It was no welcoming hail. High-pitched, tearing and cruel, it cut through Vredech and Pinnatte as it cut through the acrid blue air. Both men brought their hands to their ears to keep out the awful sound, but to no avail. It seemed to Vredech that the mountains themselves quivered and rang at its touch. Pinnatte dropped low. Feeling doubly exposed, Vredech followed him. Crouching side by side, they watched the approaching figures.
Apart from the difficulties posed by the light, they were too far away for any detail to be seen, save that they were riding and that there were three of them with one leading and two following on either side. They maintained their stations so meticulously and kept to so straight a line that they had the appearance of an arrowhead as they moved across the plain. Both Vredech and Pinnatte gasped as the three riders jumped over a wide ravine without changing either speed or formation.
‘Who are they?’ Pinnatte whispered.
Alarm made Vredech’s reply irritable. ‘I told you, I’ve never been here. I’ve no idea who they are – or what.’
Pinnatte ignored his tone. His instincts spoke. ‘I think we should keep away from them.’
Another cry reached them. It was joined by others, screeching and frightening. Though he could detect nothing intelligible in the sound, the hairs on Vredech’s arms rose in response. A ghastly conversation was being held. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s probably a good idea. They don’t sound particularly hospitable.’
‘They sound terrifying,’ Pinnatte corrected him, his eyes wide. ‘I’m glad we’re halfway up a mountain.’ He pointed to some rocks nearby and, following his unspoken command, he and Vredech slipped silently into their lee. ‘This feels a bit better,’ Pinnatte whispered as Vredech joined him. ‘We can watch them from here.’
The noises stopped.
‘Keep quiet, keep still!’ Pinnatte said urgently. It was another command, but although the figures were a considerable distance away, Vredech did not feel inclined to dispute it. Though there was silence now, the cries still seemed to be ringing through him. They stirred such darkness within him that it was all he could do to stop himself from praying.
Where was this place? And how had he and Pinnatte come here? Or, for that matter, why? That was a bad question. He shied away from it and closed his eyes again to reach out for the part of him that he could feel lying safely under the watchful eye of his wife. It was still there, though there was something strange and confused about it now…
Pinnatte was shaking him, returning him to this eerie blue world.
The figures had come to a halt. They were standing side by side, completely motionless. Vredech found he was holding his breath. This place was unnaturally quiet, he realized. There was not even a hint of the susurration of distant tumbling streams and the blowing of the wind through low cols and around high peaks that was always present in the mountains. It was as though the peaks themselves were standing in fearful obeisance to these new arrivals.
Or were they too perhaps trying to avoid their attention?
Vredech forced out a gulping breath. Relax, he ordered himself. This predicament was strange enough without letting his imagination overwhelm him.
Then, with a slowness that was as unnatural as the silence draping down from the waiting mountains, the figures were moving again, this time behind one another. Very gradually, the gap between them increased and the line began to turn until finally they were equally spaced and moving in a wide circle. Soft mewlings reached Pinnatte and Vredech, but for all their softness they were as disturbingly unpleasant as the screams that had first announced the arrival of the three riders.
Like hunting creatures trying to lure out a shy prey, Vredech thought.
A further pattern was emerging. While the riders maintained their respective positions, the circle was slowly shrinking. At the same time they were increasing their speed. Unsettling in its precision, it became a giddying and hypnotic sight that seemed to stretch time itself for the two watchers.
The cries that accompanied this taut and inward spiralling changed in harmony with it, rising and falling in a broken, uneven rhythm, like a rasping incantation. Vredech leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. There was something at the centre of the circle, he was sure – something forming.
‘Be careful,’ Pinnatte whispered, drawing him back.
‘Can you see what they’re riding around?’ Vredech asked.
Pinnatte squinted in his turn. ‘No,’ he replied, then, ‘There might be a light or something. Moving about. I can’t see properly through this blue air.’
A wave of sound broke over them in an unexpected and jangling climax, making them both start. Then, as sharply as though a sword had cut through it, it stopped.
The sudden cessation was as jolting as the first hearing. Vredech shook his head. Were the sounds still reverberating in his ears, nothing more than a physical response, like the images that linger in the eyes after looking at too bright a light, or were they real? Echoes of the riders’ cries leaking down to him as they resonated from peak to peak, carrying their message to the farthest extremities of this bleak place. Pinnatte too was shaking his head as though to clear it, but neither man spoke. They renewed their observation of the distant figures.
