Sylas pressed his hands to his ears and watched in awe as clouds blasted from every passage and lane, borne on a vicious, freezing wind. Moments later they were engulfed and he was thrown against one wall of the alcove, drenched and battered by rain and hail. He looked past the Magruman to the vast pillar of cloud twisting and swirling above him. It was wild but at the same time beautiful, glowing with a lattice of lightning and explosions, its shifting surface reflecting the silver light of the moon, which had now been unveiled in some other part of the turbulent sky.
“Look!” bellowed Paiscion, turning and pointing along the canal. “There!”
Sylas peered round the corner at the dark opening. At first it seemed still, but then there was a movement in the shadows. A figure became visible, one blacker than the night. It stepped forward until it was almost in the moonlight, then turned its head slowly upwards towards the pillar of cloud and light. Another figure appeared behind it on the narrow towpath, and another, barely visible in the darkness.
It had worked: the Ghor guards were on the move. The two at the rear were bent low, straining to see past the leader and up above the rooftops, but after only a few moments their curiosity seemed to get the better of them, for they stepped out of the opening, striding in unison along the towpath. Sylas recoiled as he watched their smooth, easy movements: their bodies carried low, their malformed, powerful legs bending the wrong way, ready to launch themselves forward, to pounce. They paused, exchanged looks and perhaps some unheard words, then in one motion they leapt their own height on to the canal wall. There they stood and watched for some moments, appearing to hesitate, but suddenly one of them broke from the group and disappeared down one of the dark, wind-blasted lanes. The others watched for a moment and then followed.
Paiscion leaned down and hissed in Sylas’s ear. “Now! Go! And don’t look back!”
Sylas looked up at the Magruman’s face lit by flashes of lightning and the shifting light of the moon and for the first time he saw none of the gauntness, the weariness of before; instead he saw eyes burning with vigour and hope.
He took a gasp of the freezing air and sprinted down the towpath.
The lone Ghor ignored the distant rumble of thunder, continuing its endless patrol along the base of the Dirgheon, treading the same path that it had trodden thousands of times before. The stone plaza had been worn away by the incessant fall and scrape of generations of claws, forming a long, perfectly straight groove beside the bottom step of the pyramid. It moved silently over this familiar smoothness, its lithe limbs hardly straining as they paced out another empty night. Its head swung low between its shoulders, lulled by the pleasant sound of claws against stone and the swaying motion of its massive limbs, only occasionally turning to cast a look out across the deserted plaza.
When the great howl erupted from the sky, it reacted in an instant. Its body tensed and it crouched on its haunches, the tufts of matted hair bristling on its powerful neck and a low growl rising in the back of its throat. Its quick yellow eyes surveyed the plaza and then flicked skyward as the first lightning forked through the blackness. It saw the convergence of cloud, the great swirling vortex. Its ears pressed back against its head and a snarl curled its lips. Its eyes narrowed as it took first one step, then two out on to the plaza, leaving the well-worn pathway behind. Then, as an immense thunderclap shook the stone beneath its claws, it swung itself forward and began loping towards the pillar of cloud and fire.
Simia and Ash pressed themselves into the shadows and exchanged a triumphant look.
“Now!” whispered Simia.
Instantly both were in motion, sprinting for all they were worth across the exposed plaza, bent low beneath their huge packs. They dared not look behind them or to the side; instead they just fixed their eyes on the black stones, strained every muscle and ran for their lives. The packs were heavy – too heavy – making them stagger and sometimes stumble, but by some miracle they stayed on their feet. After what seemed far too long they neared the Dirgheon. With burning lungs, they looked up to see the first row of large black stones glistening in the moonlight. Above was another and another and another, rising steeply like a giant staircase into the night.
They came to a halt next to the bottom step, which rose above Simia’s waist. They lowered their packs from their shoulders and craned their necks to peer into the darkness.
“There has to be an easier way,” muttered Simia.
“New worlds don’t come easy,” said Ash with a grin. “Come on, I’ll race you to the top.”
39
Through Ending's Gate
“O what evil plight, what hellish fate
Attends those who pass through Ending's Gate?
What torments foul, what curse untold
Do those awful, deathly arms enfold?”
THE PORTCULLIS GATE CLANGED ominously as it swayed in the moaning wind. It spanned the top half of the passage ahead, its jagged teeth silhouetted against the orange, smoky torchlight. The canal disappeared into the darkness and Sylas paused, covering his nose against the foul stench and glancing anxiously about him. Nothing, just blackness. But, as he set out again, something crunched underfoot.
His heart quickened and he looked down.
The ground was strewn with something white, something that glowed dimly in the firelight. It was a carpet of bones, hundreds of them, piled one upon the other: some old, brittle and grinding to dust, others with flesh still clinging to them. For a brief, horrifying moment he thought he had stumbled upon the scene of a massacre, but then he saw that the bones were small and fine – the remains of chickens, pigs and sheep – all that was left of countless meals cast carelessly aside by the guards of Ending’s Gate.
He drew his eyes away and looked up at the massive hulk of iron swinging lazily from the ceiling. This was the point of no return. He set his teeth, ducked his head beneath its arrowhead points and stepped inside.
