The Pilgrims: Book One (The Pendulum Trilogy)

by Elliott, Will

  They gathered in the room’s far corner while Anfen snored deeply at the other end. ‘He’s out for a good while yet,’ said Loup. ‘But these are his rules we’re about to break, so hush or we’re in it, deep. Here’s the story. We’re taking a quick nap. Anfen, he don’t understand visions, thinks it’s risky.’ Loup looked suddenly angry, twisting his whole face into a curdled bunch of wrinkles and beard. ‘Oh aye, can be, but so’s taking a step outside at night. And you can’t stay inside all your damn life, just cos you might kick your toe out there!’

  ‘Easy …’ said Sharfy, a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Oh aye.’ Loup nodded. His face uncreased, his toothless smile returned. ‘Who’s to say? We might just learn stuff that’s useful. Aye, you sometimes do.’

  ‘You’ve done this before with black scales, right?’ said Eric.

  Loup stared into the distance. ‘Once. Girl who did it wouldn’t say what she saw, but she was … different, after. Glad she went, oh aye. Went on for big things, that one, riches and power. Whether it was what she learned in her vision, or what she’d have done anyway, not for me to say. I miss her.’ He sighed, eyes distant for a moment. ‘Black visions fade too, sometimes. Might just pass out and wake up, see the vision itself sometime down the track. Hope you’re not riding a horse or walking a ledge when you do!’ He turned to Sharfy. ‘You done red ones and green ones, aye? Done gold?’

  ‘Not gold,’ said Sharfy. ‘Done purple, bronze.’

  ‘Aye, bronze! That’s wild enough, there’s your out-of-body. Still, let’s see what black puts you in for. Rare treat, a black one!’

  ‘Let’s start,’ Sharfy said impatiently. ‘Eric, spare a pinch?’

  Eric opened the small leather pouch.

  ‘Some red in mine,’ said the soldier, taking a small battered pouch from his pocket, inside which was a tiny amount of ground red-white powder, fine as table salt.

  ‘You and your mixing. Pure black for me,’ said Loup, gums glistening. ‘And enough left over, Eric, for more down the track, if you’re wanting. But don’t you do it without me there to help you! Not without risk, oh no. And now listen close, so you know what we’re about to do. We’re about to put in our bodies, in our minds, a little piece of the Dragon itself. Fathom? This little scale, all crushed up, still a little bit alive, is made of the great god-beast’s very stuff. Full of secrets, it is, and knowledge.’

  By opening the leather pouches, it felt like whatever they were about to do had already begun, that they’d slipped already into some heavy moment that could not reverse course in time. Loup set down four cups before him, three empty, one filled with water. Sharfy’s ugly scarred face eagerly lit up, reminding Eric suddenly of goblins and inviting a moment’s doubt he resolved to ignore.

  Loup poured a dribble of water in the other three cups, pinched a small amount of black powder and added it, stirring each in turn with his gnarled finger. Eric’s cup got the greatest share. He couldn’t tell if this was a courtesy to him, as the finder of the scale, or whether Loup had other reasons.

  ‘It’s a kind of knowledge minds like ours can’t hold,’ Loup continued. ‘Unless you think your hands can hold a mountain. You get half a thought of It — not even! A flicker of noise across Its sleeping mind — and your mind, why, it’ll bend just trying to hold it. Just a few grains of Its scale, that’s enough. And it’ll send us through the very sky, brain all full of the same magic that made the world.

  ‘The red, if you must mix,’ Loup said to Sharfy, who added a pinch of red scale to his cup. ‘When I say,’ said the magician, a glint in his eye, ‘drink it up. Simple as that; hard part’s the crushing. Takes the strength of a mountain to crush up even an old piece of Its skin. Drink, then we’re away. See you beyond, and Eric, I’ll give you a push over there, if you need it. Drink now!’

  His mouth was full of grit. He managed not to gag, but it was a battle to swallow the mix. He fell back, hands to his throat as his airways seemed to close off. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sharfy doing likewise, then rolled his head the other way, where Loup — Loup just watched him, eyes gleaming.

  Then he woke to the folk magician shaking his arm. It was dark. ‘Awake, at last!’ Sweat ran into Loup’s beard and covered his torso. A more relieved face Eric could hardly imagine. He sat up and groaned.

