Inferno

23

The Wolverines landed with a splash.

They were in water, a great deal of it, and it was salty in their mouths.

“We’re in a damn ocean!” Jup yelled.

“There’s the shore!” Pepperdyne pointed to a sandy beach a short distance away.

Stryke looked around at the bobbing heads of the band and did a quick count. “Where’s Standeven?”

“Shit!” Pepperdyne exclaimed. “He can’t swim.”

“The gods are being kind to us at last,” Haskeer said.

“I can’t let him drown.”

“Why not?”

Pepperdyne took a gulp of air and disappeared beneath the waves. The rest of them trod water.

He seemed an awfully long time reappearing and Coilla was getting worried. She was about to dive herself when two heads broke the surface a little way off. Pepperdyne had hold of Standeven, who was blue in the face and gasping for breath. Jode hauled him to the band, where others lent a hand, most reluctantly. They all made for the shore.

“There’s something in the water!” somebody shouted.

Behind them, but moving in their direction fast, was the blur of a large and scaly creature, its spiked head and a sail- like fin dimly visible through the mist. The band increased their speed, and soon their feet touched bottom.

They staggered onto the beach and moved as far up it as they could, dragging Standeven with them until they dumped him. But the creature didn’t come ashore, perhaps couldn’t, and stayed out in deeper water, cruising back and forth.

“I thought you said the stars couldn’t land us somewhere that might kill us, Dynahla,” Stryke complained angrily.

“No, I didn’t. I said they couldn’t take us somewhere that would kill us. If they eliminated all possibility of danger they wouldn’t take us anywhere.”

Stryke snorted. “Yeah, well…” He looked about the place. They had jogged almost to a white cliff-face that backed the beach. Apart from a few patches of dull vegetation, there wasn’t much else to see. “Where do you think we are?”

“Could we be back on the world of islands?” Spurral wondered.

“No,” Coilla told her. “That had two moons. This has two suns.”

She was right, but they had to look hard to see the pair of dim globes through the milky white cloud that dominated the sky.

“So where’s Jennesta this time?” Wheam asked, tipping water from the innards of his precious lute. They were all surprised it had survived intact this long.

“She’s close,” Dynahla replied, “as always.”

“Any clue where?” Stryke said.

“Not exactly, no. But does it matter?”

“Does it matter? Of course it matters!”

“No, you don’t get my meaning. We don’t need to know precisely where she is because she’ll soon pop up where we can see her. She’s playing with us.”

“I think we worked that out,” Haskeer remarked sourly.

“Yeah, it’s all a game to her,” Spurral added.

“Maybe,” the shape-shifter conceded. “Though her motives could be more than just mischievous.”

Stryke eyed him quizzically. “Such as?”

“Who knows? Perhaps this is all for the hell of it. Even I find her hard to fathom.”

“Even you? What makes you such an expert on Jennesta?”

Dynahla hesitated for just a second before answering. “I’ve spent a lot of time with her father, remember, and Serapheim’s… very informative.”

“Heads up!” Jup yelled. “There she is, right on cue.” He indicated the headland at the end of the beach, a decent arrow shot away.

A group of figures were there. They stayed long enough to be seen, then vanished.

“Do we have to follow her, Stryke?” Dallog said. “I mean, if this is some kind of crazy game, do we have to play along with it?”

“What choice do we have? And what about Thirzarr? You want me to abandon her?” He glared at him.

“No…” The elderly corporal looked abashed. “No, of course not, chief.”

“Do what you have to, shape-changer,” Stryke ordered.

Dynahla worked on the instrumentalities.

“If I could just get my hands on that bitch…” Haskeer muttered, staring at the spot where Jennesta had been a moment before.

“You’d have to stand in line,” Coilla said.

They materialised in night-time, which would have been a lot blacker if it wasn’t for a big, full moon and a sky crammed with stars.

There was nothing special about the landscape as far as they could make out. Underfoot was rough grass, there were some ghostly trees in the middle distance and what could have been a mountain range at the limit of their vision. The temperature was balmy and the air dry, with no wind to speak of. Which was fortunate as they were all wringing wet.

Standeven, still huffing and wheezing after his dip, had plonked down on the ground. They let him be.

“So where is she?” Haskeer said, anticipating Jennesta’s appearance with his sword drawn.

“Hard to see anything,” Coilla replied.

Breggin pointed into the gloom. “What’s that?”

