The Cloud Road

  Several big Monks stood with their back to Zluty, looking out at the strange white world beyond the door.

  There was another loud cracking sound, but the Monks did no more than bristle and growl, shifting restlessly. He realised then that they must be waiting for sunrise to go out and see what was happening.

  Then there was a cracking sound from within the Stonehouse. Zluty drew back into the shadows and a moment later some of the Monk guards came thundering through to investigate the noise. When their pounding steps faded, he moved carefully forward and looked around the door again.

  There were two remaining guards standing in the entranceway, brandishing staffs with metal heads shaped and sharpened into weapons.

  Zluty licked his lips and took from his bag the three sticks the diggers had pressed into his hand. Just as Flugal had bidden, he put their fat tips into the flame of the lamp hanging just inside the entrance chamber where the Monks stood.

  For a moment nothing happened, then the ends began to fizz and spit sparks. Zluty would have dropped them in fright if Flugal had not warned him what would happen. Instead, he stepped out boldly and hurled the firesticks at the entrance, then he stepped back into the other room and flattened himself against the wall.

  There was a deafening crack and then another and another, and Zluty saw red and yellow lights flash against the walls. He heard the squealing screams and growls of the Monks, but he ignored them. The moment the lights ceased to flash, he leapt into the entrance chamber, now filled with acrid smoke and the awful smell of burning fur. He raced past the Monks slapping at their singed fur, and leapt out into the icy night.

  The ground under his feet was covered in coldwhites, he realised. But there was no time to wonder at it, for even as he set off at a run along the path, he saw by the ruddiness of the clouds in the East that the sun was near to rising.

  Then Flugal was beside him, urging him to run faster.

  ‘Bily?’ Zluty gasped.

  ‘Fear not. My mate will find Bee-lee. If too late to follow, they will do hiding until night does come again,’ Flugal panted. ‘Now we must do running very fastly, for soon Monks will coming after us.’

  Zluty had no choice but to trust Bily to Flugal’s mate. Besides, it was Zluty the Monks would be after, and if Bily had been delayed, it was safer by far for him and the she digger to wait and hide and come down when it was night again.

  As if his thoughts had summoned her, Flugal’s mate leapt onto the path to run beside them. ‘The Bee-lee was not in the rift,’ she gasped.

  Zluty would have slowed down then, but Flugal caught his hand and dragged at him, urging him on. ‘Cannot do finding of the Bee-lee if dead! Must do running!’ he shouted.

  They had only gone a few steps before a great whining sound split the air.

  ‘Memory songs telling of alarm sounding when sun rising,’ Flugal gasped. ‘They do coming now.’

  Zluty stopped, forcing the diggers to do the same.

  ‘No!’ Flugal cried, tugging desperately at his hand. ‘Must keep running.’

  Zluty felt suddenly quite calm. ‘You know we can’t outrun the Monks. They are too strong and too fast. You two must run. It is me they want. Go down while you can, and when it is night again, come back and find Bily. Bring him safely back to your settlement. Tell him I love him and I am sorry.’

  ‘No!’ Flugal said frantically, clutching his hand. ‘I cannot do abandoning name brother!’

  ‘You are not abandoning me,’ Zluty cried. ‘I am asking you to help Bily. If I am your name brother, then do this for me. Please!’ He slipped off the bag with the metal egg. ‘Give this to Bily.’

  Flugal looked distraught. ‘Zluty, if the Monks take you they will do killing of you.’

  ‘If I run with you they will do killing of us all,’ Zluty said in a frenzy of impatience, for he could now hear the soft thud of heavy feet.

  ‘The Zchloo-tee do telling truthfulness,’ said the she digger. ‘Must do as he is asking, if you did the giving of your name.’

  Flugal gave a strangled cry and then he snatched up the bag and both he and his mate raced away. Zluty turned slowly towards Stonehouse, wishing with all of his heart that he might have seen Bily one last time. ‘The Monster will help him to bear this,’ he whispered, to comfort himself.