“I knew you’d come.”
The voice was deep and resonant, but it cut through the sound of the wind. The words echoed along the passageway making it impossible to tell where they had come from.
Sylas stopped breathing. His muscles tensed.
He looked frantically about him, trying to see any sign of movement, any shape in the shadows. Then he saw something. A tall, dark, human shape stepping from the shadows just a few paces ahead.
The figure reached up to its hood. When it fell away, it revealed a dark, chiselled, once youthful face marked by a terrible wound.
Espen.
Sylas froze, his instincts divided: to stay or to run.
His eyes passed quickly over Espen’s face, taking in the piercing eyes, the creased, weathered skin, the livid gash. The Magruman bore an expression that was hard to discern, his brow furrowed, his eyes focused and urgent.
But Sylas thought he saw something else. A warmth that looked like relief.
“I know you don’t trust me, but I can explain everything,” said Espen, taking a step forward. “We must go somewhere safe.”
“Here will have to do,” said Sylas firmly, his voice shaking a little despite himself.
Espen was silent for a moment. He glanced back down the passageway.
“Very well,” he said. “But the Ghor will soon find Paiscion in the eye of his storm, and then they will return. We must move on as soon as you’re ready. Agreed?”
Sylas shifted nervously, unnerved that Espen knew about Paiscion. He nodded.
“Good,” said the Magruman. “I am sorry you had to find out my lies. I wanted to tell you myself. The problem with discovering a lie is that you do not know where it ends – it infects everything, corrupts everything you know of a person.” He fixed him with an earnest look. “Whatever you may think, Sylas, I have not betrayed you.”
“How can you say that?” demanded Sylas, a little louder than he intended. “What about Bayleon?”
Espen frowned. “That was regrettable, but he is safe enough.”
“Regrettab
le? How can you—”
“Sylas, you must let me explain myself – explain my lies. Then you can decide whether or not to trust me. Is that fair?”
Sylas looked at him with narrow eyes. He shrugged.
“I told you that I was captured by the Ghor after the Reckoning, but that I escaped on to the Barrens. Do you remember?”
He nodded.
“That was a lie. I was unconscious when they finally took me from the battlefield, and when I woke, I was here, in the Dirgheon. I lied too when I told you that I went to the Other in the hope that there might be some truth in the Glimmer Myth. I knew that the Glimmer Myth was true and I knew that our salvation depended on it.”
He fell silent, as if waiting for Sylas to respond, but the boy looked at him blankly.
“It was Naeo, Sylas... Your Glimmer. You should have seen her at the Reckoning! Such a natural mastery of Essenfayle… There had to be something special about her. As soon as I saw her, I thought of Merisu’s poem, of the Glimmer Myth. She had to be the one!”
Sylas eyed him carefully. “So you’ve known since the Reckoning?”
Espen nodded. “But so has Thoth. He had no idea what her power might mean, but he understood that it was extraordinary and dangerous. I knew that she wouldn’t be safe for long. On the one hand she was enticing to Thoth, for he might be able to learn from her, but on the other she was a threat.” He drew a deep breath. “So, I decided I had to tell Thoth something that would make her more enticing than threatening; too valuable to be killed.”
Sylas’s eyes widened. “You told him about the myth?”
Espen nodded. “I told him about the myth and I told him that if Naeo was capable of fulfilling all that it foretold, then her Glimmer was the key. I told him that you must exist, and that if anyone would know who you were, it would be the Merisi.”
“But why tell him so much?” asked Sylas, confused. “Why not just tell him that Naeo was – I don’t know – a great magician, and leave it at that?”
“Because he already knew better, Sylas. This was no girl who had mastered Essenfayle – she was something altogether different. And also because this way I thought I might just get him to help me – to help us all.”
“How?”
“By allowing me to bring you together.”
Sylas frowned. “But why would he do that?”
“For your power. Either to use it, or if it proved impossible to harness, to put it beyond our reach. I told him that when Naeo grew a little older I would teach her how to raise the Passing Bell so that you could be summoned. I told him that, if he let me travel between the worlds over that time, I would find the Merisi and then you, and ensure that you were prepared for the journey. Then, when you were both ready, Naeo would summon you and I would guide you to the Dirgheon to deliver you into his hands. I told him that I would do all this if he would let all three of us live.”
“And he fell for that?”
“Not quite. As I suspected, the thought of having both Naeo and you was too much for him to resist. But he had two problems: first, he knew that I was not to be trusted, and second, he knew that whatever this power was, it was likely to be dangerous. He considered my proposal for several days and finally he summoned me…”
He shot an anxious glance past Sylas to the distant opening of the tunnel. Sylas turned and squinted, finding it hard to see anything through the murk. There was a flash of lightning, followed by another. In that momentary light he saw a slight movement, a dark shape shifting next to the canal wall.
Then he saw two and then three stooping figures.
“They’re coming back,” he said, turning to Espen.
Espen looked at him anxiously. “Will you follow me?” he asked urgently.
Sylas hesitated, scrutinising Espen’s open face. “I will. But I want to hear more.”
Espen grasped his shoulder. “As we run!”