They all strained to see. A cluster of shapes, darker than the night, appeared to be coming their way.

“Right,” Haskeer declared. “This time we don’t wait for her to call the shots.” He began to run in that direction.

“Wait!” Stryke called after him. “There’s no point! She’ll only… Oh, what the hell.”

The others seemed to share Stryke’s opinion, or else they were tired enough by now not to give a damn. None of them followed Haskeer.

As they watched him dashing nearer to his goal they expected the group of shapes to flick out of existence. Given the distance and bad light, it was near impossible to make out what did happen, but it wasn’t that. The figures remained, and he seemed to engage with them.

“Do you think she’s actually staying for a fight this time?” Coilla said.

Jup raised his staff. “If she is, let’s get over there!”

The band was all for it, and they were about to rush into the fray.

“Hold it!” Stryke barked. “Looks like Haskeer’s coming back.”

He was, at speed, and the figures were right behind him. As they got nearer, the band noticed something odd.

Spurral blinked at the scene. “Are they running on all fours?”

“And they look bigger than humans,” Pepperdyne added.

“Ah,” Jup said.

Haskeer arrived, arms pumping, breathing hard. Half a dozen fully grown brown bears were chasing him.

It was one of those times when the band instinctively fell back on their training and experience, and they’d dealt with plenty of wild animals in their time. They immediately formed a defensive ring. Blades and spears thrust out, they began shouting and beating their shields. The bears’ charge slowed right down, and they took to circling the band from a distance, looking for a weakness in their defence.

“Toche! Vobe! Your bows!” Stryke instructed.

They nocked arrows and he pointed to the biggest of the brutes, which was rearing up on its hind legs. Both arrows struck true. The shafts jutting from its chest, the bear fell, rolled on its side and was still. Its companions let out howls and quickly withdrew. But not completely. They resumed their circling from afar, dimly visible in the dark, still hoping for a chance to attack.

“Must be hungry,” Noskaa observed.

“Lucky they didn’t bite a chunk out of Haskeer’s fat arse,” Jup said. That raised a laugh. “They would have spat it out, mind.” The grunts roared.

Most of them stopped when they saw Haskeer’s face.

Stryke wasn’t overjoyed himself. “Eyes front! They’re still out there.”

“ Something ’s out there, Captain,” Gant said, nodding at the gloom.

He was right, and it wasn’t the bears, which by some means, quite probably magical, had been scared off. What was in the dark now came as no surprise to any of them. They knew the sound of her mocking laughter well enough.

Dynahla got to work on the instrumentalities.

Rain pounded down on them. A bitter wind was blowing. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed.

“Oh, great,” Coilla grumbled. “Another soaking.”

It was difficult to see what kind of place they were in through the downpour. Wherever it was, it was awash, with flowing water ankle deep. The ground seemed to be bedrock, in all probability any topsoil and vegetation having been washed away.

A chunk of tree and a couple of dead fish floated past.

Stryke wondered if it always rained here. As if in reply, the furious black sky opened up and dumped even more rain on them.

He got the band to search the immediate area for shelter, but there was nothing, so they huddled together miserably for a while, uncertain what to do next and getting wetter.

Then they became aware of a purplish glow in the deluge. It grew stronger, until they saw that it was Jennesta, dry inside a bubble of ethereal energy. A protection she hadn’t extended to her soaked retinue, including the comatose Thirzarr. It was an act of casual meanness that enraged Stryke almost more than anything else the sorceress had done. Even though he knew it was futile, he snatched a bow from one of the grunts and sent an arrow Jennesta’s way. The force field vaporised it.

As he thrust the bow back into the grunt’s hand, she and her followers vanished.

The Wolverines followed.

They were somewhere high. Dizzyingly high.

It was the top of a building that seemed to be impossibly tall, and the view it afforded was startling. As far as they could see in all directions the landscape was completely urbanised. There were other towers just as tall, and a number even taller than the one they stood on. Looking down, they saw nothing but buildings, jam-packed together, of every conceivable shape and design, and many with an appearance they couldn’t have imagined.

Highways sliced through the gigantic metropolis, and wove over and under each other, like strands of ribbon dropped at random by a wayward giant. The roads were host to numerous vehicles of a kind they couldn’t identify, and they seemed to move without the aid of horses or oxen. The whole place was in motion and resembled nothing less than a gigantic ants’ nest. Even from their great height the band could hear the distant, discordant sounds of it all.

