The Way to Babylon

by Paul Kearney

  Bicker and Isay stumbled out of the snow to join him. The Myrcan had splinters of bone sticking out from one dangling forearm and his face was shining and dark with blood, but he wielded an axe in his good hand and his eyes were bright as stars. Bicker steadied him with one hand whilst in the other his short sword glittered. The snow was piling on their heads and shoulders.

  The worm hissed hatred at them, dark fluid pulsing from the deep wound Ratagan had inflicted. Its eyes lit the spinning snowflakes with green. The head swayed a moment, and then it dived into the ground with a spray of shattered ice and disappeared with a grinding noise. The ice field quivered under their feet for a moment, then was still.

  Isay half-sat, half-fell down to the ground, and Riven noticed for the first time that his leg was a ragged blood-soaked mess from the thigh down. The ice around was already blushing scarlet, a dark stain in the dimming light. Bicker joined him and began cutting away his clothing on arm and leg to get at the wounds.

  ‘Will it come back?’ Jinneth asked them hoarsely.

  ‘Maybe,’ the dark man replied. He was wincing unconsciously as he tightened a thong about the top of Isay’s thigh to halt the streaming blood.

  ‘There may be others, I’m thinking,’ Ratagan said. ‘I have heard of these creatures. They are seldom encountered alone.’

  ‘Leave me,’ Isay managed to whisper, but Bicker glared at him.

  ‘We’ll patch Isay up as best we can and then get off this ice field. They are creatures of the snow and ice, the worms, and they don’t like being met on stone.’

  Riven bent down beside Bicker and the fallen Myrcan. The blood was already beginning to freeze in the snow.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Not so good. He will be dancing no jigs for a while, and his blood will draw the worms to us.’

  ‘Arm,’ Isay mumbled. He was slipping in and out of consciousness. It was a shock to see him so helpless, so crippled.

  I looked like this once, after I had fallen off the mountain. All blood and splintered bones.

  ‘He’ll be all right,’ Riven said firmly, dragging his eyes away from the slivers of bone that poked out of the flesh of Isay’s forearm.

  A sudden, far-off screech battered the air, muffled by the snow. Another sounded below them, down in the darkness.

  ‘They smell us,’ Ratagan said, beating his weapon hand on his breeches. His mittens were clogged with snow. ‘It is not going to be too healthy around here in a few moments. Are you finished, Bicker?’

  The dark man nodded. Isay was unconscious, his leg bound with an assortment of furs and linen and leather. Bicker had wrapped his arm in a thick cloak and immobilised it with the shaft of an axe. ‘Rough and ready, but it’ll have to do for now,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  Ratagan bent and lifted Isay as tenderly as a baby, placing him over one shoulder so that his smashed arm hung stiff and straight over the big man’s pack. Then they set off again, unroped this time. They moved more slowly than before. Riven’s legs were trembling with the aftermath of the fight and he had to help Jinneth along as though she were lame, his arm muscles on fire as he stabbed his axe into the ice and supported both of them.

  It was getting harder to see. The night was deepening and the snow fell as steadily and noiselessly as ever. Riven was sure that the Red Mountain could not be too far ahead, but it was impossible to tell. The great size of these mountains and the confusing darkness had disorientated him. And they were barely halfway across the ice field.

  There was a roar and a crash upslope, and a hail of broken ice showered down on them. They paused, searching the gloom frantically for movement.

  ‘They’re closing in,’ Bicker said calmly. ‘They smell the blood.’

  ‘How much farther to stone?’ Ratagan asked. He sounded weary now, though it was impossible to read his face in the darkness.

  ‘Too far. We won’t make it.’

  Again, there was that roar, like the scream of a caged raptor. It was answered by two others. The worms were above, below and behind them. They heard none in front.

  ‘We can still go on,’ Riven said.

  Ratagan laid Isay gently down on the surface of the ice and anchored him by planting an ice axe beside him. Riven thought he was smiling. He addressed Bicker. ‘Shall you tell him, or shall I?’

