The Way to Babylon

by Paul Kearney

  Ratagan and Riven exchanged glances.

  ‘And the Teller here would not allow us to harm you, I believe, even if it meant harm to himself.’

  Isay opened his mouth as if to speak and then shut it again, frowning.

  ‘There you have it. You are here, and living, because others would have it so, not through any merit of your own. So hold your tongue, if you cannot keep it civil.’

  Thormod had spoken in the same mild tone throughout, but Jinneth looked as though he had struck her. Her fingers fumbled at her cup and sent it tumbling to be broken on the floor, making them all start. Riven could not look at her, and lost his gaze in the creamy head of his beer.

  ‘What do you want of me?’ Jinneth whispered.

  ‘We do not yet know,’ Thormod told her, ‘but we will find out.’ His face was as stark as stone, his eyes lava-filled holes in his head. And yet it was still Calum’s face. Calum angry was something Riven had rarely seen, but never forgotten. And he had never seen him lose his temper with his daughter. He was strangely ashamed at being a spectator to this.

  ‘Was it you and your kind who made me come here?’ Jinneth asked. Her face was flushed, her hair awry from sleep. She was like a child who had just been chastised.

  Thormod cocked an eyebrow. ‘Made you come here? No one forced you to take this road you have set yourself upon. You chose it yourself.’

  She shook her head, and there were tears trickling down her cheeks, brilliant in the candlelight. Her bare feet were in a puddle of spilled beer, but she did not seem to notice or care.

  ‘No,’ she said brokenly. ‘Something made me come here. Something has drawn me to him since the first time I saw him.’ She stared at Riven, but he could not meet her gaze.

  Bicker’s eyes were filled with anger. ‘You have a queer way of showing your attraction, if that is the case.’

  ‘Attraction!’ And now the hardness was in her voice and she drew herself up as though she were a queen addressing a peasant. ‘Attraction! Is that the only word you can dredge up for yourself? You have no idea about what you speak, so close your mouth.’

  Surprisingly, Bicker did so. Ratagan rubbed a hand over his beard in an effort to hide his smile.

  Riven’s heart was thudding in his chest. So she had been drawn to him. Was there then something of Jenny in her, after all?

  He downed his beer, cursing silently. ‘When are we going to hear this story of yours?’ he asked Thormod.

  The Dwarf shrugged with a twitch of his massive shoulders. ‘We had thought to let you rest for a while. Your company looked as though it needed it.’ Unexpectedly, he grinned, white teeth flashing in his beard. ‘I have a feeling that if we leave you to rest much longer you will be fighting amongst yourselves.’

  ‘The woman is not of our company,’ Isay snapped.

  ‘I think you err, brother Myrcan. Whether it seems good to you or not, she is needed.’ Thormod paused. ‘I will ask my kindred to assemble for you once again, as soon as may be, though as I have said our Teller will need time to put together his story from the scraps he will garner from our eldest counsellors.’

  ‘Must be quite a tale,’ Ratagan said.

  ‘Perhaps. I know this. It begins where all good tales should: at the beginning.’

  ‘I have a question,’ Bicker said abruptly. ‘Our tales say that the Hidden Folk who fled the clearances made their way into the heights of the mountains and were taken in by the Dwarves. Is this truly the way of it, or is it a mere legend?’

  Thormod took a few puffs to revive his flagging pipe before replying. ‘Some came,’ he conceded at last. ‘Most went into the Eastern Mountains, and some crossed them and made the trek across the desert to Nalbeni—so it is said. Few came to the Greshorns. They are too high, too bleak. Nothing can live in these mountains except the beasts and the Dwarves, yet some came seeking us. For a while they stayed and we made them welcome, but my own people were under pressure at that time also. They abandoned their mansions and mines in the lower foothills and the marts and fairs they had once held in concert with the folk of Drinan and Talisker, Idrigill and Ullinish; they ceased, and the Folk of Stone slowly withdrew. They were no longer welcome in the affairs of men.

