact, many windows — Case counted thirty as he strolled along — viewed this looming wall, which seemed to stretch to the sky itself. It was either vastly long, or there were several of its kind, for some windows watched it from grassy plains, others from between the trees of a woodland, others from fields of dust and rubble. Before some of these were huge grey statues with round featureless faces, tall as buildings.
The views were so clear it looked as though one could step through the windows and go to wherever each place was. Every so often one of the note-takers touched a slab of rust-coloured stone set on tables before them, and the view of the window shifted left, right, or spun right around. Then they’d watch closely and take more notes.
The windows stretched as far ahead down the long hallway as Case could see. He didn’t bother to look closely at most of them — they all showed the same kind of stuff, seemingly random views of random places. Until, that was, he saw a window showing a busy road, with cars going past. He did a double take and went back. Cars? Trucks? And they weren’t alien cars either — that was a Ford! This was a city, a real city.
Over at the next window, there was a similar view. The same place, or a different city? There was a bridge that looked familiar, some well-known foreign landmark, but he couldn’t place it. A whole bunch of these windows were looking out at places in the real world. The window-watchers here were excited, as though each sight was a rare one, and they crowded three or four per window.
The Pilgrims: Book One (The Pendulum Trilogy) Page 8