Pilgrim (34 page)

F
ar to the north, the old horse stood in the courtyard of Gorkenfort, sinking deeper into dream as the snow eddied fitfully about him.

Nothing moved, saved the flurries of snow.

Drago and Faraday, the feathered lizard balancing on Drago’s pack and grabbing playfully at the top of his staff, were well north of the fort, climbing into the Icescarp Alps.

Belaguez had not even missed them, nor noticed the man’s gentle pat on his shoulder, nor the woman’s soft kiss on his nose as they left him.

Left him to Urbeth.

The snow gusted strongly now, and it piled in drifts about the horse’s fetlocks, and in a strange, shifting mound on his rump.

He dreamed on.

A shape moved within the snow.

Urbeth.

She growled, but the horse’s only response was a thin twitching of the skin on his near shoulder. Urbeth’s growl barely penetrated his dreaming.

She snarled, vicious, a hunter scenting prey, but still the horse did not wake.

There was a billowing of snow as a sudden gust of wind
scraped it from the ground, and out of this cloud of snow and ice sprang Urbeth.

First her gaping, scarlet snarling mouth, then the glint of her talons, and then her massive body sliding after. Straight for the horse.

He did not notice.

Urbeth landed on his back, digging her talons into his flanks and pot belly, and sinking her teeth around his windpipe in the predator’s death clutch.

Belaguez screamed awake. His whole body spasmed, then convulsed in a great buck, trying to throw the bear off.
I am a Skraeling, come to eat you
, she whispered into his mind, and suddenly she
was
a wraith in Belaguez’s understanding, and he bucked and struggled, his breath wheezing horribly through his tortured throat.

Blood ran in rivulets down his body and stained the snow.

An IceWorm, come to eat you!

And Belaguez could
see
the frightful horse-head of the worm plunging for his body, could see it vomiting its Skraelings until he was covered in the writhing wraiths.

Danger! Danger!

Something surged within the old horse, some vague memory of strength, and a sudden spurt of his old intelligence and cunning. He gave a huge buck and then, instead of landing on stiff, splayed legs, allowed himself to collapse, rolling over in the snow.

Urbeth lost her grip, and she was thrown several paces.

In one smooth movement, strange in such an ancient horse, Belaguez gained his feet and, instead of running, attacked. His head snaked down towards Urbeth, still lying on the ground, and she seized his nose in her jaws.

Blood sprayed about them, and Belaguez shook his head, trying to dislodge her.

He was angry now, very angry, and fear seemed a thing of the past.

Urbeth suddenly let go, and although Belaguez slipped, he
re-found his balance almost instantly. He reared, bringing his stiff forelegs down on Urbeth.

She rolled out of the way barely in time, and scrambled to her feet. She reached out a huge paw and raked it down Belaguez’s exposed shoulder, and the horse screamed in fury.

Again he turned and attacked, and now the bear was laughing, and doing enough only to tease the stallion and to keep just out of his reach.

Belaguez! Belaguez! Do you want to run, Belaguez?

The stallion stopped and stared at the bear, his ears flickering uncertainly. He was streaked with blood, but under that blood his flesh seemed firmer, his neck more muscled, his belly tauter than it had been previously.

Do you want to fight, Belaguez?

The stallion reared and screamed, his fore-hooves plunging through the air. Urbeth reached out with a lazy paw and again swiped it through the air, but this time it did not come near the horse. Instead, a spray of tiny stars fanned out from her paw and caught themselves in the stallion’s plunging mane and tail.

He halted, surprised, then lowered his head and shook it, snorting.

“Run, Belaguez,” Urbeth whispered, and the magnificent white and silver stallion pranced about uncertainly, not knowing what to make of the stars that blazed out from his forehead and neck and streamed from his haunches.

Suddenly he reared and screamed again. The dream was gone, forgotten, and Belaguez was alive and young and angry, and he needed something to vent that anger on.

Run, Belaguez! South! South! South!

And Belaguez plunged one more time, shaking his head at Urbeth, and then he was through the Keep’s gate and skidding through the deserted streets of Gorkentown.

He exploded through the town’s gates into the snow-covered wastes beyond, a shifting apparition of white and silver.

South! South! South!

