Pilgrim

  What he saw through the flames and smoke rising from the city made him grip the windowsill in support. The waters of Grail Lake were now so shallow that he could clearly see the Maze in their depths.

  And the Maze was rising. Slowly, but inevitably. It had been waiting tens of thousands of years for this moment.

  Drago raised his eyes slightly. Spiredore stood apparently serene and unconcerned by the growing conflagration over the Lake.

  And unapproachable.

  There was no way anyone could cross the Lake now, and time had run out for the people of Carlon to be gathered in some square for a dash through the army outside.

  Drago turned back into the room, and glanced at the rectangle of light. Smoke was still filtering through a far window and through the doorway. Not only had the room cleared of smoke, but a large portion of Carlon as well.

  It was time to give the doorway something else to do.

  “What we will do,” he said, “is to get the people of Carlon through this doorway. It will take them via Spiredore to Sanctuary.”

  “So all we have to do,” Herme said in a voice heavy with sarcasm, “is get all the people of Carlon out of their burning homes and into this room, and then everything will just be wonderful.”

  “Herme,” Zared said warningly, but he, too, looked at Drago with raised eyebrows.

  “Do you have that map, Gustus?” Drago asked.

  “Aye, sir. Here.”

  Drago took the proffered map and calmly spread it out on a table. He leaned over the table, staring intently at it, the fingers of one hand gently tapping as he thought.

  “For the gods’ sakes!” Herme yelled, hitting the table with his fist. “Carlon is burning!”

  “Then to you I give the task of finding as many people in the palace, and the blocks surrounding the palace, as you can,” Drago said, straightening up. “You will bring them into this room, and you will send them through the doorway.”

  He waved at the rectangle of light. “Everything that goes through that doorway will end up at the bridge before Sanctuary, so, Herme, make sure that only people go through that doorway. Do you understand me?”

  Herme nodded.

  “Good. Then move!”

  Herme grabbed Gustus and began giving him orders in an urgent monotone as they walked through the chamber doorway into the outside doorway.

  “And us?” Zared asked.

  “And the people beyond this palace and its immediate environs?” Theod put in.

  “Well,” Drago began, but before he could go any further, Faraday, WingRidge and some sixty members of the Lake Guard tumbled through the rectangle of light.

  “How did we get down that stairwell so fast?” WingRidge was saying to Faraday as he came though, and then he stared about in amazement as he realised where he was.

  Lake Guardsmen and women tumbled through after him, and soon the room was filled with bodies and voices.

  “WingRidge,” Drago said, “send twenty of your command through that doorway,” he indicated the chamber doorway. “Outside they will find Earl Herme and some members of Zared’s army. They are trying to evacuate as many people as they can find in the immediate vicinity into this room and then through that door. The Lake Guard can help. Do it!”

  WingRidge quickly sent twenty of the Guard running through the door.

  As they ran, Drago bent down to Sicarius and whispered something to him. The hound whined briefly, and then four of the Alaunt had dashed after the twenty Lake Guard.

  “They will help find those trapped,” Drago said, and then smiled a little at Faraday. “Thank you for getting back here so fast.”

  He looked about the room. “Now listen. We have little time.”

  He cocked his head slightly again towards one of the windows. “The hour of Tempest has passed,” he said. “And that will make things slightly easier for us.”

  He lifted a hand and drew four separate symbols in the air before him. When the lizard had completed retracing them in light, four more doorways stood glowing in the centre of the room.

  WingRidge stared at the doorways, then stared at Drago, nodding slightly to himself.

  “Faraday, Leagh, Gwendylyr, and Goldman,” Drago said, “you will each take one of these doorways and go to,” he named four sections of the city, “where, as Herme does here, you will gather as many people as you can and send them through the door. I say to you what I said to Herme. Make sure only people go through those doorways, because anything can go through, and I do not want a tide of rodents, or anything worse, to descend on Sanctuary.”

