The Bell Between Worlds (43 page)

It growled a deep, slow and murderous growl. The stench of its breath made him turn his face away. The grip tightened instantly, and the growl became fierce. He turned back to look the guard in its pale, human eyes.

“Listen to me, Scryer,” it said contemptuously, its voice clear and man-like. “I am to take you to the Master. Few things please the Master, but many things displease him. I never,
never
displease the Master.” It pushed Bowe further up the wall, his feet now far off the ground. “So we will do this quickly. We will do it silently. We will enter his presence with reverence. Do you understand?”

Bowe managed a half-nod.

He was dropped to the ground, coughing and spluttering, gasping for breath. Before he could even reach for his throat, the guard’s claw grasped the back of his neck and he was thrust forward, out of the cell and into the flickering light of the passageway. Despite the Scryer’s considerable size, he was propelled forward with such force that his feet barely touched the ground. They moved down the corridor at speed, passing door after door set deep into the stone walls.

Bowe tried to struggle, kicking out at the walls to try to set the guard off balance. The grip around his neck tightened again. This time he felt as though he might black out.

“Don’t make me repeat myself, Scryer,” growled the guard at his ear.

It lashed out with its teeth, gashing his cheek and shredding part of his ear. Bowe cried out in pain. Instantly the guard threw him with huge force against the damp, cold wall. His head struck with shattering force and he reeled backwards, already feeling the blood pouring from his temple.

“Quick. Silent. Reverent,” growled the guard, its claw closing round his neck. “Obey.”

Bowe felt himself slip gratefully into unconsciousness.

“How is it that music captures what cannot be caught: the
sound
of night and shooting stars, of darkness and the rising
moon
?”

“W
ELL
, I
HAVEN
’
T ACTUALLY
seen
it before, no,” said Simia defensively.

Sylas frowned. “But you brought us here,” he muttered. “I thought you knew where you were going.”

“I do know where I’m going!” she snapped, putting her hands on her hips and glaring up at him. “It’s exactly where Filimaya said it would be. I’m telling you – this is it!”

Sylas looked doubtfully over her shoulder towards the river. “Well, it doesn’t exactly look like the home of a–” he lowered his voice to a whisper – “of a Magruman, does it?”

“Well, no. It
is
a bit disappointing.”

“
Disappointing
…” murmured Sylas.

He gazed despairingly ahead of him, feeling his body give in to a crushing weariness. He had
so
wanted this to be an end to his journey – an answer to all his questions. He thought back to the fall of the mill and the terror of the chase, to the cold, bleak days on the Barrens, to Bayleon’s capture and their desperate, exhausting flight from the Circle of Salsimaine. All of that – for
this
?

His eyes passed slowly over shattered decks, a broken mast that leaned precariously against another; tattered, forlorn-looking sails that hung by threads from the frayed, tangled rigging. The hull of the ship carried the colourful insignia and intricate carvings of grander days, but now the paint was faded and peeling, the proud designs around the fittings were almost unrecognisable and the lovingly chiselled wood was rotting and falling away. Indeed the only ornament that remained almost intact was a faded, lopsided nameplate, whose forlorn letters spelled: the
Windrush
.

But what was least impressive about this decrepit ship was its positively muddled attitude towards holes. There were no holes where there should have been, for the portholes had been blocked with crudely nailed planks and the entrances on the decks were covered with piles of broken timber and discarded canvas. And yet, most alarmingly, there were very many holes where holes ought
not
to be, giving the sad vessel the appearance of a capsized Swiss cheese.

There were holes in the deck timbers and holes in the sails, there were holes in the forecastle and there were holes in the hull. Indeed this utterly wrong-headed approach to holes made the ship something of a miracle, as despite the water lapping round its many dark cavities, it remained above the waves. The entire hulk leaned threateningly towards the bank, but nevertheless it rocked and rolled with the gentle motion of the putrid river. It was quite implausibly, but quite undeniably, afloat.

