Cold Angel Days (Dica Series Book 4)

by Clive S. Johnson

  Beyond the Plain of the New Sun’s haze, tricks of the light would sometimes mimic mountain or lake, or city or forest, all at the whim of the time of the day and the season of the year. The gallery had once been a favourite spot, an anticipated jaunt, a day out to be remembered.

  Now, though, when Falmeard and Geran at last walked into its cavernous, moonlit space, it evoked nothing more than sadness and desolation, filled only with wind-borne ghosts of revellers past. In the distance, the coachbank’s dogged rumble slowly diminished southwards along the Aerie Way, its driver and passengers alike content in their despatch of a gallant service to a needy fair maiden.

  “Well?” Geran asked, her voice echoing about the gallery. “Where is it?”

  “Where’s what?”

  “The popig!”

  “Popig?”

  “Don’t be a pillock, Falmeard, I’ve already been through too much today to play games.”

  She could hear him catch his breath, saw the glint of moonlight reflected in his eyes. When she reached out to him, though, he tensed at her touch, his eyes vanishing to the gloom as he turned to look down at her hand.

  “Mistress Geran?” His voice was thin, uncertain, almost fearful.

  “We’ve come all this way for the popig, Falmeard. You remember? For dad?”

  “Oh, yes ... yes, of course! His pain. Dying. Now, where did I leave it?”

  Geran wished she could see properly. It was as though Falmeard was playing her along - a little joke perhaps - but he didn’t sound the same somehow, and that began to worry her more.

  “Can you find it in the dark, my Love?” she asked.

  “Hmm? What? My ... my what?”

  “My Love? What’s wrong? You sound upset.”

  “The wealcan, yes, of course. How daft of me. It was in my ... in my thoughts, yes ... all along ... just ... just couldn’t quite bring it to mind.”

  She heard him move away, caught the glint of moonlight on his hair before he vanished into the shadows. “Left it at the back somewhere, I’m sure,” his voice echoed back. “Now, where the blazes ... Ah! Here it is. A little large not to notice.”

  Something leant against the rear wall, glints of metal, of pale ceramic, maybe even wood and ... and yes, she was sure she could just make out what appeared to be a broad band of leather.

  Falmeard squatted beside it and seemed to be rummaging. He cursed a couple of times - the sound of a finger being sucked - then the squeak of a hinge.

  “Here we are. I knew it.” He laughed but with a crack in his voice. “I knew there was some left, knew Nephril hadn’t used it all. Strong stuff, mind.”

  He bumped into her as he hurried from the gallery, as though he’d forgotten she was here. “Oh! Sorry, mistress. Never saw you. Err ... it’s for your father I think you said. Not well, if I remember rightly.”

  They’d drawn to the gallery’s entrance and were once more bathed in moonlight, in which she saw how Falmeard’s gaze now manically darted about, his eyes glistening. Tears had begun to break free to his cheeks, running like rain down a window pane, but from eyes that had somehow darkened to their own cold moonless nights.

  9 A Sister’s Confidence

  “It’s nice to see Dad more comfortable,” Prescinda assured Geran. “A lot happier in himself.” She stole a glance at her older sister. “It’s eased his pain and even seems to have made him less grumpy.” She laughed.

  Geran said nothing, her mind apparently engrossed in peeling potatoes.

  “I’m glad Falmeard suggested it, though how he came by so much I can’t imagine, and just left there at the Scarra for anyone to find! It’s fortunate few stop there these days.”

  Geran still said nothing, the gouging-out of a potato eye seemingly more interesting.

  From the tedium of podding last year’s sand-dried peas, Prescinda watched her sister in silence, one fuelled by a steady stream of sweet, green treats.

  The gable door rattled, the snick of its latch cutting down the passageway, and Falmeard’s distinctive steps followed on. It pulled Geran from wherever her mind had gone. She shot a look at the doorway, but dropped her eyes when Falmeard appeared.

  “Hello, Prescinda.” She looked up and smiled. “Forgot to say thanks, you know, for that grand pie of yours. We really did enjoy it, didn’t we ... eh, Geran?”

