The mirror chronicles th.., p.52
The Mirror Chronicles: The Last Night, page 52
“How are you doing?” said Paiscion, his voice strangely close now that they were wearing headphones.
“I’m all right,” she said. “Tired, but kind of –” she thought for a moment – “ready, if that makes any sense.”
He eyed her closely. “So you know what to do when we get there?”
Naeo looked out into the blackness. “It’s strange, but I think we already knew. The Knowing Tree just made us certain. It kind of … showed us how. Some of it still isn’t quite clear to me, but I know it will be when I’m there, with Sylas.” She shrugged a shoulder and smiled. “Kind of with him.”
Paiscion looked at her quizzically. “I suppose if you were touched by the Knowing Tree, as you say, it stands to reason—”
Suddenly a harsh voice blared through their headphones. “You should buckle up, sir, miss. There’s some turbulence ahead.”
Paiscion pressed a button on his headphones. “Where are we?” he asked.
“Just approaching the Red Sea, sir,” said the pilot. “It’s only a short crossing, then we’ll be over the Sinai Peninsula.”
“Look!” yelled Simia excitedly. “Do you see? Between the two hills!”
Sylas started. He had been lulled by the sway of the ship and the murmur of the winds, and in his exhaustion his thoughts had begun to muddle. He peered ahead in the direction Simia was pointing and saw a pencil-thin line of silver surf between two craggy hills.
He shook himself, realising that his mind had been drifting for a while, as though drawn somewhere else. The winds had eased, and the Windrush had slowed – not a lot, but enough to set them back. If Sylas was still in any doubt, it did not last. The darkness was suddenly filled with a fearsome cry, and it was terrifyingly close.
He glanced back and saw to his surprise that Ash was not watching over the stern, but resting with his back against the rail, as though it was Sylas he had been watching. The Magruman quickly turned to gaze into the darkness.
“Still nothing to see!” he called.
Sylas eyed him suspiciously and looked up in the direction of the cry. Sure enough, he could see nothing among the stars, but he thought he could hear something beating out a rhythm, like the huff, huff, huff they had heard earlier that night.
He looked around to check the terrain ahead. Already the sea was spread out before them, and he could see boiling surf crashing on a pale shoreline. He yearned to reach that sea. There the Windrush would be in her element, and she might outrun her pursuer. He found himself leaning forward, channelling the winds.
The salt air hit him first, flooding his dry nostrils with pungent aromas of the sea. The ship careered down the final reaches of a riverbed, and in a few more moments she was there, plunging through the surf, leaping off one wave, a second, and then settling on an even keel. The prow sent up sparkling clouds of spray, which cascaded down upon them and felt deliciously cool.
Simia turned, laughing wildly. She shouted something, but Sylas did not hear, so consumed was he by the winds and the waves. He lost himself in them as Naeo had lost herself in the stars, and he felt the Windrush glide with an ease and grace that was more like flying than sailing. The wind whistled, and the standard cracked, and the ropes sang.
On she flew across the silver-flecked sea, on and on, until their pursuer’s cries began to fade once more.
Simia and Ash turned their eyes in wonderment between the blur of passing waves, and the glowing ship, and Sylas, who was glowing now too. The Merisi Band was a searing fire, as though Naeo was still at his side.
Before long, Simia saw something ahead: an uneven scrawl written in silver lines above the horizon. Her skin prickled and she pointed.
“There!” she cried. “Land!”
She snatched up the map and began poring over it, searching frantically for their location among the crude drawings of coastline, hills and mountains.
“Simsi!” called Sylas. “It’s all right! I know the way!”
She turned and looked at him in surprise, but his eyes were already fixed ahead, taking in the waters, sands and hills. He checked the position of a headland and then lowered his shoulder. Simia and Ash scrambled to steady themselves as the ship leaned to one side, carving an arc over the shallows, then corrected herself and leapt over a passing coral reef. As Sylas twisted his shoulders, she banked sharply the other way, heading directly for the shore.
