Chapter 11.
Styliann warmed his feet by the fire in his study and took tea from the mug on the table by his right arm. There was a knock at the door.
'Come.'
Nyer and Dystran entered. He gestured them to the other chairs and poured them each a mug of tea. Nyer settled into his seat with the ease of one well used to such company. For Dystran, a man barely into his forties, the nervousness was apparent and he sat forwards in his chair, clutching his mug tight.
'Is Laryon on his way?'
'Regretfully not,' said Nyer. 'He has encountered a problem with certain of his staff.'
'I see.' Styliann's eyes narrowed. People didn't usually pass up one of his invitations. He made a note to speak with the Master presently. 'Now, Dystran, the DimensionConnect research, it is in an advanced state, I trust?'
Dystran looked to Nyer, who gestured him to speak.
'Yes, my Lord. We are testing in the catacombs.' He smiled before he could help himself.
'Something amuses you?'
'Sorry, my Lord.' Dystran's cheeks suddenly glowed red beneath his short brown hair. 'It is just that we had to improve drainage rather urgently after the initial, highly successful test.'
Styliann raised his eyebrows.
'Keep to the report,' said Nyer.
Dystran nodded. 'We have made three successful tests of the DimensionConnect spell, linking our dimension with that of another. Having made the correct calculations, we were able to steer a course of water between the two, unfortunately flooding one spell chamber.'
'Excellent,' said Styliann. 'How long before we are ready for a live test?'
'Any time,' said Dystran. 'The only question remaining is one of mage linkage. We assume that the more mages casting, the wider the channel. However, there are risks involved.' He paused. 'Finally, dimensions are not always in alignment, and although we can calculate when they will be, we have no control over exactly when it is possible to cast.'
Styliann frowned. 'What are the alignment windows?'
'Between several hours and several days. We are still searching for a pattern.'
The Lord of the Mount nodded. 'That will do. Dystran, I need you to bring your team of mages up to speed for a large-scale live test. How many do you have?'
'Thirty,' said the mage.
'Your view, my old friend?' asked Styliann.
'It is the ideal offensive weapon for the pass,' said Nyer.
'Naturally.' Styliann smiled. The door to victory opened once again.
Later, Styliann held communion with Laryon and what he heard took the smile from his face. It was sad when old friends began playing power games with him. It made him angry.
Flesh was being sucked from his bones. Blood was pouring into the skin of his face. He could feel it swell until his cheeks burned with pain, and then swell yet more. Hirad's hands tightened reflexively, right hand attempting to crush the hilt of his sword. Eyes open, unclosable, seeing nothing but blackness mottled with grey. If he could have turned his head he was sure that he wouldn't have been able to see any of the others. Were they even there?
He could hear no sound but for the blood thrashing through his veins and his brain shouting at him to make sense of it all. Was he walking? He thought not, but he was certainly moving. Where didn't matter. He just wanted it to stop before the flesh was torn from his body and his blood surged into the void. Even then, he found himself thinking that he would still be moving. He felt a pulsing spread through his body. It began in the pit of his stomach and moved swiftly to enmesh his entire being. It was hot. Very hot. The blood felt as if it would boil his veins, melting them away.
Light.
The end of eternity.
A fall. Hard ground. A dimming of the light.
Hirad was sitting in an open space and it felt high up. No reason for that. It just felt that way. He looked left and right, counting the rest of The Raven off in his head. They were all there, all sitting, all looking at each other. Behind them, the rip hung in the air a couple of feet from the ground. The end of the rope that bound the chest hung in a slight bow. Hirad tracked it to the chest, which was lying on its side next to Ilkar. And behind the rip, a sheer drop into nothing.
Hirad stood up on juddering legs, quickly subsiding to calm, and drank in his first sight of another dimension. With the blood settling back to a normal pace through his veins, he felt the hairs all over his body stand as he breathed. He hadn't known what to expect, but it wasn't this. The air tasted different, dry and tinny, and the whole atmosphere was strange and cloying, slightly irritating to the skin and eyes.
The sky above them was dark, filled with cloud boiling across the sky, though he could feel only a light breeze on his face. He could see no break in the cover yet a half-light spread from the horizon where the black of the cloud met the black of the land.
