Chapter 17 – Darkness IV
A dragon floats of wings of lace,
With teeth all ready to embrace.
I
Taf didn't know the name of the village and there were no signs that gave any clue. Few of the inhabitants had the time or inclination to tell the travellers for the moment either. Jorden knew only that it was a small shielded village which lay somewhere between Lennon and Forbes, and even that was not altogether true. The village may well still have been in the same position it had always been, yet it was not altogether shielded at present.
The quakes, or the recent very violent quake in particular, had left their mark, the line of the village shield now broken. Several kaedith and several more carpenters could be seen at work amongst the rigging of two towers which flanked the road, the wind whipping at their cloaks. They were not the prettiest of towers, if any shield towers could be described as pretty, but ones that had been erected in haste to close the shield against the Darkness.
It was not the strongest of shields even when it was complete, for this was a mere village and not a great city that could afford much greater protection. Jorden could see that even without Taf's explanation.
“It won't be light here like in the city,” she said as they walked toward the dim evening-red of the village street, “but the shield will keep the creatures away. If they fix it.” The wind dropped only slightly as they moved beyond the partial shield.
They were instantly amongst a frantic crowd, a mingled mass of workers and messengers and spectators churning within the street and on out to the towers. If, Jorden thought to himself, that was a hell of an if! There were creatures out in the hills and woodlands that he cared not think about, and he was looking for some peace and quiet and a safe refuge.
But then in another day or two they would be back out there... Jorden shrugged. They had survived the Darkness and its creatures for days now and he had even survived without the fur-lined bundle of muscle and teeth who was now at his side. A companion who had provided the midget goat hind that was now in his pack awaiting the evening meal.
“I can live with a little darkness,” Jorden said at last. “If we can just find somewhere that's warm and comfortable to sleep.” He looked along the street. Finding a place that was even standing might be a problem.
The quake had certainly adversely affected the more flimsy of the village structures, indeed there were some mounds of timber and stone aside the narrow street that were difficult to envisage as anything but mounds of timber and stone. They had once been homes and places of trade. Stables had fared better, as had dark-time storehouses and hotels and taverns. And there were apparently few stable owners who would deny a first-form aestri a place within their loft.
Jorden and Taf soon found themselves within such a loft. They looked down over the crowded windswept street and its fallen buildings in the damp reddish darkness. It was all someone else's problem. Jorden knew that was a callous, self-centred way to think, but at the moment he had quite enough of his own difficulties. His dearest friend was a cat and there were still ten thousand creatures waiting on the road between here and home.
Then it began to rain. It wasn't just a light warm shower, or even a cool evening mist or cold night-time drizzle, it was the rain of a tropical monsoon, a warm waterfall from a cloudy river. And Jorden smiled. Jorden Miles felt suddenly very lucky. He was warm and dry, albeit in a loft above twenty or thirty stinking horses, while the kaedith struggled with out in the miserable weather with the shield.
It was a warped justice.
II
They ate cold raw meat, a meal that Jorden supplemented with his reserves of some local nuts and pastry sticks. He hadn't bothered cooking, the loft was certainly no place for a fire, and was not about to brave the suddenly very damp street in search of some local delicacy. Then there was money. Food cost money that he didn't have much of at present.
Jorden shrugged, knowing too well that he was not as hungry as Taf was sure to be. She had eaten the rest of the midget goat earlier in the day, yet that was no more than a snack to a first-form aestri. “Had enough to eat,” he asked anyway, the aestri stretching as she lay on the dusty hay littered decking.
The roof leaked in several places, the droplets splashing occasionally on Finesilver's silky pelt. “Enough for tonight,” she said softly. “The forest will have plenty to offer tomorrow.” Indeed her appetite for meat was not all that great. She was content just to be back close to Jorden, especially in the relative comfort of the loft. Feelings that had once been alien to her now welled inside.
She slid closer to the man, noticing that he shook slightly in the night air. “Come close and let me keep you warm,” Taf said. “I should be good for that if nothing else.” Jorden hesitated. “I won't eat you, silly!”
The outsider wondered about that momentarily. If she were hungry enough or had a bad dream... He tried a smile and laid aside the feline, Taf gently sliding a paw across his chest. She was right, she was warm and soft and smooth. If only she wasn't fur-lined as well.
