Vredech found the pace trying. He had always been a better rider than Nertha, and the sight of her moving not merely ahead of him but getting steadily further away, revived sensations that he had not experienced since his youth.
‘Come on, nag, move,’ he growled furiously to his mount, urging it forward, but to no avail. He caught up with Nertha only when she stopped, and by then he was red-faced and breathless.
‘You should try letting the horse do the running,’ she said, laughing.
‘It wasn’t fair, it was uphill,’ he said fatuously, spluttering into laughter himself as he realized what he had said.
Nertha swung down from her horse. ‘We’ll walk them awhile – let them cool down. I doubt your horse has had any exercise since you bought it.’
Vredech affected a dignified silence.
Their gallop had carried them to a little-used road high above the town. Below them lay the familiar jumble of winding streets and grey-roofed houses tumbling down towards the larger buildings at the centre of the town, and thence to the towers of the PlasHein. Had they searched, they would have been able to see the roof of the Haven Meeting House, but neither of them did.
Looking round, Vredech remembered the vision that the Whistler had shown him, of a vast, strangely flat city devastated by a cruel enemy. He remembered, too, his denial, and felt it again here. Not in Canol Madreth. It wasn’t possible…
Was it?
‘It’s not cavalry country, is it?’
Nertha’s remark struck him like a blow.
‘What?’ he exclaimed fiercely.
She looked at him wide-eyed, startled by his response. ‘I said it’s not cavalry country,’ she repeated. ‘It’s better suited to light infantry.’
‘What are you talking about, girl? What do you know about cavalry and infantry?’ He was almost shouting.
‘Don’t call me girl,’ Nertha blasted back. ‘You know I hate it. And what are you shouting at me for?’
Vredech’s mouth opened wide, then closed again unhappily. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, wilting. ‘I was just thinking about what the Whistler showed me – that ruined city and riders swarming through the streets, killing people, just for fun.’ He folded his arms about himself protectively.
Nertha watched him closely. ‘Vivid?’ she said.
His face twisted with the pain of the memory. ‘Yes. There was so much in his music that I can’t find words for. I don’t want to think about it.’
Nertha looked out across the valley. ‘Strange,’ she said. ‘I’m half-envious of you and your strange new friend.’
They stood silent for a little time, before Vredech said, quite simply, ‘Don’t be,’ and started walking away. Nertha followed him.
There was no more solemnity as they continued on their journey, now walking, now riding, trotting, galloping until they reached the Witness House. They gave their horses to a groom there and continued on foot. Vredech strode out strongly until they were out of sight of the Witness House then he slowed.
‘I suppose you did that because I rode faster than you,’ Nertha panted as she caught up with him.
Vredech chuckled. ‘As a matter of fact, no,’ he replied. ‘But only because I forgot. I just wanted to be away from the Witness House because I think I’m going to be living up here over the next few days, discussing what’s happened.’ He pulled a wry face. ‘I wonder what else Cassraw said while we were outside?’
‘Forget it, and get up that mountain, or go and see Mueran right now,’ Nertha insisted. ‘I’m not having you looking over your shoulder every two minutes. It’s one or the other… I’ll do whatever you want.’
‘Very well, father,’ Vredech said piously. He turned and looked at the steep grassy slope ahead. ‘Let’s see how fit your legs are after so long away from any proper hills.’ Nertha curled her lip at him and motioned him upwards with an sharp inclination of her head.
Vredech made no effort to race, however. He had given up that kind of folly many years ago, as time had given him a little more awareness of his own vulnerability. And besides, he was far from certain that he could outstrip Nertha, for all his bluster. Thus they walked more or less side by side, moving steadily upwards until they came at last to Ishryth’s lawn. They paused there, as did most people, and rested for a little while in the silence and the sunlight. Neither spoke.
Then they began the final ascent towards the summit. Nertha kept pace with him easily and Vredech made a quiet resolution to do more walking when all this was over.
When all what was over?