And they were standing very high up. The feeling was confirmed by simply looking down a few feet behind and to his right. The rip was positioned at the very edge of the plateau on which they had landed and the drop was sheer immediately to both sides. Lightning, red and harsh, flared and sheeted across the land, illuminating nothing, only reinforcing the impenetrable dark. Almost as one, The Raven paced further from the edge, each man noting the small margin for error when they made to return to their own dimension.
But he knew what it lacked. Sound. Apart from the breeze sighing in his ears, he could hear nothing at all. No voices, no animals, no birds. No sound of any life whatever. Even the lightning behind them was silent. It made him uneasy. It was like standing in the land of the dead.
Hirad tracked the land to his left until his line was broken by a building. Of sorts, anyway. Gazing straight ahead across the open ground - and it was ground; soil and vegetation ruffling in the gentle wind - he saw a jumble of ramshackle structures. Broken timbers, crumbled stone and cracked slate littered the area and he could see the dereliction stretching away for what had to be five or six hundred yards until it stopped abruptly, presumably at the farther edge of the plateau.
Beyond that, another rip hung in space. And as his eyes adjusted to the light, he could see all around them, but scattered distantly, rough columns of rock which expanded at their heads to form more plateaux, disc- and oval-shaped. Clearly, they were on a similar structure and the realisation unbalanced him briefly. He thought he could just make out more buildings on the other discs, some towering like palaces. But no more light. Nothing moved but that under the sway of the breeze.
'Nice place,' muttered Talan, his voice sounding loud in the quiet.
Hirad started. 'Gods in the ground, what is this place?' The barbarian wished fervently The Unknown were there. It would have calmed him just a little.
'It doesn't make sense to my mind,' said Denser. 'How did they come to be up here, and how do they get from this platform to any of the others, and how do they get these buildings up here . . . ?' His voice trailed away, his hand still pointing vaguely in the direction of the derelict village on the platform, if that was what it was.
'And who were they?' asked Ilkar.
'That's assuming they've all gone,' said Talan.
'You've all thought that far, have you?' asked Hirad. 'Personally, I'm still debating jumping straight back. This place makes my skin crawl.' He could feel his heart beating fast again.
'But isn't it fascinating?' said Denser. 'This is another dimension. Think what that means.'
'Yeah,' said Hirad. 'It's totally different, it makes me feel bad and I get the feeling we shouldn't be standing here.'
'Different but in so many respects the same,' said Ilkar. He bent down and grabbed a handful of earth. 'Look. Soil, grass, buildings . . . air.'
'But no noise. Do you think they're all dead, whoever they are?' Denser started walking towards the remains of the settlement. Reluctantly, Hirad followed with the rest of The Raven, chewing his lip, the sword in his hand providing no comfort whatever. The place was oppressive despite the lightness of the air, and the lack of noise made him dig repeatedly in his ears with the forefinger of his left hand, searching for the reason why he couldn't hear anything other than the sound of their feet and breathing.
'What is it we're looking for, Denser?' Richmond turned to the Dark Mage as they tramped across the dry earth, its crumbling texture crunching underfoot.
'I haven't a clue, to be honest. It's information we need, not pieces of this, that or the other, if you see what I mean.'
'So, some parchment, maybe?' suggested Richmond.
Denser shrugged. 'Maybe. Or another amulet. Perhaps even some sort of carved jewellery. Whatever, it ought to stand out amongst all the rubbish over there. It'll be Balaian, of that I'm sure.' He gestured again at the buildings. Collapsed though they largely were, it was plain that their design bore only nodding acquaintance to anything the races of Balaia might build. Many had openings that were probably doors. But they were oval and did not sit flush with the ground. And of those that were still partially roofed, all had a similar oval opening towards the apex of the domed structure.
In a way, they reminded Hirad of kilns, though they were wood and stone, not shaped stone like the Wesmen built. They were, or would have been, tall, each maybe twenty or more feet high. For a single-storey structure, that seemed high, although the absence of anything recognisable as a window meant he could be mistaken. There were other levels inside.
'I don't like this,' said Hirad. He shivered.
'So you've said, but I agree,' said Ilkar. 'It's not right. I feel as if I might fall any moment.'
'The less time I spend here the better.' Hirad shook his shoulders to relieve sudden tension. 'What the hell could Septern have wanted to come here for?'