Taf smiled her toothy smile and licked Jorden's neck with her still very abrasive tongue. The outsider instinctively moved his throat clear of the fearsome jaws, jaws he had seen bring rapid death to several forest species. The aestri pulled him closer. “You are still afraid of sweet little Taf, aren't you?” the aestri said. “That's silly. You know I love you...”
Jorden coughed. “Sweet maybe, but you're not the frail little thing you used to be. The worst I had to worry about before was maybe a few lacerations from those nails of yours, now I'm afraid you might chew my head off.” Taf was stroking him lightly with a surprisingly gentle paw. “I still love you Taf, but this isn't easy.” Even the words of Midnight made a lot more sense to Jorden now.
She snorted. “I told you that I was aestri and you were man. I told you not to love me, but you would not listen.” The aestri smiled a broad smile that would have appeared most disturbing on the face of a terrestrial cat and lifted Jorden easily from the floor of the loft, bringing him to rest upon her belly as she rolled onto her back. “Now I am glad that you did not listen.”
He struggled momentarily yet found that Finesilver held him firm. “All right,” he said with obvious anxiety. “Perhaps I made a mistake. You were right. If you would have told me everything...” That wasn't fair. He knew it wasn't fair to put the blame on Taf when it was really himself who had started everything. “Sorry,” he added as Taf lost her smile and rolled him back to the floor. “It's just that where I come from this is all too weird. It's all going to take a lot of getting used to.”
The aestri shook her head. “Things like this don't happen very often here either, silly. I've told you that before.” She shrugged. “Do you think that would stop me from trying!”
Jorden looked into her dark eyes, eyes that glinted slightly in the dim red light. To those eyes he remained unchanged, he was the same as she had always known. Unfortunately the girl that Jorden had met and fallen for was gone, banished until the coming of the next Time of Light. Even then he doubted she would ever be quite the same.
What a hell of a place.
III
Kelvin Connor did not live in Hell, not in the city of Hell. He lived, in fact, not far from Forbes.
Connor's hell surrounded him. It was called the Domain of Hura Ghiana. It was not the fiery hell which had once haunted his sleep, and at times he had glimpses of a personal heaven, but it was still hell. He was trapped within a tiny plot of land that he could walk across in minutes. He had been trapped there for a lifetime.
Taf and Jorden did not stay within the village for long, Jorden preferring the terrors of the night to the difficulties of being companion to a very large feline. And the Darkness was more terrible than ever. It was darker, and the rain fell constantly, and the wind howled... There were also other things that howled without pause, creatures of night that sought the company of there own kind.
Jorden didn't like it. He went o
n into the forest regardless, there was little else to do. He wanted to leave the land of nightmare, perhaps forever, and he wanted to leave now. Unfortunately that meant finding the home of the local god and convincing her that he was out of his element. He no longer thought of why he was trapped within the Domain or why he had been brought there, he simply was and he wanted out.
He was trapped in a hell that grew worse each day. If the rain paused then they were circled by the huge moth-vultures of dreamland. If it was raining then the road was littered with the red slime creatures that bled red sticky jelly when they were stood on. And there were often pink spotted lizards watching from the woodland and the constant fear of necromants and polythorns.
It was therefore a surprise to come upon the bright clearing of Kelvin Connor.
He lived not far from the road and enjoyed watching the trade of the land crawl slowly past. But there was none of that in the days of Darkness, of course. Nothing plied the road in the dark. Nothing except the creatures of hell: the thorny misfits of dream, or the badly mismatched lizard creature.
It was therefore a surprise to see a man and an aestri walking the road together.
Kelvin Connor was insane, everyone knew that and so his oasis was avoided. Of course there were few who actually knew that his home was an oasis in the sea of Darkness, for there were few who had seen his home in anything but the time of light, and there was no shield surrounding it to give any indication of such. Insane people were simply avoided because they were insane.
Jorden Miles and Aestri Finesilver did not know that Kelvin Connor was insane, they saw only the bright sky that seemed to shine just above his tiny house and the absence of rain. They approached, surprising the apparently middle-aged man even further. No-one ever approached.
