A Minstrel’s Quest (The Trouble with Magic Book 4) (24 page)

He would never have admitted it to anyone, but deep down he was terrified. Despite constant reassurances from Lamak, the very thought of being whisked through the air left him with an unpleasant churning sensation in his stomach. The bird hadn’t even explained how he was going to do it.

Soon Corlin was running out of excuses to delay the moment, and Lamak was becoming impatient.
We shall lose the light soon. It’s time to go.”

The huge bird spread his wings, powered effortlessly into the air and made a great sweeping circle before heading straight for Corlin, strong feathered legs stretched forward.

Eyes wide in disbelief, Corlin raised his hands. “Just one more minute, I have to...whoa!”

Long curved talons grasped and locked, and the minstrel was a hundred feet up in the air before he realised that the screams he could hear were his own.

Lamak’s baritone rolled smoothly into his mind.
“Please be quiet, Corlin. You’re probably attracting more attention than we need.”

Corlin clenched his teeth and pressed his lips tight together. The downdraught from Lamak’s wings sucked at his clothing and drew blasts of icy wind past his ears. Suspended face up beneath the Lammergeyer’s belly, all he could see was the great bird’s broad chest, the beard of long bronze-hued feathers under his throat, and a portion of ice-blue sky. Lamak began to soar, his wings motionless in straight level flight. His ride now more comfortable, after a few minutes Corlin dared to turn his head and look down over his shoulder. He choked back the scream which threatened to erupt from his throat, and swallowed hard as he watched the craggy shoulders of the mountain rushing up to meet him.

Inches above a broad shelf, at the far end of a long and partly collapsed saddle-back, Lamak hovered, extending his legs until Corlin’s feet touched the rock. As the minstrel sank to his knees, the great bird released his talons and back-winged until he was clear of the shelf.

Riding almost motionless on a rising column of air, he fixed his carmine-eyed gaze on Corlin. “
Good luck Corlin Bentfoot. Megan and the dog are making their way down to the valley.”

Stunned, perplexed and still trembling from the effects of his flight, Corlin could only watch as Lamak dipped his tremendous wings and powered up into the sky.

His deep tones filtered into Corlin’s mind.
“My part in your quest is almost complete. Until then I wish you success.”

Regretting the departure of the big gentle bird, and now without the company of Megan and Luma, Corlin felt himself teetering on the edge of the downward slope into hopelessness and self-pity. Giving himself a mental shake, he leaned on his staff, thankful for its restful power, and looked back to see if he could catch sight of the overhang. The sun had already slipped behind the mountain of the Grollarts, and everything below him was a vast and uneven landscape of shifting and rapidly darkening shadows. He could make out the dark bulk of the smaller mountain which lay between, and realised that even in broad daylight the overhang would be out of sight. He also realised that he needed to find somewhere to spend the night.

A few yards beyond the rock-shelf, a wide natural stairway of weathered rock led upwards, and Corlin hurried towards it. The steps were uneven, some deep, some little more than a narrow ledge, but as he peered up towards the peak, he noticed that each of the steps had a shallow dip worn smooth in the centre. His heart thumped. Gripping his staff, he placed his foot on the bottom step and started upwards towards the Fellgate. Corlin felt as though he had stepped into another world. Even with the power of his staff helping him, the staircase proved difficult to climb, and Corlin stopped every few minutes to catch his breath and to listen.

He could hear nothing, and it seemed to him as thought the pounding of his heart was loud enough for the whole world to hear. Everything was very still, almost as if the mountain lay in wait, ready for Corlin to make one false step. The stair angled up to the right into deep shadow, and he balanced on a narrow ledge, sweat beading his forehead despite the intense cold. He looked up to the top, and a groan of despair escaped his lips. The stairway ended, vanishing into a black void, a gaping mouth which even seemed to devour what little daylight remained. Corlin knew he was looking into Fellgate.

