Tales From The Wyrd Museum 2: The Raven's Knot (31 page)

Croaking sounds of agreement rippled through the assembled mob and the raven weaved in and out of the hulking, misproportioned bodies—swaying them with his words and calling them back into his service.

‘Biter!’ he crowed. ‘Thou didst bear the standard. Raging and Screamer, Torment and Ruin—the cloth of war didst thee uphold. Hate—the arrow of doom wast thine. To contend with the enemy of our Lord we rampaged over the plain, only to be confounded at the last by the witchery and devilment of those within the wood. Now the wheel is turned, the hour is here once more and this time we shalt not fail. The mists are departed and they shalt pay most dearly.’

The Valkyries caterwauled their pleasure and Thought whirled once more around them before returning to Peter's shoulder.

‘This mortal is high in our Master's regard,’ he told them. ‘No injury nor hurt wilt I permit thee to inflict upon his person.’

A low, disgruntled hiss issued from the nightmarish audience and the assembled eyes glowered disdainfully at the man whose tender flesh was denied to them.

“Tis the Lord's bidding!’ Thought reiterated forcefully. ‘Thou must all yield to my...’

The bird broke off as he suddenly realised how many Valkyries were present and screeched furiously.

‘One of thy number is absent!’ he cried. ‘Where is Shrieker? Was this day not appointed for the final moot? All were to be ready. Where is the last of thy company?’

The apparitions twisted and turned, wondering what could have become of her, but just then the noise of beating wings came rushing about the barn and into the hayloft Hlökk came.

Furling its wings, the unholy creature which had consumed Lauren Humphries stood upon the ledge, threw back its head and gave a calamitous scream.

At the far end of the loft, the Reverend Galloway winced at the sound and prayed for deliverance from this unceasing parade of terror.

‘We are betrayed, my ssissterss!’
Hlökk thundered in a fearsome, gargling voice.
‘The dessign of our Masster iss in hazzard. A traitor iss aiding the Nornir. With my own eyess I ssaw him!’

The others snarled and snapped, raking their talons through the floor when they heard this, then Thought called for silence and Hlökk's hostile glance burned upon him.

‘Why are you here?'
the monster demanded.

The raven blinked in astonishment at the insolent question. ‘I am the emissary of thy creator!’ he declaimed. “Tis not thy place to challenge me! I am Thought, he who is deep in His counsel, who knoweth all the reaches of His subtle mind.’

‘
What truth iss there in your wordss?’
the creature demanded, lowering its foul head and stealing forward. ‘
When your own kinssman asssisstss our enemy!’

Thought scowled in confusion.

‘Kinsman?’ he squawked.

‘Yes!’
Hlökk growled.
‘Your own brother!’

The raven jerked his flat head left and right as at last he understood the strangely familiar scent which had perplexed him earlier.

‘Memory!’ he screeched. ‘My brother lives?’

‘He doess and hass renounced our Masster’

‘Thou liest, Shrieker!’

‘Even now he ridess with two who sstink of Nirinel. They are here to defeat uss. Thiss very night I wass asssailed and wrenched from my hosst. A power wass with them I could not undersstand!'

The other creatures spat and clacked their dismay but Thought narrowed his eyes and hunched his shoulders.

‘Memory must be found!’ he declared. ‘If he hath indeed turned traitor then we cannot allow him to thwart us. Hark, oh devoted servants, the hour long awaited fast approacheth. Verdandi hath been enticed from the shrine's protection and unto us she shalt deliver the device our Lord doth seek.’

A macabre, croaking chorus rang about the loft as the Valkyries screamed their approval and Thought stretched his wings dramatically.

‘My brother must be taken! Go search him out. Shrieker, lead us to these vainglorious fools. They must be slain!’

The barn shuddered as the monsters shook their feathers and thundered from the opening, to soar into the dark night.

‘What's happening?’ the Reverend Galloway asked when the raven flew back to him. ‘I don't understand this.’

