The Wanderers of the Water-Realm (62 page)

Suddenly, a group of ragged scarecrows emerged from the darkness bearing spades, hoes and other makeshift weapons and they closed with murderous intent upon the four men.

“Freedom for all!” Lupus cried. “Freedom for all!” Do not kill your fellow revolutionaries!”

The group of escaped slaves instantly recognized the smith’s words of identification and quickly melted back into the night without threatening any further harm.

Moments later, the group arrived outside the wing of the villa containing the apartment of the Lady Livia and they gained entry by forcing a small side door.

They entered a narrow service corridor and Lupus almost fell over a tiny servant girl who was cowering upon the threshold.

The smith grasped the girl by the neck of her robe.

“You are in no danger girl,” he grunted. “Providing that you lead us at once to the white-skinned healer who tends your mistress.”

The girl whimpered with fear but she led them down a side-corridor and into a tiled bathroom that was brightly lit by a single blazing torch. And an extremely macabre sight met their eyes.

Myra was kneeling by the edge of a small sunken bath and the young wisewoman was supporting the head of the Lady Livia, whose naked body was half submerged in the crimson bathwater. As the four men moved closer they noticed that the veins in the noble woman’s wrists had been opened by the bloodstained scalpel lying by the edge of the bath. Myra carefully felt for the slightest sign of a pulse in the noble woman’s throat and then allowed her lifeless corpse to slip beneath the water.

She rose to her feet and joined her companions.

“This was always the traditional way for a Roman woman to seek death.” The wisewoman explained. “And it is still a common practice amongst the Kaa-Rom females. Livia had no wish to witness the destruction of her family home and the butchery of her loved ones. Her children lie dead from poison in the next room and she begged me to assist her in this final ritual. This I have done!”

Uncontrollable anger began flooding Darryl’s mind and he grasped his sword ever more firmly.

“Yon bastard Creon is to blame for causing all this suffering, I vote that we seek him out and make an end of him?”

But the giant boat hand grasped him by the shoulder with a vicelike grip.

“Hold hard master.” He said, with an icy coolness in his voice. “Our task is to reach the river-landing and continue our mission. There are plenty of other vengeful souls abroad this night and there’s little chance of him escaping with his life. Come, let us depart at once!”

“Well said George!” The young wisewoman remarked. “Your mind has grown much stronger since we began this trek, that long axe of your no longer rules your brain and you have learned how to reason sensibly.”

The fugitives quit the villa that was now burning in several quarters and plunged back into the dark Water-Realm night. At first, they had to carefully pick their way through the villa’s extensive gardens, but they were eventually able to discover the road leading down to the riverside quay. At this point Lupus called a halt and addressed his white-skinned companions.

“My friends, we can be of no further service to you, this good metalworker and myself will now return to the struggle and we bid you farewell forever.”

The two doomed blacksmiths then turned their backs and disappeared into the night, leaving the three travellers to grope their way onwards in the direction of the Great Life River. Suddenly, they heard a loud clash of arms and found themselves completely surrounded by a troop of heavily armed soldiers. The four travellers were preparing to fight desperately for their lives when a familiar voice issued from the ranks.

“Put up your weapons, my friends!” said Whiteflower of the Kev. “Cool Thoa-nut beer awaits you aboard our galley lying by the quayside, put up your weapons and rest easy, for you are now safe and amongst friends!”

G
eorge grunted with effort as he hacked his way through the thick tangle of Thoa-shrubs impeding the expedition’s progress as they attempted to follow the course of one of the broken highroads; yet another legacy of the ‘Ancient Dead.’

The giant boat hand slashed through the last remaining branches and then clipped his trusty steel cleaver back onto his belt. He paused and viewed the long stretch of open highroad leading unerringly towards the looming mass of the distant southern mountains.

He turned to Darryl who was following close behind and clearing away the severed branches from the path of the other members of the expedition.

“Thank providence for a clear stretch of road,” he said. “I thought that I was destined to hack my way through that tangle of shrubs for all of eternity. At least we can now see where we are bound!”

Darryl nodded in agreement and pointed towards the far-off mountain range. “Aye and it’s good to view the crags harbouring the portal leading back to our own reality, for I am heartily tired of following false trails that lead nowhere and always in great danger of losing our lives.”

