Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute

‘Not literally, though,’ said Shadrach, smiling.

Cabal gave him a dusty look. ‘One has to drop in. It’s a professional courtesy. There’s nothing there but a bunch of ghouls and a mad woman who fancies herself a witch. The ghouls seem to believe it, as they leave her alone.’

Corde looked sceptical. ‘You just strolled in and had a chinwag with some ghouls?’

‘Hardly a chinwag. I walked in, they threatened to eat me, I threatened to destroy them, there was some sabre-rattling, literally in my case, and that was that.’

‘And then what?’

‘And then I had my dinner. White wine and chicken al fresco upon the tomb of a pair of tragic star-crossed lovers.’

Corde was not sure if Cabal was toying with him. ‘And that was all?’

‘Alas, yes. I had wanted some cheese, but couldn’t find any at short notice. It was a shame. Cheese goes so well with tragedy.’

Corde stared hard at Cabal, and it took Shadrach’s proclamation of his own results to regain his attention. ‘I was invited to a dinner at the merchant adventurers’ hall last night,’ he said, with due deference to his own importance. ‘This truly is a fascinating world, mixed from the epic poems of Greece and the sagas of the Vikings, the thousand and one nights of Scheherazade, the mystical tales of the Orient, and the Dreamtime of the antipodean Aboriginals. I heard so many strange stories . . . but none of the Animus. One place came up in conversation, however. By all accounts a terrible place, and it may be the one.’ He drew Bose’s list to him and cast an eye down it. ‘There, the sixth one down, Oriab Island. There are supposed to be some ruins where something terrible happened once upon a time, although nobody seems to know what.’

Cabal already had his bag open and his notes folder out. ‘Oriab Island is not small, and the ruins might be anywhere. We need more exact information before investing effort in going there.’

‘The ruins are on the banks of Lake Yath,’ said Corde, a little smugly. He leaned back in his chair, and took a decent draught from his flagon of beer before elaborating. ‘I got talking to some sailors . . .’

‘What you do in your own time . . .’ muttered Cabal.

‘. . . and they said Oriab Island was the place to go. Not because there’s much likelihood of the Animus being there, but because in the ruins by Lake Yath lives a hermit. He will speak to one person a year, and will answer one question that they ask. It doesn’t matter what it is, he will always know the answer.’

The others considered this. ‘How do we know that nobody has already asked him this year?’ said Shadrach.

‘Because,’ said Corde, with a wily grin, ‘nobody has asked him a question for at least two years, and the person who asked on that occasion died shortly afterwards from his wounds.’

Bose’s eyes had gone very large. ‘Wounds?’ he asked tremulously.

‘There is something in those ruins that doesn’t like strangers,’ explained Corde. ‘That’s the scuttlebutt, anyway.’ He took up his flagon and raised it to Shadrach, whose expression of moral outrage indicated that he thought ‘scuttlebutt’ was some act of frightful sordidness.

‘We shall have to book passage, then,’ said Bose. ‘Ah. How do we do that? I assume that we cannot simply walk into a shipping agent’s and buy tickets in the same way that we travelled to America.’

Shadrach took the opportunity to demonstrate his utility and, in so doing, distract himself from theorising as to exactly what scuttlebuttery consisted of. ‘I know the very man. I made his acquaintance last night. Captain Lochery, owner, master and commander of the Edge of Dusk. A galleon.’ He settled back to bask in the plaudits.

‘Galleon’ was putting it a little strongly. The party had proceeded down to the stout, oaken wharves, where stout, oaken ships waited at anchor, quite possibly crewed by stout, oaken sailors because, after all, this was the Dreamlands. Almost the only thing at the docks that was not stout and oaken was the Edge of Dusk, a ship that had probably looked like it had seen better days right from the hour it was launched. It was not a galleon, that was clear to all of them, but it was Corde who correctly identified it as a cog, an earlier and smaller form of ship. As a galleon is to a cog, a cog is to a small toy with a sail that one splashes around in the bath to amuse oneself when one is either very young or an admiral. It was something of a disappointment, but Cabal pointed out that a true galleon, one looking like a refugee from a Spanish plate fleet, would have been greatly surplus to their requirements and to their budget. The Edge of Dusk was not pretty, but she was small, and on closer inspection bore an air of competence and functionality about her that Cabal, for one, preferred to her romantic neighbours, their sails blowing like the ruffled shirt of a hero in a novel for spinsters.

Captain Lochery himself was on deck as they approached the ship. He positively grinned with delight when he saw Shadrach and bounded down the gangplank to meet them.

‘Master Shadrach!’ he cried, grasping Shadrach’s hand in both of his and pumping it firmly. For Shadrach, who was used to handshakes with all the vigour of a cucumber sandwich left out in the rain, this was a surprise, and all he could manage were a couple of ‘Oh!’s and ‘Ah!’s in response.

Lochery, who outmatched his vaguely Scottish name with an accent that would have made Robert Burns sound English by comparison, was introduced to Shadrach’s companions and was polite and friendly with them all. When he reached Cabal, however, his mood faltered. He took in Cabal’s clothing, and said, ‘You’ll be a strong-minded one, that’s plain enough. This place will be a trial to you, no doubt.’

Cabal remembered the witch’s reference to a trial, but decided that he was not so foolish as to see meaning where there was only coincidence. ‘It has been noted before now, yes. Thank you.’

Lochery shook his head. ‘No, son, you don’t understand. The Dreamlands were built by dreamers, and dreamers are what they expect. Like a body fights an infection, this world will fight you.’

Cabal’s lips thinned. ‘Then I shall fight back.’

Lochery laughed, a fatalistic laugh of the sort reserved for gladiators, soldiers on suicide missions, and explorers leaving tents who ‘may be some time’. ‘I like your pluck, Master Cabal, but this is a world you’re talking about. You can fight it, but you will lose.’