Thought sneered at him, but knew he had to keep up the pretence a little while longer.

‘A Judas hath been discovered,’ he snapped. ‘We must find him afore the prize is brought to us. Our Lord must not be betrayed. Now, make thyself ready.’

Peter shivered, ‘What for?’

‘The war twixt good and ill hath begun anew,’ Thought told him with a devious grin. ‘Thou must come with us.’

‘Me?’ the vicar blurted. ‘Out... up there?’

The raven cackled. ‘Thy presence is needed,’ he laughed. ‘Into the heavens thou shalt be drawn. Come, ride with these angels.’

To Peter's dismay, the bird ordered him over to the opening where he stared fearfully up at the horde of black shapes now swarming above the barn.

‘Biter!’ Thought cried. ‘I have a burden for thee.’

There came a fierce rush of feathers and a putrid stench blasted upon the vicar's face as one of the circling Valkyries plunged towards him.

‘Hold up thy hands!’ the raven instructed.

Peter obeyed and felt mighty talons seize his arms, the hooked claws snapping like vices around them, squeezing and clutching so tightly that he yelled in pain.

But his voice was lost in the surrounding uproar and he felt his arms almost wrenched from their sockets as the winged horror above snatched him into the air and his feet were plucked off the floorboards.

With sickening speed the vicar was hoisted into the sky to join the others and Thought fluttered before him, crowing his instructions to the waiting, slaughter-starved nightmares.

‘Dear Lord!’ Peter howled closing his eyes, unable to gaze down at the empty gulf beneath him, and unwilling to look upon the terrifying spectacle of the dark host which bayed and screamed upon every side.

Like a black storm the assembled Valkyries hurtled through the sky and, with the Reverend Galloway dangling helplessly from their claws, they went screeching into the tortured night.

A blast of freezing air sliced into Edie's lungs as she struggled to make sense of what had happened.

Down into the pit she had fallen, clinging to her splintered section of rocky floor, until the bottom of the great dark chasm was finally reached. With the dreadful, jolting violence of the impact, the child was thrown clear.

Shattered pieces of rubble still rained down from above and Edie could hear them rattling on to the ground. Fortunately, she had been flung out of their path and for the moment was content merely to listen to the clattering percussion of pebbles and debris.

The girl's eyes were squeezed tightly shut and she felt bruised and sore all over, yet it was not until an icy numbness began to bite into her limbs, especially her legs and hands, that she started to feel afraid. What if the terrible fall had broken her back? What if she was to die slowly in this forsaken abyss? No one would ever find her, she would become just another fossil in the unexplored roots of the world.

Edie cackled to think of it—perhaps she too would one day be placed in a museum as a dried and shrivelled exhibit.

Opening her eyes, she sat up to find herself in a large drift of feathery frost which had cushioned her fall. Scooping a handful up to her lips, she licked it and stared about her.

The cavern which had lain beneath the hermit's tomb was immense. All around, rising like a forest of shimmering, crystal columns, were momentous pillars and towers of ice. Up from the hoary, rime-covered ground they thrust, rearing high into the blackness above. From that same dark ceiling, the tips of mighty icicles came spearing, hanging threateningly high over the child's head.

It was like being in the palace of winter. In the distance Edie could see galleries and cloisters formed entirely from ice and, gingerly stepping from the frost drift, she moved towards the centre of the huge, glittering space, to where the remains of Joseph's grave lay in fractured ruins.

Lying upon their sides, dented but not broken, the silver cruets still blazed their glorious light and it was this which illuminated the gargantuan space. Twinkling over every frost-bristled surface, the hallowed vessels steadily shone, turning the monstrous, glacial trees into distorting mirrors and warped prisms which threw back the beautiful, lustrous gleam a thousand times.

At any other time, Edie would have been enraptured by the vivid display but now only one thought burned within her.

‘Veronica?’ she called. ‘Where are you?’