Sylas’s musings were suddenly brought to an abrupt end. With a loud clatter of chains, a section of the hull fell open and landed with a thump on the muddy bank.

They both slithered several paces backwards. They stared fearfully at the wooden ramp, leading to a dark, square doorway.

“It’s a door,” whispered Sylas.

“No kidding,” muttered Simia, glancing at him with narrow eyes.

They stared at it for some moments, waiting for someone to emerge from the shadows within, but no one came.

Sylas took a few steps forward, looking with interest at the ramp. “Do you think we should go in?”

“Maybe. You first.”

Simia stayed well back, poised to run, but Sylas continued to creep forward, still staring at the ramp. His eyes were trained on something carved into the surface – gouged out of the rough, damp wood. The nearer he came to it, the more certain he was that it was a symbol: a collection of strange lines and dashes that shifted a little even as he looked at it.

A Ravel Rune.

He stared at it for some moments until it began to change before his eyes, its many lines turning and contorting until they formed a perfect letter P.

“P!” said Sylas excitedly. “P for Paiscion!”

Simia scowled, peering with some interest over his shoulder.

“Where?”

Before he could reply, the symbol had started to change again, its strokes curling about themselves until something new started to form, something different but just as familiar. Somehow the many markings in the timber of the ramp had morphed before his very eyes until they formed a perfect, delicate shape.

“A feather!” exclaimed Sylas, taking another few steps down the stinking, slippery bank and feeling new hope stirring inside him.

Simia joined him. She peered over his shoulder at the ramp. “A feather? Where?”

“There!” said Sylas, pointing at the symbol.

“That’s not a feather! It’s just a load of scratches!” “It’s not! You’ve got to look at it right – it’s a Ravel—”
Are you coming inside, or not?

Sylas stopped, startled.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” said Simia irritably. “Stop being so weird.” He turned to look at her. How could she not have heard it?
You’re wasting time. My time. Come inside, or go away.
“There! There it was again!”

Simia stared at him, suddenly looking a little frightened. “Stop it!” she said reproachfully. “Now you’re scaring me.”

He turned and peered into the dark doorway of the vessel. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that
he
had not
heard
the voice either – it had been inside his head, just like Mr Zhi’s voice had been when Sylas was standing outside the Shop of Things.

“Come on,” he said firmly. “He wants us to go inside.”

“Oh, really, and he just
told
you that?” mocked Simia.

Sylas slithered the last few steps down the bank and she realised that he was serious. Her face straightened.

“How… How do you know?”

He stepped on to the ramp and turned to face her, giving her an encouraging smile. “I just do. I’ve seen this magic before. With Mr Zhi.”

Simia looked at him doubtfully, twirling a strand of her red hair round a finger. Reluctantly, she followed him down.

As they stepped into the shadows, the first thing to strike them was the astonishing smell. The foul stench of sewage gave way to the incongruous fragrance of grass and fresh flowers lightly flavoured with woodsmoke. It was as though they had suddenly been transported out of the ship and away from the city to some distant mountain meadow. Almost straight away they started to feel calmed and refreshed. Sylas took a deep breath and felt sweet, wholesome air fill his lungs. He heard Simia step up the ramp behind him and she too gasped as she crossed the threshold.

Watch your backs!

Sylas jumped. The voice was louder and clearer than ever: a sharp, male voice that had the tone of someone who was used to being obeyed.

Without warning, the chains rattled above their heads and the ramp was drawn closed behind them. There was a loud clank as a latch was drawn into place and suddenly they were plunged into pitch-blackness.

“Sylas?” hissed Simia. “Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“This was your idea.”

“I know…”

Down the steps, please.

A torch suddenly burst into flame above their heads and then another ahead of them, followed by more beyond. They cast an orange, flickering light on a narrow passageway that led to a staircase just a few paces in front of them.

“Come on,” said Sylas, turning to Simia’s wide eyes. “He wants us to go down.”

She arched her eyebrows in the half-light. “Oh. Right. Good then.”

He stepped forward and, feeling for the broken banister, started to lower himself down.