He whirled about and took three or four paces along the towpath, paused to make sure that Sylas was following, then darted into an opening in the wall. Sylas hesitated for a moment, and then followed.
Inside, the darkness was even more complete than in the tunnel: there was no glow from the moon, no lightning, no torches but one that flickered in the distance, somewhere high above them.
“There’s a staircase ahead of us,” hissed Espen. “It’ll take us to the first level.”
They began climbing a steep flight of stone steps, bracing themselves against the dank walls.
“They were coming back to lower the portcullis,” said Espen when they were at a safe distance. “You won’t be able to get out through Ending’s Gate. We’ll have to think of another way.”
“We’ve taken care of it.”
Espen glanced over his shoulder. “You have? How do—”
“I’ll tell you when I’m ready,” interrupted Sylas. “Tell me about your meeting with Thoth.”
The Magruman smiled, as if proud of Sylas’s new confidence, then continued to climb.
“Thoth is known to enjoy his games,” he whispered as he went, “and the crueller and more merciless they are, the more amusing he finds them. Scarpia, one of his Magrumen, came up with a scheme that seemed to fulfil his every wish: it would allow me the freedom to help him, but keep me under his control; it would allow you to reach Naeo if that was your destiny, but if not, it would ensure that you could be no threat to him; and, best of all, it would become a pleasant diversion for him – a game of cat and mouse.”
“And let me guess… I’m supposed to be the mouse?”
Espen turned and smiled. “You’re supposed to be, yes, though it hasn’t worked out that way.”
He continued to climb and, as they were drawing near the torchlight at the top, Espen lowered his voice to a whisper.
“He told me that I could do as I proposed, but that there were two conditions. The first was that I would tell no one the truth about what I was doing; if I did, it would cost Naeo her life. That was fine, as I had no intention of leading the Ghor to any of my brethren, and in any case, I wasn’t sure that anyone would believe me.”
He reached the top step and raised his finger to his lips. He braced himself, then peered round the corner. The long, dark corridor extended both ways as far as the eye could see, lit only by an occasional flame. There was no sign of movement, no sound but the occasional spit of wax and drip of water.
“Paiscion is doing a fine job,” he whispered. “The guards must have been summoned to the defences. Come – and keep an eye out behind us.”
They stepped out into the corridor. A stale wind blew along its length, making Espen’s cloak fly up behind him. It carried a new, appalling smell: the scent of unwashed bodies, open sewers, disease. Sylas put his hand over his mouth and nose and ran to keep up with Espen.
“What was his other condition?” he murmured.
“One that I didn’t expect,” said Espen ruefully. “He told me that from the moment I told him of your identity – which had to be before the ringing of the bell – you would be treated by him and his forces as a threat; we would both be tracked and hunted as his enemy, and if we were found, we would be killed. He would send his Ghor and his Ghorhund, his Magrumen and his Slithen – anything he chose. It was a great novelty for him: he would test the foulest of his fiends against us and be sure of the outcome. If I kept you safe, you would be delivered to him; if I failed, we would be killed, and he would have no more to fear from you, me or the Glimmer Myth. What’s more, he was placing me in an impossible position: if I refused, Naeo and I would be executed anyway; if I agreed, I would have no quarter to raise a plot against him, for I would only expose Naeo and anyone we met to terrible danger.”
Sylas felt a creeping realisation. “Like everyone at Meander Mill…” he murmured.
Espen turned and met his eyes. “I had no way of knowing, Sylas,” he said. “I was right behind you, but I couldn’t have known that Filimaya would hear the bell, or that Simia would guide you so skilfully and fearlessly
across town. And, once you were inside the mill, I was lost: I had to know what was to become of you, but I didn’t dare enter the mill or meet with any of the Suhl. No, I realised that I had to find a way to spy on you, which was a problem: only a Slithen could scale the walls of the mill, and of all the foul beasts in Thoth’s legions, the Slithen are the last to trust. So I paid one I knew, one I thought too stupid to know your value, to think of betraying me. But I was unlucky: he overheard your plans, which he knew would be valuable information to the right people. And, to make matters worse, he saw the Merisi Band around your wrist. He thought there would be a bounty on your head – a bounty far greater than I was able to pay.”
As they walked along the corridor, Sylas thought through everything Espen had told him – it was labyrinthine and hard to grasp, but it did seem to make some kind of sense.
Then something occurred to him.
“You’ve been going through to the Other – working on this – for years?”
Espen nodded without looking back.
“So... when did you first go?”
Espen slowed to a stop, then turned. “Just after the Reckoning... and just before your mother was taken to hospital.”
“So did you have something to do with—”
“It was the only way to keep her safe, Sylas,” said Espen softly. “We knew the dangers of the pact with Thoth – dangers not only to you and Naeo, but to those you love. Given your mother’s condition – given her connection to this world – she too would have been—”
“...a threat,” murmured Sylas.
Espen reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “So now you see.”
Sylas nodded slowly, still trying to take it all in.
Espen turned and stepped out down the corridor. “Come on, we have little time.”
Sylas took a lungful of the stale air and followed.
The Bell Between Worlds Page 41