02 Unicorn Rider (22 page)

He breathed deeply, certain that he could smell blood in the air, and watched as the city gates were opened to let out a stream of armoured troops. They were heading to Flint Lock to set up a defensive perimeter. There job would be to ensure that nothing got into the fort, and more importantly, nothing got out.

What Lord Citrine didn’t know was there was one person in the fort for whom getting out was a very remote possibility indeed.

Cloud sat with his back to the wall of the prison cell, watching as a thin tendril of mist seeped out of the door lock and transformed into Sulphur. The ghost looked puzzled.

‘Any luck yet?’ Cloud asked.

‘Not yet,’ Sulphur said. ‘It took me over a year to move one finger of that skeleton, trying to move the locking mechanism on this door could take considerably longer.’

‘No problem,’ Cloud said. ‘Take as long as you need. I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Yes, very funny, I’m sure. I am doing my best over here, you know? I was never good with locks when I was alive, but I can assure you they’re harder to pick when you don’t have hands.’

Cloud turned to the window. The sun had already reached the highest point in the sky, and was now beginning its gradual descent. Another night was approaching. He dared not think about how many days and nights might pass before he ever got to see more of the world than what he could see through that tiny barred window.

Sulphur sighed, or at least made a noise that would have been a sigh if he had lungs to sigh with. ‘I’m truly sorry I can’t get you out of here sooner,’ he said, gliding across the cell to sit beside Cloud. ‘It’s just like me to waste my time trying to get a stupid skeleton to dance rather than working on something that could actually have been of use to somebody. I never was too bright.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘I must say, you seem to be taking this all very calmly. When I was brought down here I wailed and screamed for days... Until I hanged myself, of course.’

‘You hanged yourself? Any particular reason why?’

‘Because I couldn’t stand to be stuck in here any longer. As an escape attempt, it was not particularly successful.’

‘Sorry it didn’t work out for you.’

Sulphur shrugged. ‘Can’t win them all, can you? So tell me, how is it you are able to stay so calm?’

‘Because this hasn’t really come as much of a surprise to me. A very long time ago, when I was still a Wing Warrior, I had a vision.’

‘So you predicted this would happen? Fascinating. How long did you predict you would be locked up for?’

‘It was hard to tell from the vision.’ He managed a smile as once again he looked out of the window at the world beyond his reach. ‘But as long as I stay locked up in here, I know the person I saw in my vision was me, and not my son.’

‘Ah, of course. Family. I don’t have any family. I had a wife, but I don’t even know if she’s alive any more. Perhaps if I had decided to have children I might not be here now. Typical of me though, always looking for happiness in the wrong places.’

‘Are you expecting sympathy?’

‘No. I’ve had a long time to come to terms with what I am. I have behaved in a way totally unfitting for a lord.’

‘Hold on, are you saying you’re a lord? That’s quite a claim for a self–confessed murderer who committed suicide in prison.’

‘Doesn’t make it any less true.’

‘Of course it doesn’t. You’re a lord. I believe you.’

‘I’m not just a lord, I’m the lord.’

‘The lord of what?’

Sulphur puffed out his chest with self–importance. ‘The lord of Crystal Shine, of course. The Lord Citrine.’ 

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

As Nimbus and Carnelian travelled deeper into the shadows of the Grey Mountains, the path they were following became more treacherous, suddenly falling away into seemingly bottomless pits, or twisting through craggy rocks that even a mountain goat would find difficult to move through. One moment Nimbus would be struggling to clamber up a steep rock face, and the next minute he would be slipping and sliding through thorny undergrowth that snatched at his hair and face. This was clearly a path that had not been used for some time, and he could not help but be afraid: wherever Carnelian was taking him, it was definitely not a place that people were going out of their way to visit.

‘Are you afraid?’ Carnelian asked, helping Nimbus onto a gigantic boulder and then scrambling up behind him.

‘I don’t like this place,’ Nimbus said, honestly. ‘I feel like it doesn’t want us here.’

‘I very much doubt it does. People have not travelled through the Grey Mountains for many years. The mountains probably like it that way. Come on, keep moving. I don’t fancy crawling around here once the sun sets. You never know what you might end up standing in.’