They descended towards a roughly hewn door at the bottom of the steps, the fresh fragrance becoming even stronger as they went. But they hardly noticed the scent any more; instead they were entranced by the faint sound of music. It seemed to be coming from beyond the door.

As they clambered down the final uneven steps, the beautiful sound became louder and louder, echoing between the faded wooden panels of the walls and reverberating within the timber of the door.

“What
is
that?” whispered Simia at his ear. “It’s beautiful…”

“I think it’s a piano,” he said.

She frowned. “Never heard of it. But it sounds
amazing
…”

He hesitated for a moment with his hand on the door handle and his face pressed against the wood, listening to the doleful, haunting notes of the piano.

It
was
beautiful, and yet also unutterably sad. A deep, resonant note chimed every few beats like a call to mourning while above, a triplet of notes repeated over and over, sometimes rising and falling, but always in time with the irregular, heartbreaking chime, like the sound of loss or regret. A simple lilting melody laced the music, but while it was at times light and always gentle upon the ear, it carried tidings of sadness.

The music was washing over Sylas when, to his horror, he heard the creak of the hinges. The door swung open under the gentle pressure of his cheek, and he found himself staring into the open space beyond.

He blinked at the shaft of dusty light that bisected the gloomy room, zigzagging between a number of mirrors about its edge, illuminating a bare, featureless, cold chamber. On the opposite wall, below the single porthole, a series of crooked bookshelves offered the room’s only decoration: a vast collection of papers and books. The sole covering on the rough floorboards was a threadbare rug at one end of the chamber, upon which rested a wooden rocking chair and a low table. The table bore three objects: a tall, fluted glass of wine; a pair of spectacles; and a large wooden box from which rose a graceful, curving brass tube that opened wide at its mouth like the bell of a horn.

“Is that the piano?” whispered Simia, her eyes wide with excitement.

“No, it’s a gramophone,” whispered Sylas.

“I thought you said it was a piano.”

“It is, but—”

“What he means to say is that it is both, and neither,” said a sharp voice that resonated around the room.

A figure moved out of the shadows. The beams muddled around him, making it difficult to see him properly, but as he reached the centre of the room, a bluish light fell directly upon him.

He was not a large man, but the way he carried himself made him seem bigger than he was. He stood perfectly straight with one arm behind him and his shoulders pulled back. His chin was high and the little light that played across his face revealed strong, taut features with a heavy brow and striking high cheekbones. His eyes glinted as they passed swiftly over the two children, tracing their weary faces, their tired limbs, their dishevelled clothes. They lingered a while on Sylas’s wrist.

Sylas glanced down and saw that the Merisi Band was showing and instinctively covered it with his sleeve. A flicker of interest passed over the man’s face, but he quickly looked away.

“This,” he continued in his precise, clipped voice, “is the sound of a piano, which you are hearing through that machine, which is a gramophone. But these are the least interesting things about what you can hear, for in truth this–” he waved his finger in the air, as if pointing at the notes as they drifted across the room– “is the sound of moonlight. It is moonlight curling on a misty lake, sloping through a ruined church, caressing the dew-specked spider’s web. It is moonlight on barren hilltops and ragged cliffs; moonlight in sunken wrecks and forgotten graves. Moonlight captured in a sonata. And the captor, the great genius who thus captured the moon, was a man. He was Ludwig van Beethoven.”

He fell silent, as though to allow the full significance of these words to be discerned and understood.

They listened to the music for some moments, Sylas slowly realising for the first time that this was music of his own world; Simia struggling to understand how something called a piano could be heard through something called a gramophone and what that had to do with the moon.

“Beautiful, is it not?” said the man.

Sylas nodded. “Yes, yes, it is.”

“Of course it is!” snapped the man, as though Sylas was foolish for thinking he needed to answer. “Music is the language of the heavens, the voice of Nature herself! She speaks through such sonatas, such concertos and nocturnes.” He gazed dreamily towards the gramophone. “And in symphonies… well, in symphonies, She sings.”