South! Nothing stood in his way. A league south of Gorkenfort a Demon-controlled bull plunged at him, but Belaguez sailed into a mighty leap that carried him well over the bull and five paces the other side. His nostrils flared red and he screamed again, but he did not stop to challenge the bull. He ran south, ever south, sometimes so indistinct against the snow he seemed only a streaming, glittering whirlwind.

The terror of the night could not touch him, and the hunger of the dawn shaken off without thought.

Risen from death, and filled with the magic of the land his bones had lain on for twenty years, Belaguez ran south, an angry foam of stars.

T
hey sat their black beasts and stared into the waters of the Lake of Life. The trip through the blue mists surrounding Sigholt had not been difficult; the mists had hindered, but not overly, and the Demons had laughed at the inefficiencies of the bridge’s magic.

“She is such an inconsequential thing,” Sheol had observed as they had ridden to the shores of the Lake, “but irritating. And after we finish here, then I think we might…remove…her.”

And yet even as she boasted of the bridge’s destruction, Sheol, as all the Demons, felt the first stir of danger emanating from the Keep. Something was wrong there. Something dangerous. Something…something to be wary of.

Did the Enemy somehow—impossibly—wait in its shadows?

“This Lake is still water,” StarLaughter said, not realising the concerns shared by the Demons. Her child was clasped, as ever, protectively to her breast. “How do we enter the Repository?”

“With ease,” Barzula said. “The waters will not hinder us. And after we have collected what we need from here, we will have to go
down
no more.”

“What do you mean?” StarLaughter asked.

“You will see,” Rox replied, irritatingly obtuse. He looked at the child in StarLaughter’s arms, and his gaze softened slightly.

“Your boy,” he said, placing a very slight—and somewhat sarcastic—emphasis on the
your
, “will be too large to carry once breath has infused his body. You will have to relinquish him to his mount.”

StarLaughter glanced at the spare black mount, and her face suffused with a deep unreadable emotion.

“Soon,” she whispered. “Soon! After so many years.”

The Demons turned back to a contemplation of the Lake’s surroundings. Directly across from them was a substantial town.

Deserted. A few doors swung in the wind, and a shutter slammed shut so violently the Demons heard the sound from across the Lake.

“They have fled,” Raspu observed.

The others shrugged. “It will do them little good,” Sheol replied. “We shall feed from them eventually.”

From the town their eyes drifted over the similarly deserted barracks of the Lake Guard and, as the barracks held no interest for them, continued around the curve of the Lake to the great silvery stone Keep of Sigholt itself.

“Magic,” Sheol said in a soft voice. “StarLaughter? Tell me what you know of this place.”

StarLaughter adjusted her child a little more comfortably. “Sigholt is a place of great magic, although few know where it originates, nor even how to use it. When I lived in this land as wife to WolfStar, it was used part as a residence for the Talon and his family, and part as a staging post on the long flight from the Minaret Peaks to our summer palace in Talon Spike. The bridge guards Sigholt, and demands of all who enter if they are true, or not.”

“True to what?” Rox asked.

StarLaughter shrugged. “I do not know. And when I lived, and entered Sigholt, the bridge always let me past.”

Barzula stared at her, then burst into loud laughter. “But you are hardly ‘true’, StarLaughter! Not to this land, nor to anything
in
this land!”

StarLaughter kept her eyes on the Keep. “I was then,” she said softly.

“The question must be,” Rox said, ignoring both Barzula’s mirth and StarLaughter’s reply, “is the Keep
still
magic? If so, why? Where does the magic emanate from? The Star Dance is dead, and surely this Keep has little connection to the great forests far to the east.”

“And which we will shortly deal with, anyway,” Sheol said, almost automatically. “But if the Keep is still enchanted, then
how
?”

She paused, then turned slightly so she could see all her companion Demons. “It makes me uncomfortable, for I would know why.” Her voice changed, became harder. “As I would know how Drago survived the Star Gate.”

The TimeKeepers had come to repent of their tardiness in disposing of Drago. They’d been distracted by those magicians, still not found, and by the time they’d thought to look for Drago, he’d disappeared.

There was silence as all contemplated Drago.

“When we find him,” StarLaughter eventually said, “may
I
kill him?”

“Why is it you claim all the joy in revenge and killing?” Barzula asked, a petulant lilt in his voice. “First you want WolfStar, now Drago.”

She shrugged slightly. “They both thought to use me.”

