Fallowblade (58 page)

Out of the shadows stepped the tall, lithe shapes of men, yet not human.

At first the explorers could not believe what they were seeing; they thought it some illusion, some trick of the senses invoked by glamour. Gradually they comprehended. Those who stood before them were, in truth, knights of the Argenkindë. There were about twenty of them, dressed in sable and silver; handsome beyond dreams, insidious as poison, spirited and sparkling, dangerous as hatred. Their hair cascaded past their shoulders, blacker than midnight in a coal cellar, shot through, here and there, with a crow’s plumage sheen of blue iridescence. Silken strands of this marvellous hair rose and fell, buoyed by currents of gramarye, and tiny stars seemed snagged therein. The eyes of the goblin knights were dark, and outlined with slender smudges, as if they had pencilled the rims of the lids with kohl.

When the ogrish Marauders comprehended what it was that stood before them they roared in alarm. They were large and slow, and burdened with heavy packs; for them there would be no escape. Overcome by terror, they cast themselves flat upon the ground and covered their eyes. As one, the men unsheathed their gold-plated swords.

One of the unseelie incarnations was leaning against the side of the tunnel a little way behind the rest, his arms folded across his chest, one knee bent and his foot braced against the wall. His profile could not be described in the gloom. Lazily he turned his head sideways to look at the Narngalishmen, saying, ‘Greetings, Your Royal Highness. What brings you to my domains?’ and William instantly recognised the voice of Zaravaz.

The goblin king kicked away from the wall and came striding forward, statuesque, smiling pleasantly, his long black hair swinging in rhythm with every step he took.

‘What are you doing here?’ William cried, incredulous. ‘You said you would depart at the full moon.’

‘We are not obliged to explain our business to anyone, let alone the likes of you,
boddagh
!’ said Zauberin, who had appeared behind the shoulder of his lord.

‘In fact,’ Zaravaz pointed out to his lieutenant, ‘we are not even obliged to explain that we are not obliged to explain.’

‘But you said you would go away, and you are unable to lie!’ the prince said angrily. ‘How can this be?’

Zaravaz spoke a word to Zauberin, who responded, ‘It was I who told your weathermage we intended to leave.’

‘My
aachionard
was following orders,’ said his sovereign. ‘I chose to say
tell her we will leave
, rather than
I intend to leave, tell her so
. It is true we do not own your delightful ability to directly tell falsehoods, nevertheless we do not allow that to incapacitate us. We can direct others to speak falsely on our behalf, if they are not aware of the truth. Furthermore, we can change our minds. Perhaps I changed my mind. I will depart when I am ready, not when the moon is in a particular phase.’

‘Why does your horde remain here?’ Lathallan growled.

‘We have told you enough about our own business. What is yours?’

William answered brusquely, ‘We have come to salvage our gold from the Inglefire.’

‘Indeed,’ Zaravaz said politely.

Expecting the eldritch knights to try to block this enterprise the men hefted the weapons in their hands, but Zaravaz said, ‘Well you’d better get on with it then,’ and merely watched them, his head cocked to one side, a faint smile playing about his fine mouth. Immediately the men suspected a trick of some sort.

‘Do you mean to assault us?’ demanded Sir Torold.

‘We are but casual passers-by. La! We are not even protected by armour. How should we dare assault you?’

‘Tell us,’ pressed William, determined to penetrate any goblin word play, ‘will you try to prevent us from reaching the Inglefire?’

‘We will not,’ said Zaravaz, ‘
try
to prevent you.’ Once more he leaned idly against the wall, as if bored.

And William silently cursed himself for failing to choose his words more carefully, as one must do with eldritch wights. That statement could be interpreted to mean the unseelie knights would not merely
try
, they would
succeed
. Pride, however, prevented him from rephrasing the question and asking a second time. Instead he gave a stilted nod of acknowledgement.

‘Oh!’ said Lieutenant Zwist, as if noticing the men’s weapons for the first time. ‘You have dipped your palings in gold! Did you think those yellow sticks would make us run away?’

‘Why don’t you make your boasts with this sword pressed against your flesh?’ invited Lathallan’s second, feinting at the goblin knight. Zwist flung a handful of what appeared to be nothing at the captain, whereupon he dropped his blade with a clatter and doubled over, clutching his hand to his chest.