Still now, the three riders were standing side by side again. In front of them, Vredech could see a vague haziness. It was moving fitfully from side to side. As though held there against its will, Vredech thought. And it was twisting and turning, he was sure. It had the quality of the elusive shapes that flit across the resting eye, at once real and unreal, and though Vredech could see it, he could not focus on it nor even, he realized, judge exactly where it was. Was it just an illusion?
He blinked deliberately to see if it would move in response.
For an instant he was close to the riders and peering into the growing light. It was like a rift in the blue reality of this place.
And there was something within it, beyond it…
Then the cries were ringing about the mountains again, triumphant and malevolent, and he was crouching back down behind his distant shelter.
‘Are you all right?’ Pinnatte was asking. The street thief was holding his arm and looking at him anxiously.
Vredech nodded. ‘Yes. Just felt a little dizzy, that’s all.’
‘It’s the smell of this place,’ Pinnatte diagnosed, wrinkling his face to mark his own distress. ‘It’s setting my teeth on edge. And this damned light. It makes it difficult to see anything clearly. And it feels as though it’s shining right through me. As though I’m drowning in it… or not really here.’
The riders’ voices silenced him. Though still unintelligible they were obviously in a state of great excitement. Their ordered line had broken up and their mounts were rearing and kicking. Gone was all sign of the obsessive symmetry that had marked their approach and their circling of the light. As he watched them, something else disturbed Vredech. The movements of the horses were alien and strange.
Almost serpentine, he concluded. He let the thought pass and turned his attention back to the light that seemed to be the source of the riders’ celebration. It was no clearer to him than before, shifting and wavering erratically, though, at times, it moved to the pattern of the riders’ cries. Then their tone was different. Excitement was mounting, tilting now towards frenzy. One of the riders moved directly towards the light. It shifted and changed as he reached it, as if trying to avoid him, and the cries reaching Vredech and Pinnatte became a mixture of shrieking defiance and frantic urging.
The two other riders joined their fellow in this mysterious assault, but each time the first rider reached it, some unseen force turned him away.
‘What are they doing?’ Pinnatte asked, but Vredech waved him silent. Something about the unfolding scene was reaching deep inside him, shaking him, pounding him. It was both obscene and terrifying. Abruptly, he turned and vomited.
Pinnatte let out a hissing exclamation filled as much with alarm and disgust as concern.
‘I’m sorry,’ Vredech said, leaning back against the rock and wiping his hand across his now clammy forehead. ‘I don’t know what…’
Something had changed. Another sound was echoing through the mountains. It was full of despair and fury. Turning, Vredech saw its cause immediately.
The light was changing, slowly both shrinking and fading into the all-pervading blue of this strange place. For a while it faltered, growing fitfully as the pitch of the cries rose, looking set to return, then falling back again, smaller each time.
Its fate was inevitable, Vredech saw, though he could not have said why. No urging from the three riders could forestall it.
As it finally disappeared he turned away and covered his ears against the raging cacophony that he knew would follow.
Pinnatte did the same.
They remained thus for a long time, then both were suddenly aware of silence around them again. Looking up, they saw that the three riders were standing silent and motionless, equally spaced about a circle centred on the vanished light and facing where it had been. Vredech could feel a tension mounting that was far more menacing than anything he had felt before. Both he and Pinnatte stayed very still. It was not difficult; the mountains themselves seemed to be awaiting some decision.
‘They know we’re here,’ Pinnatte whispered, very softly. His eyes were wide and he was shaking.
‘No,’ Vredech said, rubbing his leaden stomach. ‘They can’t. They’re too far away.’ But even as he spoke he heard the lie in his own words. Nothing could be hidden for long on this desolate, ringing blue world. Some insight told him that each part of this place touched all others.
A solitary, almost coaxing cry rose up from the plain. Its unsteady tones rang round the trembling peaks like the keening of a hunting falcon. Vredech and Pinnatte both held their breaths as the eerie sound folded around them, echoing and fragmenting on the rocks that sheltered them before coming together again and swooping treacherously back down to the riders.
Pinnatte’s shaking infected Vredech. They can’t see us, they can’t see us, he repeated inwardly, over and over, as if repetition might make it so.
Another cry came. Harsher and taunting. Again the mountains carried the message and returned an answer.
Vredech saw Pinnatte’s hand close about a large stone. He tried to find a reassurance which a glance of the eyes might communicate to the young man, but could not. Though he had found himself in other worlds before, none of them had been as strange and disconcerting as this, and his leaving them had always been as involuntary as his arriving. Whatever it was about him that allowed such things was beyond his control. Should he be angry and frightened in order to carry himself and Pinnatte out of here? Or relaxed and calm? He did not know. He was helpless.
