Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute

The fishermen, for fishermen they were, were taciturn, though not hostile. They listened in silence as Shadrach explained how urgently he and his colleagues needed to reach Hlanith, and did not bargain greatly when the subject of payment came up. They accepted a little of Shadrach’s gold, although later none of the party was sure how much had actually changed hands, only that it was ‘a little’.

Still in near silence, but for the occasional softly growled command from the boat’s skipper, they made ready to cast off while their passengers settled in for the journey. Cabal did not like the fishermen, although he was unsure why. They were quiet and competent, qualities he usually found admirable in people, but there was something more about them that gently raised his hackles by the mildest degree. He could not define this sense, however, so he disregarded it as much as he might. Which is to say, he gritted his teeth and attempted to ignore the nagging sense of wrongness that badgered him at an intensity roughly equivalent to the product of a mild headache and a child with a kazoo. He sat in the bow upon a small barrel, oblivious to the conversational gambits from his fellows, and wishing bitterly that he still had his gun.

It was probably nothing, he told himself. The entirety of the Dreamlands was ‘wrong’. This was just another manifestation of that. As the fishermen cast off and guided their boat into the centre of the great river, Cabal tried to distract himself by watching Shadrach, Corde and Bose. Their earnest pointing and muttering soon bored him so much, however, that he returned his attention to the fishermen. They were swarthy men, but no more than most who worked outdoors for a living, and wore breeches, shirts of rough cambric and scruffy turbans in pale shades of yellow and blue. Their gait was not that of sailors, and Cabal concluded that they rarely if ever left the river. Venturing out of the estuary and hugging the coast to Hlanith was probably a major expedition for them. Yet they seemed unexcited, even blase, to be going to Hlanith, and uninterested in their passengers. Cabal shrugged inwardly. Perhaps this was normal here. Giving up on them, he turned his attention back to his colleagues for the best part of fifteen seconds before giving up on them, too. Perhaps, he hoped, the changing landscape might give him some distraction from the tedium of the company.

Here, at least, he was not disappointed. The river and the wide valley through which it ran had a curious quality about them that, while just as mysterious as the curious quality about the fishermen, was far more pleasurable. After some careful analysis of his feelings, Cabal abruptly realised that this quality was ‘beauty’, about which he had heard so much and seen so little. On either bank, trees crowded nearly to the waterline, willows by the thousand. He had never heard of the like, never mind having ever seen such a mass of weeping boughs all together. Further into the forests – calling them ‘woods’ was not merely understatement, it was a barking lie – he could see taller trees, oaks, elms, scatterings of evergreens and even a few isolated palms and banyans. These were no forests that ever were, but had merely been dreamed of once, and the fruits of that strange vision had settled and grown. Cabal wondered what sort of man could have dreamed a dream of such a dream and dreamed it so strongly. He watched the trees slide by for another few minutes before concluding that this ancient dreamer, this weaver of the very fabric of the Dreamlands, was an idiot. He’d got it all wrong. Banyans, indeed. Such a dolt.

And as in contemplation of matters arboreal Cabal sat and mused, the Dreamlands sudde

Chapter 4

IN WHICH THE FAUNA OF THE DREAMLANDS PROVE UNPLEASANT

nly changed. It was not a slow transformation but, rather, the abrupt sense of dislocation one might suffer when feeling tired on a train journey, closing one’s eyes momentarily, and reopening them to discover that one is two stations past one’s destination and can’t go back until you reach Crewe. Suddenness and shock are conjoined in that moment, and that was what the four hopeful adventurers experienced when, abruptly, they found themselves no longer on the river but standing in a small clearing in a wood. They reacted differently, as befitted their humours. Shadrach cried out and whirled around as if beset by invisible imps. Corde’s hand fell upon the hilt of his sword, and he looked about, alert and ready. Bose simply stood stock still while his face warred between two expressions of astonishment, one wide-eyed and open-mouthed, the other furrow-browed and jutted-jawed. The resultant facial indecision caused his ears to flap slightly.

Cabal, for his part, stood very, very still. Only his eyes moved as he gathered data in an attempt to deduce what had happened. To one side of the clearing, the tree cover seemed thinner, and the sunlight penetrated, as if they were by a larger clearing or even at the edge of the wood in which they had unexpectedly found themselves. Ignoring the others, he moved quickly that way, pushed by a barrier of bushes between the trees and found the latter case was true. Before him was the bank of the Oukranos, the river stretching away to the other heavily forested bank. There was the flow, running from right to left (Typical, he thought. We are in the Dark Wood), and there was the fishing boat, beating into the wind and the flow as it headed back upstream, presumably returning to the jetty at which they had first seen it. Shadrach appeared at his elbow.

‘Hey! Hey! Halloo! Come back!’ he shouted, but the fishermen just waved and grinned. Shadrach’s shoulders slumped. ‘They’re grinning at us. Is that a friendly grin, or a wicked one?’

Cabal was otherwise preoccupied. ‘“Halloo”? “Halloo”? Has anyone ever actually responded to that cry with anything but derision?’

‘The hounds like it,’ said Shadrach, somewhat ruffled. Cabal did not reply, but simply looked at him as a lady mayoress might look at a good-hearted but simple-minded orphan on a civic visit to the county and district simple- minded orphan facility. ‘I’m a member.’ This did not seem like news to Cabal. ‘A member of the Ochentree Hunt.’

‘Tally-ho,’ said Cabal, in sepulchral tones. ‘But, to answer your question, those are wicked grins. Definitely.’

Corde and Bose joined them as the boat turned a bend in the river and slid out of sight, the crew still waving, still grinning, still wicked.

‘What happened just then, Cabal?’ demanded Corde. ‘How did we end up here?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cabal, opening his bag. It was interesting that he still had it, he thought, that both he and Corde still had their swords and, by the look of it, that Shadrach still had his purse full of coins.

‘You don’t know?’ said Corde, putting his fists on his hips, unconsciously striking an heroic pose. ‘We hired you because you were supposed to know your way around this place . . .’ He paused at Cabal’s index finger, raised in admonition.

‘No,’ said Cabal. ‘You secured my services – and do not refer to me as a hireling ever again – on the basis that I have dealt with unusual circumstances of a supernatural type before, and have survived with life and mind intact. As I emphasised at the time, I have no direct experience of the Dreamlands, and my knowledge is strictly second- hand. This was accepted by all of you, and it is rather too late in the proceedings to start whining about it now.’

Corde lifted his chin, the better to glare down his nose. ‘I was not whining about it,’ he said, nettled.