The Pilgrims

Eric looked down at his shadow, trying to understand. It was cast just faintly in a few different directions on the grass, in the fashion of being under stadium lights. He said, ‘I don’t know what you mean. But I’m not here to hurt you or fight you. I just … fell in. Didn’t know it wasn’t allowed. I’ll go back. Gladly.’ His hand went to the briefcase and quickly clicked open its other clip.

The creature cocked its head at his movements, raised a finger in warning. So ended his bid to get the gun. The little curls of smoke puffing skywards from its horns were thinning. ‘Your shadow,’ it said. It clutched at something in the air he couldn’t see, as if trying to grab a thread of hair. ‘Do you see? Lord’s thought a groping hand, winding and reaching this way, a tendril broken off the swirling mass. Do you not … feel it? It is unsure of its own designs. Conflicts with Master’s, perhaps stirs the pot of its own poison broth, but I shall not rebel.’ The creature bared its broken teeth as though in the grip of inner turmoil. ‘Two winds push here, I lean with the stronger. Depart now. Flee with haste, if flee you will. For his moods change.’

Eric, dismayed at its cryptic speech, tried to sift through for meaning. Flee with haste was all he could comprehend. Unless he knew better … ‘Are you saying I’m free to go?’

The creature waved a stiff hand around at the corpses and hissed like a snake. Eric took that for a very welcome yes. He grabbed his briefcase and ran, hardly daring to believe his luck.

Over his shoulder, he was sickened to see the creature stamping on the newly dead man, tearing up the corpse with its clawed feet. It crouched low to the ground, head down, and came up with blood on its chin. Eric had read horror novels and seen horror films in which all manner of gruesome death was served up as titillation. Yet now he froze. He literally felt a stiffening coldness spread through him and lock up his limbs as the creature’s yellow eyes met his, for, even from a distance, he saw it was eating the body.

The tower. Eric sprinted for it as fast as he could, glanced over his shoulder once to see if the thing pursued. Not yet, but now it got slowly to its feet. It threw back its head and another high-pitched scream rent the air. From far away, there came either an echo or an answering cry.

‘In here,’ a coarse voice called. Below him, a face! A small gap in the grassy turf. A hand reaching out. Right away he knew that face. It was the invader who’d come through the door first that night. Eric threw himself flat, crawled head-first towards the man. Rough hands closed on his arms and pulled him into a darker space. His legs gave from under him and he sank gladly to the ground, sucking dusty air.

8

The Otherworlder caught his breath in gasping heaves. Encasing him were the smooth, cool walls of a dark cavern. Sharfy marvelled at the young man’s luck on several counts, not least because he’d run just past the mouth of this groundman hole. Sharfy’s charity would not have stretched as far as going aboveground to wave him over if he’d sprinted off at a different angle. Even from a distance he’d recognised the young man from their brief excursion through the entry point.

Anfen and the others would be intrigued to have an Otherworlder brought back alive … what was the word Loup had used for them? Pilgrims. Whatever that meant. Them mages and their secrets and lore they didn’t share, just cos they didn’t think you’d understand it.

On tiptoe Sharfy observed the war mage, whose cries and rasps still echoed off the valley walls. How lucky of the young man to get past it. Suspiciously lucky. ‘Do you even know what that was?’ Sharfy asked him.

The young man shook his head.

‘War mage,’ said Sharfy, smiling. His smile was not pretty, he knew — he had a face full of scars and old pocks, a head like a bruised and dented apple. It invited people to recoil from him, to distrust him. No matter. If the young man was around long enough, he’d find Sharfy kept his word when he gave it. ‘Don’t have war mages in Otherworld, do you? No spells, you said. It should’ve killed you. Like it killed everything else that come through. Even a bird that flew in, it killed. It speak to you? They speak strange.’

The young man swallowed, still a little shaken. He was no warrior, that was certain. Too young for a magician, surely. ‘It spoke,’ he said. ‘I didn’t understand, but it told me to run.’

Sure, sure it did. He thinks I’ll believe that, eh? Fine, I’ll act like I do. But something happened, all right … ‘Stay there for now, get your breath. But no noise. There’s stuff in these tunnels we don’t want to hear us. Got it?’

‘Sure. Thanks.’

‘Don’t thank me, thank your dumb luck,’ said Sharfy. But he could not keep up the pretence. ‘Come on, how’d you get past it? You carrying a charm?’

‘No.’

‘Sure about that? I won’t steal it. You can tell me. I’m ugly but I keep my word.’

‘No charm. We don’t have spells, don’t have charms.’

Sharfy scoffed. ‘What do you have?’

‘Newsagencies and dumb luck, I guess.’ Eyeing off possible escape, the young man peered down where the tunnel curved off to the left, narrow at first but wider at the end. It was thinly lit by little glowing lightstones embedded in the walls, gleaming like pretty eyes. Then he jumped in alarm as an answering shriek to the war mage’s call came from off towards the castle.

‘Damn it,’ Sharfy muttered, looking back through the tunnel’s mouth. ‘I’m not gonna get it now.’

‘Get it?’ The Otherworlder laughed grimly. ‘Were you going to attack that thing?’

‘Sure. It’s about to cook itself. It casts a couple more spells, it’ll almost melt. They don’t get like this, mostly. One or two spells and the fight’s over. But it’s been busy out there. Most of the killing, it’s had to do in the last hour. That’s why it kept calling for a friend to come help it. Hear that sound? Knows it’s in trouble. Great time to go out and cut its throat, while it’s stumbling around, blind with heat.’ Or let it cook itself, which it would do without a thought for its own life. Then go and take the staff from its harmless corpse. They were worth a fortune. Could cut off its horns too, sell them for a few scales each, or more. But the answering cry sounded again, closer …

The young man bent over and retched. Nothing came out but a string of saliva and some unpleasant noise. ‘What’s the matter?’ said Sharfy.

‘It was eating one of the bodies.’

‘Eh! So?’

‘So excuse me for mentioning it. Maybe it’s what you guys do here instead of go get a hamburger, but I don’t see that sort of thing very often.’

‘Keep your voice down. If you think that’s bad, things I seen would turn your hair white. They’ll eat anything. Helps em cool off inside. Twigs, grass, seen em eat rocks.’ The twigs and grass part was true enough; it was theoretically possible that a war mage might eat rocks, which to Sharfy was just as good as being true. ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘Don’t think about it.’

Some time passed in silence as Sharfy watched outside, though his ears were carefully tuned behind him for sudden movements (if the skinny young man thought he’d get the jump on Sharfy, he was making a big mistake). No more people fell through the gaps between worlds. And those two Invia up on the rock wall hadn’t moved once. The newly arrived war mage came and sat beside the first. They seemed to hold a conversation made of clawing gestures and hopping dances.

‘Can I ask something?’ said the Otherworlder.

‘You don’t need permission to speak. I’m not your Lord.’

‘Why is it you speak my language?’

Sharfy grinned. ‘Ha! I don’t. Something happens when you cross through. Loup told us it might happen but we didn’t believe him. Nor would you, if you knew him.’ Sharfy laughed very hard at this witticism and slapped his knee. ‘You’re still thinking in your own tongue, but speaking in ours. At least that’s what it sounds like to me. Some words you say don’t make sense, that’s all. Like hum burg uh.’

‘How does that work exactly?’

Sharfy didn’t like questions he didn’t have a good answer to. ‘Something on the barrier between here and there, Loup says. Says there’s a reason for it, but wouldn’t say what. Dragon’s will.’ He waved the subject away