  “I can manipulate that enchantment?” Goldman said wonderingly.

  Drago spared the time to smile gently at him, including both Goldman and Gwendylyr in his next remark. “You can feel the changes within you since…since the field of flowers?”

  They nodded.

  “You have been reborn in the fullness of Acharite blood,” Drago said. “As have I, Faraday and Leagh.”

  His mouth twitched. “I think you will find yourselves somewhat amazed at what implications that will have for your lives. But for now, will you just trust me when I say, this enchantment you will be able to manipulate with ease?”

  “Aye,” Goldman said. “After what you did for us this morning, I could trust you if you said I could survive the Demons themselves.”

  “Pray it does not come to that!” Drago said hurriedly. “Each of you can take two of the Alaunt with you to help find those trapped—”

  “May I take the cats rather than the hounds?” Goldman said.

  Drago nodded. “If you wish. Why?”

  Goldman squatted down and picked up one of the cats. “I’ve ever had an affinity for cats, my Lord.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Drago said sharply, then turned to WingRidge. “Send some of your guard with each of them. Zared, Theod, go with your wives. They will need your aid.”

  As WingRidge sorted his guard into groups, Faraday spoke.

  “How do we use the doorways?”

  “Walk through, and you will find yourself in Spiredore. Once there…do you remember how I folded the door and pocketed it when we left the field of flowers?”

  Faraday, as Goldman and the other two women, nodded.

  “Do the same. You will find it easy. Ask Spiredore to take you to your particular section of the city and, when you get there, simply unpocket the doorway and unfold it.”

  “And when we have found all the people we can?” Gwendylyr asked.

  “Then go back through yourselves. Refold the doorway, and ask Spiredore to return you to me.”

  “And you?” Faraday asked.

  Drago looked carefully at her, not sure if the question was asked because she felt he’d given himself nothing to do, or because she was concerned for him.

  “WingRidge and I have something else to attend to,” he said softly. “Now, go.”

  The three women and Goldman collected their respective groups of members of the Lake Guard, Alaunt and cats, and moved through their doorways.

  When the room was empty save for himself and WingRidge and the single remaining glowing door, Drago reworked the enchantment surrounding the door so that it would again take people directly to Spiredore, then turned to speak to WingRidge.

  “The Maze is rising,” he said.

  “Aye,” WingRidge answered. “It needs to speak with you.”

  65

  Evacuation

  Faraday led her group of Lake Guard and several of the Alaunt into horror.

  Faraday stopped dead just inside the room where Spiredore had deposited her. It was not the heat that had riveted her attention, even though it was close to being overwhelming, nor the smoke which had thickened enough to be irritating if not choking, but the sight directly across the room.

  A crowd of rodents ringed a small boy seated against the far wall. The rodents had originally been facing the boy, but when Faraday and her companions had abruptly appeared in the centre of the room, they’d turn
ed as one to face the intruders.

  Faraday had no eye for the rodents. All she could see was the boy. At first sight he reminded her of Isfrael when he was about five or six, for he had the same green eyes, pale skin and blonde hair, although his features were very different.

  But as Faraday’s vision adjusted to the smoke and heat, she realised that normally the boy had a ruddy complexion, and if he was pale now, it was only because he sat in a pool of his own blood. His green eyes were as wide as Isfrael’s had been, but they were widened with horror and agony, rather than curiosity and wonder.

  Faraday began to step forward, then halted, appalled.

  A mouse, covered in clotting blood, wriggled out of the boy’s half-open mouth and dropped down over his ragged belly into his lap.

  Another mouse emerged, as bloody as the first, and then a veritable swarm of the creatures wriggled out of the boy’s mouth.

  “No,” Faraday said flatly, trying to deny what she was seeing. “No!”

  But it was too late. The boy gave a single hiccup, choked, then died.