A sheet of lightning flooded the night below the platform, illuminating everything it touched with a momentary mauve radiance. Shadows were plunged into even sharper relief and the after-effect lingered in Hirad's eyes for a few seconds. It was then that he saw the movement. The Raven moved as one, dipped sword points suddenly at the ready.
From inside and around the edges of the buildings, walking and half stumbling, came the inhabitants of the village. In a few moments they had filled the space in front of the buildings and had begun a ponderous move towards The Raven. Hirad tried to make a count, but at fifty their movement fooled his eyes, and surely there were many times more than that.
From this distance, they looked thin and pale, a confusion of limbs, but within a few strides, what they were became plain.
'Gods in the ground, I don't believe it,' whispered Hirad. The Raven, again as one, stopped.
' "Though death takes the breath from their bodies and the flesh from their faces",' quoted Denser, his voice a mutter.
There was something wrong with the way they balanced - or rather, didn't. Not that there should be a right way for a dead creature to balance, thought Hirad. He shuddered. He couldn't put his finger on it, but as the villagers continued their painfully slow approach, he thought he could see their backs twitching, almost with every stride.
One of the leaders stumbled over a rock and reflexively unfolded wings to steady itself. But they were nothing more than bone connected with shredded membrane, and it fell. The others moved on, now only seventy paces away.
It was impossible to take in. A force of dead avian people, rotted cloth covering bones, oval heads centred with huge empty eye slits, and all walking at the same dull pace. They were moving to fill the space to either edge of the plateau. And they were closing remorselessly.
'Any suggestions?' asked the barbarian, a cool feeling of panic edging around his heart. The dead would be on them in a couple of minutes.
'They've got no weapons. What are they going to do?' asked Talan.
'Just walk on, I should think,' said Denser. 'After all, we've got nowhere to go except back through the rip and we can't hope to stand up to that number. They'll just keep on coming and eventually you won't have the room to use your swords. And if you aren't careful they'll push you straight off the edge.'
'But how can they be moving?' demanded Hirad. 'They're just bones, they're dead.'
'Is it some sort of spell?' asked Richmond.
'Perhaps something that tied their lives and deaths to that promise they made Septern,' said Ilkar.
'Let's worry about it later. We have to get behind them somehow, ' said Hirad. 'Whatever it is we're looking for and they're defending has got to be in that village somewhere.'
'I've got an idea,' said Denser. 'Want to hear it?' Hirad nodded. 'Ilkar casts a ForceCone at them and punches a hole in the line. Me and you run through to search the village. Everyone else keeps them occupied as long as possible, then gets through the rip before they're pushed off the edge of the platform.'
'Why don't we all go?' asked Richmond.
'Because they'll just turn around. Or I think they will,' replied Denser. 'I'm hoping if there are people in front of them, they'll keep coming and you can delay them, give us time to look. It's worth a try, isn't it?'
There was a brief silence, punctuated by the ominous dry brushing noise of the approaching dead, now only a minute away, their density increasing as the plateau narrowed towards its edge, forcing them closer and closer together.
'It'll do,' said Ilkar.
'Make it a good one,' whispered Denser.
'It'll be nothing less,' Ilkar said coldly.
Hirad came to stand by Denser and just to Ilkar's left. 'Talan, Richmond, when Ilkar's cast the spell, make sure you all stand in front of the rip. At least when you get pushed back you'll have the best chance of falling into it instead of down there . . . wherever there is.'
Talan nodded. 'And what about you?'
Hirad shrugged. 'I don't know. Just keep your fingers crossed, all right?'
'Sure.'
'Just a couple of things,' said Ilkar. Hirad turned to him. 'I'm going to put a colour in the Cone so you can see it, and when I cast it, get down there quickly. When I can see you next to the villagers, I'll let it go. Then it's up to you.' Ilkar closed his eyes and began to shape the mana. An initial stab of alarm when he felt nothing was washed away by relief when a jolt shook his body as the base fuel of magic in Balaia breached the dimensional divide, drawing on the static power source that held the rip in place.
Ilkar wobbled on his legs, steadied and formed the ForceCone, adding speed and what he expected to be a swirling green to the spell's innate power. A short intonation followed, then Ilkar opened his eyes and chose an area close to the left-hand side of the platform.