They moved on, clawing and climbing, fighting the landscape every step of the way; and Nimbus was unable to hide his relief when the narrow path finally widened out into a clearing at the base of a particularly imposing rock face.

As Nimbus and Carnelian entered the clearing, the two wyverns that had been following them settled on rocky perches where they could see everything that was about to unfold.

Nimbus paused to take in every detail of his surroundings. The clearing was dotted with the remains of withered trees that sprang out of the stony earth like the talons of giant birds, and every rock was as sharp as a dragon’s tooth.

‘Where are we?’ Nimbus asked, one hand twitching nervously by his empty sword sheath.

‘We’re here,’ Carnelian said, indicating a cleft in the craggy rock face. ‘See?’

‘What is that?’

‘On the far side of the rock is the place you seek. The place where only the dead may go.’

As Nimbus watched, the gash in the ragged stone seemed to breathe, expelling a rolling mist from its dark interior. ‘Doesn’t look so bad,’ he lied.

‘But this place is bad,’ Carnelian said. ‘There was much death here, and the stones remember it all.’

Nimbus took a few deep breaths. ‘Best take a closer look then.’

They crossed the clearing, but as they approached the cave mouth Carnelian rested one hand on Nimbus’s chest. ‘Be careful,’ he whispered. ‘If you take even one step into that cave, then you will be lost to the dead.’

Nimbus peered into the gloom. Heaps of bone fragments poked up through the low–lying mist. The hollow eyes of a hundred skulls peered back at him menacingly.

‘What is wrong with this place?’ Nimbus asked.

‘Everything,’ Carnelian said.

Nimbus felt an unseen presence move past his face, and Captain Spectre materialised beside him. ‘There are hundreds of spirits here,’ he said. ‘But there is one, more powerful than all the others. One that is not quite of this world, or quite of the other.’

‘It is the vampyr,’ Carnelian said. ‘The blood drinker.’

‘We shouldn’t be here,’ Spectre said. ‘The vampyr is a force even the dragons did not attempt to tame.’

‘These people,’ Carnelian indicated the scattered piles of bone. ‘These people did not live long enough to see him.’

‘Okay,’ Nimbus said, ‘enough riddles. Somebody tell me what’s going on here.’

‘You do not know the legend of the vampyr?’ Captain Spectre asked. ‘I am surprised. It is a horror story that was told time and time again when I was a child.’

‘No offence, but it’s been a long time since you were a child,’ Carnelian said.

‘No offence taken. Would you like to enlighten Nimbus about the place you’ve brought him, or shall I?’

‘You can do the honours.’

Spectre took a good look at the cave. It ran straight as a stab wound, and in the very far distance was a small speck of pale light that seemed no more welcoming than the gloom it pierced. ‘They are screaming,’ he said.

‘I can’t hear anything,’ Nimbus said.

‘This cave runs through the heart of Blood Mountain, and on the far side lies the village of Blood Stone. It is a village that has been abandoned for many years now. Abandoned by all but the dead, and the thing they call the vampyr. It is the dead that scream.’

‘What is the vampyr?’

‘He is... was... a man. A man of such vitality, such strength of will, he wasn’t prepared to die. There have been such people in the past. They die, but their spirit remains, not because their spirits are not at peace like mine, but because they simply do not want to go. The vampyr went one step further, his spirit dug in deep, it clung to his human body, and it clung to the village he lived in, and it clung to the mountain in whose shadow the village had been built.’

‘So he defied death?’

‘He tried, but he was not a magic user, not a necromancer. He was unable to resist the lure of the other world. He died. But even then his spirit would not let go. As it was dragged over to the other side, everything it clung to was dragged as well. His body, the village, all the villagers, even the mountain. A whole section of our world crossed over with his spirit, and that is how this place was made. The cave marks the entrance. If you step through, you are crossing the barrier between life and death.’

‘And what about this man? This vampyr?’

‘He is still here, a spirit gripping on to the flesh he inhabited in life. Unable to leave the shadow of Blood Mountain unless he constantly drinks the blood of humans to stop his body from drying out and crumbling to dust like it should have done years ago.’

‘And he serves Crow?’

‘The vampyr serves no–one, but perhaps he is helping Crow by hiding the unicorn.’