It was a tiny house in the middle of a well kept blue-green lawn that was surrounded by trees heavily in fruit. It had a earth-sky blue roof and white walls and a verandah. The man sat on the verandah and rocked in his rocking chair. He didn't speak. He had not needed to talk to others of hell in years and was not about to start now. He could still remember how to talk, of course, he talked to the trees quite often, and there were some that he had trained to talk back. Very difficult that was, and very impossible, but in hell...
“Hi,” Jorden said to the man that rocked without pause, a man who simply stared toward the two that stood on his lawn. He didn't look like he was insane. He was clean shaven and his dark hair was immaculately groomed. “I'm Jorden Miles, and this is Taf.”
So now they would talk to him. How odd, how very very odd. “Piss off, idiot,” Kelvin said. That was good, he remembered how to swear. He smiled. “It's amazing the number of idiots you meet in hell.” He looked to the aestri and wondered what provocation it would take for her to kill him.
Jorden was both surprised and confused. He was surprised at the odd greeting that the man had given and he was confused by the topography of the Domain. He frowned. “I thought that Hell was the other side of Forbes,” he said innocently.
The man continued rocking. He shook his head and grunted. “Hell is all around you moron. What the hell do you think you live in?” He sneered unpleasantly toward the boy and his pet. “Now why don't you take your pussy bedmate out of my sight.” That should do it. That had almost done it once before. A man had come very close to cutting his throat for a very similar insult.
Kelvin couldn't believe it when the man just stood there and glanced toward the aestri, and then the cat smiled in a stupid sort of way. It was impossible to get yourself killed in hell, completely impossible. He had tried so hard, so damned hard, and he was still alive. He thought about throwing himself on the aestri and trying a few good thumps to the ribs, but he knew that would never work. She would probably kiss him.
He resigned himself to live another few centuries. “I don't suppose I can say anything to get you to kill me, eh moron.”
IV
To Jorden, Kelvin Connor began to appear to be the sanest entity of the Domain.
“Outsider, eh,” Kelvin said as he learned of such, the two mismatched travellers now sitting – or in the case of Taf, laying – on his verandah. “It's nice to know that I'm not the only poor bastard stuck in this hell.” He took another long suck on the aluminium beer can, something which seemed very out of place in the Domain. “I don't suppose you could do me a bit of a favour and kill me?” Kelvin noted the puzzled stare and chuckled. “Don't worry if you don't have the guts for it. I don't either. I pass out every time I try to do it myself, although I'm not sure if I really just faint or whether I get knocked on the head.”
Taf frowned. He was mad. “There are plenty of hungry creatures out there if you're sick of life,” she said. “Why don't you go out and feed one.”
And the man laughed. “Oh I would if I could, missy. While I stay here I can have pretty much what I like – hence this ever-cold can of beer – but out there...” He shrugged. “If I try and leave this sunny little hell-hole then I fall flat on my ass and wake up a few hours later with a bastard of a sunburn. It isn't worth the pain.”
Jorden stared. He thought that he had it bad.
“You don't know yet, do you,” Connor went on, and he chuckled again. “You don't know where you are or how the hell you got here!”
Jorden was somewhat unsure of the actual meaning of the statement. “Into the Domain?” he said uneasily. “I walked, sort of. I was walking near my home and...”
“Bang, you're in hell,” Kelvin Connor finished for him. “Same thing happened to me, only I saw it coming. Drove my car straight off a freaking cliff. Bang, dead as a dodo.” He sighed. “Now I'm in hell, same as you. Both of us must have been real bastards to deserve this, eh!” Kelvin suddenly burst into laughter yet again. “Funny how you can't kill yourself twice, isn't it. I've been trying for about sixty years. I don't suppose dead people can die again, but it don't stop me from trying.”
Perhaps he was insane, Jorden thought, Taf was certainly sure of it. “I'm not dead yet. Well I don't think I am,” Jorden put forth feebly. “I've been home from here twice before, and I hope to get home again. And at least I can move around in this madhouse, although there's not a lot out there that's worth seeing at the moment.” Jorden looked toward the dim forest surrounding Kelvin's clearing. “I've come close to being killed a few too many times. Too close...”
“Lucky bastard,” Kelvin mumbled. “Take my word for it. You are dead and this in definitely hell, or one of its suburbs. If you manage to get killed then consider yourself lucky. You might come back as something better!”