  “Oh. Yes, yes, it was lovely, thanks, Sis. Made up a bit for the awfully cold night.” She levelled as cold an eye at Falmeard but then turned back to Prescinda. “I’m glad you thought to do it for us.” Her voice, though, seemed empty of any real conviction.

  “Stayed warm enough did it then?”

  “Yes. Plenty. The flock-filled towels did the trick. It helped that the locker sits above the engine, mind.”

  Falmeard looked lost, but then glanced down at the bowl of peas and dipped his hand in. Prescinda swatted it away, but gave him a thin smile as he loaded his mouth.

  “Screwdriver,” Falmeard muttered, then wandered off back through the doorway to the passage.

  When Prescinda heard him clomping his way upstairs, she angled her gaze at Geran. “Come on, Big Sis, what’s happened? I know something’s wrong.”

  Geran only stared at her, or through her to be more precise.

  “Neither of you have been the same since you got back. I’m not daft, Love, I know you’re worried.”

  They could hear Falmeard rummaging about upstairs. Geran slumped to a chair, carefully placed the half-peeled potato and her knife on the table and lowered her head. Prescinda was in the seat beside her before she knew it, arms about her sister’s shoulders, drawing her near.

  “Whatever’s the matter, Sis? It’s not like you. Come on, you know you can tell me.” She tilted her forehead against Geran’s, squeezed her near and looked closely into her unusually laden eyes. A tear formed there, Prescinda’s handkerchief soon pressed to Geran’s hand, her white knuckles loosened to take it and dab gently at the corner of her eye.

  Geran stiffened at the sound of Falmeard’s returning steps as he clattered back down the stairs, but he passed on by, down the passage and out into the yard. Geran then broke into tears.

  By the time Prescinda could coax a smile from her big sister, the potato had gone brown, the table top glistening whitely - where its stain of starch had dried. “Used to be you always putting me to rights.” Prescinda smiled, tenderly. “Never thought you’d ever turn the tables on me.”

  Geran’s eyes were red now, although it didn’t hide how smooth her skin had somehow become - smoother yet than Prescinda’s harried looks enjoyed. What was there between them? Ten years? Nearer eleven. Yet Geran already looked younger, and by quite a stretch.

  Could joy alone do that? Prescinda wondered - soak away the years. Could the late quickening of her pulse draw a woman from middle years so completely back to her youth? It seemed so, in Geran at least, consumed as she’d been these past few years by Falmeard.

  No wonder she was in such a state, now that the Falmeard she’d known had deserted her, leaving little but his shadow. Even in the short space of time they’d been back, Prescinda had noticed the lack of fire, the glint lost from Falmeard’s eyes, so how much more would Geran feel, how much deeper and more painful her own hurt?

  “I’ve been so bereft, Sis,” Geran at last said. “It’s been awful. He’s like a stranger. But it’s been made worse by not knowing why. Is it me? Have I done something wrong? Have I somehow turned him against me?”

  “Maybe it’s something of himself,” Prescinda was quick to suggest before her thoughts could stray too far along her own self-same doubts. “Maybe it’s nothing to do with you.”

  “I took the piss out of him, did I say? Made fun of him getting us lost. Do you think that could be it?”

  Prescinda smiled. “Falmeard’s never struck me as being bothered about owt like that. He’s always seemed pretty easy-going.”

  “Yes. I know,” Geran agreed, dreamily, “and so ... well, you know ... so insistent all the time.”
>
  Ah, yes, Prescinda had noticed that, and had always enjoyed the thrill she’d seen in the beam it drew from her sister’s face. A thrill to evoke memories of her own once happier times. “When ... when did you first notice his ... well, his coolness towards you?”

  Geran thought back over the past few days, tried to remember when Falmeard’s eyes had first turned away. When had he become too embarrassed to hold her gaze? Then she saw it, saw the dizzying rise of the Star Tower rearing so close above them both, and knew, knew without a shadow of a doubt that that very moment had marked the point.

  10 A Sot’s Revelation

  Even so early, still well before dawn, the late Spring air had a new freshness to it, but a mellower, more rounded edge that spoke of an early turn to summer. It made Prescinda wonder if she’d overdressed; a densely quilted jacket over a gansey with layers of cotton vests beneath, rather unbecoming breeches, knee length woollen socks, a pair of her dad’s old leather boots.