  ‘He’s back!’ Loup stood and did a little dance, elbows cocked.

  Eric’s head felt like it had been put through a washing machine. ‘What happened?’ he slurred. ‘How long’ve I been out?’

  ‘Hours,’ said Loup, smiling. ‘I thought you’d slipped away for good! That can happen sometimes, you know. Spirit goes out of body, sometimes don’t find its way back. Happens more’n you might think.’

  Eric looked at him in disbelief. ‘Thanks for the warning.’

  ‘Ah, you were safe with me right here. What’d you see? Gave you a push over there, but I lost you after that.’

  ‘I don’t know what I saw. A lot.’ He thought back, sifting through the pictures like trying to recall an old dream. It fell through his hands the second he reached for it, then was gone. ‘Something to do with Kiown and the others …’

  ‘Pff, I saw that. Right at the start, that was, before I gave you a push higher up. Don’t you bother with that old news. What else?’

  ‘Nothing. My head’s completely blank.’

  ‘Ahhh! She’s faded on you!’ Loup regarded him thoughtfully. ‘You’ll see it. It’ll come, likely some night before sleep, not far from now. Means you was showed something you’re not meant to see just yet. Maybe given some instruction, but your head can’t know what it is, or you might think to do otherwise! Gotta be felt right down in your bones, whatever it is.’ Loup’s gummy smile was so close Eric could smell his sour breath. ‘I followed you in. Out my own vision, into yours. Good at that, I am. Not all mages can do it. Not even the old schools, who thought they knew it all. Lingering around, you was, all confused, so I gave you a boost up high. Meant to follow you, then something grabbed you. Whoo! Did it what? Oh aye, grabbed you hard and yanked you away so’s I couldn’t see. Didn’t want me to see whatever was meant for your eyes! More to you than there seems, don’t you doubt it. And here, you’re just back now!’ Loup laughed and shook Eric’s arm like they’d shared a grand joke.

  ‘He’s back?’ Sharfy came in and crouched by Eric’s mat. ‘What’d he see?’

  ‘Nothing yet!’ said Loup, growing more excited. ‘He’ll see it when the Dragon wants him to. Could be a day from now, could be a week or more. Knew it, I did! It was all meant, that whole group of things: him finding the scale, me crushing it up, now the vision. What else? Maybe all of us being here in this very house, and whatever comes next, good or bad. As It wills! Anfen’s being a fool.’

  Eric lay back — whatever he’d been through had made him sleepy. ‘So, the boss found out.’

  ‘Yep,’ said Sharfy. ‘You were out too long. He twigged you weren’t just sleeping. Not happy with us. And if anything goes bad in the next few days, it’ll be our fault. You watch.’

  ‘What was your vision like?’ Eric asked Sharfy.

  ‘Not saying,’ Sharfy answered, face grim.

  ‘Ah, he blames the black scale,’ said Loup, grinning wide. ‘That pinch of red’s what did it. Warned you about mixing, I have. Sometimes gives it a kick, but black scales don’t need a kick. Skewed you to a bad place, eh?’

  ‘Not saying,’ Sharfy repeated, and he seemed a little pale.

  Anfen came back inside. He quickly examined Eric as though for physical injury, but said nothing. ‘Ready to hear me out now?’ said Loup. ‘I’m telling you, I saw something important. Real or no, you should hear it.’

  Anfen shook his head and kept tensely silent over on his mattress, running a dead stone over his blade.

  ‘He’s not happy,’ Eric whispered.

  ‘Nope. That was a fine sword of his, and that Invia snapped it like a stick,’ said Loup. ‘Eskian blade. Heck, it made me sad, wasn’t ev
en my sword.’

  ‘I get the feeling that’s not what’s bothering him,’ said Eric, though he marvelled again at the often scattered dots Loup managed to connect.

  ‘He’s got to understand something about us,’ said Sharfy. ‘We’re never gonna be like his old unit was. Not as disciplined, never will be. We can scrap all right, survive in the wild. We got the balls to come on a mission like this in the first place, can keep our mouths shut about where we been, s’long as they pay us what they promised. That’s going to have to be enough.’

