Cold Angel Days (Dica Series Book 4)

by Clive S. Johnson

  “Impossible ... unless ... ah, yes, that would certainly make sense.”

  He briefly turned to look at the four towers, now little more than grey shapes against a darker grey sky, but then stared at the distant Star Tower, nodding to himself. “Best get on. No time to waste. The thing is, though, I cannot really leave the two of thee here.”

  With the sun now lost to the cloud, Prescinda realised how cold it had become so high up Mount Esnadac.

  “’Twill not be an easy task,” Nephril said, “but I need thee both to come with me, and without delay. Thou art, though, going to have to steel thine selves to join me. Beware this place breeds a strange reluctance in both mind and limb, but thou need overcome it if thou art to leave this way.”

  Prescinda nearly laughed at the strange notion, but her reluctant feet soon reminded her of what her mind seemed keen to ignore. She couldn’t move, not nearer the towers, not towards Nephril, not without great effort.

  Geran, she thought, isn’t going to be able to do this, it’ll be far too much for her. She shouted into the blackness, “Do you want me to come back and help you, Sis?”

  Movement surprised her, the glint of Geran’s approaching eyes. She soon came beside Prescinda, much to her amazement, urging her on with her own sweet voice and gently aiding hand.

  It took much effort and quite a while, but as soon as they’d stepped into the box beside Nephril they began to descend, their reticence evaporating in an instant. Nephril’s expression now held a mixture of relief and surprise, the latter aimed squarely at Geran.

  He stared at her quite unselfconsciously, clearly thinking deeply, until saying, more to himself, “Aye, but of course, thou hast been close consort to Falmeard’s own weft and weave, have no doubt had seed of it laid deep within thee,” and patted her arm.

  The box - now more brightly lit - seemed to swing suddenly, the bottle faintly tinkling as it swayed in Nephril's hand, but then all settled once again. It seemed to Prescinda they’d stopped descending and were now moving forward somehow.

  “Where did Falmeard vanish to, Nephril?” Prescinda asked, “back there at the four towers?”

  “Not Falmeard I am afraid. It cannot be, for no living thing can draw near the four towers, never mind pass within. That be their defence thou see, an implicit aversion - brought upon all living things that happen near, be they man or beast. For Falmeard to have passed so easily that way clearly shows that he is ... well, that he is clearly no more ... that the Cold Angel alone now fills his form.”

  Prescinda darted a look at Geran and saw panic rising. Nephril noticed it too and so placed a reassuring hand on hers, but could find no words of comfort.

  “Where are we going, Nephril?” Prescinda asked, partly in hope of diverting Geran who she now hugged close.

  “To the Star Tower of course, the only place this side of the mountain’s shielding bulk where Leiyatel’s hand be truly exposed.”

  “The Star Tower!” Prescinda said to herself, then fell to her own thoughts. The box hummed and shuddered for a while until she asked, “Where have you come from in this thing, Nephril?”

  “From, mine dear? Why ... why dost thou ask?”

  When Prescinda silently held his eyes unwaveringly in her own, he finally relented.

  “From the entrance to Baradcar. But again I ask why ... why dost thou wish to know?”

  “And you stopped at the Royal College on the way, didn’t you? Testing with your, your ... bottle thing for where the Cold Angel might be?”

  Nephril just looked wary.

  “Somehow you’ve travelled safely beneath the ground in whatever this strange carriage is, following Leiyatel’s limb to where she shows her hand. Not exposed as you put it, no, but purposely shown in some way, freed for an important task. Am I near the truth, Lord Nephril?” but he wouldn’t answer.

  “Of course!” she marvelled. “The cliff face, the star-speckled eye!” She drew nearer Nephril and lowered her voice. “You asked me once if I wanted to make a star, when we first met, do you remember, there at the Star Tower?”

  “Pricking star holes in the sky,” Geran dreamily mused.

  Nephril pointedly ignored her and warned, “The Cold Angel be, like Leiyatel herself, nothing more than an unthinking engine. Formed, though, of contrary weft and weave to Leiyatel’s own good hand, to the only one we ever see. The Cold Angel cannot but be attracted to such a hand, as ordained by the laws that rule the ways of things beneath the dust of matter. The Cold Angel be drawn to the beam of Leiyatel that hast for so long shone from the Star Tower, shone to the heavens above.”

