Dangerous Gifts Page 31

  “Shut up,” Fain and I said, together. He looked at both our faces and, probably wisely, did so.

  “Why aren’t you with her?” I said.

  “Certain constraints no longer apply.” Fain fell neatly into step beside me.

  “Laney? She’s here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is she?”

  “With the others. Fortunately, since we seem to have lost Bergast.”

  “What?”

  “Bergast has disappeared. I persuaded Laney to go in his stead.”

  “We have to get after them. We have to stop them.”

  “What is it?”

  “The Ipash Dok that Selinecree said she found in Lobik’s room. She didn’t. She provided it herself, and... Look, I’ll explain as we go, but we have to go.”

  “Very well.”

  “Is Mokraine with them?” Laney obviously hadn’t spotted anything wrong with the Ipash Dok, but then she didn’t know to look for it. Mokraine just might have picked something up.

  “Mokraine has collapsed.”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  Filchis made another effort to leave. “Filchis?” I said. “You come along quiet and cooperative and fast as your little legs will carry you, or I knock you out and leave you for the Fenac to find. I bet they’ll be very interested in your explanation of how you just happened to be totally innocent of assisting in a massive prison break. You were trying to persuade them to torture me. You think they won’t do it to you, citizen of Scalentine?”

  “Did I hear that correctly?” Fain said. “He tried...”

  “She’s lying!” Filchis said.

  “No, she isn’t,” Fain said.

  I didn’t even see his hand move. Filchis folded up like a paper flower in the rain, sagging to his knees, retching.

  Then Fain’s hand moved again and Filchis fell over on his side, eyes wide and fixed. I thought for a moment Fain had killed him.

  “What...”

  “Carrying him will be quicker,” Fain said. “I assume there was a reason you were bringing him with you?”

  “Yes. He knows things.”

  “Then let us move.”

  Still more than a little bemused by what had just happened, I put one arm around Filchis’ back, Fain used the one arm that still worked (and with which he was remarkably efficient) and between us we hauled him off like a drunk at the end of a long night. Only faster.

  Fortunately for us, the Fenac were concentrating on the Ikinchli rather than the random foreigners, Ikinchli being automatically guilty of something. The shouts faded behind us.

  We slugged up the road towards the Entaire house. With what breath I had over, I explained to Fain what I’d realised about Selinecree.

  “Tell me about Filchis,” he said, when I finished.

  “Oh, he thought I must know something, about what his mentor was up to; that’s what he wanted to get out of me. Fain, why did you...”

  “Tell me exactly what he said.” It wasn’t a tone that brooked argument.

  “I can’t remember word for word, and he was going on about some blonde woman he thinks his mentor favours, but after the Enkantishak he said his mentor had told him that – wait – ‘Scalentine would no longer be corrupted by outside influences.’”

  Fain was silent for some time except for his steepening breath. The boom beetles were all around now, as the sky lightened. Boom. Boom. BOOM. Overlapping each other. Boboom. BoBoom BOOM BOOM.

  The walls of the house came into view.

  “So do you know what he meant?” I said.

  “I think so,” he said. His voice... I realised Fain was afraid. Fain. My guts went to melting ice.

  “What is it?”

  He sped up. Filchis’ toes dragged and bounced on the ruts.

  “Fain? Fain!”

  “We need to get to the stables,” he said.

  “What...”

  “Enboryay breeds racing disti. We have to take the fastest mounts we can find.”

  “Can you ride a disti?”

  “Not yet.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  WE DIDN’T DARE go in by the gate; anyone who saw us might tell Selinecree.

  We sneaked around to the place where I’d noticed the trees grew close enough to the wall to make good cover for an intruder, and then stopped.

  “Wards. Bugger,” I said. “What do we do about the wards?”

  “A good ward should be specific; it should work against those with evil intent.”

  “You think Bergast’s good?”

  “You don’t?”