Sticking out from beneath one of the larger chunks of rock the child found a mangled mass of flattened lead—all that was left of the coffin and she could not help but think that somewhere, under all those tons of broken stone, the old woman lay similarly crushed.

‘Squashed into jam,’ she said sadly. ‘Poor, Veronica.’

Suddenly an eager, delighted voice drifted to her from out of the darkness that lay beyond the reach of the magical lanterns.

‘I do hope it's strawberry!’ it cried. ‘Save some for me!’

There, stumbling into the light, was Miss Veronica.

The old woman looked only slightly the worse for wear after her hideous descent. Her already pale and powdered complexion was thick with dust, and splinters of gravel were caught in her dyed tresses. The silken robe was ripped and tattered but, although she had lost one of her satin slippers, Miss Veronica had managed to keep hold of her walking cane. Waddling forward, her stalk-like, knobbled legs bleeding with cuts and grazes, a great, glad smile was upon her face and she held out a trembling hand towards Edie.

‘Are there pancakes also?’ the old woman called. ‘How scrumptious! I do feel peckish.’

Edie ran across the rubble to hug her as Miss Veronica peered hungrily about the glittering cavern.

‘Oh, but I can't see any,’ she muttered sulkily. ‘I hope you haven't eaten it all, Edith dear.’

The girl shook her head impatiently. ‘There ain't no jam,’ she said. ‘But why ain't you killed after droppin’ all that way?’

‘The same reason you aren't, dear,’ came the amused reply. ‘We are the Fates, well, two of them anyway. I remember Ursula saying how there was very little that could actually do us serious harm. We have drunk of the blessed waters and the threads of our lives were never part of the tapestry, you see. We are outside of the web, even though we are enslaved to it.’

Clasping a hand to her bosom, she stared up past the lofty heights of the glimmering pillars to where the darkness reigned and sighed wistfully.

‘I did enjoy that little fall,’ she confessed. ‘Do you think we might do it again? Celandine and I could have amused ourselves by leaping off the museum's roof when we got bored. She would have enjoyed that so. I wonder what she's doing now? Still practising the steps to one of her dances, I expect. What a pity there are no pancakes after all—I was dearly looking forward to them.’

Edie stared at her. The old woman seemed to have forgotten why they were here and the seriousness of their predicament. It was as if she had regressed into the idiotic rambling of her former self, before the old memories and resentments towards Miss Ursula had surfaced in her fuddled mind.

‘Veronica!’ the girl snapped. ‘What about Woden? What about the bracelet? Don't go all stupid on me again!’

The old woman pressed her arthritic fingers to her temples.

‘The Captain!’ she exclaimed, becoming lucid once more. ‘The healing treasure—it fell from my hand. Help me to find it, Edith! We must take it to him!’

Separating, they each chose a section of the cavern in which to search, knowing that so long as the golden circlet was not buried under the slabs of granite it would be fairly easy to find.

Passing between the enormous ice pillars, Edie's sharp eyes scanned the way ahead, hunting for both the treasure's pale, yellow glow and a possible way out of this great, wintry chamber.

Yet there was no escape, there were no hidden exits and no steps to take them back to the destroyed tomb chamber above. Edie and Miss Veronica were trapped.

Reaching the far, slippery wall where the soft beams of the silver vessels mingled with dim shadows, Edie began to follow it around as best she could.

After several minutes of having to squeeze between the translucent stalagmites and constantly losing her footing upon the treacherous, frozen floor, the child suddenly saw a pale radiance ahead, where fewer of the titanic pinnacles jutted into the dark.

Hurriedly, Edie slipped towards it, leaving the chill, glass-like forest behind her as she ducked beneath a draped formation of iridescent ice and slid to a wide area of white frost, ringed about by boulders of polished, black rock.

In the centre of this strange circle, half buried in the snowy carpet, lay the golden ornament they had removed from Joseph's grave.

Keeping her eyes fixed upon the wavering, buttery gleam which flowed from the precious, enchanted metal, Edie clambered over the bordering stones and quickly ran across to retrieve it.