At a lone roadside store, they were able to buy backpacks and fill them with supplies and rations, though the clerk very nearly refused to serve a customer so oddly accented as Eric. While the guard at the door took Kiown’s sword from him (testing its weight with approval and looking at Eric as if to say: how did one such as you come by a blade like this?), on the shelves, jar lids were lifted by invisible hands as Case pocketed wares, the young clerk only glancing once at creaking steps on the floorboards where there shouldn’t have been any.
With Kiown’s coins — large silver and gold discs, the rune printed on them spelling their city of origin, he guessed — Eric bought the backpacks, a jacket to cover his business shirt, a big map with totally illegible writing, and a spare set of clothes for each of them. The guard returned his sword at the door, but Eric could almost see working across the man’s mind: To kill him and take the blade, or not? With a shrug, the guard handed it back and sweetly bade him safe travels, his grin indicating the decision had been a close one.
From the store, the road led directly south, a few twists and turns aside, through country less scenic, bearing many old scars of war. They played chess on an imaginary board as they walked, though only Case managed to keep accurate memory of where the pieces were, which made the results somewhat predictable. They slept in fields and woods some way off road, their new garments keeping them warm or cool, whichever the shifting daily climate required. Soon, three days of travel were behind them. Every day they woke to the sound of birds chirping and a gently brightening sky growing more familiar and gradually less strange, though they were no less alone beneath it.
52
Their first real trouble came at a place where the road split through wilder-looking woodlands to either side. Two women dressed as Nightmare cultists were tied up and sitting by a roadblock, while four soldiers in unfamiliar colours inspected their packs. Not knowing if he’d been seen, Eric ducked off road into the flanking woods, Case just behind him and still invisible.
‘From now on, we stick to the old arrangement,’ said Case. ‘That was close.’ Earlier, Case had walked twenty metres or so ahead, invisible, scouting for trouble, and they had cut a wide line through the trees around the soldiers. As they would now.
But it became clear this scrub was harsher than the woodlands they’d slept in a short way back. Swarms of insects sometimes flew in angry bursts about their feet. The trees had an unhealthy, skeletal look, many without leaves or greenery, just long hard branches like jutting bones. Every so often the branches scraped at them hard enough to break skin, leaving stinging red slits for their sweat to trickle into. Blocks of such trees and clumps of impassable stone outcrops soon forced them a fair way wider from the road than they’d intended. ‘Don’t lose track of where it was,’ said Case. ‘We should head back, right back the way we came and chance the roadblock. Worse comes to worst, we can spare four bullets for those guards. Maybe rescue the damsels into the bargain.’
Eric looked behind them, not entirely sure he’d be able to find their exact way back even if he’d wanted to. ‘Roadblocks are not our friend, Case. There’s a reason Anfen and the others went to great trouble to avoid soldiers. We’ll do the same.’
Not long after, the feeling of becoming lost gradually bloomed to suppressed panic, as steadily as their very footsteps led them deeper into nowhere. The sky was completely cloudless, offering no hint which way they travelled. Threads of magic like creeping green mist shimmered and coiled shapelessly through the piebald white and grey tree trunks. When the terrain allowed them to cut back towards the road, it wasn’t there; it had presumably curved further west, away from them. Case had been the one keeping track of which way the compass pointed, but without the road he’d lost track. ‘A little further,’ Eric said hopefully, not even believing himself any more.
The sound of running water ahead soon told the story: the road, if it was in this direction at all, was beyond a river they weren’t going to get across without drenching their supplies, assuming they didn’t also drown. Nor, by now, was the way they’d come any more discernible than the way ahead. ‘This is just fantastic,’ Eric muttered. ‘Blair Witch here we come.’
Case removed the charm. Eric thought: If he whines, I swear, I’ll break his nose … All Case said was, ‘Good place to stop for lunch, I reckon.’
They did just that, finding a place among the dry dead leaves to sit where those angry insects wouldn’t hover about them. The roadside store’s bread was still fresh enough, its middle soft and flavoured with something sweet. They munched the last of it in appreciative silence. The water’s sloshing and burbling was the only sound, inviting a moment’s peace.
