‘Yes. He and you are the ones who lived. I heard you call him, but there’s no use. He is far away.’
‘Where? Now where is he? I need to find him!’
‘I have a task for you first, then I will take you to him. You understand my speech?’
‘Of course. I’m talking to you, aren’t I? But I don’t see why you can’t just tell me where Eric is. You better tell me.’
‘Quiet, listen. I am speaking the tongue of the Invia. Not your tongue. Yet you understand me, as I understand you. Pilgrims to and fro always have such magic about them, as It wills. You may understand their speech too.’ She pointed at the castle looming behind and below. ‘Enchantments protect their words in the upper halls, for they fear to be overheard by the great ones I speak to. It may be you are immune to this disguise. We are not.’
‘Now, damn you, if you know where my friend is and you don’t tell me, I swear I’ll choke the breath out of you!’ He took some shambling steps towards her, the bottle raised like a club.
She stepped lightly up and out of his reach without even beating her wings, though she extended them now, gracefully flexing and angling them flat. The look on her face hadn’t changed; it expressed nothing. She just watched him from above, nothing more.
Case sat down hard on the ground, body shaking with sobs. ‘Too much for me to understand,’ he said. ‘I don’t get it any more. Don’t know where I am or what it all means. Thought I was about to die, back there, and I would’ve let it kill me, because I dragged my friend into this in the first place. All those people, deader than shit. And you’re just looking at me like that. Damn it, tell me where he is.’ He cried harder, wiped his eyes, and when he looked up she wasn’t there.
Lying in the grass beside him was a long necklace of dull silver beads. He hesitated then grabbed it. The beads stuck against each other a little, like they were faintly magnetic. He cast his eye around, trying to find the woman with wings, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Wait — over there, by the castle. She floated in the air above the nearest tower, distance making her seem hardly bigger than a bird. She waved. Come. Case stood, wiped the tears from his cheeks, and grabbed the bottle, muttering curses.
The strip of valley ended just a little further ahead, where it curved steeply down to the castle’s back edge, nestled in the sheer cliff base. It was a long drop, but there was some semblance of a path zigzagging down through a few trees, shrubs and boulders of white stone. I’m too old for this, he thought, already puffing from the first steps of his descent.
And he was too drunk for it. His foot slipped and down he went. As much as he’d been casual about the prospect of dying a few minutes before, now the moment had come, perfectly involuntary panic bloomed through him like an explosion, and he clutched desperately at the ground as he slipped over the edge into air.
But hands caught him under his armpits. He felt a steady lurch as the Invia’s wings beat. He grabbed hold of her arms as hard as he could, too alarmed by the sight of the world far below his feet to worry whether he was hurting her. Her grip was strong and painful; her breasts pressed into his back firm as fists. He looked down at the forearms he held onto and was startled to see thin little scales covering her skin, clear as glass.
Between his feet was the round marble-white roof of a lower part of the great structure, which seemed a grouping of fat dome-shaped temples, while other parts led off and trailed in giant branches curving away from the main mass. The whole thing had some huge deliberate shape to it, like an enormous sculpture, nothing like any actual castle that Case had ever seen. There were courtyards way down there where dot-sized people scurried about. Case’s head spun, guts spun, and he tried not to reflect on the odds of her letting go if he puked on her forearms. ‘Don’t drop me,’ he said. ‘I’ll do what you want. Don’t drop me.’
‘Hush! You are annoying.’
Each beat of her wings brought them closer to a tall tower, its upper half coloured gold. Case thought it was about to smack them head on until she parked on the wide ledge outside a window two-thirds of the way up. She set him down and stepped backwards onto the air as though standing on an invisible platform, angling her wings so they held her still. She said, ‘Now it becomes difficult. You must go inside when the prisoner opens her window. She will not see you, as long as you wear the charm. No one will see you. Do not take it off! And do not speak. You are a fool, I think. I hope you listen.’
‘No argument from me. What’m I supposed to do here?’
‘Find a man named Vous. Stay near him, and listen to what he says. The charm you wear does many things. It will preserve what you hear, so that I may listen later.’
‘Are you coming with me?’
‘No!’
‘Well, then what? Once I’m in there, how do I get out again? And where’ll I go? And you better tell me about Eric after this, I swear.’
But she’d vanished. And Case had only just realised that at some point he’d dropped the bottle.
12
They hadn’t gone much further before something approached, making the chittering noise they’d heard through the walls earlier. They began to double back, but the sound came from behind too. Gleaming yellow lights appeared at both ends of the tunnel, bright as candle flames. The lights were eyes and the groundmen who approached were no higher than their waists. They looked human enough — bald little heads, pointy noses and ears — but their stocky bodies were covered in mats of brown or grey fur. Four came from ahead, three from behind, all nattering angrily.
‘Hail, tunnel masters,’ said Sharfy, bending low to kiss the floor. He gestured urgently for Eric to do likewise. Kiown did the same, making his kiss far more passionate and drawn out than was perhaps necessary. The groundmen watched this carefully as though to ensure the large people were suitably humiliated, then stared at Eric silently, the gleaming candles snuffing out for a moment when they blinked. Their small faces were bunched in shock and anger. ‘Toll?’ Sharfy sighed, nodding at Eric. ‘Pay?’
‘Toll!’ one of them snapped back in its high voice. ‘Pay!’
Sharfy dug in his pockets, coming out with Eric’s bus schedule. He handed it over. ‘Otherworld writing,’ he said as extravagantly as a game-show host. ‘Otherworld language. Real, very rare. Hard to get.’
They took it, pawing the pages, grappling with each other for the chance to get close enough for a look. For a long while they muttered and whispered. The language wasn’t the same they’d been speaking to Sharfy, but Eric caught words here and there:
‘Messages! See? Numbers.’
‘That line. See? Like map mark.’
‘My turn! My turn!’
‘Different paper. Shiny, green!’
‘My turn! Give!’
‘Careful! You rip!’
‘We share. Lots time. Shut up.’
‘Enough? Let pass?’
‘They have more. Perhaps. Ask?’
‘Ask!’
Their apparent leader — one with thick dark eyebrows that made him look furious — reverted to the normal tongue. ‘More! Not enough. Pay more.’
‘We pay more later,’ said Sharfy. ‘When we get through the tunnels safe.’
‘Pay more!’
‘No more,’ said Sharfy. ‘Don’t be greedy. We gave you lots. Then you kicked my friends out of the cavern you sold us. You don’t keep bargain, no one bargain with you again. No more toll for you.’
The groundmen conferred amongst themselves. ‘Leave it be,’ said one in its own tongue. ‘Tallest has sword. Ugliest has knives, enchanted. Send them down left tunnel. Traps there to kill them. Steal from bodies.’
‘Don’t send! Traps broke. Devils came through. Set off traps. No good.’
Sharfy and Kiown watched the groundmen, their faces indicating they didn’t understand a word. Eric tried to catch their eye, but they didn’t look at him.