Jorden recalled Taf's tales of reincarnation, the local theology. But this man wasn't a local, he was a man of the real world, it seemed, a man who had been stuck in the domain for longer than Jorden cared to think about. “I'm going to see this Hura Ghiana,” he said. “I'm hoping she can get me home again...” Jorden's words faded.
“Perhaps she might,” Kelvin said. “I'd go myself but...”
Jorden attempted to carry the unconscious Kelvin Connor beyond the boundary of his tiny oasis.
As the not-so-insane man had said, Kelvin fainted within a few paces of the invisible circle surrounding his home. He simply fell to the ground without warning. But Jorden had no intention of stopping there and leaving the man victim to another severe case of sunburn. He would carry him... Somehow...
Taf tried to help, even to the extent of offering her services as a pack-cat, but the man's limbs would soon have worn to stumps if he were left to dangle on the back of the aestri.
It was a futile exercise anyway. The moment Jorden dragged Kelvin Connor into the shadow of the forest, the man vanished. He wasn't dropped and he did not run away. He simply became nothing.
Kelvin Connor, the small blue and white house, the lawn, the clearing, the sunshine – everything – vanished. There was suddenly just a dim dusty hole in the forest that the steady rain turned to mud.
Jorden stood in disbelief and became very
wet.
Taf sniffed and shrugged.
V
Days passed.
It was becoming difficult to tell night from day, the lands of Darkness becoming one continuous dim nightmare, and the two companions who braved such lands simply slept when they were tired and walked when they weren't.
And they avoided Forbes. There were several reasons for such, one was the lack of money, another was time. Taf's major reason was the lack of good fresh meat, Jorden's was simply that it kept a little distance between himself and Taf. In a town she would be close, a little too close, and Jorden still was not sure about how he felt about that. It was true that there were the lofts of deserted barns and stables along the road, yet they were few and seldom used. All for the same reason. Jorden's life had taken a definite turn for the worst since Taf changed.
This night it would again be a tree.
Jorden began to doze off to sleep, ignoring the odd noises of the damp evening, while Taf kept a silent watch from her own branch. He was tired and Nowhere was still a lifetime away. The storms were more fierce and the rain heavier and the creatures more vicious and huge... They hadn't actually seen any for several days, but Jorden was sure that they were.
Then there was sound and sudden movement.
Then nothing.
Jorden recalled a strange and painful nightmare, or was perhaps currently experienced it. Jorden felt that he was suffocating, that the darkness had become a solid living entity that had leapt upon him as he slept. Now it smothered him. He couldn't call, and the sounds of the night were dim and muffled. There was a roar, the roar of the African lion, and another deeper groan.
Then biting pain, and engulfing flame, and spinning colour, and deeper sleep.
Jorden woke slowly, his body aching as it often did when he slept within the trees. He rolled over, forgetting that he was perched on a hard, narrow branch. But he didn't fall.
It was not something that was instantly recognized as odd, there were too many other problems. The first was a burning sensation in his left arm, the bone itself seemingly hot iron straight from the forge. Then there was the pounding in his skull, then the absolute darkness surrounding him. It was some time before he noticed that he was laying upon solid stone.
That was odd. If he had fallen from the branch then he should now be lying amongst damp weeds and soggy earth and various thorn-bushes. He wasn't. He was laying on solid, and very dry stone. It was totally dark and the air was still as death and there was no rain. It was dry, very dry, and the area seemed to have an odd musty sort of smell. Jorden sniffed. It was more than that. There was a definite smell of death. He was suddenly afraid, very afraid, and somehow knew that the tree and the damp forest were a long way away. He thought to call for Taf, wondering if that might bring Death instead. He felt amongst the rubble that littered the floor, hoping for clues.
There were clues there, clues that did not ease his mind. Dry bones. Jorden backed and sat on a long toothy skull. It felt like the skull of the lesser lizard beast. He swore aloud.
A whispered voice hushed him to silence. “You will bring Death before its appointed time,” the voice hissed. “Our end is already close enough without rushing it.”
“There are juveniles in that passage,” whispered another voice. “And there are eggs in that one. The chances of us all surviving are not good.”
Jorden tried to approach the voices, tripping noisily over another skull. He recognized the second, or hoped he did, but the first was an unknown. “Is that you, Taf?” he said as quietly as he could manage, his hand coming onto a silky pelt.