His own question jolted all his concerns back on to him. As if sensing it, Nertha turned and issued a brisk, ‘Come on. We’ll stop at the next skyline,’ and then moved off smartly. It was sufficient to release him for the moment, but Vredech knew that some of the magic of the impromptu journey was irreplaceably lost. Nevertheless he was still content to be where he was, concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other and moving quietly upward through the clear mountain air.
When he reached the skyline he found Nertha, a little red-faced and breathless, staring curiously at the summit which, for the first time since they had started up the mountain proper, was now in view.
The strangeness about the summit which Nertha had casually identified as heat haze, was there still: an uneasy distortion which made the summit appear to be shifting and changing, although when any one part of it was examined, it seemed quite still.
‘I’m not even sure I’m seeing what I’m seeing,’ Nertha said, rubbing her eyes then squinting up at the peak. ‘Can you see it? Moving and not moving.’
Vredech nodded. It was as good a description as any.
‘What do you think it is?’ Nertha asked.
Vredech felt something stirring deep inside him. Not so much an anger as a combination of hatred and a predator’s lust for its prey. ‘I’ve no idea. Let’s do as you said. Take the devil by the tail.’ He bared his clenched teeth. ‘And twist it,’ he said, his hand miming the deed. Nertha glanced at him uncertainly and then squeezed his arm.
As they began clambering up the final rocky slope, Vredech felt far less assured than he seemed outwardly. Despite his best efforts he found himself thinking of the many legends that hung about the mountain: about how it had been torn from a land far away by Ishryth to crush a terrible foe, or how it had been driven upwards from deep below to escape the awful cries of a king imprisoned by Ishryth, and too, how the Watchers of Ishryth looked over it from their great palaces in the clouds. A whole gamut of stories were wound about the mountain, from holy texts in the Santyth to children’s tales and dancing rhymes. Most of the tales in the Santyth were either allegorical in character or had obvious historical derivations and, of course, as he kept saying to himself, none of the more fanciful myths were to be taken seriously. But the Ervrin Mallos dominated not only the land of Canol Madreth, it also loomed large in the hearts and minds of its inhabitants, and no one was absolutely free of some superstition about the place. That it had become the site for the heart of their religion testified to that.
It took Vredech far more mental effort than he would have imagined to hold his growing anxiety at bay. He found it comforting simply watching Nertha clambering agilely over the rocks and looking about her constantly, eyes prying into the faint haziness about the summit. She seemed in some way to be invulnerable, while fear was hovering increasingly at the edge of his mind. Fear of the darkness that had hung over the mountain when he had been here last, and of the deeper darkness that had enveloped him, and, not least, of the strange barbarous paean of rejoicing he had heard, and the terrible, interrogating coldness that it had presaged.
He looked up at the sky. Bright blue and littered with small white clouds, it was the very antithesis of that day. Yet though the sun’s warmth more than compensated for the cool breeze that was beginning to blow as they neared the summit, he began to feel a chill deep inside – a tiny, ice-cold knot. They must have moved into the region of the haziness by now, yet there was no sign of any disturbance in the air.
‘Nertha, wait!’ he called out.
She stopped and looked back at him. ‘What’s the matter?’
All he could think of to say was, ‘Be alert.’
He moved quickly to her side and took her arm. ‘Be aware.’
Her face filled with questions but she asked none of them. They continued upwards. The chill inside Vredech began to grow. It was not the chill of the mountains, nor was it the chill of fear, or the clammy iciness of death. Rather it was the cold of complete absence. Coldness of the heart from the absence of love, coldness of the mind from the absence of doubt, coldness of the spirit from the absence of awe at anything beyond itself. Coldness that was the very negation of life, that was the very opposite of the Great Heat from which all things were said to have come.
And he recognized it. It was the coldness that had held him, searched him…
Dismissed him!
Anger welled up inside him as the memory returned of the judgement that had found his inadequacy, his worthlessness, so total, and left him nothing but fist-waving fury by way of rebuttal. Yet, in truth, why should he want the approval of such a fearful judge?