  “I hope you were right, Dad,” she worried as she picked her way up the dark-hidden trips of the steep stone steps she was climbing. “That you weren’t just talking popig nonsense.”

  She stopped, screwed up her face and gasped whilst the pain of the toe she’d just stubbed slowly subsided.

  A sliver of dawn light stained a jagged mountainous edge to the far north-east but did little to help, only drawing her mind to some quiet few moments of thought. “If you’re sending me on a wild goose chase, Dad, then...”

  The farm’s cockerel began to welcome in the new morn, cockily calling from the farmhouse yard, still quite close below. “A daft idea! What was I thinking?” She plonked herself down on the step, elbows on knees, and lowered her chin to her cupped hands.

  “Farewell, Dad.” Her cheeks quivered - as they’d often done this week - drawn numb, lending a tautness to her mouth. “Rest in peace, you old bugger.” A single tear escaped her eye, absently flicked away.

  Despite the cockerel’s insistence, the house stayed dark - a wake’s aftermath having clearly stuffed wax to the household’s ears. All but Geran, Prescinda thought, all but Geran.

  “You were clearly his favourite, Sis. Enough to forgo the popig so he could speak the plain truth to me for a while at the end, even knowing the pain would soon return and take him off.” This time the tear went unnoticed until its salty tang seeped past her lips and cried against her tongue.

  Thick breeches maybe, but the stone-cold of the step soon got through and pushed her thoughts aside, and so pushed her to her feet. “An odd bugger, as Dad had rightly said, but I never realised just how odd.”

  She sniffed, passed a quilted sleeve across her face and turned away, at last able to pick her way up the now faintly visible steps.

  She soon put Blisteraising far enough behind that only its chimney showed, the haze of a newly kindled fire bidding an unwitting farewell. Before long even that was gone.

  The steps she laboured up eventually rose to a lane, sharply choppy with ancient stone flags and bordered on both sides by dry stone walls. It ran away from the distant coast, along the northern flank of the mountain and towards the east, aiming slightly to the left of the Star Tower’s needle rise.

  Twenty five years of softer Grayden living meant that determination carried her as much as her legs. She must have covered a good few miles, though, before the sun rose high enough to lighten the lane and so give her surer footing, by which time the toll on her feet had become a little too much.

  She clambered up the lane’s earthen bank and onto its wall’s warming stones, and from there looked down the steep sweep of fields to the spread of buildings below. The Park of Forgiveness lay yet further away, beyond the blur the distance gave the houses and halls. The long shadows - blue-grey like the oily haze she’d seen about the phlogran’s hot-laboured engine - had by now shortened and darkened. It still left the park in cool shade, though, stretched beneath the Great Wall’s shadowy march.

  As she swung her boots idly against the wall’s stones, she looked back towards Blisteraising but could see nothing of it. Geran would certainly be about the milking, as she always had, routine deadening the pain of a now twice broken heart.

  Prescinda turned to the Star Tower. “Well,” she sighed, “dad may be gone now but at least I can do something for Geran about Falmeard, although what exactly still escapes me.”

  It was as though she saw the glittering rise of the tower for the first time, realised how unearthly and alien it really was. Nobody knew anything about it, not that she remembered, nor of those she’d asked at the house after Dad’s funeral. Just making conversation she’d pretended only to learn that it was plainly nothing more than something that had always been there.

  Uncle Gazeby had as usual known a titbit or two, not that she’d seen much use to it, not at the time. It had struck her as odd, though, that his nugget contained nothing flirtatious, especially given the amount of ale he’d sunk.

  “Thee’s remember t’falling o’ king, young Presci’?” he’d slurred, but still with the usual twinkle in his eye. “Thee knows, when that quiff Laixac got killed? Him they’d said had been bumming him.” An embarrassed cough or two came from nearby aunts.

  Gazeby’s elbow had then slipped from the arm of his chair, spilling his ale. He’d cursed and fussed, only making matters worse, driving the sweet ale’s sugar into the fabric. He’d soon lost interest, given up and stared through Prescinda, as though her black robes and veiled hat hid her from view.