  The dark man leaned on the haft of his axe for support, head bent. They could hear movement from upslope in the darkness, the sound of a heavy body swishing across the ice. Jinneth started as she heard it and clutched at Riven’s arm. Behind was a distant crash and crunch that made the ice underfoot shake minutely. They were closing fast.

  ‘They are making for the blood,’ Bicker said matter-of-factly. ‘They smell it. You and Jinneth go on and we will stay here and hold them off for a while. We will buy you time to get onto stone.’

  Riven stared at him. ‘No.’

  ‘You must do this, my friend,’ Ratagan said. ‘You must get away at all costs, or everything that has happened will have been for nothing. You have this thing to do—and the lady must go with you.’

  ‘No,’ Riven whispered.

  ‘You must, Michael,’ Bicker said, and he laid a hand on Riven’s arm. ‘This is why we came: to see you do this thing, to make sure you get there. Do not fail us now—and do not fail Minginish.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Riven croaked. ‘I can’t go on without you. I can’t do it alone.’

  ‘You must,’ Ratagan insisted. ‘Besides, you have a beautiful lady with you. You are not alone.’

  ‘You will never be alone,’ Bicker told him. ‘Not so long as this story continues.’

  It seemed he heard another voice say, from a long time ago: ‘There is always a story. Maybe the people within it are different, maybe it is even someone else’s to tell. But it continues.’

  It continues.

  Magnificent, make-believe characters. He had made them, had met them, had loved them. He counted them his friends, perhaps the best he had ever known. And now he was to leave them, to let them die.

  I won’t do it.

  Ice creaked off in the darkness. Something hissed close by, and then they saw the green glitter of eyes through the snow. Ratagan hefted his axe thoughtfully.

  ‘You must go, Michael Riven.’

  I know.

  His throat had narrowed. He could not speak. Bicker and Ratagan were no longer looking at him, but were staring at the eyes that blazed on the edge of vision. Three pairs of them.

  ‘Don’t get caught,’ Ratagan warned him. ‘Go now, while you can.’

  The cold burned the tears on Riven’s cheeks. He backed away.

  ‘I’ll tell a story of you two some day,’ he managed to say. Then he lurched off across the ice with his ironbound feet anchoring him, Jinneth trailing after. He heard the worms shriek as they closed in, and Ratagan’s laugh rose in the night, clear as a bell.

  ‘Make our story a good one!’ he shouted. Then the sounds of the fighting began and Riven turned away from it. He left them behind, his face set towards the mountain ahead, which reared up out of the night like a cathedral.

  TWENTY

  SGURR DEARG. THEY were on its lower slopes, labouring up a scarp that was treacherous with scree and ice-welded stone. The snow had stopped falling, and Riven thought there was a light behind the clouds that was the rising of the moon. He heard his crampons screech on bare rock and slipped to his knees. Only then did he realise that he was weeping as he walked. He bent his head, his face gnarled with grief. They were gone, now. He was almost alone.

  Jinneth knelt beside him, and her arm encircled his shoulders. The night was almost entirely silent. If the fighting continued, then the bulk of the spur was blotting out the sound of it.

  He twisted the sob that ached out of his throat into a snarl, and rose to his feet.

  Make an end, Riven.

  He started forward again without a word to his companion. He was afraid, this close, that if he spoke to her, he might find his wife speaking ba
ck, and that would have been too much. His mind was about to give up its ghost. Or meet it, perhaps.

  There were too many faces in his head, too many pictures. He was claimed by two worlds, torn apart by opposing loyalties. At this moment, most of him wanted to be back on the ice, fighting with his friends. They had saved his life times beyond count, and he had left them to die in exchange. And Ratagan had laughed.

  He saw the river at Beechfield glittering under the moon, waves rushing up the shore at Camasunary, the Red Mountain on a summer’s afternoon with the sun warming the stone. He felt Nurse Cohen’s arms around him, her lips on his forehead, but she changed into Madra, sitting with a wolf’s head laid in her lap.

  Too many things. Too many impossible images.

  The clouds drifted apart and they found their way lit by moonlight, a grey, eldritch radiance that made the shadows seem like dark pools, the mountains as grey as ash. He grinned at the emptiness and the surrounding silence, but at the memory of Ratagan’s laugh, the grin faded. No matter. No matter. His dream was behind him. There was nothing in front of him but the mountain.

