In Dreams… part 2

Extracts from the Personal Diary of Gloriana Pinarii

We had, or rather St John had, a small argument with the captain as we left port. Captain Nicolo Monteverdi was adamant that his ship would not fly the green flag with the device of the Horned God in black upon it. His final point – that the crew would mutiny if they saw it fluttering from the mast – was the most convincing one. I was quite happy to not sail under this flag.

A day out from Dylath-Leen a crew-man spotted a man waving from a rock in the sea. He was Ezekiel Corathan, a trainee Sage from a ship that had been taken by pirates. Unlike others who had been killed or made captive, he had been dumped on the rock with some provisions with clear the idea that rescue was possible. He talked with us, and taught us more about the nature of the Elder Gods, like Bast and Nodens. They are our gods here in the Dreamland but come from other realities. Some fade as they are forgotten, while others remain.

The following day dawned bright and clear. We soon realised that the captain and crew were worried by a ship that appeared to starboard. It had the flag of Rinar, a small merchant seaport of no great account. However, they all armed themselves as a chase developed, with the ship gradually gaining on us. When it was only a few hundred yards away it broke out the pirate flag of the skull and crossbones. There was a sudden bang and a plume of water as high as the mast rose near us.

‘By the Outer Gods, they’ve got bombards!’ yelled someone. The crew threw down their weapons and the ship was about to be overhauled and boarded. Ezekiel tried, but failed, to raise morale. Then Alec suggested the Horned God’s flag again, and this time we ran it up the mast-head despite any unease. The pirates abruptly veered off, so it must have meant something powerful to them. The crew cheered at this, rather than mutinied, but as soon as the pirates were over the horizon, Captain Monteverdi had the flag taken down and stowed away. For most of the rest of the voyage the crew shunned us and spat over the sides as homage to Poseidon for saving them. If it was him, he certainly chose an indirect route for our salvation.

After around a week we arrived at Inquanok. This city had bulbous domes and spires of black onyx with golden tracery and a sixteen-sided tower at its centre. Captain Monteverdi made it clear that his ship would not stay long enough to take us home, which was a pity, since it is always good to have a sound line of retreat. We found lodgings at the ‘Schooner and Star’ and then made enquiries about the palace and Shantak eggs. Alec, who is obsessed by cats, spotted one as we left our lodgings in twilight to go to the palace. We followed it, and him, and it seemed to deliberately lead us on, letting us almost catch up with it, and then springing ahead. We realised that it was leading us up a twisted, winding staircase in the general direction of the palace. Finally it led us under an arch into very beautiful gardens laid out with exquisite precision, with statues placed in exactly the right places to lead the eye to pleasing vistas, night and day flowering scented plants, the most precise topiary – in all gardens that were lovely beyond reality. As we took the views in, we realised that the cat had now truly disappeared.

We also realised that we were not the only people there and joined a queue to see a veiled priest who could be our route to the eggs. The priest was a short, chubby man in black robes edged in gold. He wore a flat hat with a veil hanging down from the brim that concealed his face. He had no interest in us and our wish to view the eggs, until Ezekiel said that we had been sent by the Horned God, and that we had been told by the god to collect four eggs. Then he took us to a side room where more priests appeared and served us with sherbet, fruit and sweetmeats. After about a quarter of an hour, a more senior priest appeared and Ezekiel again explained what we wanted, remarkably patiently I thought, since the man had undoubtedly been already told everything by his underlings.

The senior priest explained that the Father of All Shantak Birds laid eggs at regular intervals in various colours. Black or gold ones were kept by the city, while other colours were sold. Occasionally there were small blue eggs and the priests knew that these were for the Gods, to be used as they requested. The priest needed to know that we were indeed the intended recipients and asked us to complete a verse. He began to recite, then stopped.

‘Open unto me the way …’

I barely recollected it, but fortunately several of the others remembered it more clearly, since it was the verse that went with the sacrifice at the Mayburgh Henge in Cumbria that had started this series of events. As they recited the words, the light in the room dimmed. This was enough to convince the priest that we were indeed on the God’s errand. He gestured to a priest who left the room.