  Sadness now seemed to weigh heavily on Nephril’s face. “The Star Tower, where we need to get to before Falmeard does, although why I know not, and truly fear no one knows any better than I.”

  Prescinda lifted her eyes and imagined Falmeard stumbling along through the darkness above, spurred on to the Star Tower by a remorseless rider. An unsolvable riddle; how for Geran’s sake to save the life within an engine that must be destroyed, for somehow something plainly told her that Falmeard did indeed still live on.

  41 To Strike a Deal

  After what seemed like an interminable delay, the strange box slowed. When it began to rise, it reminded Prescinda of her last visit to the Star Tower. She hoped this one wouldn’t be as frightening.

  Nephril had been quiet for a while, in a world of his own it seemed, but Geran looked unusually alert. She softly hummed to herself, something Prescinda hadn’t heard her do since childhood. The thought brought back such pleasant memories, reminded her of the quietly confident older sister Geran had once been.

  “How are you feeling, Sis?” Prescinda said. “You look as though you’re bearing up pretty well.”

  Geran turned her a soft smile before Nephril said, “We are drawing near to the pinnacle, good ladies,” and placed a hand gently on Prescinda’s arm. “Fear thee not for I have remembered. We will arrive within the Star Chamber itself, far from any disturbing sight from without.”

  “Is this some kind of second chance then, Nephril?”

  “Second chance?”

  “Yes. We failed to get Falmeard to the Garden of the Forgotten so...”

  “The Farewell Gap, aye, indeed thou did, more’s the pity.”

  “...so I take it you’ve something else as onerous for us to do here.”

  “Fortune seems to hath looked kindly upon me today, Prescinda - thank Leiyatel. Our meeting may have saved mine own immortal form for I was otherwise set firm to challenge the Cold Angel mine self, a mortal deed if ever there was. And to no avail in all likelihood for we still know not what to do.”

  Prescinda’s mouth dropped open. “You mean you’ve no idea how to...” she glanced at Geran.

  “To remove the threat,” Nephril finished for her. “Quite so.”

  One wall of the box now stopped rising just before they themselves came to a halt, the side subsequently opened revealing a large but dimly lit space filled with all manner of unfamiliar things. Prescinda recognised some of the desks as the kind with sloping cupboards.

  As soon as she stepped from the box, though, she saw a shimmering column of white light that rose from the floor. Its green tinged brilliance vanished into the clear night sky above, only a vast crystal vault coming between her and a brilliant spread of stars all around.

  Nephril carefully placed the glass bottle on one of the desks, setting it just so. “The Cold Angel be still some way off,” he said as he peered more closely at the vanes, turning the bottle if only slightly. “Caught in the warren of ways across the Upper Reaches no doubt.”

  He looked over the top of the bottle at Prescinda. “Time yet to recruit thy help once more.”

  “I take it it’s your weft and weave that’s the problem, Nephril, why you’d prefer not to stay here. In fact, it strikes me this tower’s a bit of a trap for you.”

  Nephril looked uncomfortable.

  “Once the Cold Angel gets here,” she added, “you’ll not be a
ble to get past him to get out, and I doubt we’re high enough to keep you safe from his influence.”

  Nephril’s lips drew thin and he cast an eye at the bottle, his brows lofting as the muscles in his neck became proud.

  “Right,” Prescinda almost barked at him, drawing his startled eyes. “Here’s the deal.”

  Geran drifted nearer, drew a chair from beneath the desk around which they stood and sat down; demurely, hands in lap, enquiring face upturned. Nephril looked from one to the other before he too sat down.

  “You can start by telling me what’s really going on, Nephril,” Prescinda began. “It’s obvious Leiyatel somehow reaches out to here from Baradcar, through the college and the Four Towers, but why? And why,” she threw an arm out to indicate the column of light, “why expose herself so, her raw self? More intriguingly, what’s she up to out there, Nephril?” and Prescinda pointed at the sky. “What’s all this pricking star holes about?”

