by Tom Lloyd
Lichen raised a trembling finger and pointed past them all. There was a smear on the horizon, the suggestion of shapes and nothing more, but it was at least something. ‘Is that the far shore?’ he asked quietly.
Moss and Shell both stopped to look. There was little enough to see amid the mist and cloud of nothingness, but an impression stood out all the same. Jagged shapes that rose like the ghosts of broken teeth, so large they filled the horizon.
‘Our destination looms,’ the angel announced.
THEY STOOD IN silence and watched a wall of dust blow across the empty twilit plains beyond the bridge. Shell felt her hand begin to tremble and tightened her grip on her spear to hide it from the others. The distant echoes of those who’d died around her, all those years ago, seemed to carry on the breeze still. Voices on the cusp of hearing. Lives hovering on the frayed edges of this dead world.
Great mountains loomed in the distance; pale, ill-defined shapes against the sky, but so vast they looked impossible and unreal. No stars were visible past something quite unlike cloud that veiled the sky. A pale light seemed to shine across the world though, illuminating the curve of the land and the piercing mountain peaks, but where it came from Shell couldn’t tell. Beyond the mountains the last breath of dusk hung in the heavens as though a scrap had crossed the bridge with them and now withered in this alien place.
The plain itself was a rocky wasteland stained grey by the gloom. Only the dust, made animate by the wind, moved over the undulating terrain. Empty of terrors, the dead lands beyond the bridge still filled Shell with fear and as she looked at the faces of her companions, she knew she was not the only one.
What Moss was thinking she couldn’t say. The apprehension on his face was the soldier’s mask for a deeper fear inside – one he was warrior enough to control, but human enough not to deny or hide from. Lichen had no such self-imposed limits and his terror was naked. Even as he unwrapped his injured arm and peered at his wound, as though hoping he’d be able to see it heal before his eyes, Lichen still shuddered with fear and could barely stay upright.
‘Now where?’ Moss asked after a long while.
The two men turned to Shell, but she said nothing. Ice stepped down onto the fine powder that had accumulated at the edge of the bridge and spread its wings to catch the buffeting breeze as a man might stretch after crawling alongside children.
‘Nothing?’ Moss persisted. ‘No tingling in your fingers or tugging at your heartstrings?’
‘What do you want from me?’ Shell snapped. ‘I’m neither scout nor wizard in equal measure. I’ve no idea what the plan is. Ice, do you even have a plan?’
The angel tucked its wings back and turned to face them. ‘There is a link between you. After all this time it will draw you back together.’
‘What, so I just pick a direction and start walking? And one day I’ll see your Voiceless friend coming in the other direction?’
‘First I must fly. I must see what dangers there are around us. It is said this plain sees little of the horrors beyond the mountain – they can still glimpse the light of creation – but I will take no chances.’
‘And until then?’
‘Rest. Sleep. I will watch over you.’
At that, Moss grunted and tugged his horse forward, down onto the lifeless earth. It was soon clear that he was heading towards an outcrop not far away – little more than broken boulders, but shelter of sorts from the wind. Lichen stumbled after the man, leaving Shell and Ice staring at each other until the wind forced Shell to blink and look away.
‘The Voiceless will come.’
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What more does it want with me? I don’t even know why it saved me that day, why of all of us it chose me to survive.’
‘Perhaps it sensed destiny within you. Perhaps it sensed the will of the God lying dormant until this day when your purpose is revealed.’
‘Fuck destiny and fuck the will of the God. I want no part in whatever you’re doing.’
‘Your role is assured,’ Ice replied without rancour. ‘Your life is part of the God’s pattern, however you struggle against it. Without the pattern binding you, you would fall to the ground and never rise. To be mortal is to need purpose.’
‘I want none of your purpose.’
‘Yet it cradles you with every moment.’