  There was a movement among the rodents, and Faraday refocused on the rat that walked several paces towards her. It was twice the size of a normal rat, its pelt patchy-bald in places, and its black eyes bright with pure venom and, appallingly, intelligence as keen as Faraday’s own.

  Somehow, horribly, Faraday could see inside its mind.

  It was a warren of dark tunnels and mazes. The rat’s consciousness seized hers, and Faraday found herself being pulled along one of the tunnels at breakneck speed, towards some horror that awaited her at the heart of the maze.

  She could hear, feel, that heart beating with pure malevolence.

  No, she thought. No! She knew what existed in the heart of that Maze!

  Get you gone, breeder of small two-legs, the rat said in her mind, or I shall deliver you into the hands of—

  In the extremity of her fear, Faraday reacted with pure instinct.

  In her mind she drew an image of a rat trap, drew it with glowing lines of light, and with all the strength she possessed she threw it towards the patchy-bald rat.

  “Get you snapped, you filthy disease-monger!”

  The rat screeched, and then suddenly its head caved in and its ribs blew apart.

  The maze disintegrated, and Faraday’s mind was freed.

  She smiled, an expression of pure coldness.

  Every rodent, worm and burrower and crawler within Carlon suddenly stopped what it was doing and turned itself towards the building where Faraday had just killed their leader.

  Then, as a single entity, every one of them screamed (or screeched or moaned or rasped), then scuttled for the nearest dank hole leading back to the sewers.

  The brown and cream badger grunted in fury. He quivered, and then gave the order his furred comrades had been waiting to hear for a long, long time.

  Faraday blinked, and realised that the room was full, not only of those who’d come through Spiredore with her, but with five or six terrified men and women, huddled in a far corner.

  Faraday walked over to them, touched the cheek of the nearest woman, and smiled, with warmth this time.

  “Do you see that door?” she said softly, indicating the glowing rectangle of light. “It leads to escape and to wonder. Take the hand of this Icarii man behind me, and he will guide you through.”

  One of the men huddled at the back of the group was wrinkled with age, and the joints on the trembling hand he now raised were swollen and painful.

  “Queen Faraday?” he whispered. “Is that you?”

  “My name is Faraday, indeed,” she said, taking his hand, “but I am queen of nothing but my own destiny. Now, will you come?”

  Even though Faraday, Leagh, Gwendylyr and Goldman had all moved to different parts of the city, the business of evacuating two hundred thousand people from a burning and fear-filled city through five small doorways was a mammoth and well-nigh impossible task.

  Nevertheless, several things worked in their favour.

  Sheer luck—or Spiredore’s good sense—had placed Faraday in the very room the patchy-bald rat inhabited, and her ability to trust in, and use, pure instinct, together with a long familiarity with the processes of power, had witnessed the patchy-bald rat’s demise and the subsequent panic and flight of all his comrades within Carlon.

  Suddenly, the creatures that had panicked the entire city were gone.

  The Alaunt and the members of the Lake Guard moved almost as one, hunting out pockets of terrified humanity and directing them towards the rooms where the women and Drago had erected their doorways of light.

  Goldman, of course, relied on the cats.

  Faraday, Leagh and Gwendylyr induced calm by their very presence. People huddled choking and close to death in a corner of an attic or kitchen or on a landing of their stairwells, would look up to see the smiling face of what they first thought was an apparition of one of the spirits who guided souls in their journey through to the Gate of the AfterLife. Lovely, serene, dressed in flowing white robes, the apparition would bend down with an extended hand, and people would suddenly, startlingly, realise that they looked into the face of Queen Leagh, or the Duchess Gwendylyr or, for some of the older people, the face of the mythical, enchanted Faraday.

  There were no questions, no panic. They took the hand offered them, and followed the Icarii who guided them, and they stepped through glowing rectangles of light into a maze of twisting stairs and crazily-canted balconies, then onto a bridge—who spoiled the dreamlike quality of their journey thus far with some persistent questioning—and then found themselves on a flower-lined road that led to a magical valley.