A third cry reached them, goading and confident.
The three riders began to move.
‘They’re coming for us,’ Pinnatte said.
‘You don’t know that,’ Vredech tried.
Pinnatte looked at him, almost scornfully. ‘I know when people are looking for me. I’ve known it all my life. That’s why I haven’t been caught very often.’ He became urgent and practical. ‘We need to get back where we came from, find a better hiding place, or get ready to deal with those three.’
‘I don’t know how to leave this place,’ Vredech said, doing his best to hold Pinnatte’s gaze.
‘Well, whoever they are, I don’t want to meet them face to face,’ Pinnatte retorted, without any hint of reproach at this admission.
Vredech glanced down at the approaching riders. ‘They’re not hurrying,’ he said. ‘And they’ll never get horses up here.’
Pinnatte was less sanguine. ‘I don’t know about the horses, but if they’re not hurrying it’s because they don’t have to. It’s not a good sign.’
With a grimace, Vredech bowed before the young man’s greater experience in such matters.
‘That leaves us with finding a hiding place,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps running.’
Pinnatte looked around desperately. ‘It’s not my kind of country. I’m used to streets and alleys and lots of noise and people.’
Vredech too was searching the terrain. He still clung faintly to the hope that the riders would not be able to make what looked to be a long and difficult climb to reach them.
A mocking cry circled around them. Pinnatte clamped his hands over his ears.
‘They don’t care what we do,’ he said, breathing heavily and obviously struggling to retain control of himself. ‘I’ve had to deal with people like that before. This is their place, their territory. All of it. Wherever we go, they’ll find us, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’ He seized Vredech’s arm. ‘Are you sure you can’t get us back?’
‘I told you, I don’t know how,’ Vredech snapped, snatching his arm free.
Pinnatte put his hand to his face momentarily, then swore and began scrabbling about, gathering more stones.
‘Perhaps we can talk to them,’ Vredech said weakly. ‘Perhaps we’re worrying unnecessarily. Maybe they can help us find a way back.’
Pinnatte was openly scornful. ‘Use your ears, man,’ he said. ‘That’s not some clerk and his family out for a quiet evening’s ride. I don’t know what they are. I’m not even sure they’re people, making a noise like that. But they’re bad, that I do know.’ He waved an encompassing arm. ‘And look at this place. Anything that lives here is going to be like nothing either of us have ever met.’ He thrust some rocks into Vredech’s hand. ‘I don’t suppose you can fight either, can you?’
Vredech toyed with the stones nervously. Irregular and jagged, with sharp edges and many facets, they were unlike any stones he had ever seen before.
‘You suppose right,’ he said. ‘I’m a Preaching Brother, not a warrior.’ He glanced down again at the riders. They were still making the same unhurried progress. Almost as if they had seen him watching, a rasping cry greeted him. It was a chilling sound and it gave Pinnatte’s remarks a grim validity. ‘But if we get caught, we still try talking before using these,’ he said sternly, rattling the stones in front of Pinnatte’s face. ‘If we start throwing first we’ll only have one option then.’
Pinnatte paused and thought for a moment, then nodded and returned to gathering his ammunition. Vredech looked again at where they were. Born amongst mountains, this ought to be more his kind of country that it was Pinnatte’s but it did not help. There was a newness about this place, a harsh violence, that was quite different from the age-sculpted landscape of Canol Madreth. Sheer rock faces swept up to improbable peaks and ridges that looked as sharp as crystal and which seemed to be striving to tear down the sky itself. Like the stones that Pinnatte had given him there was nothing about them that indicated the touch of wind or rain or any of the rigours of an endless parade of summers and winters. And, too, there was a barren monotony, a deadness, about the place that weighed on him and that he could not properly identify.
In front of them – the way the riders would have to come – was a rough slope that, reassuringly, fell quickly out of sight. On either side of them the ground swept up with increasing steepness to high peaks and offered nothing but more exposure and no escape. To their rear, the ground rose a little to the top of the col.
‘You wait here. I’m going to have a look over the top,’ he whispered to Pinnate. ‘There might be somewhere to hide on the other side. Or we might be able to lay a false trail.’
‘No!’ Pinnatte exclaimed anxiously, seizing his arm again. ‘We came here together, we must stay together. I don’t want you going over there, then suddenly, poof, you’re gone and I’m left here on my own.’