“When we find Drago again,” Sheol said, “he is
mine
! He thought to trick me of his death once…he will not do it again.”

StarLaughter thought about protesting her right to Drago, then let it drop. Sheol seemed particularly strident over this issue, and besides, her revenge on WolfStar would be sweet enough by itself.

“As you wish,” StarLaughter said, and Sheol smiled at her.

Always as I wish, you irritating birdwoman.

“Now,” Sheol said, and turned to Raspu, “will you work
your
magic on this Lake?”

Raspu bared his teeth, and hissed. He dropped the reins of his horse, and flexed his fingers into claws.

Watching, StarLaughter was struck by how skeletal they seemed.

With jerky movements, almost as if he was consumed by a desire so great his muscles had gone into involuntary spasm, Raspu threw a leg over his mount’s wither, slid to the ground, and tore the clothing from his body.

He stood, naked and trembling, staring at the water.

StarLaughter suppressed a grimace. Raspu’s body was so emaciated his bones almost protruded through his skin, and boils and pitted scars of long dried-out pustules littered his body from the base of his neck to the backs of his knees. As the Demon began to jerk and tremble, she ran her eyes down his body, noting every sore, the knotted, swollen joints of his limbs, and the withered, browned genitals shrunken up against his pubic bone.

StarLaughter had once considered Raspu a potential lover, but the sight of his naked body dissuaded her completely. Even Drago, as boring as he had been, at least had a body worth caressing.

If Raspu was aware of StarLaughter’s caustic scrutiny, he gave no indication of it. His attention was completely on the waters of the Lake of Life before him. He stepped towards it, rocking violently on his feet as his muscles continued to spasm. His arms and hands jerked in a violent dance by his side, seeming completely beyond his control, and his mouth had dropped open to allow his swollen, reddened tongue to loll down almost as far as the bony bulge of his chin.

As a foot touched the waters, Raspu jerked even more violently, and tipped back his head, screaming and wailing. StarLaughter’s eyes widened, and she glanced at the other
Demons. They watched with beatific expressions on their faces, as if it were the greatest wonder they had ever beheld.

StarLaughter looked back at Raspu. The Demon had walked into the Lake far enough that the waters lapped at his thighs. He still jerked and spasmed, so uncontrollably StarLaughter wondered how he kept upright, and a thin shriek now came from his mouth. Dribble streamed down to connect chin to chest. StarLaughter’s mouth twisted in repulsion…

And the waters of the Lake began to churn.

She stared. It was as if Raspu had infected the waters with some foul pestilence. The water bubbled, not as if it had been heated to a boil, but as if its surface was erupting in great pustules, sending spurts of fetid steam into the warm air.

“Look,” Sheol said, and she pointed to a spot some twenty paces before Raspu.

Here the water had formed into a gigantic pustule some five paces across that, having burst, had then solidified as its effluence drained from it. In the centre, a scarred and pock-marked walkway sloped downwards.

“Bring your child, Queen of Heaven,” Sheol said, and she dismounted from her horse and walked past Raspu, still standing jerking and keening, and waded through the water towards the horrific opening.

StarLaughter found the journey downwards somewhat loathsome. It reinforced her growing belief that she must really find some more suitable companions. Perhaps when her son was fully grown…

She followed Sheol towards the opening, and was followed in turn by Mot, Barzula and Rox. As Rox passed Raspu, the Demon of Pestilence abruptly halted both jerking and wailing, and fell into quiet step behind Rox.

The walkway sloped down at a gentle gradient, but StarLaughter found the going difficult.

The entire surface was slicked with something thick and fetid, and StarLaughter did not want to dwell on what it might be.

“Sheol?” StarLaughter called to the Questor several paces before her. As she spoke, StarLaughter had to fight to repress a gag caused by a sudden mouthful of the putrid air. It smelled (
tasted
) as if a herd of diseased cattle had chosen to die in this place…several weeks previously.

“Yes, Queen of Heaven?”

“Will…” StarLaughter fought her stomach again, and barely managed to suppress her nausea. Now they had descended well below the level of the water, they were surrounded by close, suppurating walls of sickly pink. It was almost as if they walked through a tunnel of corrupted flesh. “Will the Enemy attempt to trap us here as they did at Cauldron Lake?”

