The Lost Realm (17 page)

The man glanced back over his shoulder, and Gulph felt his face go slack with shock.

“John!” Gulph exclaimed. “Sidebottom John!”

“Who?” said Ossilius.

“He's my friend. One of the Tangletree Players. He's . . . I've got to go to him!”

Gulph raced from the house and onto the path. Reaching Sidebottom John, he grabbed the man's shoulder and spun him around.

“Steady, old lad,” said John, his tone mild, his friendly face set with a bland smile. “Don't you go a-droppin' my fruits.”

“John! I didn't think I'd ever see you again! How did you get here? Where are the others? Is Pip here? Is she all right?”

Gulph thought the questions would never stop pouring out of him. Then he noticed the blank expression on his friend's face.

“You be a chatty fellow,” Sidebottom John said. “But I've got to be a-goin'. Bye-bye.”

He turned to leave. Gulph pulled him back, more roughly than he'd intended. “John—it's me. It's Gulph.” Sidebottom John stared at him with dull, uncomprehending eyes. “Don't you know me?”

“Be gentle with him,” said Ossilius, having caught them up. “I have seen this shocked way before, in soldiers returning from war. Your friend's mind is wandering. It might even be lost altogether.”

Lost?

“I wasn't trying to hurt him,” said Gulph.

“I know that,” Ossilius reassured him. “The sight of your friend has shocked you, too.”

But Gulph didn't want to give up. “Don't you remember anything, John? The players? Performing at the castle? Remember how I used to turn somersaults over your head! Or what about that time when . . .”

He stopped. The vacant look in Sidebottom John's eyes was too much to bear. His friend was there and absent, both at the same time.

“I'll be a-goin' now,” John said cheerfully. “There's fruitin' to be done.”

“But . . .”

“Let him go,” said Ossilius, gently gripping Gulph's arm.

Gulph watched, distraught, as Sidebottom John trotted down the path, turned a corner, and disappeared.

“It isn't right,” said Gulph. “And you can't tell me it is. There's something about this place—”

A scream interrupted him. It echoed through the cavern, ringing like a bell off the surrounding walls of crystal.

“What was that?” said Gulph, unease pooling inside him.

“Someone in trouble.”

They ran toward the lake. On reaching the shore, they found themselves at the end of a long, narrow bridge of crystal extending out across the water like a pointing finger.

The scream came again.

“Come on,” said Gulph.

They raced along the bridge. There were no handrails, and as they crossed, Gulph tried to ignore the fact that one wrong step would send him tumbling into the lake.

The bridge ended at the far cavern wall, where a wide opening yawned. Mist swirled through thin gray light. Cool air wafted Gulph's face and he knew at once where they were.

The bottom of the chasm!

They stepped cautiously outside. All around them, barely visible in the mist, were fields dotted with scrawny crops. Gulph could taste the damp air on his lips . . . only it didn't really taste of anything. There was hardly any wind here, no sense of weather, and the light—such as it was—seemed flat and lifeless.

Gulph looked up, straining to see through the haze. Somewhere up there was Idilliam, and Isur, and all the rest of Toronia. Another world, high above, forever out of reach to the people who lived down here in this hidden realm.

He turned, searching for Ossilius, when once more the scream rang out.

“Over here! By the three realms, over here!”

He found the captain beside a pile of bodies. He looked stricken with grief.

“Trident!” Ossilius said, pointing to the green uniforms, the image of a three-pronged spear stitched onto the tunics. “These are my son's warriors. They were here. Trident was here.” He fell to his knees. “My son was here.” His gray eyes grew wide. “I must find him. I must find Fessan!”

The nearest body was lying facedown. Ossilius rolled it over. Gulph gasped: one half of the Trident soldier's face was a raw, bloody wound.

“Not him!” muttered Ossilius, turning to the next body.

The wind gusted and the mist cleared a little. Gulph saw that this heap of corpses was just one of a long line of such piles stretching into the murky distance.

A figure emerged from the mist, and Gulph's heart rose into his mouth.

The dead are coming alive! Brutan's army is down here too!

But the figure was just a man clad in the silk robes of Celestis. He walked straight up to where Ossilius crouched among the bodies and laid his hands firmly on the captain's shoulders.

“We have worked hard to bring them to a peaceful place,” the man said. “Let them rest.”

“But you don't understand!” cried Ossilius. “My son! Fessan! Have you seen my son?”

The man waved his arm toward the rows and rows of bodies. Ossilius slumped to the ground in despair.

“People fall, from time to time,” said the man. “But never so many. Others fell too, creatures we'd never seen before, men who were not living but . . .”

“Undead,” finished Gulph with a shudder.

The man nodded. “We think there must have been a battle between these soldiers and those . . . undead. We are burying them. It is all we can do.”

“They came to fight,” whispered Ossilius. He began to weep. “They came to help Idilliam. And they lost.”

It broke Gulph's heart to see his friend this way. He wondered if Ossilius's son—this young man called Fessan—really was down here.

“How many have you buried?” he said.

“Many hundreds,” the man replied. “There are many hundreds more.”

So that was that. If Fessan's body had fallen from the bridge, he might already have been laid to rest.

“Ossilius,” Gulph said, dropping to one knee beside his friend. “I think . . .”