In moments, she was there, striking the sand, riding up the beach, bucking over the low banks beyond. She careered across lowlands of desert scrub, bouncing heavily off sunbaked mounds, glancing against jutting rocks. But, as Sylas gained his bearings, the Windrush settled to a steadier course, and sailed more smoothly over the dusty terrain, sweeping left and right, avoiding outcrops, cliffs and ditches. Nevertheless progress was far slower than on open water. With so many obstacles to avoid, her path was far from straight, and sometimes her keel dragged in the sand. Soon she began climbing towards the mountains and slowed further still.
Everyone looked warily across the sea for any sign of their pursuer. There was nothing, just an overhang of glimmering stars, and a dying moon, and below a wide expanse of glistening waves.
For a while the Windrush crossed open terrain, mountains towering above her on one side, but gradually her path became steeper and more treacherous. At last, as she rounded a hill, a narrow valley opened up on her starboard side.
“Hold on!” cried Sylas, leaning towards the valley.
In a trice, the Windrush heaved herself over and skipped across a facing slope, leaving a wake of silver dust. She dropped into the barren valley and began winding her way between bluffs and steep scree slopes. In what seemed moments, the valley divided, and Sylas took her left, letting her climb the facing incline and settle into the higher, craggier valley beyond.
The enchanted ship turned this way and that, her masts and rigging creaking and clattering as they yawed, tilting precariously over drops and ravines. The hull roared as it gouged deep into the dust and grit, and boomed as it hit hidden rocks in its path, but still she surged on. She glanced against hillsides, skipped along ridges, tore down gullies, and the rocks about her no longer seemed obstacles at all. They were just another sea for her to sail on.
“They aren’t trying to trip you,” Simia murmured to herself, remembering Merimaat’s words all those years before, “they’re trying to help you.”
Sylas was sailing through boulders and bluffs that ought to dash the Windrush to splinters, knowing that they would help him, and guide him, and part before him. Simia turned and gazed at him in wonderment, remembering him haring through the ditches on the Barrens, feeling his way as though he had been born to Essenfayle, and she realised that, and everything since, had been just the promise of this.
Suddenly the keel lurched upwards. Simia locked an arm over the railing and clung on for all she was worth as they flew out across a ravine, falling the height of a house before striking the far slope. Astonishingly the ship held together and she swept back across the slope to enter a new mountain pass. Simia was still catching her breath when they reached the heights and a new vista opened before them: a muddle of low hills and scattered rocks rising ever upwards to several rumpled peaks.
She stared for a moment and then lifted the map up, peering at the drawings. Her eyes rose slowly to the mountains, to one rounded summit in the centre. It was distinctive, surrounded by bare folds of rock that looked in the moonlight like a clutch of entwined fingers. Her eyes fell to a drawing of just such a peak.
Simia lowered the map and staggered slowly to her feet.
“Sinai,” she murmured. Then she turned and called: “It’s Mount Sinai!”
“Can there be any more splendid and imposing creature than the Sphinx, with its human head, body of a lion and sometimes falcon wings. No wonder, perhaps, that the Dirgh dreams of bringing it to life, and to heel.”
THE HELICOPTER THUNDERED ALONG valleys and mountain passes, swaying sickeningly one way and then the other. One moment it lurched upwards, pushing its passengers into their seats, the next it plummeted down a mountainside, so that their stomachs seemed to hang in the air. But despite the darkness none of these gut-wrenching aerobatics took Naeo by surprise. It was as though she knew these valleys and passes, and as in a Groundrush she was feeling her way through.
Paiscion, however, sat rigid in his seat, with his eyes shut and sweat beading his forehead. He was deathly pale in the white light of the cabin.
“It’s all right,” said Naeo, holding his arm. “We’re nearly there!”
The Magruman opened an eye. “There’s nothing ‘right’ about this!” he said between his teeth.
Soon the cabin tilted back as the helicopter began to climb. The engine laboured, the steel frame shuddered and the din of the rotors grew to a pronounced thwack, thwack, thwack. Naeo’s ears popped as the helicopter soared higher and higher. Her heart began to race with anticipation.