The angel spread it wings as it spoke and, before Shell could find the words to reply, it kicked up into the air and was caught by a gust that whipped it away into the grey. Shell watched it climb, beating its wings only occasionally, until she could make out nothing more than a dot far above her. Still she watched, rubbing at the stained skin of her wrists, until Moss called to her that flavour had returned to their food.
GOT ANY FAMILY, Moss?’ Shell asked as the three humans huddled close and stared out over the dead plain.
‘Family?’ He looked up and blinked in surprise, lost in his thoughts. ‘Aye, mebbe. Hard to say now.’
‘Tell me about them.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s either that or we sit here in silence.’
They had no fire to warm themselves, only a pair of caribou skins and some blankets, so any notions of propriety had been quickly shed. Moss still preferred not to touch Lichen’s mottled skin though, so Shell enjoyed the warmest position, wedged between the two men while they all sat with their backs to a large rock. It deflected most of the wind, but was hardly comfortable and the best that could be said of their campsite was that it was dry. The view was unchanging, wind-scoured and grey, but even in shelter sleep somehow eluded them all.
Moss sighed. ‘Fair enough. Not much to say though. Two sisters and a brother – least I did when I was growing up. Don’t know how many I got now - been away for ten years or more. There were some nieces when I left, a boy too come to think of it, but all too young for names.’
‘Little ones don’t get names?’
‘Not back home, not until they’re old enough to ask the God for one at midwinter. Too many die young but if they’ve no name, they can have no sins either.’ He sniffed. ‘I ain’t saying it’s the only reason I left and joined up, but I never regretted turning my back to the priests back home. Some of ’em liked telling the little ones about sin all too much, and apparently it’s a sin to break the jaw of a priest.’
Shell was quiet a moment. ‘That didn’t stop you though, did it?’
He laughed. ‘Like I said, there were a few reasons for leaving. How’s about you?’
‘Family?’ She sounded startled. ‘Never had much, doubt there is any left now. Had a cousin was taken as a slave with me, Sulay her name was.’ Shell shook her head. ‘Strange. Even her, I can’t remember her face.’
‘Even her?’
She bowed her head ‘All those I was with . . . slaves and slavers. Some of those bastards I swore I’d never forget just in case I found a way to track them down, but after that night . . . nothing. Can’t bring any faces to mind, even the shite who beat me near to death before we crossed the frontier and headed out this way. I can feel his fists still, but his face’s blank in my mind. They all are.’
‘Their souls were taken,’ pronounced a voice above them.
Shell yelped and turned to see Ice standing on the rock above them. ‘What?’
‘The Voiceless,’ Ice said, ‘it does not just kill. They are taken from the world, excised from the God’s pattern.’
‘My . . . my cousin too? She was blameless. Most of those taken as slaves were just attacked in the night, kidnapped and put in chains!’
‘The Voiceless is not mortal,’ Ice said. ‘It lives by no morality. It simply is.’
Shell turned away again. It was hard to tell how long it had been since she last slept, but she was too tired to argue morality with an angel. Most likely it would never even understand what the argument was about.
‘You must all sleep,’ Ice continued after a while. ‘I will watch over you.’
‘It’s cold,’ Moss said, tugging the blan
kets closer. ‘We sleep too long, we could die.’
Ice regarded him for a while then turned to face the wind, its wings opening a touch. With a strange grace, the angel lifted into the breeze and over their heads before dropping down to the dusty ground beside the hobbled horses.
It reached behind its head and drew its sword which burst into dancing orange flames that streamed with the wind. Horse twitched its ears at the sudden heat and light, but something about the angel’s presence seemed to calm the beasts. They did nothing as Ice reversed the weapon and drove it a foot into the ground in one deft movement.
Shell felt the weapon’s warmth on her cheeks immediately and despite herself, smiled at the pleasure of the half-forgotten touch. If Ice noticed, the angel made no sign of it and leaped back up onto the rock, wings pinned back from the breeze, and out of sight.
They stared at the flaming sword a long while before finally Moss nudged Shell.
‘Would it be sacrilege to cook food on it?’ he whispered. ‘We’ve got strips of beef packed away.’