‘Or the other way round, for that matter,’ Vredech said soberly. ‘We’ll go together, then.’
Another glance told him that the riders would soon be out of sight beneath the curve of the slope. As they finally disappeared, he and Pinnatte set off up the short scramble to the top of the col. It did not take them long. Pinnatte was nimble, Vredech was mountain-bred, and both were frightened.
In so far as he had expected anything, Vredech had assumed that the col would leave him at the top of a slope down into another valley, and, he hoped, with choices to make. It was thus with a cry of outright terror that he came to a sudden halt, swaying precariously on the very edge of a vertical drop. Indeed, he might have fallen had not Pinnatte, a few paces behind him, hastily seized his jacket and dragged him roughly backwards.
It was some time before either of them recovered sufficiently to talk coherently.
‘I’m all right,’ Vredech gasped several times, patting Pinnatte’s supporting arm with an urgency which showed quite clearly that he was not. Pinnatte returned the reassurance, then eased himself forward on his stomach to peer over the edge into the dark blue void that had nearly taken his companion. Not unused to the rooftops of Arash-Felloren, he prided himself that he was unafraid of heights. This, however, was different. The edge was as abrupt and clean as that of any man-made wall, and the rock face that fell away from it plunged giddyingly into an unseeable blue darkness that seemed to reach up into Pinnatte as he involuntarily drew in a sharp breath. With an effort, he forced himself to look from side to side. The edge curved away, fading into the same impenetrable shadow. The view disorientated him; not least, he realized, because though there was the darkness of shadow to be seen everywhere, there was no sun to cast it, nor any other light than the pervading blueness.
Even more carefully than he had approached it, Pinnatte pushed himself away from the edge and rejoined Vredech.
Though still breathing heavily, Vredech was more himself. He was looking upwards at the surrounding peaks and gesturing for silence. Pinnatte became still. As he did so he became aware of a faint whining all around them. It tinged the bitter air mockingly.
‘My cry,’ Vredech said, his face pained and fretful. ‘Echoing and echoing. If they didn’t know we were here before, they do now.’ His lip curled into an uncharacteristic snarl. ‘These mountains must carry every sound as far as they reach. They’re like nothing I’ve ever known.’
‘I gathered that, the way you nearly ran over that edge,’ Pinnatte retorted acidly.
An unexpected touch of humour in his manner cut through Vredech’s frustration and anger and drew a soft, snorting chuckle out of him. As if in confirmation of his estimation of the treachery of the mountains, the sound bubbled up to join the fading echoes of his cry, shaking and disturbing them. But, too, something was lifted from him. Nothing had changed about their predicament, and his heart was still pounding from his near accident, but he felt a little lighter.
‘It seems we’ve nowhere to go but down – towards our hosts,’ he said, standing up shakily. Pinnatte’s eyes widened. ‘Well, have we?’ Vredech pressed, before he could voice any protest.
‘I… I suppose not,’ Pinnatte stammered. ‘But…’
Vredech laid an earnest hand on his shoulder. ‘They come up one way, we go down another,’ he said.
‘And if there’s only one way up and one way down?’
Vredech shrugged. ‘Then we meet them a little sooner, that’s all.’
‘But…’
‘Come on!’ Vredech tugged Pinnatte’s arm encouragingly and set off down the slope. They had only gone a few paces when Pinnatte looked down at his hand and swore.
Vredech turned to see the young man sucking his hand and then spitting.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘I’ve cut myself, that’s all. Everything’s so sharp.’
Vredech quickly examined the cut. It was at the base of the thumb and though it was not deep it was very fine and bleeding quite profusely. Pinnatte sucked on it and spat again, splattering an uneven purple stain on the ground. Vredech unearthed a kerchief and bound the hand. ‘It looks clean,’ he said. ‘Just keep this tight if you can.’ Then he looked at his own hands. There were one or two thin scratches there that he had no recollection of receiving, but none of them was bleeding. It was a timely warning, he thought. Every edge in this place did seem to be relentlessly sharp. Another cruel difference between here and the mountains he knew.
As they reached the place where they had first found themselves, Vredech paused, trying to estimate which way the riders might be coming. With nothing to guide him, however, he opted for what looked to be the easiest way. Pinnatte followed him without question.