‘If Kiown wants to follow us through this scrub, he’s welcome to,’ said Case, looking around at the tall bare trees, which seemed to stare right back. ‘We’d best follow the river along until we find a bridge, but the scrub looks pretty thick both ways. We’re in a mess, my friend.’
Suddenly, Eric seemed to see the ground they were sitting on for the first time. ‘Oh shit. Case. Look.’ A little beyond their feet were just a few of those distinctive spiked tracks. Had they sat down to eat a bit to the left, they’d have seen straight away the ground there was covered, absolutely covered in them.
Case stood up quickly, knocking the backpack off his lap and spilling out some of their supplies. The woods’ quiet seemed to close in like huge suffocating hands. Not a bird call, not a wind to shake the bone-dry leaves. Yet the quiet spoke: You are alone.
‘They’re all over the place,’ Case said, examining the compacted dirt shouldering the river. ‘Even right down the banks there. They must be good climbers. Christ! Look, Eric, some of these tracks are big. Your leg’d sink down into em!’
‘Case, I hate to say it, but I think we’re in very deep shit all of a sudden.’
‘Maybe, maybe not, just stay calm. No telling when these things passed through here. Could’ve been weeks ago.’
‘Could have been an hour ago. I have a feeling we’d better get the hell out of these woods before night falls.’
They went as far back the way they’d come as memory allowed, but it didn’t allow much; the sameness of the woods meant the river was their only reference point. Beneath their feet, often partly hidden by the brittle grass, the ground was still covered in those tracks, sometimes thick clusters of them intertwining, sometimes just a few small holes widely scattered.
Each loud footstep crunching on the dry forest floor ticked off the time till nightfall and their deaths. Long stretches of ground showed no signs of the spiked tracks, which looked for all the world like someone had hammered stakes of varying thickness deep into the surface then removed them. Often as not, the smaller tracks led to groundman holes, which were suddenly everywhere in the forest floor. These were larger than they’d seen, almost as though they’d been built to allow large creatures easy passage …
The last of the daylight had almost faded completely when Case’s feet tripped up on a square grid of sticks stuck together and sent it skidding across the forest floor. It had been covering a groundman hole like a manhole cover. ‘No tracks,’ Eric said, crouching low and examining the surrounding turf. ‘I think we’ve found lodgings. How these sticks keep the monsters away I’d like to know.’
‘Don’t know, maybe it messes with their ability to see it? But this is smaller than the other holes too. We’ll be lucky to fit.’ Case crawled in first, pushing his backpack ahead of him down a J-curved bend flattening out a few metres down. Eric went backwards, carefully dragging the grid-stick cover back across. Tiny lightstones gleamed like eyes in the walls behind them, where the tunnel widened a little, curving around left and out of sight. It was the safest either of them had felt since stopping for lunch by the river.
‘Why do these little people make their tunnels big enough for us to get through, anyway?’ Case whispered.
‘I think they used to be friends with humans when they built a lot of them. Don’t know when it
all changed, but they hate us now.’
‘Who gets first watch?’ said Case, yawning.
‘I’ll take it. Too nervous to sleep.’
‘Fine by me. I’ll be out in five minutes; not the worst place I ever slept, either.’ Case tossed him the charm, then nestled into the curves of the tunnel’s floor as though into a comfortable bed, hat down over his eyes, backpack as a pillow.
With the very last of the daylight, Eric peered closely at the charm necklace. There was a little swarm of activity in the air around it, much of it moving patterns like bubbles of clear glass. Around one of its silver beads the magic swirled in a slow, small orbit. He’d been going to put the charm on, but it suddenly felt like he was clutching something very much alive. He put it in his pocket and waited.
The hole’s opening made a disc of night sky faint as starlight, cutting across the rough lattice of its makeshift lid. He jumped at every little sound he heard or imagined out among the trees. His imagination was all too willing to recreate the hunters’ hall from which Lalie had been rescued. The woods were quieter than it seemed they should be — the occasional breeze made the brittle tree branches creak, but if there was any wildlife, small or large, it moved with complete stealth.