  Goldman had as much success as his three female companions, but with a slightly different method. Like Gwendylyr, Goldman was still absorbing the full impact of his journey from crazed psychotic to a man not only restored in body and soul, but also augmented with something…more. A depth that he’d never realised he’d possessed. Whatever this “depth” was, it did not feel in the least foreign, but very much a part of him, and Goldman realised that he’d been living a half-life to this point.

  Now he felt more the priest than the guild master, more the mystic than the hard-talking and scheming Master of Guilds.

  He felt as if his spirit had come home.

  Goldman was certainly home in body. He knew Carlon better than he knew the contours of his favourite pillow. He’d been born in this city, had spent his childhood scrambling about its roofs and creeping through its cellars, had spent his youth learning its idiosyncrasies in the city workshops, and had spent his adulthood exploiting those idiosyncrasies for the gain of the city’s guildsmen and traders.

  Now he put a lifetime of knowledge, plus his new-found “depth”, to good use. The cats helped Goldman, as the Alaunt helped the women. They found the secret places where parents had hidden children, and the cunningly disguised doors that led to smoke-filled closets filled with the hidden.

  They also invariably led Goldman through kitchens to get to where they had to go, but when Goldman clapped his hands and told them to get to the business at hand, they would do so uncomplainingly, even though they flicked their tails in disgust.

  But Goldman had far more in mind than going through his section of the city room by room. Already he could hear buildings crashing down as walls and supports burned through. Drago may have cleared the city of much of the choking smoke, but he could do nothing about the spreading flames through tight-packed tenements that shared walls and roofs.

  Goldman knew this was no time for a leisurely stroll through the deathtrap his beloved city had become.

  “ProudFlight,” Goldman said to the Lake Guard Lieutenant who led the group of guardsmen and women WingRidge had assigned Goldman. “We are within two blocks of the Wool Weavers Guild Hall. Get me there.”

  “But—”

  “Get me there, and then get on with your task of getting people into the doorway.”

  “And you?”

/>   Goldman would have grinned, save the situation was getting more desperate by the moment. “Get me to that Hall, and you shall see.”

  They moved into the street, wrapping spare cloths about their heads as some protection against the thickening fumes. Now that Drago’s door was again evacuating people, the smoke was rapidly rebuilding to a point where it was causing serious difficulty in breathing. Burning cinders and ash drifted down from fiery buildings, and ProudFlight spread a wing over Goldman to protect him, disregarding the cinders that burned holes through his feathers.

  Fortunately, the streets they took were not badly obstructed by burning debris, and they reached the Wool Weaver’s Guild Hall in a relatively short time. Thank the gods, Goldman thought, that the Wool Weavers were a rich enough guild to build with brick rather than wood and shingle!

  “Leave me,” he said to ProudFlight, gasping for breath. “I will be safe enough here for the moment. Fetch me…fetch me when the bells stop.”

  “The bells?”

  “When the bells stop! Now, go!”

  Goldman gave ProudFlight a shove, and after a glance to make sure the Master of the Guilds had entered the building, the birdman ran back down the street towards the block his command were currently evacuating.

  Goldman stumbled inside the building, and stood for a moment to orientate himself. The Guild Hall was not yet seriously alight, but its interior was nevertheless filled with the smoke and cinders of the conflagration to either side, and Goldman knew he couldn’t waste time by running aimlessly from room to room.

  Ah! There! Goldman walked as fast as he could through the shifting, grey-filled gloom, keeping a hand on a wall for direction and support.

  He reached a small and almost hidden door, opened it, and climbed the stairway it revealed.

  Drago glanced over his shoulder at the group of people that Herme herded into the room. They stared at the glowing door, then walked through without question, glad enough to escape the certain death that awaited them in Carlon.

  He returned his gaze to the sight out the window. The Maze was evident as darker smudges of grey under the silvery waters of Grail Lake.