  ‘So these poor folk from the cities and the Vale came seeking us in the heights of the mountains, in the grip of a witch winter such as is upon us now. Oh, they were folk of magic, yes, but most of them worked with charms and spells that were beneficial, primitive. Very few had any of the raw stuff of the high magic about them. Only one or two were sorcerers of might, and they kept themselves to themselves.’ Thormod smiled coldly. ‘Wizards are not as common as some of the folk of this land would like to make out.

  ‘But they stayed with us for a while, until they began to hanker after the light of the sun and moon and the feel of the wind on their faces again. A man called Birkinlig—an old man who came, he said, from beyond the Greshorns—appeared and led them away. They followed him into the heart of the Greshorn range, meaning to find an end to it, an unknown land which existed beyond, and they disappeared. None returned, and no word was sent back to the Dwarves. It was as if they had vanished. There were Hearthwares with them, and even some Myrcans who were following banished lords. But none returned. We searched for them, but found no trace. Their company kept north; that much we could find out. But the mountains there are savage and there is nothing that will hold tracks, and our own powers do not extend there. Something baffles them that far into the Greshorn massif. We lost them.’

  ‘What lies beyond the Greshorns?’ Riven asked.

  ‘We do not know. The world’s end, perhaps, or perhaps there is another land there—another world, indeed, where the exiles are living in peace. Who knows?’

  ‘Birkinlig is a figure of myth, the man who was given magic by the Stone-folk to take to the people of Minginish,’ Bicker stated. ‘How can it be the same man?’

  ‘It was the name he gave,’ Thormod said.

  ‘All those people,’ Bicker said. ‘Did they die, then, and leave their bones in the peaks?’

  No one answered him. Thormod tapped out his pipe into the fire and stretched.

  ‘Time for me to depart and see how this tale of ours is coming along. I will have Hyval and Thiof send you more food and drink, if you wish.’

  ‘Where is our gear?’ Riven asked.

  ‘In a safe place. It has suffered rough treatment, and we are refurbishing it for you. We can fit you out in winter clothing more effective than anything you will chance across in the lands below.’ He looked at Ratagan’s massive frame with amusement, Calum’s quirk at the corner of his mouth. ‘Though most of it will need to be altered somewhat. You will be summoned later.’

  Without another word, he strode over to the door and pushed it open with one hand. It swung back after him and boomed shut. The fire crackled to itself in the sudden silence.

  ‘So the Dwarves are not all-knowing,’ Bicker said ruminatively. ‘Even they are ignorant about some things.’

  Riven realised he had been hoping the Dwarves could tell him what exactly to do, but he understood now that he knew as much as they—or would, once he heard this story of theirs.

  So it’s all left to me in the end. Some hero.

  He felt weary, though he had only just woken up. He noticed the beer puddle on the floor and saw wet footprints leading out of it into the adjoining room. Jinneth had left them again, it seemed. He was both glad and sad. Her words had opened up too many possibilities, and up here she was becoming too similar to the Jenny he had known. But perhaps that was meant to happen.

  He followed her footprints unwillingly into the other chamber. It was darker in there, the only light that of the fire in the hearth. She sat staring into the flames, but looked up when he joined her. Irritation flitted across her face, and her eyes were full of the writhing firelight, but she said nothing. They sat together in a bright semi-circle that spilled outwards from the hearth, and for minutes Riven was both content and tortured to
remain silent and gaze at her.

  ‘Why do you stare at me so?’ she asked him, and then sneered. ‘No. I know, of course. Your dead wife—I am her image. No wonder your eyes follow me.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Riven said harshly. ‘You’re her image, but you’re not her. You’re nothing like her. Nothing.’

  She studied him then. ‘You said I was needed here, on this quest you and your confederates have taken up. How? What do you think my role is in your mission?’ The sneer was still in her voice.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He kicked a recalcitrant faggot into the fire. He could smell her; the beer she had spilled clung to her and there was another odour underlying it. Sweat. Blood, perhaps. He remembered her standing nude in the cave and shook his head angrily. She smiled.

  ‘You loved this wife of yours, it is plain. You loathe me, yet you cannot leave me be. I am a thorn in your flesh.’