  “I don’t know what Bergast is,” I snapped. “Especially now he’s bloody disappeared.” What with one thing and another I was feeling a little edgy.

  “Either his wards will work against us or they won’t. There is only one way to find out.”

  “Then let’s chuck Filchis over first and see what happens.”

  Slightly to my surprise, Fain agreed.

  We got him into a tree, rolled him along a branch and let him drop.

  There was a faint crackle – presumably the wards – and a thud.

  It was followed by a groan, so whatever had happened to him wasn’t fatal. And I couldn’t smell burning.

  I started to edge along the branch after him, and paused. “Are you going to tell me what you know?” I said.

  “Let us deal with Filchis and get under way. Then we can talk.”

  Oh, we were going to talk, one way or another.

  Assuming we survived the next few minutes.

  I edged forward until I could see Filchis’ shape on the ground. He was moving.

  I held my breath and inched out over the wall. I felt the magic itch and crackle on my skin, but it didn’t hurt.

  Then I dropped in on the right side of the wall.

  Fain followed – cat-neat, of course.

  We worked our way along, dragging Filchis, until we were close to the stables, the metal-and-cream smell of the disti thick in the air. I could hear the hissing of the beasts and someone humming a string of whiny, nasal notes that was probably supposed to be a tune. The clunk and squeal of a pump, water drumming into a wooden pail.

  I realised I was desperately thirsty.

  Filchis was moaning and holding his head.

  “Shut up, or you’ll get it again,” I said. He shut up.

  “What did you do to him, anyway?” I whispered to Fain.

  “Allow me a few trade secrets, Babylon.”

  I thought about asking him why, when he could simply have knocked Filchis out, he had gutpunched him first, but I had the feeling he wouldn’t answer.

  Besides, this didn’t feel like the time for that conversation. I was a lot more concerned about the fear I’d heard in his voice.

  “So what are we going to do with him now?”

  “Find somewhere he can be confined until we return. I need to question him further.”

  There were empty buildings enough; we found one with enough of it left to hold him, stuffed rags in his mouth, and bound him with my chains.

  “Pray we succeed,” I told him. “Otherwise they’ll find what’s left of you in spring.”

  “If we fail,” Fain said, “being forgotten will cease to concern him rather quicker than that, I think.”

  Filchis’ eyes widened and he whimpered through his gag. My heart, already chilled, froze a little more.

  “HEY, YOU GOT that upside down. She won’t like that.”

  I swallowed my heart back down, turned around slowly and smiled at the stableboy. “Can you show me how to do it right?”

  “Oh, surely. But you not taking her out, eh? She’s carrying. No riding for her.”

  Damn.

  “Show me the two best, please.”

  “Best for what?”

  “A long fast ride,” Fain said, appearing at the door of the stable. “Over rough ground.”

  I winced.

  “Okay.” The boy had two disti saddled and bridled in mome
nts. He asked no questions, only patted his charges, gave us each bags of feed to sling from their saddles, told us they would need watering every ten focat (whatever those were) if we were riding them hard, and saw us off with a sunny, unconcerned grin.

  “What’s a focat?” I muttered, trying to act as though I knew what I was doing as the beast’s unfamiliar swaying movement and the narrow, hard saddle told me I was in for a very unpleasant time even if I succeeded in staying on. I had already drunk about a gallon of water from the pump, and it was sloshing unpleasantly in my stomach.

  “A unit of measurement, I imagine.”

  “Yes, Mr Fain, I gathered that. But what: feet? Yards? Miles?”

  “I should imagine it is one of those dialect words Bergast is so interested in. When we find him, we can ask him.”

  “If the beasts collapse from lack of water before we do so I’m not going to be able to ask him.”

  “Then let us water them as soon as they show signs of fatigue.” He stared at the approaching wall, and crouched down in the saddle.

  So did I, though what I thought would happen next, I wasn’t sure.

  A cry came from behind us. “Heya!”

  I stiffened up; I didn’t want to hurt the boy, but if he was going to try and stop us...