A gentle vibration rippled across his shoulders and down his back. Seconds later a soft melodic humming drifted into the air around him. Taking care not to overbalance, he turned and made his slow way back to a broad but shallow step where he could move about in comparative safety. Leaning his staff against the staircase, he un-slung the gimalin from his back and removed its soft leather case. The strings fell silent as he placed the strap over his shoulder and settled the instrument against his body. He waited, wondering whether the gimalin would sing of its own volition as it had when he was lost in the Whispering Forest.

The final hues of sunset were lighting the sky when, from the darkness above him came a sound like a deep yearning sigh. Corlin grabbed up his staff and picked his way back up the stairs, until he was within sight of the dense dark void. From within its depths the sigh came again. His heart pounding, Corlin climbed the last few steps, leaned forward and tried to peer into the impenetrable blackness.

Filled with longing, a thin tremulous voice struggled out into the chill air. “Play... the g...g...gimalin for me, C...Corlin Bentfoot.”

The minstrel hesitated until, from the confusion of his whirling thoughts, he remembered that it was Lamak who had insisted he bring the gimalin.

The voice called again. “P...play for mmm...me, Corlin Bentfoot.”

Not even certain that the instrument would still be in tune, Corlin fingered a simple arpeggio. The music floated into the dark.

As the sound of the notes faded, the voice whispered “Walk forward Corlin, and enter my domain.”

Like thick fog in an autumn breeze, the black curtain shredded and fragmented, swirling away to reveal a narrow corridor, its ten paces illuminated by a soft green glow which seemed to emanate from the rock itself. Corlin looked back over his shoulder, but night had shrouded the mountain, plunging the stairway into perilous darkness. He turned back to the entrance. As he stepped forward, the rock wall at the far side of a small circular chamber at the end of the corridor seemed to melt and shift. Veins of precious metals and clusters of gemstones flowed and swirled, the rock which bore them re-conforming into a grotesque travesty of what Corlin could only think of as a man. He swallowed hard and tried to look away, but found his gaze transfixed by the awful scene. Outlined with silver and partially distorted by a vein of quartz, a mouth-like opening appeared near the top of the hideously malformed shape.

From this twisted orifice, the voice repeated its request. “Play for me, Corlin Bentfoot.”

Winding up every strand of his courage, Corlin moved closer, flexing stiffened fingers and trying not to breathe in too much of the tantalisingly familiar and acrid stench which had begun to drift into the narrow chamber. He leaned his staff against the wall, thought for a moment, and touched his fingers to the gimalin’s strings. As the first few notes of a simple melody rose into the tainted air, the surface of the rock above the twisted mouth rippled and furrowed. Red-rimmed and cold, a pair of ash-grey eyes opened above a small rocky protrusion that struggled to be a nose. Sickened, yet fascinated, Corlin moved closer as the music flowed round the tiny chamber and over the walls. Agonised groans mingled in screeching discord with grinding rock and the sound of the gimalin, as unwilling granite was forced to morph into something resembling a man.

A strange notion prodded Corlin’s mind, and he stopped playing. Gripped within a thick vein of sparkling white quartz, a bony hand, the nails torn and bleeding, made frantic clutching motions.

Freed from the restraint of its stone caul, the twisted mouth dribbled dark brown viscous spittle as it worked in a desperate effort to form words. “Don’...don’ stop playing! They...they...!”

The malformed face contorted with despair, and a high-pitched shriek of sheer desperation forced Corlin to turn away. For a brief moment something glinted, caught in the green light which seeped from the corridor’s walls. Shimmering shapes, curved and slender like willow leaves, floated along about eighteen inches above the floor. Corlin could see nothing tangible but some kind of instinct told him that something was moving towards him in steady procession, and reflecting the light. A vague outline glimmered less than a yard away, a simple sketch against the shadows, but it was enough. Corlin cursed under his breath as he saw his staff still leaning against the corridor wall, and surrounded by an approaching swarm of green reflecting shapes. The small blue jewel set into the head of the staff had begun to glow.

With a sound like gravel and sliding scree, the voice gurgled and screeched. “P...play Corlin! Free me! Don’ let them...k-k-kill!”

He gave a strangled gasp as though the effort was too much, and the mired and contorted mouth closed.