‘You’re looking grim.’ Nertha brought him back to the present.
‘Just remembering,’ he said.
Nertha looked at him closely. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
He smiled faintly. ‘I’m beginning to know your physician’s manner,’ he said, then, ‘Why do you ask?’
Nertha’s nose curled. She was about to say, ‘No special reason,’ but instead she told the truth. ‘There’s an… unpleasantness about this place.’
Vredech borrowed a phrase of their father’s. ‘Be specific,’ he said. They smiled at the old memory, but only briefly, as if such light-heartedness were too alien a bloom to flourish in this place.
Nertha looked troubled. She put a hand to her face. ‘I can feel the breeze blowing, and yet I can’t. There’s a terrible stillness about this place.’
Vredech glanced around at the sunlit vista of Canol Madreth laid out before him. There was still no shifting haze that he could see. All was clear and bright. Yet something was amiss. Here, on a day like this, he should feel deeply relaxed, joyous even, with many petty perspectives righted by the massive and ancient presence of the mountains and sight of the tiny houses far below. But now, there was nothing. He did not know what he had expected to find up here, but it was not this cold emptiness that forbade all responses.
‘Let’s go on,’ he said, very softly but with a determination that made Nertha frown anxiously.
They did not speak again until they were clambering over the jagged rocks at the very top of the mountain.
Nertha folded her arms about herself and shivered. She looked at Vredech reproachfully. ‘It’s you and your damned superstitions,’ she said, offering an explanation before one was sought.
Vredech shook his head. ‘No, it’s not,’ he said gently. ‘It’s whatever’s attached to this place. You feel it, too, don’t you, but you don’t want to talk about it because it makes no sense. Something’s reaching into you and laying a cold hand over…’ He paused. ‘… over everything in you that’s human. Perhaps even everything that’s living.’
Nertha turned her head from side to side, as if trying to free herself from something. Then she grimaced and let out an almost animal growl. ‘Everything has a rational explanation. Nothing is to be feared, it is only to be understood.’
‘There is only the darkness where my ability to measure ends,’ Vredech said.
Nertha’s angry expression changed to one of surprise. ‘Yes,’ she said.
Vredech met her gaze and extended a slow embracing arm across the craggy summit. ‘Then there’s great darkness up here, for both of us,’ he said. ‘You can’t explain what you’re feeling, but you’re feeling it nonetheless, aren’t you?’
‘Hush!’ Nertha said sharply. ‘I need to think.’
Holding out a hand as if to keep him at bay, she sat down and leaned back against a sloping rock, then closed her eyes. Vredech sat down nearby and rested his chin in his hand. He did not close his eyes. The last thing he wanted now was to be confined in his own darkness. He wanted to take in the familiar mountains and green valleys billowing away into the distance. He wanted every possible contact with this real familiar world, wanted to embed every least part of it into him as protection against the cold alien presence that was pervading the mountain.
But it would not be enough, he knew. What hung here, what was somehow seeping into Canol Madreth through Cassraw, was no passive spirit. He remembered again the all-too human triumph in the clamour he had heard during his search for Cassraw. Rampant, savage joy. The kind of joy that danced on the crushed body of an enemy. Devoid of respect, of compassion, of everything save awareness of itself and its insatiable needs.
What hung about this place was merely the aftermath of its touch. The will that had brought it about was gone.
‘Who responds to His song builds a way for Him, and He will not relinquish it,’ the Whistler had said. ‘And there are many ways in which He can come. He builds ever.’
Vredech nodded to himself as he pondered the remark. He found he was staring absently at the motionless form of Nertha. She seemed to be more solid even than the ancient canting stones about him, yet, ironically, she also looked soft and very vulnerable, leaning back against the rock. He was happy that she was here with him.