  I turned around to see him bouncing up to us on another disti, a big-boned ugly beast even by disti standards, so much too big for him that he seemed to have been stuck on its back like an afterthought. “No one else here, right? Everyone is gone. I let his lordship’s guests go out with no one to show them the right things, he will be very angry. So, I am come with you.”

  “Good!” I said. “Marvellous. Show me how to make this beast jump over the wall.”

  “Oh, is easy,” he said. “Hold on tight with the knees and go yoka-ki!”

  His beast swayed its neck, and started to run, its stride lengthening as it approached the wall, until on the last its feet simply didn’t come down again. It almost seemed to flow over the wall, the boy on its back laughing and barely bothering with the reins.

  Fain and I looked at each other, and shrugged.

  “Yoka-ki!”

  The saddle slammed into me in places used to better treatment and I gripped with my knees like a nervous bride. The ground dropped away and reappeared with a jolt that went all the way to the top of my skull.

  I hoped we wouldn’t have to do too many of those.

  Fain landed right beside me and muttered something under his breath, possibly obscene.

  “Where we going?” the boy said.

  “To the sacred mountain,” said Fain.

  “You going to the Enkantishak?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “We need to go very fast,” Fain said.

  “Very good. Ki-tai!”

  We shot forward into the trees at a speed I found thoroughly disconcerting, especially with so many branches that looked ready to sweep me right off. I leaned flat to the beast’s neck.

  On through the trees, the green gloom lightening, giving way to open parkland; then the disti really started to run, their massive muscular legs propelling them in long smooth bounds, the landscape flowing past like water. We passed fine houses set far apart, some of them empty, disintegrating, flickers of pale sky showing through the broken walls.

  The houses became fewer and fewer, and more of them looked abandoned, crumbling down like bad teeth.

  Fields, either side. A single house, smaller, still occupied, a curl of smoke rising from a thin chimney.

  Eventually the boy called a halt by a stream, to water the beasts. We were right out in the country now, surrounded by wide, flat fields, full of some silvery-brown crop that grew to waist-height and showed a tinge of pink when the wind disturbed it. Beyond the fields, hills rose, their sides washed green and purple and streaked with the white of hurrying cascades. Here and there I could see the deep grey, distinctively cup-topped shape of a volcano.

  I walked over to where Fain stood by his beast, stretching his back muscles. I sympathised. My legs and arse were already sore; they’d be yelling by tomorrow.

  “So are you going to tell me?” I said.

  “Tell you... Oh.”

  “Yes.”

  Fain glanced at the stableboy, but he was downstream, stroking his mount and singing tunelessly to it.

  Fain looked me in the eyes. “This goes no further, Babylon. Ever. Already you know far more than I am comfortable with.”

  “I am capable of discretion, though you might not believe it.”

  “Selinecree was on Scalentine. I think that she met with Filchis’ mentor. I think he arranged for her to collect the Ipash Dok.” He laid his hand on the disti’s smooth hide, as though drawing reassurance from it. “How much do you know about the portals, Babylon?”

  “I don’t. They open, they close, every time I go through one I get sick. They’re known to drive people mad. So are people who don’t give straight answers.”

  “I am attempting to give you a straight answer. The portals of Scalentine are unique. We know there are others, many others, throughout the planes. But none have been found that we know of that have all the same qualities. And there are writings in the Section’s libraries that are very old, and talk of some other qualities the portals have, which no one now alive has seen in operation.”

  He fell silent, staring at the rippling crops. The hiss of wind, the gurgle of the stream, the sucking and splashing of the disti drinking their fill, the boy’s tuneless singing.

  “The portals of Scalentine are not exactly alive, and not exactly intelligent. But their function is, at least, twofold. To provide passage, and to prevent passage. If there is a sufficient threat, an extreme threat, they will close.”

  “Close? What, actually close? Even the permanent ones, like Bealach?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long for?”

