The Ghost Roads (Ring of Five) (26 page)

“Why? Is it dangerous?”

“Dangerous? Not like gun or knife dangerous.”

“What is it, then?”

“You ever see someone killed with fear?” Nala said. “You can die of fear.”

V
andra and Toxique had dealt with all the sick birds they could reach. Vandra turned again and again to the burning building.

“Where
are
Les and Dixie?” she said in despair.

“They can look after themselves,” Toxique said, but there was no conviction in his voice.

“And
they
can’t,” Vandra said, looking up at the rows of sick birds.

Suddenly there was a great whirring and the air was thick with birds. “What’s that?” Toxique said.

“More ravens,” Vandra said, “but there’s no way they’re big enough to carry the sick ones out of here.”

“No, they’re not,” Toxique agreed, “but
those
are!”

The ravens had gathered a battalion of birds, all big and strong. There were pelicans and geese, swans and golden eagles. Vandra could have sworn afterward that she saw an albatross among them. Without waiting for direction, each of the great birds took a sick raven in its beak and flew to the ground with it, as far from the flames as possible. The other ravens flew above the mass of birds, directing operations, it appeared.

“Come on,” Toxique said, “we’ve got work to do.” Not trusting Toxique’s shaking hands, Vandra grabbed the bucket full of antidote and they started on the first birds.

There were many of them, and they looked sicker than the ones that had already been treated. Vandra prayed the antidote would bring them all around. The scene would have looked hellish to an onlooker, a ghastly light cast over it by the burning building while sick birds cawed feebly and the air whirred with wings. Vandra heard a shrieking noise and looked up fearfully. A great owl, a handsome male she had noticed earlier, had flown too close to the flames. His feathers had caught fire and he plunged, his plumage ablaze, to the ground.

Vandra shuddered. She looked to the roof of the mansion, but it was consumed in flame. Les and Dixie! She felt a sharp peck on her hand and flinched in pain. One of the ravens stared up at her, then plunged its beak into her hand again. She looked down. There were four fledgling ravens on the ground in front of her, barely moving. She
took up her teaspoon and started to feed the antidote to the first one. Tears ran from her eyes onto the baby raven’s plumage. It opened its beak and uttered a single soft caw.

“T
ell me everything you know about the dark stream, Nala,” Danny said. Fear or no fear, he had to get to Wilsons.

“Not much,” Nala said. “Boat comes when you want it. Don’t touch other bank of river, whatever you do.”

“Okay,” Danny said, “we better get moving, then.” He stood up and suddenly felt that someone was prodding him with a stiletto: Longford was trying to get into his mind! He swayed and almost fell to the ground. Nala put out a steadying hand and looked at him with real concern as Danny pushed Longford away.

“I’m fine,” Danny said gruffly. “An unwelcome guest is all.” Nala shrugged, not understanding. Danny started to walk, but Nala pushed in front of him.

“You need to learn to walk in ghost road,” Nala said.

And there was much to be learned. Danny hadn’t realized the whole time he was with Nana and Beth that Nana was traveling a complex path that required much thought and concentration, particularly in a vehicle. For a start, you always had to be on the left-hand side of the road; otherwise, the ghost traffic, invisible and unfelt, traveling on the right would slow you to an eventual standstill, leaving you too exhausted to move and not knowing why. There were sayings and invocations for crossing bridges and cresting hills. Passing through forests at dawn or
dusk (Danny realized that Nana had avoided this), you had to turn your jacket inside out so that evil spirits would not recognize you. There were patches of ground to be avoided because to cross them was to be assailed by terrible hunger. There were Pools of Regret, where swimmers were overcome by sadness and sank unprotesting beneath the surface. Danny realized that when he had been learning maths and history in school, Nala had been learning about the ghost roads. Cherb education was all about learning what you needed to know to stay alive in a hostile world.

It took two days to reach the entrance to the dark stream. Nala found food. He hunted and killed without mercy. They ate rabbit and partridge. But Nala could also find wild garlic, and tiny strawberries growing under hedges. He gathered fragrant mushrooms in the dawn cool, and berries deep in the woods. Danny could feel health and strength flowing back into him, and a sense that the Danny he had left far behind, before he had been sent to Wilsons, was back. Nana and Beth had looked after him in a gentle way, but Nala expected him to gut rabbits and to make snares. He was being given the weapons to fight the forces struggling within him.

