The Bell Between Worlds (37 page)

It was a picture of sun-spangled beauty framed by the delicate, whiteedged fingers of evergreens. The sun beamed from its bright blue throne, its rays glancing from the frosted fingertips, scattering through prisms of ice so that they sparkled and danced in the icy breeze. Sylas gazed up at this glorious vision, the sun playing warmly on his face, only distantly aware of the creeping cold that inched through his limbs, working its way sleepily, lazily to his heart. His eyelids began to feel heavy, blissfully heavy, drooping like the snow-laden branches above.

“Wake up. Your journey is not done.”

The voice was gentle but close, as if at his ear. He blinked and drew a sharp, icy breath. The biting chill chased away the encroaching sleep and, as it did, he heard the muffled crumple and creak of footsteps in the snow. He raised his head and looked about him, across the glistening, lustrous blanket of snow, between the stark shadows of trunks and branches, and in the dappled light he saw them: a perfect trail of footprints, leading off between the trees.

He summoned an almost-lost reserve of energy and brought his stiffened limbs painfully to task, heaving himself from his too-soft bed of snow. His breath clouded about him with the effort, obscuring his path, but as it cleared, he saw the trail, straight and true. He staggered at first, wrong-footed by the clinging powder at his feet, but soon he had fallen into her tracks, matching her steps, her easy gait. Like her, he descended a bank and pushed through a pleasant veil of frosted green, feeling the cold-tipped tendrils grazing his face.

His heart suddenly leapt, and a new, unexpected warmth flooded his veins. He wanted to cry out for joy, cry out to her, but he had no voice. She sat with her back to him, only her cheek visible beneath the hood, which glowed radiantly by the light of a crackling campfire. Her head inclined towards him and she extended a delicate hand, motioning for him to join her by the heat of the flames.

He sat down, his heart full, tears in his eyes, and he turned to look into her lovely face. She turned away, and her soft voice sounded somewhere in his mind. “Know me, and you will find me.”

S
YLAS WOKE TO A
fearsome, crippling cold. It cracked his bones, thickened the air in his lungs, slowed the blood in his veins. He yearned to return to his sleep, to his dream, to his mother. There had been no time, no chance to reach for her hand, to look into her eyes, to see the face he loved so much.

“Know me, and you will find me,” she had said. Perhaps, he thought, he was only now coming to know her. Know all of her mysteries, her torments. Only now, in this terrible place, so far from her.

He drew a gasp of icy air and slowly, painfully, forced himself awake. After some moments he mustered the energy to push himself up on to his elbow.

The camp was entirely still beneath a shroud of thick, dark grey cloud and a low mist, which drifted over the figures of three sleepers huddled beneath their blankets. The fire had burned down and now glowed a deep red at his feet, though he felt no warmth, heard no hiss or crackle. The sombre blackish-grey of the Barrens lay about them like a deathly blanket. There were no birds heralding a new day, no scent of dew, no glint in the sky; only the reluctant light of a day that would rather be night.

“Let’s bring this fire up,” came a low voice from somewhere behind. “You’ll feel twice the cold this morning.”

Espen’s broad figure loomed into view, carrying fresh firewood under his arm. He stepped over the bank of earth and laid it down quietly so as not to wake the others, then took up a handful of twigs and threw them on to the fire.

He sat down next to Sylas, leaning forward to warm his hands.

“How do you feel?” he asked, without turning.

Sylas thought for a moment. “Cold.”

Espen smiled.

Bayleon stirred on the other side of the camp. He stretched his thick arms above his head and yawned noisily, which woke the other two.

They were all soon sitting up and eating a breakfast of porridge and dried fruit. Simia was white from the cold, but she ate heartily and it was not long before she had regained some of her colour and cheer. Ash too looked much recovered and to Sylas’s astonishment, when he removed his bandages, they revealed no sign of the cut on his temple: healed by Filimaya’s strange balm.

The conversation soon became lively, though it was Simia and Ash who did most of the talking. Espen sat quietly watching the others, while Bayleon seemed altogether detached, gloomy and preoccupied. Sylas was still too busy thinking about all he had been told the previous evening to take much interest in the discussion, but as the warming, sweet porridge had its effect, he too found himself smiling at Simia’s wild stories of life on the Barrens.