With his recent experience still vividly in his mind, Vredech moved very slowly, peering intently ahead and placing every step with exaggerated care. Occasionally, an exchange of high-pitched cries would well up to let them know that the riders were still nearby and, presumably, still searching for them. Each time this happened, they stopped, momentarily paralysed by the sounds, but now they had decided on a course of action, however futile it might prove to be, Vredech found that he was greeting the cries of their pursuers with a growing defiance. Gradually, however, and as he had feared, the slope became steeper and the choice of ways down more problematical, forcing them to move with increasing caution. Though the sides of the mountain were covered with sheets of tumbled rocks and boulders, these were sharp-edged and viciously spiked like miniatures of the peaks towering above them, a clamouring family scrabbling at the knees of their parents. And, too, it was not easy to see in the blue light, nor breathe easily in the clinging unpleasantness of the sour air.
They halted in the lee of a large rock to catch their breath.
‘We don’t seem to be any nearer the bottom,’ Pinnatte said unhappily as he looked first up, then down the slope.
‘We’ve come quite a way,’ Vredech reassured him. ‘It’s just that mountains are bigger than you think. You tend to lose your sense of size and distance. What seems to be no more than an hour or so’s walk away takes half a day.’
‘Well, at least we’ll all be on foot,’ Pinnatte said, gazing round. ‘I mightn’t know much about mountains, but no horse I’ve ever seen could walk across this. It’s hard enough with two good feet and two good hands.’ As he looked down at his hands he turned over the one that the Sierwolf had crushed and began examining it closely. ‘Your wife thought she could bring some use back to this, didn’t she?’ he said, softly, as though to himself. ‘I’d like that. She’s got a way with her, your wife.’
Pinnatte’s harsh city accent gave the compliment an edge that prompted Vredech to give him a sidelong look despite their circumstances. Pinnatte caught it. He stammered. ‘I meant… she’s kind… clever. Atelon saved my life when this thing was festering – burning me up – but I don’t think he even thought about how it could be made to work again.’
He leaned forward and took Vredech’s arm in a powerful grip. ‘If we get out of here – get back to the camp – and my head’s choked up with… cobwebs… again, tell her, “Thank you”. Tell her, yes, I want my hand back, if she can do it. I’ll do whatever she says. Tell her – tell all of them…’ He tapped his head. ‘I’m in here. I’m listening. I’m learning. And I’m grateful.’
Vredech was taken aback by this passionate outburst. ‘I will,’ he managed to say, but Pinnatte had not finished. He bared his teeth. ‘And tell them I’m angry, too. Angry at what those foul crystal meddlers did to me. I might have been precious little use to anyone as a street thief, but I didn’t deserve that. And I don’t deserve this either. I…’
Vredech reached out and put his hand over Pinnatte’s mouth gently.
‘I understand,’ he said urgently. ‘I understand. And I’ll make sure everyone else does when we get back. And it is “when” we get back, not “if”. Do you understand?’
Pinnatte’s nodded reply was interrupted by a paean of triumphant shrieking high above them. Both men started violently, so abrupt and awful was the noise. Instinctively they flattened themselves against the sheltering rock. Vredech’s defiance faltered as his protestation about their ultimate destination felt empty and futile in his suddenly dry throat.
‘How did they get above us?’ Pinnatte whispered.
‘As you said, this is their place,’ Vredech replied as he struggled to recover from the shock. Though, even as he spoke, he realized he could not properly answer Pinnatte’s question. It did not seem possible that anything could have clambered up this slope so quickly.
‘More to the point is why do they sound like that? As if they’ve found something they’ve been searching for.’
‘Perhaps because they have,’ Pinnatte replied tersely. ‘Perhaps they weren’t after us at all.’
Vredech looked at him unhappily. There was logic in what he was saying, but every part of him denied it. The riders were searching for them, and the triumph in their calls did not bode well.
‘Do we stay or do we run?’ he asked.
‘Run,’ Pinnatte said without a pause.
Not that anything approaching running seemed possible, but they immediately moved away from the sheltering rock and continued their painstaking descent.
The shrieking above them continued, first one voice, then another, rising and falling. A debate was being held. A leisurely debate, Vredech thought. Just as they had moved across the plain, so the pursuers were moving towards their prey quite unhurriedly. Though nothing in their cries was intelligible, their general tenor was unequivocal: there was nowhere for Vredech and Pinnatte to go, nowhere to hide, nowhere in this entire terrible place.
As if giving a blessing to this conclusion, a low, moaning cry of satisfaction folded around them.
They stopped and turned at the same time.
Above them, on the rock they had been sheltering under, black against the dark blue sky, and still mounted, stood the three figures.