“This is it!” she whispered. “This is it!”
She leaned out of the opening at her side and by the single searchlight she made out a strange landscape of desolate, rutted rocks and rounded hillocks. It was only a fragment, but even this she found she knew – almost as though she had been there before.
“Mount Sinai!” she exclaimed excitedly.
The engine screamed as it battled to climb through thinner and thinner air. Fixings rattled, starting to come loose, and lights blinked alarmingly before the pilots.
“Not far now!” murmured Naeo.
She could barely contain her excitement and was about to unbuckle herself to peer through the windscreen of the helicopter when suddenly there was a cry of alarm from one of the pilots. An instant later a familiar roar filled the cabin as they were battered by yet another swarm of insects. The aircraft lurched and twisted, swerving away from the face of the mountain. All at once insects poured through one of the openings, pelting the walls as they swept through to the other” to “swept through to the other doorway.
Naeo and Paiscion cried out and covered their faces.
Even in the chaos, they heard the engine falter. It spluttered, gave a juddering whine and then, to their horror, its growl gave way altogether. Now, all they could hear was the whip, whip, whip of the rotors.
Already the helicopter had ceased its climb, and now it was slewing to one side. A harsh alarm blared in their ears and the cabin was flooded with a blood-red flashing light.
Paiscion took Naeo’s hand. “Keep hold!” he cried.
There was an explosion of sparks somewhere outside and, for an instant, everything was silent. One of the pilots yelled something unintelligible.
Then everything went dark.
It would have been eerily silent on the mountaintop were it not for the occasional hiss of sand over ancient rocks, and the flap and flutter of sails.
The Windrush stood crookedly on a stony slope, prow high, glowing beneath a slither-thin moon. She gave out a golden glow, and by that light Sylas could see Simia and Ash still standing on the gangway. They were both watching him, Simia a little in front, so keen had she been to go with him. It had felt strange to leave her now, at the end of their journey, but somehow he had known that it was right. He had to do this alone.
Almost alone.
He raised a hand in farewell, and straight away Simia lifted hers in response. She smiled, hesitantly at first, but then she gave him that broad grin he knew so well, full of warmth and courage. He smiled back and set off up the slope.
“Come on, Sylas,” he murmured. “You can do this.”
The end was finally in sight – just there, where the mountain rounded to a dusty hunch, like a timeworn shoulder carrying all the weight of the world. It was nothing to look at: a barren, featureless hump strewn with rocks and sand and brush. But something about the simple beauty of the place – the pinnacle of a landscape that was barely of this world – made it feel magical and primal. He saw now why Moses had come here, that it was just the place where a god might reach down and touch the lives of humans, or where humans might reach up and touch the face of the universe.
This was the place. It had to be here.
This was the moment it had all been about: his passing between the worlds, his adventures with Simia, his journey to find Naeo and, before any of that, the Merisi, the Bringers, the Samarok, the Glimmer Myth, the Reckoning. All of it had led to this very moment.
Sylas’s boots crunched in the grit as he climbed the last steep rise to the summit. His breath came short and sharp.
He was almost there. Now everything, everything depended on Naeo.
He had barely had a moment to think of her since they had parted, so consumed had he been by his journey. Now, he allowed himself to think about her impossible task: to pass between the worlds, to find help, to travel all this way. But she had to be here. She had to be, or it had all been for nothing.
Sylas was no more than twenty paces away now. The wind had dropped altogether, as though Nature herself was holding her breath. His footsteps seemed too loud, his breathing heavy and laboured. He stopped and lifted his head.
Was that a sound?
He walked on a couple of steps, but then stopped again.
Yes, he was sure of it. At first he thought it was another gust of wind whipping up the sand, but the air was still.
Then it became clearer: a definite, familiar
huff …
huff …
huff …
Sylas shuddered. It was close, and getting closer.
There might still be time, he thought. There had to be time.