After a while there was a lull in the conversation and he decided to ask something that had been on his mind.

“Espen?”

“Yes?”

“If we all have one of these twins – these Glimmers – and they are a mirror of us, doesn’t that mean we would have to be born at the same time?”

Espen nodded. “That’s what we think.”

“But doesn’t that mean we’d have to have the same parents?” he asked. He screwed up his face and rubbed his temples. “Or is our Glimmer born to the Glimmer of our parents?”

Espen smiled. “Now you see why many think it to be a myth,” he said. “The truth is that nobody knows.”

“But do we live and die at the same time as our Glimmer? I mean, how does
that
work?”

“Yes and why don’t we
feel
like half a person?” added Simia. “I mean, surely we should feel weak or... something?”

Espen opened his palms and shrugged. “Again, I’m afraid that—”

“He doesn’t know...” mumbled Bayleon. “What a surprise!”

Sylas looked from Bayleon to Espen. He so wanted to ask more, but he stopped himself: talk of the Glimmer Myth had done little to improve the tension between the two men. He decided to change the subject.

“I’ve been thinking... Now that you’re here, Espen, do we really need to see Paiscion?” he asked. “I mean, you’re a Magruman: don’t you know just about as much as he does?”

Bayleon scoffed and jabbed at the fire. “You’d think so...” he muttered.

Espen levelled his gaze at the Spoorrunner for a moment, then turned back to Sylas. “But you still don’t know who you really are, do you?” he asked. “You still don’t know how or why you were summoned here. Neither do I. I know part of your story, Sylas, but by no means all of it. Nobody does, because it’s still unfolding. Of course you’re right to be seeking Paiscion, because if anyone can help you to discover more of those final truths, he can.”

“But what’s so special about Paiscion?”

The Magruman smiled. “Oh, there’s much that is special about Paiscion. He was always the most powerful of the three of us, and certainly he has the greatest powers of seeing and communing, which in your case could be very useful. He is the one that the Scryers and the Scribes always looked to, and he certainly has the best understanding of the Samarok. You must meet with him.” He paused and kicked the embers of the fire. “Where exactly are you hoping to find him?”

“Don’t answer that,” instructed Bayleon gruffly.

There was an awkward silence. Espen regarded him with a perplexed expression.

“Bayleon, you really don’t need to keep secrets from—”

“We’d better get moving,” said the Spoorrunner, getting to his feet and beginning to stuff his bag with pots, blankets and utensils. “We must reach the circle before sundown.”

Espen raised an eyebrow. “Bayleon, we were—”

“Let’s just get one thing clear,” snapped Bayleon, turning towards him. “None of us answer to you – not any more. And I for one don’t trust you. Filimaya told us to make sure that Sylas reaches Paiscion by tomorrow and that’s exactly what we’ll do.”

Espen regarded him calmly for a moment, then shrugged his broad shoulders and bowed his head. “As you wish,” he said.

Ash looked nervously from one to the other, then clapped his hands.

“What finer day for a stroll in a wasteland?” he chirped.

Nobody smiled.

Sylas and Simia heaved their aching, heavy legs over the earthen bank and set out on to the Barrens. The thought of leaving the fire behind was almost too much to bear, but deep down both wanted to press on and reach the city. They took a wary look at the dark, glowering horizon and shuffled on.

Bayleon strode out far ahead of them to scout their route, quickly becoming a smudge of grey, almost invisible against the relentless murk of the plain. Espen stayed back, watching the open plains at their rear, leaving Sylas, Simia and Ash to walk together.

“What
is
it with those two?” said Simia, keen to take her mind off her legs and stomach. “Bayleon’s been at Espen’s throat ever since he turned up.”

“I know,” said Ash. “Old scores, I think. Bayleon hasn’t forgiven him.”

“What for?”

“The Reckoning.”

Simia frowned. “But why’s Espen to blame? Surely that was all Thoth’s doing.”

“When you lose your wife and your children, you need more than one person to blame,” said Ash soberly, looking ahead to Bayleon’s solitary figure on the plain. “Espasian – Espen – ordered the Spoorrunners to find a way out for the others. It’s because of Espen that Bayleon wasn’t there… at the end.”

“But that means it’s because of Espen that he’s still
alive
,” said Simia.

“Precisely,” said Ash.