Not cavalry country. The thought came from nowhere and made him smile. What in the world could Nertha know about such things? But in its wake, as if suddenly released, came other, more sobering, martial images:
Cassraw’s first sermon with its talk of armies – multitudes marching forth, united under His banner; the Whistler showing him the awful sacking of that alien city; then, almost prosaically, the faint menace of real conflict with Tirfelden that was hovering silently around the edges of the political mayhem in the Heindral. A spasm of terrible fear suddenly shook him at the prospect and he clenched his hands together in the manner of earnest prayer. In the name of pity, let none of this be, he thought desperately, as the images persisted. Then, untypically, and not without a touch of guilt, he asked of his god, ‘Reach out and stop it, Lord. Reach out, I beg You.’
Bridgehead.
The word came out of his rambling war-filled thoughts with an almost physical vividness. It seemed to be important and he scrabbled after it as if it might suddenly be snatched back and interrogated. In common with most Madren, he knew nothing of war save such of Canol Madreth’s early history as he had been obliged to learn at school, and such as could be gleaned from various dramatic passages in the Lesser Books of the Santyth. Yet, as he turned over the word ‘bridgehead’, memories began to return from the time when, as a child, his father had read him a tale of a single warrior who had held an entire army at bay while his companions demolished the very bridge he was standing on. The idea and the manner of the telling had thrilled him enormously, and he had spent many exciting daydreams holding one of the local bridges against unspecified but overwhelming odds for a long time afterwards. To his surprise, some of the excitement lingered yet, his palms tingling slightly with the feel of the grip of his long-sheathed and quite imaginary sword that had solved so many problems so invincibly and so simply. He allowed himself a smile of regret at the passage of such childish intensity. And as the word carried him back across the years, so it spanned into the future. Doubts about what was happening fell away from him. Not his intellectual, reasoning doubts, but those ill-formed doubts that prowl the realms of the mind beyond the depths of reason and gnaw at the roots of faith. He shied away from using the name Ahmral, but he could no longer turn away from the inner knowledge that some power was intruding into his life and, potentially, the lives of everyone in Canol Madreth. Nor could he turn away from the knowledge that Cassraw was being used by Him. And, just as Cassraw was His, or, being charitable, was becoming His, so He had chosen this place. A bridgehead. An enclave deep inside enemy territory.
Let him build nothing.
Many ways…
‘Nertha,’ he said, very softly. She opened her eyes immediately. ‘What are you thinking? Tell me right away, however foolish.’
She looked up at the sky and then, as he had been doing, around at the surrounding mountains and valleys. ‘I’m thinking that the sky looks different here, and the mountains. I’m thinking that everything feels different, too, as if this place weren’t the summit of the Ervrin Mallos any more, but something else – and somewhere else.’ She spoke without hesitation and with no sign of embarrassment. Then she stood up and looked at him. Vredech saw that her face was tense with the effort of keeping something under control. The same tension came through in her voice when she spoke again, her words measured and deliberate. ‘Yet I feel no different, and I think I’m an experienced enough physician not to allow my affection to cloud my judgement about what’s been happening to you too badly. So I must presume that what I feel up here comes from something outside of me, for all it’s as though it were coiling round my insides.’ The control faltered slightly and she folded her arms and hunched up her shoulders. ‘There’s something here that’s colder than death,’ she said. ‘Yet it’s alive and wilful.’
Vredech frowned. ‘You feel an actual presence? A will?’ he said, trying to keep the alarm from his voice.
‘Yes, I think so,’ she replied. ‘Faint, but there, definitely there. Something very old. Something very strange, and frightening.’
Suddenly concerned, Vredech reached out and took her hand. ‘Perhaps we should leave,’ he said urgently.
‘It’s all right,’ she said reassuringly. ‘I’m female. By my nature I’m nearer to the truth of things than you are. There’s much easier prey available for it than me.’ She looked at him pointedly. ‘I’m also a devout sceptic and a trained physician. And what I smell here is the onset of a disease. The inconsequential symptoms of a grievous sickness to come. It can be resisted.’