‘Desist, Rotherfield!’ Lathallan said sharply.

‘Those poor imitations of Sioctíne will avail you naught,’ Zwist said with contempt.

‘Be careful not to stumble and fall on them, or you might cut yourselves!’ gibed Zauberin.

He and the other goblin lieutenants were laughing softly as they stood at ease around their king. ‘You walk so stooped, men of Tir,’ they mocked. ‘You jump at every sound and cringe from every shadow. What are you afraid of?’

‘We fear nothing,’ William’s men retorted.

Said the unseelie knights, ‘Do not lose your charms, and amulets, for the spinners down here are passing fierce for old biddies! It is fortunate your weapons are so many and so formidable. The worms and beetles of the underworld will surely tremble at the sight of such warriors as you!’

The faces of the men suffused with rage and they were sorely tempted to attack their harassers. Controlling their ire they held back, for William had too much common sense to throw away everyone’s lives, the Companions of the Cup were well disciplined, and the rest were too terrified to make a move.

Wise judgement prevailed.

‘We will not be provoked by your taunts,’ said William.

At that the beautiful chivalry laughed aloud, but Zaravaz raised a languid hand, whereupon they bowed derisively, turned their backs on the human men and swaggered away. The goblin king had already melted into the dimness. As his lieutenants and other knights disappeared from view they were still jeering and calling out offensive remarks. Zauberin was heard to say, ‘Let us go and play with the water-girls.’ It appeared the goblins were leaving the intruders to their own devices. The Narngalishmen, however, were leery of being duped again.

The Marauders lumbered to their feet, sweating, panting and trembling. Still wielding their swords the human men continued on their way. Now doubly vigilant, they lit more lanterns to banish the obscurity that hemmed them in. Aonarán whimpered incessantly, while the Marauders crowded so close to their companions that they jostled them, and Lathallan had to order them to stay clear.

Deeper into the mountain they went. The adventurers had descended a rough stair and were passing through another gallery when their attention was caught by the appearance of a second flicker of light, this time at the far end of the cavern. This new light, however, was utterly unlike the lunar goblin brilliance.

It was a golden glory, like flawless topaz with a piece of the sun at its heart. As they drew nearer the glory intensified, but most wonderfully, this radiance was singing. To William, it produced a soft clear music like the pure voices of children in unison, voicing a wordless melody, and within that pouring syrup of melody there were sudden glints of chimes, as if golden bells were ringing.

The jaws of the Marauders dangled ajar.

‘Hark!’ exclaimed one of the Narngalishmen. ‘That is the sound of goodness! It is the laughter of children.’

‘It is the song of the blackbird in the early dusk,’ said his comrade.

‘No, it is running water,’ said a third man.

‘It is a mother crooning a lullaby,’ said someone else, but others claimed it was the music the stars would make if they fell through the strings of a harp. The song was variously like wind through the leaves of poplars, the beat of a loving heart, the patter of raindrops on a tiled roof, the sigh of the ocean, or the purring of a great cat. The listeners could agree on one point only—that they all heard something different.

Enraptured and intrigued, the Narngalishmen followed Aonarán towards the lustrous source of the music. Around a corner the walls opened out, and there before them in a rocky chamber a bonfire leaped twenty feet high, in full splendour. None had ever before beheld such a phenomenon, yet there was no doubt in their minds that this was indeed that which they sought: the Aingealfyre.

The interior of this light-splashed cavern was sculpted, as if water-worn. A wide and roughly circular well in the floor contained the source of the golden light. Translucent flames flashed in towering spirals from this pit, their glow so bright that the bottom of the well could not be seen, if indeed it had a base and did not pierce right through to the centre of the world, or even to the other side and beyond, to where comets roamed the universe. Spills of jewelled radiance welled up; shimmering crimson and orange were the colours of the flames, now tinged with sea-green copper. Unlike normal combustion this conflagration did not involve oxidation accompanied by the production of heat and light, nor did it give off smoke. It was a self-sustaining blaze of eldritch energies, engendered by gramarye.