There was a pause. “Oh,” said Simia.

“We all have a sorry tale to tell, don’t we?” said Ash, with a weak smile.

They fell silent for some moments as they trudged over the parched, dusty surface of the plain, lost in their own melancholy thoughts. But, with the passage of time, the sombre light and deathly emptiness of the Barrens had a way of turning melancholy to sadness and sadness to despair. Sylas was keen to revive the conversation, no matter what the topic.

“Tell me about it,” he said. “The Reckoning.”

There was a long hesitation.

“We don’t often talk about it...” began Ash.

Sylas saw the look on his face – a mixture of awkwardness and distaste – and immediately regretted raising it. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

“No, you should know. It’s important,” said Ash, drawing a long breath.

“People call it a battle, but in truth it wasn’t a battle at all. It was hopeless from the start, wasn’t it, Simsi?”

Simia lowered her eyes and kept walking. Clearly she liked this subject even less than Ash.

“But we had no choice,” continued Ash. “We had to fight to the end. Even once Thoth was joined by the other two Priests of Souls, and we knew that the war was all but lost. Not only was Merimaat fighting three of her own strength, so were each of her Magrumen. Thoth’s army of Gherothians and the Ghor, who had been weakened by months of fighting, were reinforced by the Sur and the Basetians. What had been a fairly balanced fight turned into a rout – worse than that, a massacre. They outnumbered us and they used magic the like of which we’d never seen: strange mutations of living things – probably some kind of Druindil; devastating Urgolvane forces that tore into our ranks and charred the very earth beneath our feet; and all manner of awful devilish creations – no doubt the work of Kimiyya, Thoth’s own magic. Within weeks, our settlements had been utterly destroyed and the tide of the war had turned. We were in retreat, and we needed to find a way out.

“It was Espen’s idea to go south. These plains were once riddled with rivers, all of them flowing towards the sea no great distance away. The Suhl Magrumen – Espen, Paiscion and Blissil – were to use the dry riverbeds to take the weak and the sick out by night, while what remained of our fighting army and Merimaat stayed behind. Once the fugitives reached the sea they were supposed to be met by the Ghalaks – a sea-faring people working for hire – hardly allies, but they were outside Thoth’s influence and were reliable enough if you paid them well.”

Simia had fallen behind, not wanting to hear any more, and was trying to strike up a conversation with Espen. Ash looked sombre as he paused to take a swig from his water bottle.

“We don’t know how,” he continued, “but Thoth found out about the plan. While the other Priests of Souls stayed to fight Merimaat and the army, Thoth and Scarpia, the most powerful of his Magrumen, followed our people to the sea. There they found them gathered on the sand flats, looking out at an empty bay, crying out in despair. The Ghalaks hadn’t come. That’s when Thoth and Scarpia attacked. They summoned downpours of acid rain, torrents of molten rock and flames that belched from the sea. It was like the end of the world, and in an enclosed bay like that, there was no escape. Blissil was killed in the first attack and Espen and Paiscion were too busy fending off the onslaught to have any hope of helping. In despair they sent the Spoorrunners to search for a safe way out.

“While they were away, Thoth walked alone out on to the headland, cloaked all in black and silver, wearing his dread mask of cloth. He looked down on the Suhl and raised a terrifying magic: the earth began to tremble and quake as though it was about to break in two; the sands beneath the waves churned and boiled, mixing with the water, seething like they too were part of the sea. Soon they were little more than a liquid morass, heaving, swirling, eddying. Slowly at first, then all too quickly, they engulfed the people, swallowing them into the earth, pulling them beneath the waves of sand and water.”

Ash paused, checking that Simia was still far behind, then he added in a low voice: “Within minutes, everyone was gone, lost beneath the sand flats of Salsimaine.”

Sylas shook his head. “Everyone?”

“Everyone. Except a few, including Espen, it seems. And Paiscion – he was still fighting on the headland.”

“And Simia’s family?” whispered Sylas, glancing behind him.

“No, not there,” was the hushed reply.

“But she seems so…”

“The Reckoning touched us all in its own way,” replied Ash with a glance behind.

His face was drained. Once again Sylas felt overwhelmed by the scale and horror of it all. It was an unthinkable, hideous thing, an evil that he could not even begin to comprehend.