“Quite a banger,” he murmured, feeling his side where a thrown staff had grazed him. “Glad I saved that one for last.”
For the second time that night Ethan found himself running blindly over rooftops, dodging pillars and buttresses, dropping from level to level toward the stairway. Apparently the Brothers were too disorganized, or demoralized, to offer ready pursuit. Or maybe that last bomb had eliminated the sanctimonious Prior and several of his deputies.
At any rate, they met no opposition in their hectic scramble downwards. They reached the last roof above the stairway without being challenged.
To their left a long black streak extended back into the monastery, a charred wound. The results of Hunnar’s covering blaze set earlier that night. A large band of Brothers stood in front of the burnt entrance, armed with the usual clubs and staves.
They were expecting an attack from the front. Clearly no one had brought them the word about the return of the Dark One’s other servants. Not very military. Hunnar’s soldiers surprised them completely.
There was no pursuit as they started their second dash down the stairway.
“So much for rule by reason and logic,” September grunted. He was breathing heavily. The run down from the monastery had finally tired even him. But now they were safe on board the Slanderscree and there weren’t enough Brothers in the world to get them off it again. The big man was staring up at the monastery buildings, faint ghosts against the black crags.
“Well, it performed well enough—within their own tight little precepts,” Ethan countered. Behind him, Ta-hoding was sending the crew aloft, yelling dire threats at imagined slackers.
The Slanderscree began to move out of the harbor. Astern, a quartet of soldiers were ungently dumping the Brothers who’d taken the raft earlier. It was more humane than similar actions that had been performed on Terra ages ago, for there was no water for the captives to drown in.
On the other hand, the ice wasn’t especially soft.
The wind blew and the Slanderscree enslaved it, cutting west, then south, to take advantage of the slightest counter-breeze. Ta-hoding didn’t miss many.
A week later they saw the first smoke. It blew steadily to the east, black and sooty and well up in the atmosphere. From there Ta-hoding was able to ignore the compass and follow the black line. They made even better time. It was another two days before they had their first glimpse of The Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns, and another two before the base of the giant volcano came into view.
Mottled brown and black, splashed higher up with ice and snow—fourteen kilometers of vertical hell shrouded in polar ice and rock. It was magnificent, awesome, and a little bit frightening.
“Well, no hallucinations so far,” Ethan mused.
“How,” Colette snapped back, “could you tell the difference?”
Williams voice sounded behind them. “I’d very much like to land.”
Ethan turned. Eer-Meesach was there, too. “Really, Milliken, in light of the past weeks, don’t you think…”
A huge paw came down easily on his shoulder. “We did leave without properly fixing the bowsprit, friend Ethan,” said Hunnar. “Nor did the crew receive their promised chance for a rest on shore.”
“You’re not afraid the spirits and goblins will object?”
The knight didn’t smile. He gazed over the ice at the sky-rubbing cone.
“As a cub I might have been. As a younger man I’d have been uncertain. But the wizards have explained to me what it really is, a thing neither supernatural nor inherently inimical, and I am not afraid.”
They followed the jagged shore southward, searching for a place to put in. Hundreds of meters of broken, tortured rock fell in undisciplined cataracts onto the clear ice. But nowhere did it level off.
Just as they rounded the southern tip of the island-mountain, hitting into the wind again, the plutonic crust abruptly gave way to a smooth, level stone beach. Ropy lines of pahoe-hoe marched gently into the frozen sea.
They tied up half into the wind, still protected by the sheltering bulk of the volcano. Ice-anchors were used this time, set with care and precision under Ta-hoding’s experienced watch. Once again the repair crew set about their tasks—for the last time, one hoped.
Considering what they’d gone through the past weeks, though, there were none who blamed the craftsmen for an occasional over-the-shoulder glance. You couldn’t be too sure that the ground would not still deliver up yet another fiendish surprise, hey? So the carpenters and sailweavers worked a little slower, a little more observantly.
Roiling blackness. Distant night-stars of plasmoid terror. Vast spaces unmeasureable. False concepts of life and death. The living dark came, a loathsomeness of long licorice tentacles and soul-draining fangs.
It groped for him in the emptiness, reaching, twisting. He ran faster and faster on a sea of gurgling tar, an oil-sky overhead. The ocean grabbed and tugged at him. Down he looked and saw in horror that it wasn’t a sea at all. He was running on the back of an amorphous amoeba that humped and shook and laughed.
He tried to jump, but now fat greasy pseudopods held him firm. All about the nightmare, shapes flowed up and around. In the middle of each the faces of things not human chuckled and puckered at him.
Black fronds clutched tighter, enveloping, suffocating. He tried to scream and one of the inky ropes dove down his throat, choking him. They crawled over his eyes, under his ears, into his nostrils. Cilia brushed and tickled obscenely.
He couldn’t breathe. He coughed, gagged. The thing in his throat was curling into his belly, swelling, filling him with gravid blackness.
The interior of the cabin was dark, too. But it was a comforting, familiar, prosaic dark—not sticky, not malevolent, not full of nightmare shapes. Despite the cold he was sweating profusely and heaving like he’d just finished marathon.
Shaking, he reached for the lamp, then caught himself. His hand paused in mid-air, drew away slowly. No… no. It was a bad dream. Nothing more. Happens to everyone.
He put both hands on the bed, palms flat against the blankets and furs, and lay down slowly, staring at the bare outline of the ceiling. With a conscious effort he closed his eyes and breathed out, long and low. Then he hunched slowly on his side and fluffed the blanket under his head.
His last thought before falling asleep was that he hadn’t had a nightmare since childhood. He wondered about it, for a second.
Morning light bit like a mosquito. The volcano did not shine or sparkle in the false alpenglow. If anything, the black volcanic rock absorbed the light. Only at upper elevations did ice and snow work to do eye-pleasing things with the rich light.
A dark, brooding ziggurat, the mountain gave no hint of the burning core that steamed in its depths. Even the cloud-scudding black smoke was a cold coal.
There was nothing so palpable as an air of menace about the mountain, but neither was it pleasant to be near. It needed companion mountains, a sibling range around its base, before mere humans could relate to it. Alone, it was as impersonal and alien as a lost moon.
Ethan leaned on the rail and gazed at the ropy beach. He’d almost have preferred to stay on board, but there was always the thin chance that something interesting might turn up. He only stumbled once as they made their way across the ice and onto the rock. Small cause for pride.
On the frozen lava the humans had an advantage over their tran companions. The natives had to pick their way carefully on unclad feet over the nastier sections of aa and scoria.