Shell shrugged. ‘Who cares? I’m hungry.’
AFTER RESTING, MOSS struggled into his battered mail armour and peaked steel helm before they crossed the plain as though in a dream. It was vast – that much Shell could see with her own eyes. It didn’t just stretch for miles into the distance, but hundreds of miles. With all the certainty in her heart, Shell knew the distances spread before her were impossibly great, the mountains and plains further than should have been visible – and yet she had found herself on the other side with only a faint memory of the hours they had been walking. A full day’s walking and more echoed in her bones, but her body was by no means exhausted and still the distance they had covered was too far.
She stopped and looked back, barely able to make out the shape of the bridge in the distance, the trail of their feet leading back towards it. ‘How is this possible?’
‘The lonely plains are vast,’ Ice said by way of answer. ‘Alone, you will walk them for days.’
‘Sounds like a philosopher’s wordplay,’ growled Moss.
‘In this place, all such things may be real.’
They crested the rocky rise that ringed the plain, the vast mountains still distant. Laid out before them was an undulating expanse of black rocks, a shattered section of cliffs ringing a recessed plain. On the more level ground before the cliffs stood a hill, at the peak of which was a huge stone throne facing away to their right. Shell gaped, not at the hundred-yard-high object but at the shimmering wisps of light that seemed to dance in and out of existence around it. Flickers of sheet lightning formed angular shapes in some unfathomable, but far from random, pattern.
‘What is it?’
‘The seat of the ungodly,’ Ice replied, staring out towards the edifice. Something about its stance had changed, Shell realised. There was a readiness about the angel now, an immanence of action as though it longed to take flight and draw its sword.
‘Is that where we’re going?’ Moss had his hand on his axe, unconsciously adopting a similar pose to Ice as though an echo of the angel’s anticipation had chimed with him.
Like dog with its hackles raised, thought Shell, looking between the two of them, working others up around it.
‘No,’ Ice said finally, letting its wings lower a shade. ‘We skirt behind the hill and head for the pass beyond.’
The angel pointed to a cleft between great boulders that seemed to pierce the winding shelf of impassable rock, well past the throne.
‘How do you know?’
‘I divined it as you slept. In your presence I can sense the direction of the Voiceless.’
Their path over the broken rocks was slow and tiring with nothing like a path to assist them. Shell found her mind drifting once more and fell into the habit of biting her cheek to keep her wits about her. Several times they were forced to retrace their steps, presented with an obstacle the horse and mule could not hope to traverse, but eventually they found themselves back on level footing and crossing desolate terrain of lifeless grey dust.
They kept close to the base of the cliffs, towering thirty or forty yards above their heads, without needing instruction from Ice. More than once Shell looked up and felt a tremble of anxiety at the jagged seams and strata looming over them, twice they even saw great shards of black rock shear away and fall, spearing the ground, but still that was preferable to nearing the malevolent lights playing around the huge throne.
Again time passed quickly, more quickly than seemed possible, and despite the miles to the cleft, they reached it far sooner than Shell had expected. They stopped to rest at the entrance, Moss striding off down through the darkness to investigate their path until Ice called him back.
Shell and Lichen sat side by side watching the great lights erupting miles away. It was unchanged since they’d first saw it and, whether it was the dance of dark angels or some natural phenomena, it paid them no heed and continued in its strange rhythm.
‘We must leave,’ Ice announced, not long after they had halted.
‘Now?’ Shell groaned, pushing herself upright again and turning towards Ice. ‘Why so soon?’
The angel pointed past her to a series of great flat-topped outcrops of pale grey stone far in the distance. Shell watched them uncomprehending for a while, then saw movement among them. Little more than white wisps, there were figures moving between them – drifting in and out of visibility, but making a slow path through the studded ground towards the throne hill. At that distance they had to be huge, but it was too far for her to gauge and hard enough to count the ghostly giants as they came and went from sight. At least five, she guessed, composed of swirling white ribbons of mist that pulsed in echo of the throne’s lights. She could make out little more than an approximate shape, but found herself relived that the distance was too great to see more.