  ‘How high up the chain of command was Anfen, in the army days?’

  ‘First Captain, rank below General,’ said Sharfy. ‘Youngest ever to make that rank, best swordsman around, in his day. There’s a tournament, Valour’s Helm. Use blunt wood swords so no one’s killed. Best sent in from all cities, best from the castle. Week long, it runs, whole lot of smaller tournaments before it to pick the cream. Even Free Cities send their best, kind of a truce. Anfen won it four years running.’

  ‘Three,’ said Loup.

  ‘Three, four, may as well be ten. No one won it twice, before him. He’s nearly a decade older now; I reckon he’d be a chance to win it still.’

  ‘But you’d give him a good fight, wouldn’t you?’ said Loup, grinning.

  Sharfy considered this question very carefully. ‘When I was younger, maybe I’d make him sweat, but he’d win. Now he’d cut me up in three seconds, if I really went at him.’

  ‘And I might,’ Anfen said from across the room. ‘Among my virtues is uncannily good hearing. I was waiting for you to add it to your list.’

  Sharfy winced.

  ‘Valour’s Helm was pointless,’ muttered Anfen, running the dead stone over his blade with aggressive tugs: scrape, scrape, scrape. ‘You said it yourself. Blunt wooden swords so no one gets hurt. Three years running I was best at wielding a piece of tree barely fit for firewood. Some of those others would have spilled my guts on my shoes with their own swords.’

  Anfen tossed the sword aside as though afraid he’d be tempted to vent his anger by using it. ‘You think I’m pining for elite soldiers, Sharfy,’ he went on. ‘Not really. It’s common sense not to do magic rituals when a powerful mage stalks your company. And to tell your leader when you’re being followed by one. Siel knew, Loup knew, even Case knew before I did. And let’s not even mention Kiown’s idiocy at the wagon train, which was so stunning I’m almost in awe. Would you people think about this, please? In my pocket is a charm, with a message on it that may change the course of all history: they have shown us their fear and their weakness. All we have to do is get this charm back to the Mayors. Not to mention two Pilgrims with heads full of priceless knowledge. Yet, we are extremely lucky to be alive right now, and not in castle dungeons being slowly tortured. You of all people, Sharfy, should be wary of that.’

  Sharfy’s face darkened, jaw clenched.

  ‘If this were the army,’ said Anfen, ‘the castle’s or a city’s, on a campaign with one hundredth as much at stake, most of you would be headless in a roadside ditch. And I’d side with the officer who did the cutting.’

  Siel gave Eric and Sharfy a look that said, maybe you should just keep your mouths shut. So they did, and soon Faul bade the birds good night.

  33

  No one had been put on watch duty, so Eric was the first to hear it. As he came up from deep sleep, he thought it was only the claws of Faul’s birds scraping the metal floors of their cages. The half-giant’s snoring from deeper in the house rumbled like an idling engine.

  He hadn’t noticed Siel climb under his blanket, and it was a shock to find her naked body pressed to his, with his arm pulled around her, her hands clutching it like he was her protector. Fine joke, that — she could probably kill him with bare fists. Her skin felt cool on his and he could smell her body, unper-fumed and clean.

  The sky had just begun to lighten, so that the sleeping silhouettes stood a little firmer across the long spacious room. Again came the sound that had woken him, thump thump on the roof. Like something falling on it. His heart quickened.

  With regret he gently prised himself away from Siel, trying not to wake her, but she stirred, and was up a second later. She heard something too. In seconds she was clothed again, bow in hand, stalking through the house with footsteps not making the slightest creak on the floorboards. Eric pulled on his shoes, grabbed the army-issue sword, scoffed at himself and picked up the gun instead, quickly strapping on the holster. It was loaded and ready to fire. He went out after Siel, his steps not nearly as stealthy as hers.

  He had just begun to wonder if they’d imagined things when Lalie’s voice came from outside, a shrill yell: ‘Something here! Help, something here! They’re back, they’ve come!’ Her words dissolved to panicked whimpering.

  The whole company was up, armed, and rushing through the house. There was a crashing sound as something punched through the roof. Anfen shouted an order Eric didn’t catch. He and Siel were out on the porch with Lalie, who groped for them in her terror. Siel told her twice to be calm. Now she slapped the girl, and Lalie hushed.