He got ready to run, but even as he extended his leg he felt a strange drag on his foot, stopping it from leaving the ground. He tried to throw his weight forward, but his shoulders were wrenched behind, forcing him to take a backward step. The more he strained to go on, the more he felt himself pulled back.
Huff …
huff …
huff … came the sound of those mighty wings.
Sylas looked around and saw a movement among the stars. Something huge and dark passing before them, making them blink as it grew closer and closer.
Then came that half-human shriek echoing between the mountains.
As it died away, Sylas heard Simia’s raised voice behind him. With all his might, he dragged his heavy limbs about until he could see the Windrush.
What he saw was so unexpected that at first he did not understand.
Simia had her back to him and her hands in the air, as though in surrender. When he followed her gaze, his jaw fell open in horror. He saw Ash, his face bloodless, his eyes in a chilling glaze, with one of his arms outstretched towards Sylas, his fist in a tight clench.
“No, Ash!” Simia yelled. “Let him go! You don’t want to do this!”
It was only then that Sylas understood. It was Ash who was holding him back. Ash was stopping him from reaching the summit.
Simia glanced over her shoulder, tears streaming down her face, panic in her eyes. Sylas looked out into the night and saw the sprawling shadow closing in on the mountaintop.
Simia walked towards Ash, arms still above her head. Sylas realised now that it was not a gesture of surrender at all. She was trying to put herself between him and Ash.
“Ash!” she shouted. “You’re forgetting who you are! Who – who Sylas is!”
Without taking his eyes from Sylas, the young Magruman lifted his other hand and swept it towards Simia. Instantly she was hurled to one side, so violently that she only just managed to put her arms out to break her fall. She landed in a crumpled heap.
“No!” screamed Sylas, straining all the harder against his bonds. “Ash, stop this!”
But Ash was impassive, his face set and grim, his arm still outstretched. And now Sylas felt his own arms forced down to his sides, his feet still fixed to the spot. He saw Simia clamber slowly to her feet, pulling the hair away from her face. Without a moment’s hesitation, she started to walk towards Ash.
She said something Sylas could not hear. The thrashing of wings was deafening now, but he could not tear his eyes away from Simia. As she drew near to Ash, she was thrown even more brutally across the mountaintop, so that she sprawled on her back fifteen or twenty feet away. This time she lay still.
The anger that had burned in Sylas’s chest suddenly roared into rage. “STOP!” he yelled, glaring at Ash.
But Ash seemed entirely unmoved. He simply closed his fingers into a tighter fist, and at the same time Sylas felt the breath being squeezed from his lungs.
He struggled, trying desperately to free himself, but just then his eye was caught by a movement out in the night. The vast shadow in the sky had taken shape. Now, it had two huge, eagle-like wings, but its body was not like that of any bird Sylas had ever seen. It was thickset and powerful, with four muscular legs clawing the air and a great mane gathered about its neck and shoulders. And sitting astride this matted tangle was a hooded figure, leaning forward as though to urge the beast on.
Sylas heard Simia’s voice again. He looked back to where she had fallen and was surprised and relieved to see that she was already back on her feet, limping towards Ash. Her clothes were torn, her right hand glistening from a bloody cut, and her arms were stretched out before her, as though she was about to use Essenfayle.
“What are you doing?” he muttered.
She was approaching Ash from the side, and he seemed not to have noticed her. Sylas heard Simia’s voice again, soft and sobbing, then she stumbled the last two paces towards Ash. He finally became aware of her and took a step back.
“Ash, you’re my friend,” she was saying. “You’re one of us!”
He reached out and in the very same moment Simia was lifted from her feet, twisted in the air and dropped cruelly to the ground, making her cry out in pain. However, in his surprise, Ash did not succeed in throwing her far, and this time Simia was straight back on her feet. She charged at him, covering the open ground in four or five strides. When she reached him, she threw her arms about him.
“You don’t mean to do this!” she sobbed. “You have to stop, please, before it’s too late!”