“Undoubtedly, StarLaughter. But I do not think they will have much success at—”

Something lunged out of the floor of the walkway and sunk sharp teeth into Sheol’s ankle. She shrieked, and stumbled back into StarLaughter and her son.

A bright blue fish clung to her flesh.

Sheol lifted her foot and tried to shake the fish free, but it clung tenaciously.

“StarLaughter!” she shrieked, fury more evident in her voice than fear.

But encumbered as she was by her heavy son, StarLaughter could do nothing. She shook her head, stumbling out apologies, her eyes fixed on the rivulets of blood running from Sheol’s ankle, and eventually Mot was forced to push past her and lean down to Sheol’s aid.

But as his hands wrapped themselves about the fish, ten more wriggled out of the suppurating floor of the walkway, and snatched at Mot’s hands.

He lurched back, shouting, but several managed to sink their teeth into his hands, and he waved them about, hitting
StarLaughter in the face with both his and the fishes’ loathsome flesh.

Something dropped down from the close ceiling above them, and snagged in StarLaughter’s hair. She screamed, her arms at first loosening, then tightening about her son just before he dropped from her grasp. He was too heavy for her to hold in only one arm, so she could do nothing as she felt…
something…
chew amongst her hair, trying to find her scalp.

Raspu grabbed at the thing for her, and flung it far down the walkway. It was an eel, as bright blue as the fish that yet clung to both Sheol and Mot.

He grabbed at the fish clinging to Mot, tore them off—causing Mot to shriek in pain as he did so—and flung them likewise. Then he bent to the remaining fish still chewing grimly on Sheol’s ankle.

“There!” he said, as that, too, went slithering down the walkway. As they watched, all the fish and the eel wriggled back into the floor and disappeared. “I don’t think that we will be—”

He halted, transfixed with horror. Slithering up the tunnel of rotting flesh towards them was a massive fish-creature, its girth almost filling the entire tunnel. Its mouth yawned open, revealing row after row of razored triangular teeth, disappearing into a dark red gullet that eventually shaded into black in its considerable depth.

It roared, and every one of the Demons shrieked and clambered backwards.

Only StarLaughter remained still and silent, staring at the creature as if transfixed with horror.

Something grabbed at her, and she jumped.

It was Sheol, who had overcome her own fear to fetch StarLaughter.

No, not StarLaughter, but the child. Sheol tried to jerk it out of StarLaughter’s arms, but StarLaughter’s grip tightened automatically.

“No!” she cried, suddenly finding her voice.

“Give him to me!” Sheol screamed, tugging with all her might. “Die if you want, fool, but
give him to me
!”

The huge fish-creature was now only fifteen paces away, slithering closer with every lurch of its body.

“
Give him to me!
”

“No!” StarLaughter cried desperately, and the two females rocked back and forth, arms and hands locked tight about the child, pulling him to and fro.

The child paid no attention, its blank eyes fixed unsighted on a spot in the ceiling above.

“I am his
mother
!” StarLaughter shouted and gave a final, desperate heave.

She was far, far too successful.

Sheol’s grip suddenly gave way, and StarLaughter fell backwards, completely losing her footing. She fell straight into the yawning chasm of the fish-creature’s mouth.

All StarLaughter saw was Sheol’s horrified eyes, and the other Demons rushing up behind her, and then she felt the clamminess of the creature’s tongue, and felt the first rows of teeth slice open the skin of her back and buttocks.

Agony swept through her body, and StarLaughter screamed once, and then again, and then a third time.

The creature’s jaws snapped closed about her.

There was blackness, and more pain, and then a period of unknowingness, and when StarLaughter opened her eyes again she saw the Demons standing over her, Sheol cradling the child in her arms.

StarLaughter scrambled to her feet, wiping her hands free of slime on her gown, where new and more putrid stains had added themselves to the rust brown blood that already streaked the once fine, pale-blue gown.

“Give him to me,” she cried, and snatched the child from Sheol’s arms.

Sheol shrugged. “You tripped and fell,” she said, “and
I
saved the child.”

StarLaughter glanced behind her. The fish-creature had disappeared. “Where is it?”

“The Enemy’s attack was a delusion only,” Raspu said. His naked body was streaked with filth. “Hardly worthy even of the term ‘trap’. What remains of their power fades fast, and I doubt we shall be overly troubled by them again.”