  Then the Monks were there, racing towards him in a snarling pack. The sight of Zluty standing there all alone seemed to confound them, and one by one they came to a halt, their breaths steaming from their mouths, red eyes glaring.

  Then one of the Monks stepped forward.

  ‘Kill unplanned-strangeness!’ it growled.

  Zluty closed his eyes so that he would not see the Monks fall on him, and thought he heard Bily calling his name. ‘I am sorry, Bily,’ he whispered.

  There was a terrible roaring growl, and Zluty’s eyes flew open in time to see a giant Monster made of clouds leap down onto the path. As the Monks turned and fled towards Stonehouse, screeching and keening in terror, the Cloud Monster turned to Zluty. He trembled under its icy-blue gaze. Then, to his everlasting wonder, it lowered itself to the ground and Zluty saw that Bily was riding on its back!

  His brother slipped lightly to the ground and turned to thank the Cloud Monster gravely, and then it rose and bounded after the Monks, its thick tail lashing in its wake.

  Within seconds, Bily and Zluty were quite alone.

  ‘Zluty!’ Bily cried, flinging his arms around his brother’s neck and smothering him in kisses.

  Zluty laughed and hugged him, too. But when they let go of one another, he asked incredulously, ‘What was that?!’

  ‘He is a blizzard,’ Bily said. ‘He found me when I was lost. I thought he was going to eat me! The ­Makers sent him to guard the Stonehouse, only his mate was killed when they came through the sky crack, so he has refused ever since to obey their plan.’

  Zluty must have looked as confounded as he felt, for Bily laughed and said, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters but that you are safe.’

  Then his face fell and he looked towards Stonehouse. ‘We must get down from the mountain as fast as ever we can because he can’t stay out much longer to hold off the Monks. You have no idea what awful pain he endures to disobey the Makers after the sun has risen. That is when their power over him is strongest. Usually he stays hidden in his cavern in the daytime and comes out at night when he can fight their control. I am sure that is why the Monks only come out in the day. They fear him.’

  ‘But it is day now,’ Zluty said.

  ‘He came because . . . because . . . I asked it.’

  ‘I owe it . . . him . . . my life, for if you had not come, the Monks would certainly have killed me,’ Zluty said. ‘But you are right that we had better keep going for the diggers must not go down without us as I have no idea how to work the device that will take us down.’

  Bily’s eyes widened. ‘The diggers found you!’

  ‘They did,’ Zluty said. ‘I would never have got out of Stonehouse without them. I sent them ahead when I thought the Monks would catch us. Let’s run and catch them up.’

  ‘Whatever is on your head?’ Bily panted, after they had run a little.

  ‘It is a metal shape like the ones the Monks use to control the diggers. There is a great metal object inside Stonehouse which they call the Machine. It empties the head of whoever wears a metal shape, only it did not work on me because . . . ’

  ‘Because we do not have Makers metal in us,’ Bily said. ‘I have learned much, too, since we last talked. I think the Makers sent the Machine for the Monks to use. Oh, Zluty, the Makers must be such dreadful creatures. It was one of their objects that caused the arosh! Only it used to cause bigger and more terrible storms. And one of them killed all of Redwing’s people before the diggers broke it and ran away. That is why they were so astonished to see her! I suppose she must have been inside her egg somewhere safe until she hatched.’

  Zluty opened his mouth to tell Bily what he had overheard the
Monks saying about the little metal egg, then he closed it again. They would talk of that when they were safe.

  They did not stop running until they reached some stone steps at the edge of the plateau. Zluty had no memory of them, but Bily said they led down to a ledge, where they could board the device that would carry them to the ground. As they descended the steps, Bily added that they were lucky coldwhites covered the stone, because the steps had been dreadfully slippery when he had climbed them earlier, and he had lost Zluty’s staff. At the bottom of the steps was a white ledge beside which hung the platform.

  But there was no sign of the diggers.

  Zluty’s heart sank, but before he could utter a word, there was a cry of joy and Flugal burst from behind the metal object where he and the others had been hiding, and flung himself at Zluty.