  I am a dark room you never entered. He heard the voice of his dream once again, mocking him.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he rasped, and started to get up. There was no profit in torturing himself here.

  But she grasped his arm and drew him down, pulled him towards her.

  ‘No. Don’t leave me.’

  She took his hand and held it in her lap, an odd smile twisting her mouth. Gradually his fingers uncurled from the fist they had become and she interlaced her own with them.

  ‘Who was the girl in Talisker who could not speak?’ she asked him. ‘The one you cared for.’

  ‘The one you threatened to have raped,’ Riven said, and her fingers tensed in his.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She was my... nurse.’

  ‘Did you love her?’

  He thought of Madra’s grave smile and mobile brows, her agelessness. The calm she seemed to carry with her.

  ‘Yes, I did.’ I do.

  Jinneth bent her head so that her hair threw her face into shadow. ‘What would you say to your wife if I were she?’

  Riven grimaced. ‘You’re not.’

  ‘But if I were?’

  He tried to pull his hand away, but she would not let go.

  ‘Please.’

  He shook his head in bafflement and pain. Was this another game she was playing with him?

  ‘She’s dead, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Maybe she is not. Maybe she is in me. Perhaps that is why I find myself here, why I did not have you slain in Talisker, why I followed you into these mountains.’

  There was something like bewilderment in her voice, and he felt a thrill of fear chill his belly.

  ‘Death is final,’ he said.

  ‘Are you and your friends taking me to mine?’

  ‘No, of course not. We’re not assassins.’

  ‘You play for high stakes. That would make certain things expendable. Like myself. Your Myrcan friend would slay me without a thought.’

  ‘It was the lies you and Bragad spread that set him against his own people. Are you surprised Isay wishes you dead?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No.’

  She began to laugh. ‘I don’t think you know. You want me, it’s plain, but you hate me too.’

  Riven could not answer. He wondered why he was sitting here listening to this.

  Suddenly Jinneth sprang. He tumbled backwards with her weight on top of him, her hands fastened on his wrists like fetters, and fell to the warm stone. Raven hair cascaded over his face. She was surprisingly strong, and for an instant he wondered if he were about to receive a knife in his ribs. But he felt her body shaking. She was laughing silently, her mouth muffled in his neck. Her fingers left his wrists and entwined with his.

  She nuzzled his cheek, let her lips trail over his eyes. He freed one hand and ran it up her buttocks and back, the muscles quivering beneath his fingers. Then he grasped her nape and forced her mouth over his. Their teeth jarred and then their lips had joined. He could feel the smile and kissed it off savagely. They half rolled away from the fire, locked together as though in mortal contest. He swung her beneath him, her legs locked round his hips. There was a laugh still on her face and in the firelight her eyes seemed to glow like a wolf’s.

  ‘Did your wife do this?’ she asked him with a grin that was more a baring of teeth.

  He slapped her, hard enough to spin her face to the side, but the grip on his hips remained. He hit her again, and saw blood fall from her lip. Her grip on him loosened. She lay still beneath him, her face strangely empty, the eyes alight with sudden tears.

  ‘It would seem she did not,’ she murmured thickly, the tears tracing lines of firelight down the side of her face, disappearing into her hair.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Riven said, his voice strangled and hoarse.

  She pulled him to her. ‘No matter.’ And they lay in each other’s arms before the fire, faces close, her blood on his hand as he wiped it from her mouth.

  ‘Why?’ he asked her softly.

  ‘I love and loathe you,’ she said, holding him tighter. ‘And you are to be the death of me.’ Then she pushed him away. ‘Go now. Leave me alone. Go back to your friends and leave the she-wolf in peace.’

  He stood and stared down at her for a long moment, at the blood on her face and the swelling there. The eyes mocking him through their tears. Then he left her and rejoined the others.

  HOURS WENT ROUND and Riven waited. There was little talk amongst them. They felt that they were close to the end of their quest, but as of yet none of them knew what that end might be. Riven suspected, with some of the same foresight that had convinced him they were to meet with someone in the mountains; but as always, he could not be sure. It was like having the idea for a story in his head that was vague and unformed, knowing how things should turn out but unsure as to how it could be done. Knowing and not knowing; the same feeling that had gripped him ever since he had wandered into this world of his in the company of one of his own characters. Somehow he had been marked down for this since his birth.