Speaking the command word, he jabbed his hands forward and the Cone crashed into the advancing villagers, shattering three on impact, their bones hurled in ail directions. It ploughed on, driving a wedge through the ranks of the dead, pushing bodies to either side and causing mayhem. Skeletons fell like dominoes left and right. Bone wings flapped uselessly as legs were swept away by falling comrades, and at the edge of the platform, some slipped over the edge and into oblivion.
The Cone held firm, Ilkar edging it back as the villagers slowly re-formed and advanced. Hirad turned to Talan and Richmond.
'Don't risk yourselves, don't come back and don't let him do anything stupid.' He jerked his thumb at Ilkar. The warriors said nothing, inclining their heads in tight-lipped acknowledgement.
Hirad placed a hand on Denser's shoulder. 'Let's go. Stay behind me.' The barbarian hefted his sword and trotted off down the clearly defined Cone. As he closed, the sight of the villagers was shocking. Collections of bones shambling forwards, some with hands missing, others with ribs, hips or shoulders smashed, all with black streaks discolouring the white of their bones. But it was the lifeless heads which never moved that caused Hirad to flinch as he looked deep into the black caverns that were eye sockets.
Inside was nothing. No light, no life, nothing. Yet still they moved. Still they had purpose. If one had spoken, the barbarian would have turned and fled.
Five paces from the front rank of the villagers, Ilkar cut the ForceCone, leaving them a gap through which to run. Hirad pulled his sword in front of his face and increased his pace to a sprint, hearing Denser right on his heels. The cat streaked through his legs, on past the skeletons and into the village. For a moment, the dead continued as they had with the Cone in place, but as Hirad moved through the first of them, the line started to close. He shuddered as he ran, crying out as bone hands snagged his leather and slashing in front of his face as a skull appeared right in front of him. His strike swept it from its neck and the body collapsed.
It was tight. Denser's breathing was loud in his ears, and he cursed under his breath. Hirad swung his sword through double-handed again and again at chest height, feeling it shatter bone and crunch into wing membrane, head and shoulder. And never once did a villager lift a hand to strike them.
They broke through the line, stumbling to a stop after a dozen or so paces and turning to see what they'd left behind. The gap was closed. The villagers walked on towards the rip, not looking back, advancing on The Raven trio who stood with their backs to the moving darkness that was the dimension gate, swords at the ready. Ilkar managed a wave and Hirad responded before turning a face running with sweat to Denser.
'We'd better be quick,' said the Dark Mage. 'Once those three are forced through the rip, the villagers will be coming back, only we don't have anywhere to fall except down or through the other rip.' Hirad raised his eyebrows, nodding nervously.
The two men trotted into the village, where they stopped again, staring at the derelict settlement. All around, they could see the crumbling remnants of a civilisation. Buildings, blasted and blackened, scorched and falling to rubble; large pots, jugs, and cauldrons lying over the ground. What was once furniture, tables, chairs and pedestals, could be seen in the ruins of the houses. Cloth had rotted to dust, pottery was cracked and chipped, wood was splintered and burned, and all that was left was chaos.
'How did they live up here?' asked Hirad, picking up the handle piece of a broken jug. 'I mean, it's so small.' He stared back the way they had come, looking afresh at the empty earth. From the settlement, he could see squares of darker ground meshed in a grid of lighter areas. Plots and paths. Gods, they had been farmers. Farmers who could fly. 'And what's down there?' He threw the jug towards the edge of the plateau. It shattered on the ground a long way from its intended destination.
'Nothing, at a guess,' said Denser. 'I expect that's why they came up here to live.'
'I don't get it,' said Hirad. 'Why would there be nothing down there?'
'You can't use Balaia as a reference to explain this. Hell, I'm just stabbing in the dark. All we know is, this is how they ended up. Draw your own conclusions.'
'But why did they die?'
Denser shrugged and turned away, scanning the village. 'I have no idea and we haven't the time to think it out just now. Start looking.'
Hirad peered inside one of the buildings, seeing a microcosm of the village itself reflected in its age-ridden remains. Bones littered the floor and a skull hung from the great oval hole in the roof. Black soot covered every surface.