‘I feel no presence,’ Vredech said, still anxious. ‘I did, when we were searching for Cassraw, but not now. I feel only a kind of… desolation – a waiting.’
Nertha took his hand. ‘Your turn,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you’ve been thinking.’
Vredech coughed awkwardly. ‘I thought, “bridgehead”,’ he said. ‘Something establishing itself here against a future intention.’
Nertha half-closed her eyes, testing the idea. ‘Yes,’ she decided. ‘That’s good.’
Vredech ventured his most fearful question. ‘What do you think it could…?’
Nertha’s free hand came up to silence him. ‘What or who it is, where it’s come from, and why, I can’t begin to think. I’ve precious little logic keeping me afloat as it is. I’m really sailing over deep waters just on my intuition.’
‘It’s all we’ve got, I suspect.’ Vredech was not unhappy to abandon his question. ‘But it’s all right saying nothing is to be feared, only understood. That doesn’t necessarily make whatever lies in the darkness beyond where we can measure any less dangerous.’
‘Oh, it’s dangerous,’ Nertha said, her eyes narrowing. ‘I can feel that.’
‘What can we do, then? We can’t just debate and do nothing. But how can we fight something that we can’t see?’
A shadow fell across the summit of the mountain, making them both start, but it was only a cloud passing in front of the sun. Nertha pulled free from Vredech’s grip with a cry of annoyance at being so foolishly startled. ‘I fight things I can’t see all the time,’ she said angrily, striding away across the rocks. Then she stopped and pointed a determined finger at Vredech. ‘You do what you can. Say your prayers, speak your blessings, whatever you feel is right.’ For a moment Vredech thought she was being sarcastic, then he realized she was quite sincere. ‘I’m going to try to cure this place. If there’s a disease here, then there’s a cause.’ The pointing hand became a clenched and angry fist. ‘I’m going to look for it like I’d look for any other disease. And if I find it I’m going to root it out.’
As Nertha moved away, Vredech felt the cold inside him intensifying. For a choking moment he thought that he was not going to be able to move, that he would become like one of the great fingerstones that marked the summit.
‘Come on!’
The call transported him momentarily back to the night-time hillside where he had met the Whistler only hours earlier. Though he had not felt that his vision was impaired in any way, everything was suddenly in sharp focus, as though a fine veil had been drawn back. And the cold no longer bound him.
‘Come on!’ Nertha shouted again, waving to him. She was clambering up a small cluster of rocks that marked the highest point of the mountain and that did indeed look as if they had been pushed up from below by some last desperate effort. He walked across and climbed up after her.
Nertha was standing with her hands resting on one of the rocks and her eyes closed. ‘Do your praying silently,’ she said. ‘I need to concentrate.’
Vredech was half-inclined to ask her what she was doing, but the tone of her voice forbade it. He grunted an acquiescence.
He did not close his own eyes, however. Instead, as before, he watched Nertha, for fear that, in the stillness of her own darkness, she might be in some kind of danger. Silently, he started to reach for the abundance of prayers and litanies that were a routine part of his religious life. After a moment, he hesitated. They would not be enough, he realized. They would suffice for most people, for most of the normal ills of life, but this was no normal ill. Nor was he an untutored member of a flock to be consoled by a solemn utterance. He was a Preaching Brother, well versed in the origins and inner meanings of the church’s rituals and, if he were brutally honest with himself, more than a little hardened to their balm. No form of words, however revered, would aid him here. It came to him that if he was truly to find the strength to oppose this menace, then he must look to the very heart of his faith.
He felt helpless. Nor was he unaware of the dark irony of his position, standing on top of the Ervrin Mallos and looking to find form where generations of scholars had searched and failed. He was given no time to ponder his position, however.
‘It’s here,’ Nertha said, her voice a mixture of triumph and disgust. He looked at her. Her eyes were still closed, but she had removed her hands from the rock and was waving them vaguely in front of her. As she turned, one of her hands struck him and she seized hold of him. ‘It’s here, Allyn,’ she said again. ‘Something that doesn’t belong. Something that’s binding it here.’