The Aingealfyre’s chamber was splendid. Its clean, dry walls were veined with glimmering ores. Fractured images of the intruders glanced from countless angles, for the walls and ceiling were not entirely smooth. Indeed, they were pierced with apertures great and small, and fluted, and buttressed, and recessed and niched. Refracted light danced on polished surfaces; brassy and apricot, luteous and rubicund.

Spellbound, the men tentatively approached the barley-sugar flames. No fierce heat assaulted them, only a gentle warmth, as of Spring sunshine, yet for some this temperate incandescence was painful, while for others it was like balm. Furthermore, while it did them no harm, they sensed peril in that radiation.

Gazing in fascination, most of the party arranged themselves around the edge of the pit. Aonarán, however, hung back. He ceased his mewling and his tugging on the ropes, and instead became very quiet and still. After a while William recollected himself and said, ‘By the Powers, we have found our goal at last. It will not do us much good to stand staring—let us get to work!’ He issued orders, whereupon the swarmsmen unloaded the equipment they had carried thence on their brawny shoulders, and the miners unpacked it.

Hesitantly, for the act somehow seemed like desecration, the men, standing as far away as possible from the pit’s brink, thrust large iron ladles into the strange blaze, and lowered crucibles on chains. Soon and with astonishing ease, just as they had hoped, they were scooping out lumps of gleaming metal, as soft as wax, sometimes mixed with a few jewels unmarred, sparkling as if rinsed in rainwater. Neither soot, nor ash, nor cinders tainted the precious ore or gems, and to the amazement of the Narngalishmen their booty was relatively cool to the touch, once free of the flames.

Truly, the fire of gramarye was mysterious.

With willing zeal the labourers piled up their gleanings. They accumulated quite a quantity, which they stowed in bags of hempen canvas and stacked against the walls, later to be loaded onto the shoulders of the bearers. Every member of the expedition became engrossed in the task. As the men hauled out their salvage Aonarán stood silently by with a look of awe on his hideous face, never taking his eyes off the fire. He had tilted his head, like a man listening for a far-off sound, and wore a slight frown as though trying to understand a foreign language or to grasp a message.

‘All seems to be going well,’ Lathallan murmured to William as he and the prince watched over the proceedings.

‘The men feel safe here,’ said William. ‘They know the goblins could never come near this place.’

‘Is that true?’ asked Lathallan.

‘I believe so,’ the prince replied. ‘The weathermasters say that if a mortal man should enter the Inglefire he would not perish immediately, but fade, gently, without pain, in a dream or trance, as it were. Those who are chaste of spirit survive longer than those whose hearts are corrupt. For unseeliekind it is a different story. They also perish slowly, but as they decline they suffer unimaginable torment, shrivelling slowly until they become a wisp of dust or soot, still alive and sentient. Eventually they float away, doomed to drift on the wind until time’s end. Even to view the werefire from afar is painful to them. They will not come here.’

‘Nonetheless, we had better watch out for goblins as we depart through the tunnels,’ said Sir Torold. ‘They are our sworn foes, and no doubt will assail us on our way out.’

William was about to respond with a suggestion, when all of a sudden someone rushed past him and ran straight towards the pit. It was Fionnbar Aonarán.

‘Stop!’ yelled the prince, dashing after him, but it was too late.

Everything happened swiftly. Aonarán deliberately let himself drop over the brink into the fire. At the instant he toppled, William, who was hot on his heels, grabbed him by the shirt. As Aonarán fell, William was still hanging on. Aonarán’s flailing arms knocked the prince’s head against the pit’s edge and William, fainting, was dragged into the blaze by the weight of the man he was trying to rescue. Both of them vanished into the inferno.

Throughout the Northern Ramparts millions of tons of rock arched and strained, fighting the slow battles of geological evolution; shaped, made and unmade by tectonic, volcanic, gravitational, chemical and climatic forces. In underground chambers, solutions of calcium carbonate dripped leisurely, depositing travertine to form stalactites and stalagmites. Far below the cavern of the Inglefire, molten lava, ash and gases forced their way through crustal vents, a sluggish ooze of volcanic release. On the exposed peaks thousands of feet high, lacy snowflakes fell, blanketing the firn, while crazed winds scraped along the skies at full pelt, sharp-edged and cold as scalpels, as if attempting to chisel the stars from their niches.