  Clearly talking to someone else, perhaps someone beyond the eternal veil, he stared into his past, suddenly made more real to him than his aging present. “Rumour ‘ad it that Laixac would oft spend time at t’Star Tower.” Prescinda’s ears had pricked up. “Naked like, and covered in muck an’ grime.” She’d inwardly grimaced, even more so when he added, “Catching mice ... aye, an’ eating ‘em raw like!”

  Plainly an unfounded rumour, it had to be, but Uncle Gazeby had then begged to differ. “Me ole mate, Higgy - rest ‘is memory - once saw him wi’ ‘is own eyes.”

  Gazeby hiccupped then farted. “Sorry, Love. Clear soon.” He wafted air between his legs, nudging what was left of his pint of ale, leaving it rocking dangerously on the table by his elbow.

  There seemed to be as many ideas about what Laixac had been up to as folk who’d then joined the conversation, their suggestions clearly preposterous in proportion to the alcohol they’d drunk. What did come of it, though, was the clear agreement that Laixac had ventured within, that he’d been in the habit of climbing to the tower’s high pinnacle.

  For Prescinda, that had been more than enough, and what had now brought her her throbbing feet. So, she slackened her laces before climbing back down to the lane.

  As soon as she came into the lee of the walls, flies began to bother her, an annoying herald of that early summer she’d expected. Wafting the blasted things aside, she looked down at the steady but uncomfortable stride of her boots. “Hmm. Don’t think Dad was quite the same size as me!”

  It was mid-morning when she came beside the wall of the Outer Courts, and within a hunger pang of dinnertime as she came through the gateway to the Upper Reaches. By now her mind dwelt on the dried peas, turnip and waxed-paper bag full of scrag-ends of lamb she’d stuffed into her pockets before leaving. She soon found a sunny yard and there, in the lee of the wind, rested her feet and fed her stomach.

  Above the crumbling gable wall at the far side of the yard, the Star Tower drew a straight line down the sky, but now scribed with a much broader nib. Prescinda’s mouth suddenly dried, denying her current mouthful of carrot its passage, as her eyes followed a small cloud. The tower just happened to cut it in two where it passed well below the crystal summit, undeniably affirming the tower’s unimaginable height.

  Forgotten carrot crumbled from her gaping mouth, flecking her jacket and the granite flags around where she sat. “Why haven’t I ever really seen this before? Why? Why hasn’t anyone ever remarked upon it?” but then the cloud pa
ssed on by, the Star Tower seemed to diminish, and Prescinda finally swallowed what remained of the carrot.

  More cloud was coming in, dropping down from the distant Gray Mountains, bringing snow to melt before it had a chance to fall. Despite the warm air, the increasing shade made her glad of the jacket if not the inelegant breeches, but the cold rain finally drove her on her way.

  When the base of the tower finally came into sight, Prescinda drew to a halt and stared in wonder at its swirling mass. She soon felt dizzy, dizzy and nauseous, and now spotted with rain, rain that quickly gave a polish to the granite-grey setts before her. As though magically drawn to the tower, she strode off down the avenue towards it, enrapt, enthralled, and somehow strangely emboldened.

  It may not have kept to its original flakes but the rain’s icy cold soon chased any thoughts of an early summer to the arms of a late winter’s embrace. It sorely tried Prescinda’s jacket as she raced against the growing squall until the ground had all but vanished beneath a haze of bouncing rain.

  The splash of booted footfall gained dry and hollow echo as she panted wetly to the shadowy shelter of a grand old portico. Here, she turned and stared out across the way, through wide and watery eyes, at the nearby swirling mass of the tower’s unearthly guise.

  11 Against a Mother’s Advice

  An hour, maybe two, or a mere ten minutes? How long Prescinda had stared was anyone’s guess - mesmeric, unbelievable, truly inspiring of awe, the base of the Star Tower held her fast.

  She’d seen some strange sights around Castle Dica in her fifty years, a great deal of monumental work from long ages past; the King’s Mausoleum on Grayden Head, the great granite harbour of Bazarral, miles and miles of unfathomably huge walls. This, though, was different. How could it be? How could it seem to move so when it plainly held so still? More importantly, how on earth did she get in?