  ‘How did you do escaping the Monks, Zchloo-tee?’ Flugal cried. ‘And where did you do finding of Bee-lee?’

  ‘Bily found me, but I think that the telling of the rest had better wait until we get down from the mountain for the Monks will be after us again as soon as they can,’ Zluty said.

  ‘Yes! Yes! Timely to doing going down,’ cried his mate. The four of them climbed carefully aboard the platform, while Flugal clambered atop the metal object and began to touch and twist the knobs embedded in it. Then the platform began to tremble and descend. He leapt down from the object, raced to the edge of the ledge, and jumped without hesitation into Bily’s outstretched arms.

  ‘You did do rescuing of stolen Beloved!’ he told Bily.

  ‘You truly did,’ Zluty said and put his arm around his brother as they descended.

  Coldwhites began to fall before they reached the ground, and Zluty was relieved when Bily explained that this would prevent the Monks following them straightaway. The other diggers were camped at the foot, waiting, and although they had many questions, after a brief excited exchange they packed up and set off at once for the digger settlement. Coldwhites fell the whole time they walked.

  They were getting close to the settlement when Redwing came soaring down to tell Bily she had been searching for them at the behest of the clan leader. He sent her flying ahead with the news of their success, and by the time they arrived a feast had been laid out to celebrate what the diggers called The Rescue of the Stolen Beloved.

  Zluty was abashed to find himself called by this title. Yet he could not help being affected by the genuine delight of the diggers at his safe return. After the telling of what had happened, the diggers sang praise to Flugal who had courageously followed Zluty and crept into Stonehouse to find him and lead him out. There was some astonishment when the other diggers realised Flugal had told Zluty his name, and Bily explained to Zluty that such an exchange usually happened only between mated diggers, or those who were kin. In giving his name to Zluty, Flugal had effectively made them brothers. Which, it turned out, meant Flugal’s mate had become a sister to him, too! Zluty thought how strange and fine it was to have two brothers and a sister, when there had only ever been him and Bily.

  The feast had been set out under makeshift canopies to protect it from the falling coldwhites, and there was a good deal of singing and dancing and more eating as the night wore on. Eventually, the coldwhites ceased falling for a time, and the clan leader took the opportunity to make a speech about the debt of honour owed by the clan to the Guardian. This was the name the diggers used for the Cloud Monster.

  Bily whispered to Zluty that the clan leader had told him a ‘blizzard’ was actually a terrible storm of coldwhites turned to sharp ice, but that he thought it a perfectly splendid name for the Cloud Monster.

  The Clan leader finished his speech with a solemn pledge that the clan would fulfil the promise Bily had made to the enormous creature to see what could be done to free it from the Makers control. Then Flugal insisted Zluty play his pipe. The diggers had been unable to remove the metal shape from his head because of its strange attachment in his ear, but fortunately it did not hinder his playing, and the diggers sat entranced by his music until late into the night.

  When the diggers had gone sleepily off to their burrows, Bily and Zluty talked into the early hours. Zluty learned all that Bily had discovered about the diggers’ history and about Makers and Listeners. In return he told his brother what he had seen and overheard while being held captive by the Monks.

  Near dawn they lay down in their bedrolls under the canopy by the wagon, for coldwhites had begun to fall hard again.

  Zluty could not sleep. There were so many questions that still needed answers.

  Most of all, he wanted to know more of the mysterious Makers plan to come through the sky crack. He had no idea what the sky crack was, but clearly the Makers were dangerous, dreadful creatures and the more they knew about them, the better they could prepare themselves if ever they came across them. He hoped the Monster would be able to answer some of his questions when it woke, but for the time being it was still asleep, recovering from whatever the diggers had done to heal its metal.

  Bily had questioned the potion-maker about the healing and had been told there was no knowing how long it would be before the Monster woke, and that meantime he must lie quiet. That meant further delay in their journey, but since there was no chance now of them getting to the other side of the Clouded Mountains before winter, it hardly seemed to matter.