More astonishing were the things that inhabited the sky. They weren’t dragons, griffins, hippogryphs or any of the other airborne creatures a sensible being might expect. Some didn’t even have wings, and they reflected glints of sunlight as they flew, as though, unfeasibly, they were made of metal or glass.

“This must be the billet of mighty wizards,” Wheam reckoned, awestruck.

“If it is they’ve built themselves a hellish place,” Stryke said, expressing the sentiment of them all. “Who’d want to live so cut off from natural things? Where are the trees, the rivers, the blades of grass?”

“And where’s Jennesta?” Coilla pitched in.

“I think she’d feel right at home in a hive like this. It’s vileness would appeal to her.”

“But not enough, apparently,” Dynahla announced. “She’s left.”

“I won’t be sorry to follow her this time.”

The place they turned up in would normally have struck them as either lacklustre or potentially hostile. Compared to where they had just been it felt welcoming.

It was a desert. Sand from horizon to horizon, broken only by occasional dunes. It was hot, but not unbearable, and there was even a gentle breath of wind. There didn’t appear to be anything immediate that might threaten them.

“Everybody all right?” Stryke asked.

“I feel sick,” Wheam said.

“You would,” Haskeer came back.

Standeven didn’t look too bright either, but he knew better than to complain.

Although they didn’t know how fleeting their stay would be, the band took the chance to rest, and most sat or lay down on the fine sand. Stryke was content to let them.

Coilla found herself beside Dynahla, both of them a little apart from the others. It was an opportunity to ask him something she had been pondering.

“Tell me, does carrying the stars have any kind of effect on you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, they certainly did something to Stryke’s mind once, and to Haskeer when he was close to them for a while.”

“Objects as powerful as these can have an influence on those exposed to them, particularly for long periods. They’re not playthings, you know.”

“What kind of… influence?”

“Good or bad, depending on the nature and preparedness of the individual. I’m guessing that with Stryke and Haskeer it wasn’t good.”

“Maybe strange would be a better word.”

“Each set of instrumentalities has its own signature. And because every set is unique, its effect will differ. But whoever possesses them will feel it strongly nevertheless.”

“But not you?”

“I’m trained to resist their negative power and to utilise the positive. And remember that Serapheim created this set.” He patted the pocket containing them. “What better teacher can there be than their maker?”

“So they’d affect Jennesta too?”

“Oh yes. That’s one of the reasons why her having a set is so dangerous. She would certainly prosper from their negative emanations. Although she has an ersatz set, of course, copied from these. I don’t know if that would make a difference. It’s almost unprecedented.”

“Thanks for telling me that. Though I can’t say I understood it all.”

Dynahla smiled. “The greatest adepts have never got to the bottom of all the instrumentalities’ secrets, even Serapheim, and I certainly haven’t.” He paused, and briefly closed his eyes. “She’s on the move again.”

“It amazes me that you can tell.”

“As I said, I’ve been trained.” He turned and called out, “Stryke! Time to go!”

Stryke came over. “Already?”

“Yes. I think things are going to take a slightly different turn now.”

“How would you know that?” he replied suspiciously.

“I’ll explain later. Meanwhile-”

“Trust you. Yeah.”

He shouted an order and the band gathered round.

The crossing was the longest and most disquieting they had yet experienced.

They opened their eyes to a place like no other.

They were on an enormous, totally flat plain, devoid of any features. Above them, the sky was unvaryingly scarlet, with no clue as to where the light that bathed the scene came from. The ground they stood on was a uniform grey and of some unnatural substance. It was spongy underfoot. The only landmark was a distant, pure-white, box-shaped structure. It was hard to judge the scale of things, but the building looked vast. A tangy, sulphurous odour perfumed the air.

There was no one else in sight, least of all Jennesta and her minions.

“Where the hell are we?” Coilla whispered.

“What do you know about this, Dynahla?” Stryke demanded.

“Only that there was a good chance we’d end up here.”

“You knew? And you didn’t think to tell us?”

“Only a chance, I said. It was by no means certain and-”

Stryke grabbed the shape-changer by the throat and thrust his face close. “You’d better start telling us what you know about this place.”

“I can tell you that not everything here is real, but all of it can harm. And that nothing you’ve faced up to now compares with what you’re about to be confronted with.”