Things began to fall into place in Corlin’s mind, and he turned his back on the hysterical part rock, part man. He felt sure that he knew what crept along the corridor, cloaked by their invisibility yet betrayed by a trick of light. Taking care not to touch the strings of the gimalin, he moved, one slow step at a time towards his staff, praying that his guess that adult Fade-lizards couldn’t fly was accurate. He could feel their bodies, soft and yielding against his legs. Muscles tensing he edged forward, battling with the creatures’ tear-inducing stench and the prospect of invisible jaws armed with needle teeth or sucking mouthparts about to sink into his flesh. The staff was within touching distance. He reached forward. His fingertips touched the carved wood just as something collided with his leg. The staff teetered, slid across the wall, striking and bouncing across invisible bodies as it toppled floor-wards, the glowing jewel pulsing.

Corlin felt his gorge rising as, revealed by the touch of the jewel, the creature attempted to crawl away through the crush of its glistening and now semi-opaque companions. Deathly white and eyeless, the yard-long, smooth-bodied Fade-lizards thrashed and squirmed, trampling each other with sucker-lined feet in their efforts to escape the effects of the magical staff. Set at the front of a short blunt snout, long vertical nostrils quivered above round pale pink-lipped mouths which gaped open to reveal close-packed triple rows of tiny, backward-curved teeth. Taking care not to make any sudden moves, Corlin suppressed his revulsion, bent down and retrieved the fallen staff. He could hear a new noise, like voices speaking in another room, but the sounds were not words, just a flow of unintelligible noise assaulting his mind. On an impulse he held the staff high in the air, smiling with grim satisfaction as, with incredible speed, the Fade-lizards revealed the reason for their name.

From the mouth in the rock, came a wail of horrified protest. “Kill them! Pl...play Corlin. Pleeease! Free me!”

With the tip of his staff placed carefully between his feet, Corlin allowed himself a little sigh of relief as he gripped it with both hands and let it take his weight. Feeling the Fade-lizards pushing with gentle persistence against his legs, he took a small step forward. The mass of cold bodies closed up around him. He began to shuffle forward, the lizards surging, silent and determined, round his feet towards the contorted rock which held the grey-faced man so securely within it. Wondering why he hadn’t thought of it before, he slipped the gimalin under his arm so that the instrument hung upside down and out of harm’s way across his back.

The skeletal hand clutched, and the already twisted mouth contorted even further in a snarl of rage. “Play your gimalin and free me Corlin Bentfoot, or your quest has ended.”

The choking, stammering speech had been refined to a nasal wheedling which Corlin found equally unpleasant. He leaned on his staff and glared into the red-rimmed eyes. “Not to mention the stench in here already, something else stinks about this. Who are you, and how did you end up in here?”

In a pitiful attempt at a sneer, the corner of the mouth curled upwards, revealing broken and blackened teeth. “You will not say my name, but you know who I am.”

Corlin felt as though he had been punched in the stomach. If this living nightmare was Malchevolus, who was Jacca? He lowered his head and studied his feet, mainly to conceal his shock but also to give him a little thinking space.

When he looked up, his eyebrows drew together in a deep frown. “So, what’s the story of this rock you’re stuck in...part of...whatever?”

Malchevolus attempted a scowl and simply succeeded in looking more hideous. “They did it. Those loathsome and deceitful lizards you’re consorting with. They hid the object you seek, and then imprisoned me.” He gave an insane, high-pitched shriek. “They can chew rock, you know. Very clever, nasty beasties.”

At this moment, Corlin was desperate for two things; to breathe fresh air and to empty his bursting bladder. He could also feel the pressure of the invisible lizards against his legs, and with a frisson of alarm he wondered whether the ‘nasty beasties’ would let him out. Wary of stepping on an invisible foot, he turned round in an awkward shuffle to face the corridor entrance.

Almost grudgingly he muttered “It’d make things a darned sight easier if I could see you.”

His skin crawled as a manic cackle came from behind him. “Never see ‘em; sneaky, slippy, hidey-hidey things.”