On the evening of the second day they reached the dark stream. Nala, always quiet, had said less and less as they approached the glen.

“What’s wrong, Nala?” Danny asked. But Nala wouldn’t speak. He had produced a set of wooden beads from somewhere and ran them through his fingers continuously, his lips moving.

“You sure you want to do this?” Danny prodded. Nala nodded brusquely and put the beads in his pocket. They descended the stone steps leading to the little door. Danny touched it and it swung open silently. Downward they went, the dark enfolding them, warm and intimate. Danny could feel Nala’s shoulder against his, could sense his fear. He felt Longford’s mind probe for his and recoil instantly—was it the proximity to death that scared Longford?

They heard the water before they saw it, a rushing sound that echoed gently in the cavern around them. They forged on toward the river and arrived at last at the landing stage, the water flowing dark and velvety in front of them, the rushing now overlaid with whispering voices, millions of voices, perhaps.

“Look!” Nala said in a hoarse whisper. Moving toward them on the water, riding easily and smoothly, though no hand guided it, was a boat. It was long and narrow and was made of a smooth black wood with no ornament save for simple silver mooring rings at either side of the bow. The mooring rings looked too much like coffin handles to Danny’s eyes, but he didn’t share the thought with Nala.

The boat glided to a halt at the little dock. There were two simple wooden benches inside, but no oars or any other means of steering. Nala muttered something.

“What was that?” Danny asked.

“What if … what if it take us to the other side? Nothing to stop it. Maybe Nala not get on board.”

“You’re coming with me,” Danny said. “I’m not getting into that thing on my own. Come on!”

Without thinking, Danny stepped down into the little boat and stretched his hand up. Nala hesitated, then took it and stepped into the bow. Danny could see the whites of his eyes in the gloom. With a tiny jolt, the boat moved away from the slip. Nala was caught off balance and stumbled backward, the seat behind him catching him in the back of the knees. He would have fallen overboard if Danny had not steadied him. Nala quickly sat down, grabbing the thwarts with both hands. Danny looked down into the water, if water it was, and wondered what would happen to someone who fell in. Were there living, swimming things in the water? Danny tried not to let his mind dwell on what kind of fish might inhabit the river of the dead.

The boat floated midstream and caught a faster current. No air moved around them to indicate how fast they might be going, but Danny could see a tiny wave at the bow and a swirl of turbulence behind the boat. He tried to give Nala a reassuring smile, but it felt more like a grimace.

For an hour they moved on the river, their surroundings unchanging, the whispering of the throng on the far bank constant, the voices of the multitudes lulling Danny into a strange state between consciousness and sleep. He was aware of Nala’s eyes on him, but nothing else, unless it was voices calling to him, voices of memory rising out of his past.…

“Look out!” Nala shouted. Danny came to. The hull of the boat grated on shingle. Danny was remotely aware of water lapping on a dark shore, of hands reaching out, of voices calling, but as he awakened, the boat swung away from the shore, the voices faded, and the grasping hands turned to mist and disappeared.

“You must stay awake.” Nala’s voice was low. “You can’t let them call you to the dark shore.”

Danny was shaken. He thought he’d heard some voices he recognized—Stone, perhaps; even his parents—or was it a fancy that his mind had constructed? He didn’t have time to think about it. The surface of the river was starting to change. If he had been on a real river in a real boat, he would have said they had hit rapids. The boat tossed and plunged. He held on tight to the thwart. There was terror in Nala’s eyes.

“What is it, Nala?” Danny said.

“Beast, beast!” Nala cried. Danny looked down. What he had taken for waves were glistening black coils covered in scales, as if the water was full of a thousand snakes. The boat was being tossed from side to side, but there was a rhythm to it, as though they were being toyed with in a terrible game. Then the movement ceased and the boat stopped dead in the water. Danny did not know what force commanded the boat, but it would take great power to stop it.

There was absolute silence. Nala moaned. The Cherb, brave and stoic in the face of most danger, was now paralyzed with fear. His eyes widened.