  But he would have given a lot to find out how exactly it could happen, how it was possible. He believed in magic, for it was all around him, but in his own world there was nothing like it, nothing whatsoever.

  The dead cannot rise again.

  At last the door to their chamber grated open, and the two squat Dwarves, Hyval and Thiof, stood on the threshold. They bowed to the company, their beards sweeping the floor.

  ‘It is time,’ one of them said. ‘Our people await you.’

  Ratagan stood up first, stretching. ‘Never keep a Dwarf or a woman waiting,’ he said with a smile.

  They tugged themselves to their feet. Jinneth joined them from the other room, a cloak pulled about her lower face. To hide her bruises, Riven realised, and his face burned with self-disgust and shame. He had never struck a woman in his life before.

  They followed their two guides out of the chamber.

  IT WAS A different place they were taken to this time, farther away—deeper in the mountain, Riven thought. He could almost feel the awful pressure of the titanic gutrock above his head. The passageways they trod were mere wrinkles in its flesh. A twitch of the mountain’s shoulders and they would disappear, and Riven would be fossilised in the bowels of his own story.

  Their guides led them unerringly along narrow corridors and broad thoroughfares, through intersections and crossroads, past yawning chasms and castle-sized emptinesses. And they were not alone. Everywhere in the darkness there were lights, the embers of dwarven eyes moving with them, the low stump of feet, the murmur of conversation, harsh laughs, sepulchral voices humming unknown tunes. There were crowds on the move in the darkness, both behind and before the company. The inhabitants of the Jhaar seemed to be congregating to hear the story that was to be told that evening.

  They entered a vast darkness, so large that there were air currents moving in it like wind. They could see nothing but the firefly-flicker of eyes scattered throughout it, strewn like forgotten gems in a mine. There were hundreds of them, some near, some so
far away that they were visible only as a faint glimmer on the edge of sight. The space spun with whispered voices and scraping feet. Riven stumbled in the blackness and felt Isay and Ratagan steady him. He put his hand out to grasp at Bicker and was tugged forward again. The company stumbled along blindly, Ratagan cursing in a low tone as he tripped over something.

  Then they halted, and suddenly there was a blue-white radiance about their two guides such as they had seen once before. Hyval and Thiof gestured to the floor and they saw that there were stone benches there, seemingly hewn out of the solid rock. They sprouted out of the floor like a weird fungus. The company sat down and the light went out. They were left to listen to the massive black space around them, the sound of the Dwarves moving about within it, the cold feel of the stone beneath them.

  After a while the shuffling stopped, the movement ceased. A stillness fell in the place.

  And a light grew around them. It was a warm, saffron light that seemed to have no source. It welled out of nowhere, revealing rock walls that arched around them steeply and rose for ever above their heads to an unguessable height, leaning closer as they rose, perfect as the beams of a cathedral—except the space they enclosed could have held ten cathedrals.

  The cavern was round, and in the middle was a black pit, surrounded by benches such as the one the company occupied. Five thousand people could have found a place there with ease. The benches rose in row after row from the centre towards the titanic walls. And from the pit, now, the light of flames licked out, throwing shadows over the faces of the crowd that sat there unmoving. Riven heard Bicker’s breath rasp sharply in his throat.

  ‘I didn’t think there were so many Dwarves in all the world,’ he breathed, staring at the bearded figures, their eyes shining in the dimness, smoke rising in reams from some as they smoked long pipes.

  Then one Dwarf left his seat and strode to the lip of the flame-filled pit in the centre of the cavern. He was taller than most of his comrades, and his beard was short and grey. Sewn into the breast of his leather jerkin was a flame emblem such as Riven had once worn: the mark of aTeller. The Dwarf paused and let his eyes sweep the occupants of the hall, lingering for a moment on the benches where the company perched, Ratagan’s shoulders hulking and huge in the firelight.