“Let’s hope that you’re right,” replied the giant boat hand. “Anyway, the stream over there will make a good place to camp for the night. For the five suns will set in about half an hour, if I’m any judge!”

George swept together an armful of dry brushwood and lit a fire close to the stream. Soon, a pot of soup was simmering over the flames, and, as darkness fell he was joined for the evening meal by Darryl and his witch-sister, together with Paris, Whiteflower and their four surviving porters.

The travellers ate their evening meal in silence and their minds drifted back to the moment of their swift nocturnal departure from the quayside of the estate of Klee, followed by the long and tedious journey, by galley, to the place where the Great Life River joined its waters to those of the Southern Sea.

The tired wanderers also recalled the journey overland to the seaport of Ostiaand the weeks spent in virtual idleness whilst the agents of the dark priesthood put together a trading expedition to the lands beyond the Southern Sea; an expedition whose real task was to find the only portal holding the power to return the three white-skinned travellers to their own native reality.

It was during their stay in Ostia that the traveller’s bade farewell to ‘Willakin the Navigator’ who had served them so well ever since the ‘Bonny Barbara’had sailed from Calar. The wanderers agreed that Willakin had long discharged any dept owing to them and they could no longer expect the man to take further risks on their behalf. The sailing master had reluctantly agreed to leave their service and they had watched him depart upon the return journey to Holy Ptah, where he was to assume the ownership of a fine trading vessel, which the Dark Priests had promised to provide for him now that the ‘Bonny Barbara’ lay on the bottom of the Great Life River.

As they ate, some of the wanderers recalled their ghastly voyage aboard the small sail-driven cargo vessel that seemed hardly capable of surviving a single hour upon the storm torn waters of the Southern Sea. Indeed, all of them shuddered at the memory of the frightful period when the expedition had fruitlessly searched for a route that would take them from the sea-coast to the distant southern mountains where the portal was said to be situated. The travellers also recalled the bouts of bitter disappointment that each of them had suffered, when a promising route had petered out in the midst of a vast quaking swamp or had simply become completely lost in the dense jungle-like Thoa scrub covering much of the landmass of this inhospitable region of the Water-Realm.

The expedition had numbered over two hundred souls when it had first departed from the shores of the Southern Sea. Porters, guards, merchants and the like, but desertion and the deadly poisoned darts of the treacherous southland natives had now reduced its numbers to a mere handful.

The travellers had almost given up hope of finding the southern portal in time to reach their own world, for only one hundred darkenings remained before the end of the five year cycle, when the curtain between the two realties thinned sufficiently for the wanderers to cross the barrier and return home. Yet fortune had finally favoured them for twenty darkenings ago, the expedition had stumbled upon a small hamlet that was quite deserted, save for an old man who was sick and almost dead from lack of food.

Myra had treated the man’s illness and the wanderers had given him all the provisions they had to spare.

When questioned about the portal, the man had told them that an abandoned shrine did indeed exist in the depths of the southern mountains, about ninety darkenings of hard marching from the hamlet where he now dwelt.

The old man had recalled that once, in his distant youth, he had penetrated deep into the southern mountains and in the far distance seen the spire of shining metal that was said to mark the spot where a mighty and powerful shrine existed. The sacred place, the man had said, could be reached by following an ancient highway; a route that could be encountered if one quit the hamlet and marched due south for the space of only one darkening; But the oldster had also warned them against undertaking such a journey, for he declared that the same southern mountains were the home territory of an isolated clan of Hixian’warriors who invariably killed all who entered their craggy homeland.

The travellers had been instantly elated by news of the metal spire that Councillor Hemm had already mentioned during their briefing in the City of Holy Ptah. Myra also recalled translating a verse from the grimoire of Rose Littlewood, which almost certainly referred to the same spire.

Where the shining needle climbs
Above sheer peaks of hardened stone,
Witch-Wife pause and sing your rhymes
Then tread the path which leads to home.

“Don’t you see?” The wisewoman had exclaimed excitedly. “My ancestor has described the landmark showing the position of the portal.This man has verified her words and has also given us details of the route that we have been seeking for so long.”

The travellers then held a swift consultation and had agreed to find and then follow the nearby road, for it seemed to hold out the best prospect of reaching the portal before their window of time expired, leaving them trapped within the Water-Realm for a further cycle of five years. That had been twenty darkenings ago, and they were now wending their way along the ancient highroad described by the old man. A road leading toward a spire of white metal that pointed towards the crimson sky. Perhaps they would survive. Perhaps they would live and once again tread the soil of their native Earth!