‘What do you mean?’ Vredech asked, bewildered. ‘There’s me, you, and the rocks, nothing else.’
Nertha’s head shook in denial. ‘Hush,’ she said. ‘I’m listening.’ She released him and, gently easing him to one side, held out her hands again, searching. She was treading carefully, her feet testing the ground before she placed them down, her hands moving slowly for fear of impact with the rocks that formed this shattered crown of the mountain. For an instant, Vredech felt cackling mirth rise up inside him at the sight: mirth without humour, full of the savage unrestrained cruelty that only a young child can know. He wanted to take hold of her and push her with all his strength from their small eyrie, to end this foolishness here and now and to walk away from everything.
The shock of the thought made him gasp.
‘Hush,’ Nertha said again, irritably.
This time it was cold fury that filled Vredech and he found himself looking around for a rock suitable for dashing this insolent woman’s brains out. He was on the point of bending down before he realized what he was doing.
‘Here!’ Nertha cried.
‘No!’
Nertha’s eyes opened and she turned to him sharply, for there had been such rage in his shout. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, alarmed, as she met his own wide-eyed stare.
Vredech gaped and shook his head several times before he could release the words. ‘I don’t know,’ he managed. ‘Such thoughts, such emotions. Horrible.’
Nertha, her arms extended, was leaning forward, half-sprawled across a flat-topped rock. She was torn between going to him and leaving what she had discovered, as if it might somehow slip away from her. Vredech ran his arm across his forehead. It was clammy with sweat as though he had just completed some massive task.
Nertha frowned and, still reluctant to move, motioned him toward her. Vredech’s head began to spin. He put out a hand to steady himself on one of the rocks. ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ he said.
And he was.
Nertha abandoned her discovery immediately and in two long strides was by his side, offering a supporting arm. He brushed it aside. ‘I’m all right, I’m all right,’ he said.
‘You don’t look it,’ Nertha retorted. ‘What brought that on all of a sudden? We’ve both had the same things to eat.’
Vredech was fumbling for a kerchief to clean his mouth. ‘Guilt and disgust,’ he said, quite clear in his diagnosis. He turned to her. ‘I had such appalling thoughts… about you. Dreadful, primitive. They came out of nowhere.’
‘Tell me,’ Nertha said. Vredech shook his head. ‘Tell me, damn you, Allyn. Whatever they were, they’re gone now. Bring them out into the light for pity’s sake if you don’t want them to come back.’
The Whistler’s words came to him. ‘We must remember the darkness in our own natures,’ he said softly, speaking more to himself than to Nertha. ‘If we forget, we’ll be taught again.’ He looked at her earnestly. ‘I understand that,’ he tapped his head, ‘as an idea. But when it came like that, possessing the whole of me, visceral… unreasoning…’ He shivered.
‘This is your Whistler’s advice, is it?’ Nertha asked. Vredech nodded. ‘Well, he’s got more sense than you have,’ she said with some appreciation. ‘Now just tell me what happened.’
Vredech knew Nertha well enough to accept that he would have to tell her sooner or later, and telling her now was likely to be much easier. He did so. Nertha grimaced, but more because of the pain it was causing him, than from distress at the nature of his thoughts.
‘Very interesting,’ she said calmly, when he had finished. ‘Don’t feel bad about it. You should hear some of the things I’ve heard. They’d really make you throw up.’
Vredech was still distressed. ‘But…’
Nertha shook him. ‘They were nothing, Allyn. Smoke in the wind. They’re out and gone now. Gone for good. And you didn’t act on them, did you?’
‘I nearly did.’
Nertha sneered. ‘Nearly, nearly. Nearly’s nothing. Nearly pregnant. Nearly a virgin. The point is, you didn’t do anything.’ She tugged at his arm. ‘Forget it. Come and look at this.’