Until, that was, he’d nearly fallen asleep. He heard something like wood being bent until it begins to break — creak, creak, creak — and there was no mistaking it for the work of the wind. He crawled so close to the stick-grid its poking fibres tickled his nose, trying to judge the sound’s direction. There was so little to see: trees hunched up in belligerent skeletal shapes.
Except — there! One of them moved, stalking across the patch of sky behind it. It was nearly double a man’s height, with lean limbs covered in spikes, some curved, some straight. Its outline was all he could see. A head, if that’s what it was, sported a large jagged mane, spiked in the many-pointed shape of a roughly drawn star, each point needle thin.
The thing out there stood still for a time, only the curling points along its body in motion like fast restless fingers. Then it moved with an awkward stiff gait and blended, hidden amongst the silhouettes of trees. For a time silence fell, then came more creaking noises, closer to the hole’s entrance. There was the impact of something heavy pressing down its feet, very close, just overhead, but he couldn’t see it.
Had it come lured by their human scent, their footprints? Eric crawled backwards through the tunnel, his whole body shaking. The tiniest sound of his knees and hands sliding across the stone floor seemed hugely magnified. He shook Case’s shoulder. Case murmured, annoyed to be woken. ‘What is it?’
‘Shhh! Don’t make a fucking sound. Let’s move. They’re up there above us, right now. Go.’
Case cocked his head, listening, and heard it close by: creak, creak … He looked uneasily at the tunnel’s curve behind them. ‘You sure?’
‘Yes I’m sure for fuck’s sake: go!’ Case hustled down the tunnel on hands and knees, around its curve to where it ran deeper and wider, so that they no longer needed to stoop their heads. Case turned to speak, and in fact he was about to say this: Hold on a minute, if this tunnel is supposed to keep those monsters out, maybe there’s a chance of those traps the gang kept talking about, when, with a crumbling sound, the ground seemed to drop out beneath them. They both fell for just a heartbeat, till they were lodged in the floor waist deep and painfully winded.
When Eric could speak again, he muttered: ‘Groundmen traps. Beautiful.’
‘I’m thinking we should have chanced those roadblocks,’ said Case.
Eric shut his eyes and breathed deeply. ‘I am going to agree with you on that, for the first and final time. OK? Now please. Drop it. Please.’
‘Just saying, is all.’
I am probably going to kill him, sooner or later, Eric thought. There wasn’t much to do but wait out the slow hours.
53
Their feet did not touch a floor below, nor did struggling shift their positions in the slightest, though it served to ward off numbness in their legs. The charm in his pocket was out of reach.
There was no knowing if night had passed yet or not. Eric managed to doze for a while, dreams unpleasant indeed, until woken by the feeling of something sharp poking his leg down below. He jerked frantically, feet kicking the air. There was, it seemed, much hilarity from the groundmen in a tunnel directly beneath.
‘Cut legs!’ said a gleeful voice below. Someone or something yanked up his pant leg and a sharp object gently traced along the exposed skin. ‘Hear screams! Uprat, screams pretty. Cut slow.’
‘Wait!’ Eric screamed. ‘Toll! I can pay! Toll! Toll!’
‘Toll?’ a voice below nattered. ‘We take toll. Dead soon.’
Another said, ‘Wait, wait. Go up, talk. No harm. Why they here? We ask.’
‘Trick! May trick!’
‘No trick!’ Eric yelled. ‘Believe me, please!’
There was a moment’s silence. ‘Speak our tongue?’ said one of them. Hard to tell with their strange inflections, but it sounded alarmed.
‘Speak your tongue!’ Eric agreed. ‘Yes, yes! So does my companion. We can pay toll! We can sing and dance. Sexual favours, you name it. Will you free us?’
Case groaned. ‘Don’t give em ideas for Chrissakes. If they want sexual favours, you’re their man.’
The voices below gabbled excitedly before fading as the groundmen moved away. Minutes later there was the candle-gleam of their bright yellow eyes as four approached, each holding a small spear. The foremost poked his spear down at the rock floor now and then, and there was a flare of light painful to the eyes as traps were closed off. ‘Can’t reach the gun,’ Case whispered.