Something smashed onto the pile of bodies with a tremendous, sickening thud. Gulph cried out and jumped backward. Beside him, Ossilius staggered to his feet, reflexively reaching for his sword. But Lady Redina had taken their weapons—one of the conditions under which they'd been allowed to stay in Celestis.

“Not another one,” the Celestian man moaned.

The thing that had fallen was rising up from the scattered corpses. It was a corpse itself, Gulph saw with mounting horror—a dead man clad in red velvet robes. Red fire blazed inside its empty eye sockets. A huge white wig clung precariously to its naked skull, while pinned to its chest was the gold badge of the Idilliam treasury.

The undead treasurer lunged, and its skeletal fingers closed on the arms of the Celestian. The man shrieked and tried to pull back, but the thing's grip was unnaturally strong. It bared its teeth, and guttural sounds erupted from its torn throat.

“Here!” shouted Gulph, hurling a rock at it. “Over here!”

The undead creature released the Celestian, who scrambled rapidly backward. Even as it was lunging for him, Gulph took three rapid steps straight toward it—drawing a warning cry from Ossilius as he did so—and jumped high in the air. He flipped once, twice, and landed square on his feet on the other side.

The treasurer spun, unbalanced. Its wig flew off, revealing gleaming white bone. At the same instant, a second corpse staggered out of the mist. This one wore the remnants of a tattered green tunic and carried a notched sword. Its face was still mostly intact, but the rotting flesh had sagged, drawing its mouth down in an expression of infinite sadness.

A Trident soldier!
thought Gulph.
How many more of them are down here?

“Come to me, Gulph!” barked Ossilius. “Quickly!”

Circling back behind the treasurer, Gulph saw Ossilius prying a broken sword from beneath one of the corpses. But the undead Trident warrior had slipped between them. Gulph stumbled, momentarily disorientated by the cloying mist, the repetitive slap of dead feet on the damp ground, the hideous rasping sounds rising from deep inside the wrecked bodies of the oncoming dead . . .

A third figure appeared from the mist. To Gulph's astonished eyes it seemed to be
made
of the mist. Instead of limbs it seemed to move in silence on curves of swirling gray vapor; where its face should have been, there was a yawning hole.

The thing seemed to have no hands, yet it was carrying a sword.

Unaware of the strange creature's arrival, the two undead monstrosities continued to lumber toward Gulph, backing him against the pile of bodies. Ossilius was running forward, his broken blade raised, but he would not get to them in time.

The mist creature moved.

With a thin, hissing sound, its sword sliced through the neck of the Trident soldier. The walking corpse dropped like an unstrung marionette, its whole body jittering frantically. The instant it hit the ground, the rotten flesh smoothed over and it became just one more ordinary corpse.

The second blow cut the undead treasurer clean in half. Its bones jangled as it fell, losing in the space of a single breath all the hideous magic that had animated them. What landed at Gulph's feet was nothing more than a skeleton. The lifeless skull cracked in half, then all was still.

Gulph bent double, panting hard. His whole body was trembling.

“Look out!” shouted Ossilius.

Gulph glanced up to see the mist creature heading straight for him, its body a blur. Gulph cringed back, but just before he thought it would strike him down, the apparition came to a sudden silent halt, and he was amazed to see that it was just a person after all. A woman, in fact. Her slender body was completely shrouded in thin robes made from many layers of gray silk. A hood covered her head and obscured her face.

One thin hand was visible from beneath the robes. Its pale fingers gripped a sword made from pure white crystal. With a single liquid movement, both blade and hand vanished beneath folds of the sheer, gray fabric.

They stood in silence: the amazed Gulph, the equally surprised Ossilius, the trembling Celestian. And this ghostly woman of the mist.

“Th-thank you,” Gulph stammered. “You saved my life. All our lives.”

“That blade,” said Ossilius. “No ordinary sword could have done that.”

“Nor a blade of Celestis.” Although her face was concealed, the woman's voice sang out clean and clear.

Why do you sound familiar?
thought Gulph, although he was certain he'd never heard her voice before in his life.

“How did you . . . ?” Ossilius began.

Long fingers rose and drew back the hood. Gulph gasped. Half the woman's face was pale, like her hands. The other half had been burned a savage pink. The scars twisted along her cheek and jaw, and continued down her neck to where they disappeared beneath her robes.

“Witches have their ways,” said the woman.

Her hood fell fully back, and a wave of red-gold hair tumbled over her face. She tossed it aside. Her eyes were fixed on Gulph. They were ordinary green, but like the eyes of the undead, they seemed somehow to burn.

“Kalia!” Ossilius cried.

A roaring sound filled Gulph's head. He felt dizzy; for an instant he was sure he was going to faint. The moment passed, and he stared in open wonder at his savior.

Kalia.

He'd heard the name before, of course he had. It had come from the lips of Queen Magritt as she'd stood beside the body of her husband, King Brutan.

Kalia seduced King Brutan.
That was what Magritt had said, or something like it.
And she bore him three children—triplets indeed.

The dizziness came and went in waves. Gulph staggered, convinced he would fall. Yet somehow he stood.

They said you were burned at the stake!

He stared at the dreadful burns scarring Kalia's face and neck.

Witches have their ways.

Gulph realized he'd been holding his breath. Slowly he exhaled. As he did so, all his strength fled and he sank to his knees.

With the last of the breath that was fleeing his mouth, he managed to say:

“You're my mother.”

CT TWO