  They stared around the yard. The rocky outcrops, the forest lined down to the left, were black outlines against the bluish gloom. Again came the sound on the roof. And the sound of wings beating the air. All Faul’s birds began screeching at once.

  ‘Lalie, do your beasts have wings?’ said Siel, pulling an arrow back, angled upwards. Lalie whimpered and didn’t seem to hear. ‘I don’t see it,’ Siel muttered. ‘Answer me! Do they have wings?’

  But Lalie cowered on the floor, stupid with terror.

  Faul’s snoring still rumbled from within the house. They heard Lut’s voice in there trying to rouse her, apparently without luck.

  Anfen and the others came outside on the porch with them. Then many things happened at once.

  A flash of light flared out in the yard. There, a woman in a green dress — Stranger — had arms aloft, a look of concentration on her face. A fountain of light poured from her, illuminating the yard like a lightning strike that stayed put, but for its slow twisting. She had not made the sound on the roof; she was showing them what had.

  Perched on the yard’s lone tall tree were two Invia, staring at the house — rather, at Anfen. Wings beat at the air again as two more took off from the roof and flew to join those in the tree. Not knowing who or what else was inside with the clearly dangerous Marked one, they had wanted to draw him out.

  ‘Damn it,’ Anfen muttered. He didn’t even look at Stranger. He called to the Invia, ‘You only want me?’

  There was a fluttering whistle in response, like an unearthly bird’s coo. Anfen strode down the steps, into the yard. Stranger called, ‘Fight them, I’ll aid you.’

  Siel hadn’t looked away from Stranger for a moment. She loosed an arrow which sliced the air and narrowly missed. Stranger looked at her with great surprise. Case gave a strangled cry and threw himself at Siel, who had begun aiming another arrow. It flew well wide, as Siel tripped over Lalie and landed sprawling on the porch.

  Anfen meanwhile approached the Invia in their tree. All four creatures watched him and only him, the Marked one, their faces neutral and curious. One by one, they stood and stepped onto the air, wings spreading. Back over his shoulder, Anfen yelled, ‘Don’t attack them. Take the charm to the council. Sharfy leads. Be safe.’

  Whatever Stranger had been planning to do to aid him never happened. A huge white wolf big as a horse sprang from the gloom with its mane flaring. It charged her, teeth bared, a growl in its throat.

  ‘Hoo boy,’ Loup muttered, ‘still dancing, these two. Far Gaze, that’s the wolf. Now what’s she? Fox, rabbit, or a bigger wolf yet?’

  Stranger didn’t seem to see the wolf, even as it sprang for her. Then came a flash of green motion and she was gone, the wolf’s jaws closing on nothing, the clack of its clashing teeth loud even from the porch. It circled back around ominously, its size making it seem slow despite the ground it covered with
paws thumping hard on the turf. It leaped at some further point, seeing something the rest of them couldn’t, jaws snapping on air. Then again it leaped and bit, and again. Stranger, hidden, kept evading it. She did not seem to fight back. The pillar of light, pouring like a fountain from the ground, remained where she had stood.

  Sharfy unsheathed his knives and stepped uncertainly into the yard as the Invia carefully took positions around Anfen. They circled well above his head, cautious of one so Marked, though he seemed just a normal man, easily enough dispatched with one swift fist. One sister had mistaken him for such already and flown back wounded; he had cunning tricks, this one. This kill would be as certain as any ever made. They would take great care.

  Anfen stood poised beneath them, army-issue sword angled backwards. There was suddenly something unlocked and liberated about him; his movements were smooth and easy, more than just resigned to his fate; rather, relishing it. The beating wings ruffled his hair. Suddenly he dropped his sword to the ground, laughed, and fell to his knees, offering his throat.

  One of the Invia experimentally swept down, just a blur of white speed. She came up higher than the others, fearing some counterattack, but the man lay flat on his back, dazed. The others waited; to feign death was an old trick in the wild. Into what trap was he luring them? Dropping the sword had thrown them into slight confusion, and a series of quick whistles exchanged between them too high-pitched for the humans to hear — that was a strange move! Sophisticated, this warrior. A shame about the Marks, for he was worth a long life. Oh well.