  “Until the threat is considered to have passed.”

  “Who decides?”

  “They do.”

  “What, the portals? But they... What?”

  “Filchis’ mentor, whoever it is, wants the portals to close. They have reason to believe something will happen at the Enkantishak ceremonywhich will provide a sufficient threat to Scalentine to make the portals close.”

  “All the way from here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Merciful All.”

  “Let us hope so.”

  THE CROPS THINNED out; the land became rockier, silvery with pools and lakes. Lichen and moss grew everywhere, emerald and ochre and the rich red-brown of good leather. I saw a plume of what looked like smoke, or steam, coming up from the ground, and the air smelled like hot metal and gone-over eggs.

  We saw no one on the road, not a single Ikinchli coming late to the ceremony. Had it already begun?

  I had gone over the ceremony with Rikkinnet. The Itnunnacklish and her two husbands were gowned and garlanded. I’d worried about that, before; now, I had the dreadful thought that if someone did assassinate Enthemmerlee, it would probably stop the ceremony and prevent the opening of the Ipash Dok.

  What was in that small glittering shell?

  After the gowning – of course, now, there was only one husband to dress, dammit, even less time – there were words from the priests, an offering of fish to the ancestors, then the laying of the Ipash Dok on the altar.

  I urged the disti on. It moaned. The stableboy, infected by our mood, had stopped singing as he rode and now crouched anxiously on his beast’s neck, glancing over at us every now and again, but asking no questions.

  I felt bad for the boy; but if whatever was in that thing was powerful enough to threaten Scalentine, an ocean away, telling him to ride like hells in the other direction probably wasn’t going to do him much good.

  Ahead, a great clump of hills, shaggy and brilliant with growth, and shrouded with mist. The road thinned, and steepened, and finally petered out into a narrow, muddy path, rising between banks lush with gro
wth. The disti slowed, placing their great clawed feet carefully.

  A small bird, of an extraordinary, heart-achingly brilliant shade of blue with a bright yellow throat, landed on a branch, scattering drops that fell like burning diamonds through the rays of the setting sun. It tilted its head, watching us with a bright orange eye.

  We drove on up the path, while around us the landscape shimmered and hummed.

  Suddenly the path flattened off, and there before us was a cliff-face, deep red, hung with vines. A set of steps cut into the rock led to a cave gaping dark among the green. All around us grew tall, flowering plants with trumpet flowers of a blazing, triumphant orange streaked with white, each bloom as long as my forearm. They gave off a richly honeyed scent, which drowned out the smell of decaying eggs.

  We leapt down, and ran up the steps; red stone, a smooth shining dent worn in the centre of each by uncounted thousands of feet over who knew how many centuries.

  The colour of the stone made the entrance to the cave, high and wide enough for two carriages, look uncomfortably like a mouth. The sun was behind the mountain; I could see glimmers of light in the darkness within. My spine itched, and my hand tightened on my knife. I missed my shield, wondered if Rikkinnet still had it

  We stepped forward.

  “Who goes there?”

  Tantris, and a handful of the guard, flanked by Ikinchli.

  “You! What...”

  “No time. Let us in.”

  “Who are these people?” Two of the Ikinchli, hard-muscled and alert, stepped forward. “What do you want here?”

  “Enthemmerlee!” I yelled.

  “Babylon. Please.” Fain bowed. “We are here to protect the Itnunnacklish.”

  “The captain knows me,” I said. “Please. If you won’t let us in, just tell them, they mustn’t put the Ipash Dok on the altar! If it opens...”

  They looked at each other, and in that moment I dived past them.

  Heat, steamy as a laundry, smelling of eggs and greenness and packed bodies and something rich and sweet. The murmurous sigh of a huge crowd.

  Beyond the glow of daylight falling through the cave-mouth, showing a floor of polished red stone, the place was a vast hollow, packed like a jewel-chest with lamps and candles and thousands upon thousands of glowing eyes.