  He stared at her, his eyes unsettled, mouth drawn to a taut line, but then glanced at the bottle again and swallowed hard.

  “If you don’t tell me, Nephril,” she hissed, flecking him with her words, “and make some sense of it, then you can stay here and sort it all out yourself ‘cos me and Geran have had enough. We’re more than happy just to say bugger you, and bugger Leiyatel come to that. It’s a simple enough journey back to Blisteraising from here.”

  “After all,” Geran added, with a twinkle in her eye, “as you said yourself, Falmeard’s no longer with us. So, to be honest, why should we give a stuff?”

  Nephril could find no answer that didn’t somehow leave him at a disadvantage, and so he began to laugh, loudly as he looked from one to the other. He laughed long enough to bring tears to his eyes until he once again noticed the bottle’s even faster spinning vanes.

  42 To Mete a Task Upon a Man

  Nephril took a few moments to think before answering Prescinda, the bottle clearly occupying his thoughts more and more. Eventually, he licked his lips.

  “I suppose Steermaster Sconner himself was untutored, except by his own hand, and so I must not judge thee unfairly for I now see thou too art quick witted.” His finger drew circles absently on the desktop. “Thou of course know full well of Leiyatel’s role, how she sets good fortune by winnowing Nature’s chaotic choice and so ensures the realm of Dica’s eternal grace.”

  When the sisters said nothing, Nephril asked, “But dost thou know what drives Leiyatel’s winnowing, eh? How she knows chaff from grain?”

  “I’ve heard tell it’s peoples’ wishes,” Prescinda said.

  “Aye, thou hast taken better interest than most.” He looked at Geran but appeared uncertain, although he now addressed them both. “’Tis the consensus that counts, no one individual having sway enough. That be the purpose of the Towers of the Four Seasons, or the space and time trespassed by their image, and why they are placed more central within the realm than Leiyatel’s own domain of Baradcar.”

  He let a sallow eye drift to the bottle, his pace then quickening.

  “The Living Green Stone Tree, Leiyatel, doth spread its infinite branches out to form twigs that infuse the very body of Dica, so to embrace and cherish it all, so to make in matter what thoughts so desire.”

  “Hence,” Prescinda said, “Leiyatel has a limb to reach out into those guiding thoughts, there in the Four Towers, a limb that runs from Leiyatel’s place in Baradcar out past the Royal College. A limb that clearly lets your strange box pass to and fro.”

  Nephril smiled broadly, but then again noticed yet more changes within the bottle. “So, there thou have it, why we cannot countenance the Cold Angel being so near.”

  He stood, nodded to them both and turned towards the strange box, but Prescinda caught him by the cuff and coldly looked up into his eyes. “You still haven’t answered why we’re here, Nephril, here in the Star Tower, and why Leiyatel’s limb and its nurturing way should run this far, bringing her to shine out into the very heavens.”

  “I have not got the time,” Nephril forced through a grimace, furtively glancing at the bottle.

  “Then you’d better make time ... or speed things up a bit,” Geran said as she regarded her nails, “or risk making my sister very, very clingy, and trust me, you’ll then find it’s just about impossible to get away.”

  “Ha!” Nephril cried. “I once had a yearn to curtail mine own immortal life. Now mine life once more has great purpose, I see opportunity draws mockingly close.”

  He leant forward, hands fisted against the desktop, voice low but fast. “There be a purpose to life other than the petty ones we each do hold. This very realm and castle of Dica has but one true purpose, a duty to help men stare into the depths of the heavens.”

  In his haste, Nephril almost chanted, “As Leiyatel brings firm choice from Nature’s otherwise random chance, so too does life itself bring real matter from Nature’s otherwise chaotic soup of formless promise.”

  He stopped and blinked rapidly, eyes clearly speaking of too much to tell in too little time. Into the sudden silence Geran quietly said, in her almost sing-song lilt, “So we really do create stars, other worlds like our own, pricking holes in the sky to see them through.”