Nertha’s earthy dismissal set Vredech’s concerns aside for the moment, but he had the feeling that something within him had been changed for ever.
‘I felt it here.’ Nertha was back at the flat rock, her hands splayed over it. She closed her eyes. ‘It’s gone,’ she said angrily. ‘I’ve lost it.’ She swore at herself. ‘I’m not very good at this kind of healing.’
‘What was it?’ Vredech asked, puzzled by the reference to healing.
Nertha tapped the rock anxiously. ‘I can’t really explain. If I was dealing with a patient I’d say it was a hurt, a tension… a wrongness.’
She looked at him uneasily, as if expecting him to laugh, but Vredech was watching her carefully.
‘And when you’d found such a hurt in someone, what would you do?’ he asked intently.
‘Look to ease it, obviously,’ she replied.
‘How?’
Nertha looked flustered. ‘It depends, doesn’t it? I can’t answer a question like that. You have to be there.’ She became defensive. ‘I told you, I’m not particularly good at this kind of healing. It’s an intuitive thing.’
Vredech took her hands. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘It’s like faith. There are no words for it.’ He held up a hand for silence as she made to speak. ‘Don’t say anything else. And don’t doubt yourself so much. Go back to where you were before I distracted you.’ He laid her hands back on the rock. As he did so he noticed a dark stain in the centre of it. In so far as he had noticed it previously he had assumed it to be residual dampness from rainwater or dew that had collected in a slight hollow. But there had been no rain for some days, and virtually continuous sunshine. Even as he looked at it he felt a sense of unease returning.
Hesitantly he reached out and touched it. The unease pervaded him.
‘What’s the matter?’ Nertha asked.
Vredech replied with another question. ‘What’s this?’
Wrinkling her nose, Nertha wiped her fingertips across the stain and peered at them intently. Then she closed her eyes and sniffed them.
‘It’s here,’ she said, her eyes opening in horror, her voice low and awe-stricken. ‘This is what I felt before. The seat of the hurt, the wrongness.’ She hesitated for a moment, and a look of fear and disgust passed briefly over her face. Then it was replaced by the expression that Vredech had seen as he had watched her treating the injured in the PlasHein Square and the Sick-House: a strange mixture of compassion and almost brutal determination.
‘What is it?’ he asked again.
Nertha bent forward over the stain and ran a finger along a thin line radiating from it. There were several such, Vredech noted. They were splash lines.
‘I think it might be blood,’ she said softly.
As she spoke the word, Vredech knew the truth of it. Blood and sacrifice. The cold, cruel dream he had touched had come back to him. He felt the oppression about the summit grow in intensity. ‘Some injured animal?’ he asked faintly, knowing that this was not so even before Nertha shook her head. No animal was going to clamber to the top of the mountain to die from an injury.
‘It must have been brought here,’ she said quietly. ‘And it was brought here as part of all this… business. I can feel it again now. It’s awful.’
So many questions filled Vredech’s mind that he could give voice to none of them. In the end he said, ‘We can’t leave it. We must do something.’
‘I need to think,’ Nertha said, a hint of desperation in her voice.
Vredech shook his head. ‘No,’ he said agitatedly. ‘Now we must feel. React in the way our hearts and stomachs tell us to, while we’re here. You know this. Later, we’ll think. I’m going to pray over this. A prayer of purification of some kind, or for the safe passage of the dead, I don’t know – whatever comes to me.’ His agitation increased. ‘You can heal it.’
‘I…’
‘Do it!’
He seized Nertha’s hand and placed his free one on the stain. Nertha did the same. Their fingers were touching. Both closed their eyes.