Nimbus sat in front of the cave, letting the ghostly strands of mist wrap around him like the coils of a spirit snake. ‘What did he have to live for?’ he asked, as he stared into the darkness. ‘He was so determined to live, he dragged every man, woman, and child he knew into death with him. He was so reluctant to leave this world behind that he took massive chunks of it with him into a place where normally only a spirit may go. What could possibly drive a man to such actions? What could there possibly be that would make him want to hold on so tightly?’

‘Love,’ Carnelian said. ‘The same thing that makes us all want to defy death.’

A thoughtful silence fell over the clearing. The sun continued to set, bleeding the world of its colour.

Nimbus removed the shard of stone from around his neck and looked at it thoughtfully. ‘We’ve still got a problem,’ he said.

‘I know,’ Captain Spectre said. ‘It’s a long tunnel. You can’t set foot inside, and I can’t move more than a few feet away from that rock you’re carrying.’

‘Quite a predicament,’ Carnelian agreed, cheerfully. ‘But if I was you, I’d be more worried about him.’

‘Who?’ Nimbus asked.

Carnelian pointed. ‘Him.’

A soldier in silver armour was striding across the clearing with his sword drawn. His face was obscured behind a grilled visor, and his blood–red cloak billowed.

‘Nimbus,’ the soldier said, in a voice that sounded like he was talking through a mouth full of phlegm. ‘I have been waiting here for you for a long time.’

‘I hope I was worth the wait,’ Nimbus said, putting as much bravado into his voice as the wedge of fear in his gut would allow.

‘I have been waiting here, to kill you,’ the soldier said.

Nimbus sighed wearily as he got to his feet. ‘I guessed you weren’t here to throw me a surprise party.’ He turned to Captain Spectre. ‘Probably best you get back in the stone,’ he said.

‘As you wish,’ Spectre said, dissolving into a stream of formless vapour. ‘Try not to get yourself killed.’

Nimbus slipped the necklace back over his head. ‘I’ll do my best.’

At the edge of the clearing, the wyverns cawed and fluttered impatiently. They had never looked quite as hungry as they did at that very moment.

‘Carnelian,’ Nimbus said. ‘I consider us even. I rescued you, and you brought me here. Your debt to me is paid in full, and I don’t expect anything more of you. But if you wouldn’t mind terribly keeping those wyverns occupied while I deal with this soldier, I would really appreciate it.’

Carnelian grinned, clapping his hands together. ‘You’re lucky I’m not keen on dragons,’ he said. ‘Besides, it’s ages since I had a good fight. Don’t worry about the wyverns. They won’t know what’s hit them.’

‘Thank you, Carnelian. It’s strange, but despite everything, I feel like you have been a good friend to me.’

Carnelian’s grin faltered. ‘Friend?’

‘You’ve not been the best travelling companion, but I never could have got this far without you, and for that you will always have my friendship.’

‘I...’ Carnelian scratched his head. ‘I’ve never had a friend.’

Nimbus clapped the cyclops on the shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s go and show some bad guys the error of their ways.’

‘But I am one of the bad guys,’ Carnelian muttered to himself, watching glumly as Nimbus walked out to meet the approaching soldier. ‘You aren’t supposed to be my friend. It’s going to make it so much harder to kill your sister.’

‘Hello,’ Nimbus said to the soldier. ‘It’s very nice of you to have waited here for me, but really, there was no need.’

The soldier chuckled, deep in his liquid–filled throat. ‘My master desires you dead, Nimbus.’

‘Who’s your master? No. Let me guess. Crow, right?’

‘There is only one master.’

‘I’ll take that as a yes. Now, I realise you’re a hired henchman, and you have a job to do, and that job involves killing me, but I have my own plans, and absolutely none of them involve me being dead. So, let’s cut the chat and go straight to the bit where I knock you out.’

The soldier tilted his head to one side quizzically. ‘Time to die now, Little Boy,’ he said.

Nimbus rolled his neck, shook the tension out of his shoulders, and flexed his hands. He had only had one lesson in unarmed combat, and Obsidian had spent most of that lesson talking about how it was a bad idea to be unarmed in a fight in the first place.

Desperately, Nimbus tried to remember some of the few moves he had been shown. There was some kind of twist move, he remembered. He thought that if the soldier suddenly lunged at him with the sword, then he would be able to dodge to one side and perhaps use that move to disarm the soldier before he could strike again.