  Prescinda stared at her, blankly, but as she began to smile her understanding, she heard the sound of the box lowering and Nephril’s voice calling from it, “Thou wilt be hailed by an enger from Galgaverre, through the cabinet thou see on the wall behind thee. Make sure thou listen out for it for...” and then his voice was gone, only the tinkling sound of the bottle’s fast spinning vanes filling the stagnant air.

  43 Through Weft and Weave

  “I wish we could read this damned bottle thing,” Prescinda said, running a finger delicately down its cool glass. “I’d love to know exactly where the Cold Angel is.”

  “He’s just coming down the avenue,” Geran calmly informed her, “maybe a hundred feet or so from the tower, and it’s started to rain.”

  Prescinda looked up at the spread of exquisite stars. “Eh?” she said then stared at Geran whose mouth had creased to a smile, her eyes half closed. “You ... you somehow feel Falmeard don’t you, Geran?”

  Her sister didn’t answer, but she began humming an old refrain fashioned to calm young minds.

  “That’ll be why I knew Falmeard was still alive,” Prescinda marvelled, “when we passed beneath him. I felt it through you, didn’t I, Sis?”

  Again Geran didn’t answer, her eyes closing, blind to the Star Chamber but plainly sighted through Falmeard.

  “Weft and weave. Now I understand what Nephril meant when he said you’d seed of it no doubt laid deep within you.”

  “Falmeard’s now standing at the base of the tower,” Geran said, briefly opening her eyes. “He can do nothing but watch, Prescinda. Isn’t that awful? And he’s getting drenched.”

  Prescinda stood, steeling herself to look along one of the passageways that led from the chamber, a view out through the crystal dome at its far end. She placed a hand on Geran’s shoulder as she passed her by. This time the fear didn’t return for the top of ashen-grey clouds filled the view, obscuring the rain lashed streets far below.

  What she did now notice was that the column of light seemed to waver, as though it had somehow lost some purpose. The lustre of its pale-green tinge had also faded, becoming almost milky.

  “Leiyatel’s clearly aware of how near the Cold Angel is,” she called back to Geran, but when no answer came she turned only to find the chamber empty.

  At the far end of the opposite passageway, Geran’s silhouette stood framed against a now cerise-stained sky, her hands pressed to the dome’s unnaturally clean crystal.

  “Geran? You alright, Sis?” Prescinda called when she’d come up as near behind as she could, wary of any worse view this side.

  “The Cold Angel can get no nearer, Presci,” Geran said as levelly as she could. “He’s just standing there, close against the strangely swirling base of the tower, right below me
now. I can feel Falmeard’s pull, Sis, feel it deep inside.”

  “An unthinking engine,” Prescinda said, “that’s what Nephril called it. All the Cold Angel really knows is that this is the only place it can see Leiyatel’s warm hand, the hand it covets. Nephril said that such an engine would stay as near as it could, steadily crippling Leiyatel until one day she’d fall and be no more. I wonder how long it’ll take, Geran? How long can Leiyatel last?”

  “It might take a long time, who knows? What’s clear enough now, though, is that the Star Tower’s task is already spoiled, and for as long as the Cold Angel lives. No more star holes, Sis ... no more stars!”

  Geran turned away and rested her forehead against the chill of the crystal, her voice clouding their sight of the new day’s promised light. “I can’t say I understand it all but I can feel how important it is, feel it through Falmeard, know it’s far more so than anything else in this world - or beyond.”

  She turned and came over to Prescinda, took her hands in her own and brought her face close. “Little Sis?” Geran asked so tenderly that Prescinda could almost feel the touch of soft blankets about her, the safe embrace of a cot. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

  Prescinda nodded.

  “Then, my young ‘un, show me how to get out of this place, to where Falmeard now stands drenched and entrapped,” and Prescinda could do no other for her big sister had spoken.

  Now hand in hand, Prescinda no longer felt fear from being so high. She led them around the gentle arc of the viewing deck to what appeared to be a large rug. In drawing near, though, its pattern of constantly shimmering and swirling stars marked it out as something entirely different.

  The sudden squawking of a man’s voice - somehow made mechanical - stopped Prescinda in her tracks. It strained to them from the wall-box in the Star Chamber.