In the darkness, the oppression of which he had been vaguely aware seemed to take an almost solid form about Vredech. And, like Nertha, he began to sense a will behind it. To his considerable alarm however, he found that, try as he might, he could remember none of the prayers that were his stock in trade: prayers that he had recited from memory week in, week out, year in, year out; prayers to which he had turned many times in his own private meditations. His mind filled first with a scrabbling confusion and then fear. He felt Nertha’s grip tighten about his hand. It was the only sign that passed between them of their common struggle. It heightened his resolve. He must cling to his faith. But still his prayers eluded him, mocking him with disjointed fragments of long-familiar phrases. His fear began to twist into panic. And into the now almost crushing oppression came hints of scornful amusement. He recognized them as the will that had touched him once before, when he and the others had been searching for Cassraw. He was the merest mote before such awesome power and majesty.
If Your power is so great, why do You use such a feeble vessel as Cassraw?
The thought, stark in its challenge, emerged through the whirling confusion of his mind, its source unknown. Another came.
Whatever else I might be, I am near enough his equal. If You need his strength to do Your will here, then know that I will oppose You with a strength no less.
‘I need the strength of no mortal. Cassraw is my Chosen. My vessel. My Way.’
The voice that spoke inside Vredech was icy and terrible, but to his horror, the voice that his ears heard, though distorted and distant, was Nertha’s.
He could not move, and he dared not open his eyes.
‘Why do you seek to persecute me, your Lord?’
Vredech could feel the presence moving through him, searching, testing, learning. Soon, he must surely fall before this terrible possession. Despite the defiance that he had offered, the words of his faith were gone, the heart of his faith was…?
Yet something other than this will held him. As he clung to his sanity, so something clung to him. Literally. In the shapeless darkness and turmoil he felt it, tight and desperate, pressing itself into him with a force that cried out for help.
It formed itself into Nertha’s hand, gripping him now with appalling force. Vredech’s awareness cleared. As she had supported him so much over these last few days, so now he must support her in whatever pain she was suffering.
Abomination!he shouted silently into the darkness. Whatever else You might be, You are not my Lord. Get Thee hence, demon. Leave us, I command You in the name of Ishryth.
The words rolled back over him, echoing hollowly, empty and futile. They were not enough to warrant even a flicker of attention. They had been like the least of insects riding the uncaring wind to dash themselves to destruction against a great cliff-face.
Vredech’s ordered resistance, such as it was, crumbled at the insight. Beneath it was a primeval desperation, full of a burning fury.
‘Nertha!’ he cried out. ‘Nertha, I’m here. Hold on to me. He can do nothing, except twist our thoughts and desires. For all His seeming power, He is weak and feeble. A great enemy has wounded Him sorely. He holds Himself here by the merest of threads. Threads that we can break. Hold on. Reach out and heal the hurt that He is.’
But even as he called out, he knew that the hatred and anger that was in him was merely sustenance for the obscenity that was binding him here. He felt it burgeoning, nourished by his own will. Yet he could not relinquish his rage. It poured forth like the vomit that had poured from him only minutes earlier.
Then he was surrounded by a sound like a great rending. Its terrible shrieking tore at him, making him cry out, though he could not hear his own voice. He felt as though he had been lifted into some fearful limbo where nothing existed save the pain and the noise. And Nertha’s clinging hand. Still holding on to him, trusting, dependent. Nertha, who could no more bring herself to believe in Ishryth and Ahmral than fly. He seemed to hear the Whistler saying, ‘Astonishment, Vredech. Astonishment.’
And that, he realized, was why Nertha had been so easily possessed. She would not have believed what was happening to her.
But he did. He would not be downed by his own inability to accept.
His rage became a determination. Whatever else happened on this desecrated mountain-top, he would save her, even if it cost him his sanity and his soul.
‘Hold me, Nertha,’ he called out into the tumult. ‘As you love me. And I you. Hold me. He can do nothing, but what we allow.’
And, as abruptly as it had begun, like the sudden closing of the door to a boisterous inn, the noise was gone. As was the presence.
Vredech slumped forward across the rock. Silence flooded into him.
Silence and horror.
He opened his eyes, fearing to see what he knew he would. Sunlight burst mockingly into them, but nothing could illuminate the darkness that was filling him now.
For the summit was deserted.
Nertha was gone.