  And Jenny.

  Sgurr Dearg filled half the sky, looming black in the moonlight, the summit wisped with silver cloud.

  It was a clear winter’s night on Skye, and he was walking the mountains with the bright memory of a dream veiling the edges of his mind; walking back into his own world, with a ghost at his side.

  They stopped to remove their crampons, and then the way became harder, steeper, the scree sliding under their feet to rattle off down the slopes. The wind had allowed no purchase to the snow here. It gathered in drifts where there was some shelter, but for the most part, the mountain was as bare as a gravestone, rocks shining with ice under the moon.

  His limbs were complaining. All over him there seemed to be once-broken bones clamouring for attention. Beside him, he could hear the breath sawing in and out of Jinneth’s throat. She was keeping pace with him. He could see her face, stark in the livid light. It looked cold as a statue, and the eyes were silver glints, under brows that met in the middle.

  He had to stop and rest after a while, gasping, and she sank down beside him. Pictures of himself, clean-shaven and healthy, ploughing up mountainsides in Brecon with scarcely a pause. Lieutenant Riven.

  Off again, breath whooping; like the sound of George’s chest wound in Derry.

  Soldier no more.

  The first of the steep cliffs leading to the summit reared in front of them, black and glistening with snow in odd corners that sparkled in the moonlight.

  Climbing, now.

  They no longer had any rope. The rags of it were tied about their waists, but the rest was down with Bicker and Ratagan and Isay, and the worms. He threw off his mittens, knowing he would need his fingers for this, and he made Jinneth do the same. She seemed to be in a trance or daze, as helpless as a transfixed rabbit, but she followed him without question.

  He began to pull himself upwards, the handholds easy to find in the bright moonlight, but his feet slipping on unseen pockets of ice.

  False summits came and went. Sharp rock numbed and bled his hands, making him fumble clumsily for a grip. Twice he had to lever his axe into a cleft and reach back to draw Jinneth after him. She was shuddering, and her teeth were clenched with cold or fear. There was blood on her hands.

  The vertical rock came to an end, and they found themselves on a flat, exposed space that was near the Pinnacle. They crunched and clinked across it, exhausted. Halfway to the Pinnacle, he shrugged off his pack and let it fall to the ground. Then he levered Jinneth’s from her back, and caught her in his arms as she swayed. They stood there for a moment on the last approach to the peak, and she leaned her forehead against his shoulder.

  ‘My death is here,’ she whispered, and sobbed silently. He stroked her ice-clogged hair, but had nothing to say. He had come too far. When they started forward again, they walked hand in hand, like children drawing comfort from one another.

  And at last they were there.

  He had half-expected to see the rope dangling, the frayed end hanging loose, but there was nothing except the bare granite, the scattered snow, the darkness beyond and the gulf of the valley he knew was waiting below. There was a fall as long as a river there, out in the moonlit night, and at the end of it Minginish slept. If it were daylight, he would be able to see the fiefs and villages around Talisker, perhaps even the high-sided shape of the city itself, with the river coiling round its feet and the expanse of the Vale looming off into infinite space. Or perhaps he would only see Glenbrittle, the houses trailing along the narrow road in the bottom of the glen. The house where Jenny had been born that was empty now.

  He and Jinneth crouched on the ledge where he had belayed from, a year and a century ago, and knew they were not alone.

  She was with them, on the ledge. Jinneth shrank from her, but Riven stared, frozen. He could not move.

  The dark girl.

  She wore her thin shift still, and her hands and feet were bloody. She was starvation-thin, the face below the cheekbones sucked in and emaciated. It seemed as though her bones were ready to break through her skin. She was smiling.

  Jinneth screamed and leapt up, but one look from the grey eyes paralysed her. The two women stared at each other, the face of one suffused with terror, the other inhumanly peaceful, calm as a corpse. Riven was rooted to the rock between them.

  A creaking gasp of breath came from Jinneth’s mouth. She shook her head wildly, her eyes never leaving those of her twin. Then, slowly, she stepped outwards—

  ‘No!’ Riven shouted, and he lunged forward. Too late.