“Of course it is, silly,” she said in a quiet but recognizable voice. “And this is Morelian Sheba.”
Jorden looked toward a hiss that responded to Taf's introduction. He couldn't see a thing, the darkness complete, and as he had not previously met a morelian, he was somehow glad. “Nice to meet you, Sheba,” he said quietly. “At least I'm not alone. Perhaps you could tell me exactly where the hell we are, Taf.”
Taf sniffed. There was no easy way of telling such a tale. “We are in a dragon's meat-safe – food for its young.”
Jorden swore again. He had not heard of land-based dragons before, just the sea-dragon, whatever they were. But why would there not be dragons in such a world, there was every other beast of nightmare. He wondered if they were related to sea-dragons. “Shit,” he said more loudly than he should have dared. “Well now we really are screwed, aren't we. Kelvin Connor would love this...”
The morelian hissed him to silence again. “If you continue to yell then we will not live long at all. As it is we still have a chance, as little chance it is. More chance than that stunned polythorn over there.” Sheba didn't point. Jorden could not tell whether she did or not. It didn't matter, he could no more see her lack of pointing than he could the stunned polythorn.
And if the polythorn didn't have a chance...
“Luckily the poison of the dragon affects mainly the creatures of Darkness,” Taf said. “Although it makes men sleep for near a day.”
“Now she has an aestri and a morelian prowling in her hive,” Sheba hissed, a natural sort of hiss. Jorden wondered if Sheba was male or female, or either. “Stupid dragon. She will pay for this mistake with the death of her young.”
Taf nodded. The morelian could see her nod, just as Taf could see Sheba perform a similar gesture, although morelian were not known for their range of gestures and facial expressions. “Jorden has a knife and may also be of use,” the aestri said. “He has injured a necromant before.” She did not mention that he had done so with the aid of a crossbow.
Sheba hissed and slid toward the man, her belly grinding upon stone and bone. “He does not look like much, and what use is a boy against even the youngest juvenile dragon...”
There was a sound. It was not a pleasant one. Sheba and Taf glanced toward the polythorn and the larval dragon that began to feed on it. The polythorn groaned but could not move. “It does not matter,” the morelian went on. “When the dragon opens the safe it will be each entity for itself, and I fear that at best only two of this three will survive. I think the man's chances are the worst, no matter how much faster than morelian he may be, and the chances of the aestri are by far the best.
“But we must take care. This safe is certain to be built on high ground, perhaps in the face of a cliff that has no easy escape. A cliff might not have been the greatest of obstacles to morelian, yet to man and aestri...” Sheba liked the aestri, and even the man did not deserve death in the larder of a dragon, a slow painful death. She wished that they could all survive. She had great doubt that such a thing was possible.
The day passed slowly. There was little to be done but wait. The three trapped within the cave had little hope of moving the huge stone sealing the entrance. Jorden stayed close to Taf. Her different form was somehow not such an issue with the threat of Death so near.
Then, as hope ebbed and the three feared they would soon become the fodder of a young dragon that grew fat on the dark meat of the polythorn, the great stone that sealed one of the mother dragon's many hives was shifted aside. The dim light of darkness rushed into the cave, actually seeming dazzling bright after the depth of the darkness they had suffered. Shadows leapt onto the walls, a hideous variety of form against the rear wall of the cave. And a gurgled moan resounded through the caves, a sound that chilled the blood of both those who knew the source and those that didn't. Three entities froze, and even the juvenile dragons seemed to pause in their feeding lest they become mother's next meal. Gravel rattled and stones tumbled, an ill defined silhouette moving slowly, then the smacking of lips too huge to imagine...
Yet then a roar. Not near, but further afield, distorted by the howling winds beyond. And the black shape paused, listening, turning. More stones shifted under foot.
And the dragon was gone.
Two of the meaty parcels the dragon had stored began to run, another continued sliding.
&nbs
p; Then the three paused upon the threshold of the cave, looking skyward in disbelief , one of them a touch more shocked than the others.
Ahead and far below lay the wide expanse of the Domain.
They were indeed far above the plains on a cliff.
They were dead.
Jorden could see that much at a glance.
Long Days in Paradise - The First Book of the Shards of Heaven Page 18