‘What are they?’
‘You have no words for them,’ Ice said, urging them into the darkness of the rock cleft, ‘but if I call them dead gods you might understand enough of them.’
‘And this will be better?’ Lichen asked, eying the shadows of the cleft fearfully.
‘It will be less certain,’ said the angel, and reached up with its hands as though gathering strands of light from the sky above.
When it lowered them again, there did seem a renewed shine to Ice’s clothes and wings, one that reflected dully off the slanted walls of the cleft. It walked on without another word, bearing its gathered light along with it. The others hurried to catch Ice up and stay within the dull glow of its light. As they passed along the cleft, Shell looked up and, with a jolt, realised there were stars above them – a constellation she knew as well as the beat of her own heart. The line of stars pinned to a black velvet sky, still leading the way to the bridge and her own world; a small spark of comfort in a world of horrors.
The minutes stretched into hours, the hours faded into minutes. Shell lost all track of how long they had been travelling. The cleft itself they left behind after an interminable time to her great relief. The shadows within it slipped oil-slick and silent over the sharp walls of stone, lingering first uneasily then with mounting resentment at the light Ice had brought with them.
But then the rocks were a distant memory behind and they had rounded a blunt pair of hills before starting on a great upward climb, a meandering rise that seemed to stretch not much further ahead but hour on hour climbed higher into the cold, shifting sky. Shell kept her weapon in her hand and she saw Moss do the same, but they seemed even more alone than before, exposed out on that rise with the empty miles falling away on either side.
They camped amid a crown of stones at what Shell guessed was the peak of the rise. The circle seemed to be too regular to be naturally-formed, but she could see no trace of tool-marks other than the occasional faint rune and it looked as though spines of stone had pushed out of the ground itself in a dozen places. By then they were exhausted and flopped down on the faintly concave floor without pulling out bedr
olls or skins. Only once Ice drove its sword into the very centre, where rain would have pooled if their dead place had even seen rain, and the flames warmed them did they stir to make camp properly.
Nothing was said: the mortals too drained to speak after covering hundreds of miles in what seemed like a day, the angel not inclined to speak. As they ate a portion of their meagre supplies, Shell watched the angel standing between two of the crown’s tines, each a fraction taller than Ice, on watch for whatever might come. She noted that it kept within the circle even when it changed position to watch the other flank, tethered to the hub of its sword as they were to the warmth it provided.
Soon she had eaten her fill and wriggled back between Lichen and Moss, the big soldier sitting upright and himself watching through the gaps between the stones. Shell wanted to speak to him, to urge him to rest, but before she could she fell into a slumber of formless dreams – a black void within which there were only the faint darting whispers of dead gods.
She woke in the night, or what she had presumed was night, to a world turned silver. Shell gasped as she looked up and saw a million bright stars above; far more than she had ever seen before, formed in great arcs and whorls across the sky. There were so many of them that they cast their cold light over everything below and she could see quite clearly for what seemed a thousand miles in every direction.
The air was beautifully crisp and clear, a mild winter’s night for all that her breath seemed to crystallise and blow sparkling clouds of vapour. Shell looked down at the hand-prints on her wrists and felt a moment of profound sadness as she saw the blackened skin was even darker than usual in the silver light. It didn’t last, however, the glinting sparkle that coated even the hilt of Ice’s sword and the cold shine from above unearthed some childish excitement inside her that cut through her gloom.
She reached out to wake the others and see this marvel for themselves, but before she could, Shell felt a hand gently touch her shoulder. It was Ice, the angel’s face tight with concentration as she had never seen before. Without it doing anything more, Shell knew it wanted her to be silent and, after a few moments of staring into her soul, the angel nodded and moved to one side. Behind it was revealed great amorphous shapes that glistened silver-grey in the beautiful light, a dozen or more passing within a hundred yards of where Shell sat.