  She toppled over the lip of the ledge without a sound, spun once, her face a flash in the moonlight, and then was gone.

  Jesus Christ!

  Riven pressed his mouth against the stone of the ledge and put his hands over his ears. He did not want to see, did not want to hear—he did not want to hear the thud, could not bear to hear her scream. He thought he heard his own voice shouting frantically, far away, had a momentary impression of sunshine on his back. Then it was gone. The stone was as cold as death on his cheek. There was ice between his fingers.

  And a tentative hand on his arm. He jumped back from the edge like a hare, eyes wide.

  ‘Michael,’ she said.

  Jennifer MacKinnon sat on the stone before him, concern on her face, a smile wavering on her lips; that smile, with the quirk at the corner she had got from her father.

  His wife. Not some facsimile, not a vision or a dream. His wife, here before him on the mountain that had killed her.

  He reached out one chapped, rock-scored hand towards her, and her cool fingers entwined with his and gripped them. Human. Real.

  ‘Jenny?’ he whispered, his voice cracked and raw.

  She looked puzzled a moment, and thoughtful. Then her brow cleared. ‘Jenny. Yes. I suppose that is who I am.’

  ‘You—you’re alive.’

  She smiled again. ‘I am more than alive. I am in the story, as are you now. There will be tales told of you from these mountains to the sea. You have become a hero, Michael.’

  His eyes filled with tears. ‘I don’t want to be. I want you back. I want you home.’

  She shook her head. ‘That part of the tale is finished. It cannot be told again. I cannot go back.’

  He knew then that this was not the woman who had climbed Sgurr Dearg with him that day. Not her, not entirely. And the mourning rose in him as he realised anew that his Jenny was lost for ever.

  ‘Minginish is the name of the land where you made your home,’ she said. ‘It is here, also, because you never left it. It surrounds and is part of the world you know as your own, even as the people you knew in one world became people in another.’

  ‘Who was Jinneth?’ Riven asked.

  ‘She was part of you, and part of me. She was the fears you had for me, and more. Magic, Michael. Do you believe in it now?’

  There was a dull ache in him, a
pain he had known before.

  ‘Yes, I do. Now.’

  ‘Minginish is made of magic. It is not immutable, as the world of Skye is. It changes constantly, and you are what changes it. You were born with a story in your head, a story that was so close to the truth of this world that it was drawn to you and entered you. Who knows why or how? Maybe you will find out some day. But you were given some of this world’s magic. You became its arbiter. You changed it and it changed you. But too much of the essence of this world was taken by you. The connection became too strong, and when—when I died, it was like an explosion. For a time all the magic came back in one direction—to Minginish, creating... Jennifer. The dark girl who has shadowed you since you came here. Because she loved you.’

  He looked up at that, and saw that her eyes were fixed out in the yawning gulf below, and her face was twisted with baffled grief.

  ‘The magic was in me,’ she went on, ‘trapped in me. And the land began to die. Only when I was made whole was it released.’

  ‘Jinneth, and I, coming here?’ Riven asked her, and she nodded.

  ‘Now the land can heal itself, and I am whole.’

  He tried to pull her close to him, but she would not move.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Death is final,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘Yet the story continues.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I forgot. Life goes on,’ he said harshly, blinking the treacherous tears from his eyes. ‘And what am I left with?’

  Her hand stroked his cheek. ‘A tale worth telling, perhaps. A reason to go on.’

  ‘It’s gone, isn’t it? I’m back again.’

  She nodded once more, silent.

  ‘Will I ever enter Minginish again?’

  ‘You are going home now, and you are going to forget. You would never be content, otherwise.’

  ‘Forget everything?’ he asked, and he remembered Giants and Dwarves, mountains and cities, friends and foes, and a lover who had been almost a child.

  Everything.

  A BREEZE HAD picked up, and was curling round the mountain as though on an errand. He was cold. His clothes were worn and thin and the stones were eating into his back. Dawn was bleeding into the eastern sky, blooming over the jagged darkness of the Cuillin Mountains. He shivered, wrapping his arms around his chest.