‘Shh. Let me talk,’ said Eric. ‘I’ve seen these things before.’
The groundmen positioned themselves on either side of Eric, ignoring Case, and pointing the sharp tips of their weapons close to him.
‘Speak our tongue,’ said one, its face angrily bunched. ‘How? Spy?’
‘I don’t know, exactly. But I come from Otherworld. They call me a Pilgrim.’
A burble of excited chatter. The way they looked at him changed: not more friendly, but certainly more curious. ‘Why here?’ said one.
‘Here … do you mean in your tunnel, or in your world?’
This got him an angry prod by the foremost, the spear point stabbing half an inch into his shoulder. He squirmed and fought not to cry out but the pain was hideous. The other groundmen rushed to hold the angry one in check before it could drive the spear deeper. What Eric had said to offend it he had no notion at all. ‘In world, in woods, in ground,’ another said, holding back the enraged one as it made more lunges at him. ‘Answer all. Why here?’
‘We’re lost, that’s all. We came here to your world, to Levaal, by accident. We were separated from our guides. We moved off the road to avoid guards. And now we’re lost. We came down here to escape something outside, but we don’t know what it is.’
‘Tormentors, Stranger called them,’ Case interjected.
‘Case, please, as per our agreement, keep your fucking mouth shut. Can you help us, tunnel masters? We’re trying to find our way to Elvury.’
Chittering laughter broke out. ‘Want to die?’ one inquired.
‘Not especially.’ More laughter. ‘Is there something in Elvury that’s dangerous?’ said Eric.
‘They want to die!’ cackled the angry one. ‘In bad woods, while things are loose. In tunnel, walk right in trap. Now, if escape, they off to dead town. Uprat, hate life!’
Eric said, ‘Dead town? Elvury? Our friends are going there. Anfen. Do you know him? We were separated—’
‘Dead town, yes! Not yet, soon.’ The others gestured for the speaker to hush, but there seemed great mirth afoot all round.
Eric said, ‘Soon? Why, what will happen?’
‘You go, you see.’
He thought of Siel. ‘Are our friends in danger there?’
More laughter. ‘All uprats dead. We don’t c
are. Not our work, but we watch. Your friends first. Then you.’
‘Now pay toll,’ said another. ‘Then say why we don’t kill you, take more toll.’
Luckily Eric had a reason — funny how the feel of their spear point had cleared his head. ‘I can teach you Otherworld writing. I can show you how to read what it all says.’
The groundmen tried to hide the fact that this prospect impressed them a great deal, but he could see by the widening of their bright yellow eyes that it did. ‘The toll is in my pocket. I can’t reach it.’ There had to be receipts still in his wallet, maybe old bus tickets, and he knew Sharfy had missed a ten-dollar note, back when he’d rifled through it near the door. His key card, driver’s licence. Would these interest them?
‘Hear close,’ said one of the groundmen after a brief whispered conference with the others. ‘We let up. But! Can still kill. You big. Yes, sure. But, see? Sharp.’ He pointed his spear tip very close to Eric’s eye indeed. ‘See? Sharp.’
‘Sharp,’ Eric could only repeat, pulling his head as far back from it as possible while the spear tip followed. He didn’t see what they did but there was a tapping sound and whatever gripped his waist gradually weakened. With tired arms he pulled himself free, making the pain of the spear wound flare up badly. Blood trickled warmly down his chest. The groundmen spear points waved and jabbed around him as though they feared he’d attack. Slowly he reached for his wallet. Out came the two remaining receipts, their print almost completely faded. His key card — how strange to hand that over, in this world where it was perfectly useless, and still feel an acute sense of loss. The spear tips angled away from him as the groundmen fumbled with the receipts, an old train ticket, their mouths open in wonder, tracing fingers over the lettering. ‘More,’ one said distractedly. They were evidently so fascinated it didn’t occur to them to take the wallet itself.
The Pilgrims: Book One (The Pendulum Trilogy) Page 32