“Easy, Nala, easy,” Danny said, trying to soothe him.
Then he realized that Nala was looking not at him but at a point over his shoulder. Danny felt as if someone had placed an icy hand on the nape of his neck. He turned slowly and found himself face to face with the most hideous thing he had ever seen. A creature with a head like that of a horse, a dead horse, with flesh hanging in gobbets from its skull. Two great nostrils flared above a mouth in which jets of greenish flame replaced teeth. And above the nostrils: empty sockets for eyes, a darkness in which eons of evil knowledge lurked.

The creature breathed out and Danny gagged. He felt as if he had been submerged in a pond of foul slime and rot. He reeled back and saw that the head was attached to the great coils that had tossed their boat about so playfully. The creature moved closer to him. He scrambled back and fell into the bottom of the boat. He felt the power of the Fifth rise in him but instinctively knew that he was faced by a much older and deeper power.

The creature seemed to be sniffing him, but it wasn’t looking for scent. Danny felt as if something was tugging at his actual mind, sucking in the essence of who he was, taking his thoughts, everything.… With a moan of pure fear Nala threw himself between Danny and the beast. The beast reared back, then bent his great neck forward again, and anger and malice swept the little boat as if the gates of hell themselves had been opened. Danny felt himself enveloped in terror, blinded to all else. He was aware of Nala holding his own face with desperate hands, as though he could stop the beast from sucking his mind out. Danny’s head filled with a cold howling and he knew
that the beast was speaking words of infinite loneliness and hatred to him, though he did not know its language.

There was a great surge in the water. He was dimly aware of the beast’s tail rearing above the boat, then slapping the water. He tried to duck but a great sheet of water swept over him. For a moment he felt as though part of him was dissolving in it, and he feared that his soul was stolen. There was a great ache of fear, and then, somehow, a calm. And through the calm he heard a whistle. That sounds just like a referee’s whistle, he thought, and through all the noise and cold commotion and hatred a laugh bubbled up inside him, a tiny chuckle at the absurdity of the thought that somewhere in this zone of the dead there would be someone to referee one of the games he had played long ago in the playground.

It wasn’t much of a laugh, but it was enough to make the beast turn aside, puzzled by this strange emotion coursing through the mind of its prey.

There it is again! Danny thought, the whistle shriller this time. The boat rocked and was almost upended as a judder ran through the creature’s coils. Danny grabbed the gunwale with one hand and got hold of Nala with the other. The whistle sounded again, but this time it was loud and long like a silvery trumpet and the creature reacted even more violently, thrashing around and throwing masses of water—if it was water—high into the air, where it hung in great sheets before falling slowly back to the surface. The boat bucked and shuddered but somehow did not capsize. From the same direction as the whistle came a loud voice.

“Begone, foul serpent! Crawl back into your vile lair! Return to the stench pit prepared for you and await the coming of doom. Await your extinction there or meet it here, it matters not to me!”

The serpent gave another great shudder. The surface of the water boiled, and then, as if the beast had never been, it was gone, the water was restored to velvety stillness, and Danny felt the current catch the boat and turn it back to its proper path. Behind them a light glowed, and as it neared, Danny saw a lantern hung on a pole over the bow of another boat a little like their own, but dented and patched in places. It had a mast, oars and a sail that was filled with something that could not be wind, for there was none in the cavern through which the dark stream flowed; nevertheless, the boat was catching up with them, its captain standing in the stern.

“Ahoy,” a voice rang out. “Hold on there, you two.”

“I don’t know how to stop it,” Danny said.

“Just tell the darn thing to stop.”

“Er, stop, boat,” Danny said. He reached out and pulled Nala to his feet as the boat slowed and halted. The other boat drew alongside and Danny got a good look at its skipper. He was a bright-eyed man with white hair and a beard. He wore a captain’s hat with an anchor on it, a frock coat with brass buttons and polished knee boots. He reached out and grasped the gunwale of their boat with one gnarled hand.

“Don’t know what you two did,” he said, “but that old serpent hasn’t been seen this many long year. He used to snatch the travelers as they crossed over. He’d drag them
down to his lair and feed off their souls for millennia.” Nala let out a low moan.