The small sail-driven fishing boat pitched and tossed as it drove before the wind in the direction of the small treeless Island several miles from the northern shore of the Isle of Skye.

Hetty sat in the bows alongside Inspector Angus Smith, her friend and lover, and keenly searched the coastline of the rocky islet for a first glimpse of the narrow cove affording the only possible landing place. But her eyes alighted upon nothing more than wave swept rocks and barren slopes covered by heather and ling.

The wisewoman winced slightly as her inner-eye began picking up a strange aura of menace that seemed to emanate from some ill defined spot beyond the sea-girt coastline.

Angus laughed quietly and without humour.

“Can ye feel it lassie? Do ye catch the ill feeling that place casts abroad and makes fishermen keep well clear of yonder Island, even though good catches can be made close to its rocks.”

“Aye, you’re right.” She replied. “Yet I feel much more than that. I also feel a similar power to that radiating from the portal beneath the Devils Tor; a power pulsing outwards whenever the curtain grows thin and when a crossing between the two realities can be attempted.”

“Our two crew members feel it also.” He said, nodding towards the two fishermen who were now steering the craft towards an almost imperceptible gap in the rocks marking the mouth of a smallcove. “You can see the fear that’s graven on to their features. Small wonder that it took five golden guineas in order to persuade yon pair to transport us to this Island, aye and to get a firm promise from them to return for us in a month’s time once our mission is completed, even though they be close kinsmen ‘O’mine!”

The fishermen skilfully steered the craft into the cove and beached it upon a bank of fine shingle that acted as a landing place. A few yards above the high water mark there stood a small cottage, whose sod roof was still largely intact, despite having endured a long period of neglect. The door-space, however, was quite open to the winds and its tiny windows were likewise uncovered.

“That’s the cottage where my old grandmother used to stay when she dwelt on this cursed islet.” The policeman said as he began helping the fishermen to unload their personal belongings and the boxes of provisions they would need to stay alive.

“It’s broken down a bit,” he continued “but once we’ve patched up yonder roof and stopped up the door and window spaces with some old blankets, then it will afford us shelter enough for the duration of our stay!”

After a good hour of hard labour the couple’s stores and belonging were safely stacked in a corner of the tiny dwelling and the pair climbed a nearby headland in order to watch the fishing boat putting back out to sea.

As they watched, the policeman paused and drew his companion closer to his body.

“There they go!” He said with a laugh. “Nigh scared out of their trousers, but we are of the Fay kind and don’t fear the unknown forces as much as they. Come lass, lets away back to the cottage, we shall be fine and warm once we get a driftwood fire burning in the hearth and …”

The witch twisted away from his embrace.

“The stone circle.” She said. “The place of power, I must see it at once and also the cave that you say lies close by.”

Angus nodded patiently. “Plenty of daylight still remains lassie and both of those places are near, so let’s go at once.”

Hetty followed the policeman up a narrow path that was overgrown with heather. After a few minutes climbing they breasted a rise and the witch gained her first view of the ring of standing stones occupying a small hillock on the opposite side of the Island. The pair splashed their way across an area of swampy ground. As they drew near to the circle they realized that many of the great stones monoliths had given way to the elements and were leaning over at crazy angles, whilst others had collapsed completely and were lying prone upon the mossy earth.

The two lovers reached the circle of stones and strode over to a flat slab of the same material that occupied the centre of the site.

“It is here where all the power is centred!” The witch said, laying her hands reverently upon the surface of the stone. “It is from here that I must call to my daughter who dwells beyond the curtain, and it is from here that I must conduct the ritual that will open the portal and allow my loved ones to return to the reality of their birth.

Now Angus!” She continued impatiently. “You must show me the cave.”

An ancient stone-flagged path led from the shrine to the edge of a nearby sea-cliff and disappeared from view. The pair moved cautiously forward and peered over the edge of the cliff. A narrow path, hewn from the rock-face, led downwards to the mouth of a cave some ninety feet below the edge of the precipice.

Hetty shuddered and the policeman held her close to his body.

“I feel the power pulsing from yonder cavern.” She whispered. “It is a power that fills me with terror!”