  In fact, until the Monster woke, there was no use trying to make any plans at all, and Zluty wondered if it might not be sensible to remain in the settlement until the end of winter, especially given the clan’s certainty that the Monks would not come down from the mountains now until spring.

  Zluty had no memory of finally falling asleep, but suddenly Flugal was shaking him awake to say it was dawn and did he want to take part in a foraging expedition.

  Zluty accepted the little digger’s invitation. He was startled to find that coldwhites were still falling steadily so that now the black stony ­terrain was covered in a cold blanket of white, but this appeared not to daunt the diggers at all. Joining the expedition at one of the pit fires to nibble a bite to eat before they left, Zluty realised the diggers must be as accustomed to this coldwhite season as he and Bily had been to Winter on the plain.

  Just as they were leaving Bily appeared, scratching his head and yawning. He was asked to accompany the party but he explained excitedly that he was to be shown how paints were made and how to mix a potion that would cause a deep sleep.

  The foraging party set off and Zluty was soon absorbed in the hunt. By the end of the day he had learned much and was amazed at the many different foods that could be found in what looked like such barren terrain.

  That night there was another feast and Bily told Zluty all about the things he had learned. Zluty’s heart warmed to see his brother so inspired about making things again.

  The next day proceeded in the same way, ending in a wonderful display of firesticks like those Zluty had lit to escape the Stonehouse.

  It seemed to Zluty the diggers would happily have gone on celebrating and feasting night after night, all winter long, and he marvelled at how smoothly he and Bily had become a part of life in the settlement.

  The next morning, the Monster woke.

  Zluty and Bily were sitting beside a little fire Zluty had made in the fire pit closest to the wagon, and Zluty was finally telling his brother and Flugal about the Monks and the little metal egg.

  ‘They said it was a message from the Makers and they were going to give it to a new Listener who is supposed to come in spring,’ Zluty said. ‘They seemed to think it a test from the Makers and they wanted to trick the Listener into accepting it so they would be the ones tested. They were going to empty my head and give me to the Listener as well.’

  ‘That was the egg you stole from Stonehouse!’ Flugal cried.

  ‘I did not steal it,’ Zluty said indignantly. ‘I found it ages ago in the Northern Forest. It was in a great burned place where there was a giant broken egg with the bones of a dead beast inside
it.’

  ‘Maybe it was a dead Maker,’ Bily whispered.

  ‘It was not a Maker,’ said a familiar smoky voice.

  Bily whirled with a cry of delight and ran to the side of the wagon. The Monster heaved itself into a sitting position. ‘You are better!’ Bily cried.

  ‘I am very weak,’ said the Monster. ‘But my head no longer hurts and I can feel my legs. . . ’

  Bily launched into a long telling of their adventures since it had last woken and the Monster listened gravely, then it asked Zluty to tell it all about Stonehouse and the Monks. Finally, it asked to see the little metal egg.

  Zluty took it from the bottom of a new pack the diggers had made him and Flugal stared at it in wonderment. Seeing his wide eyes, Zluty suddenly remembered how interested the diggers on the plain had been in the metal egg. He had seen a number of metal eggs on the plain, but all had been larger and all had been opened, their inhabitants long gone. That an egg might contain a message seemed very strange to him.

  He gave it to Bily and watched closely as his brother held it out to the Monster. Its yellow eyes glowed as it studied the egg.

  ‘It is not from the Makers,’ it said at last.

  ‘How do you know?’ Zluty asked.

  ‘The metal inside me would feel it,’ the Monster said.

  ‘But your metal has been healed so the ­Makers can’t make you do anything any more,’ Bily protested.

  The Monster looked at him. ‘The metal never controlled me. It allowed me to use the Makers devices to control other things that have Makers metal in them. And though I cannot feel the Makers machines any more, my metal still tells me the diggers have Makers metal in them, though it is powerless. It also tells me that there is no Makers metal inside you or Zluty.’