The man returned shortly with a small wooden carriage filled with padding and four eggs in cavities within it. They were each about a foot high and a delicate pale blue. The senior priest told us that we should take them to an Elder God in the coastal city of Salvação that lay quite a distance southwest of Rinar and was partially concealed from the sea by a creek and peninsular. He remarked that we would need to arrange transport, and we could collect the eggs tomorrow from the palace lower gate once we had done so.

We returned to the Schooner and Star. Ezekiel had remarkable luck in rapidly arranging transport by Captain Helmut Solo and his ship the Äusserengötterdämmerung (Twilight of the Outer Gods). The captain had just offloaded a cargo of the intoxicating tea tsai and was loading onyx to leave at 10 am the next day.

We were up at first light, to be certain to get the eggs to the quayside in time. For some maddening reason, Eliza decided she wanted to shop for a thick cloak. She made her purchase quite rapidly and we began to head for the palace lower gate. However, we realised that we were being followed by a hooded and cloaked man who was deliberately following Eliza. She accosted him and he went for his sword. I glimpsed his face and it was gaunt and haunted. She said to go but I drew my rapier because he looked as if he would not be easily deterred. In any case, his whole manner was an affront to anyone of nobility.

Like almost all unpremeditated fights that I have entered, it was an exhilarating mixture of speed, slowness and adrenaline. I knew I wanted to deter, rather than kill him, but had no idea of his skill. I therefore wanted a rapid result. I managed to pink him twice, but he only surrendered when I skewered his thigh. Although he was unskilled, his heavy sword cut at my rapier and would have proved a problem in a longer exchange. I was unscathed.

He surrendered, said that he was following Eliza and then fainted. She, ever the physician, worked to heal his wounds – which he could have avoided by simply yielding to me at the start of the fight. He came round and the look on his face on realising that Eliza attended him, her hands actually touching his poorly-clad body, was something that would make any decent person sick. He pulled her to him to whisper in her ear as she tried to bandage him, then kissed and clutched her to him. Alec pulled the insane man away and he hobbled mindlessly away. It was an unsavoury encounter, and we could not understand if the man had been suddenly smitten with Eliza, having seen her for the first time no longer than the day before, or whether he had followed us for a deeper reason.

We collected the eggs in their carriage from the priests and dragged it to the quay. As we approached the ship we saw that the cranes were putting boxes that looked like coffins into the hold. The cart with the eggs had to go on deck in front of the forward mast and behind the galley. We made sure it was well lashed down and unlikely to shift even in a heavy sea. The captain looked under the sheet covering the contents of the cart and realised that we had brought a cargo of four fabulous, priceless Shantak eggs onto his ship.

Captain Solo relinquished his cabin to the nobles, Alec and myself, and Alec immediately insisted that Eliza take his place. Apart from the obvious propriety, it meant that she would be less likely to run into trouble with the crew. The appearance of the captain, crew and ship made it obvious that this was an elite ship where all took pride in their appearance and its abilities. Once it was underway, we realised that this was a very fast ship, even unnaturally fast. I have been on several ships, even a warship, and, looking at how rapidly the shore flowed past, I was certain that this one was faster. The other strangeness was that wind and spray did not lash the decks as we moved at speed. It was as calm and quiet as in a gentle summer’s breeze.

We had decided that we should keep watch over the eggs, so that none of the crew would be led into temptation. Our watches matched those of the crew. On the first night nothing happened during mine, and I went back to the cabin to sleep. However, by the morning, the others had decided that something marvellous was happening inside the eggs. They had all heard whispers and murmurs from the eggs and recognised the voices as those of some of the teachers from the Morgan Curwen School who had been eaten by shantaks that invaded their reality. They had heard whispers about the geography of South America, about geometry, history and French. We continued to hear these murmurs at intervals throughout the voyage to Salvação. This only took three days, because of the unnatural speed of the ship. This contrasted with the eight days it took us to reach Inquanok from Dylath-Leen which was a shorter distance. Alec continued to indulge his cat obsession during the journey by feeding the ship’s cat and Ezekiel cast a horoscope that suggested we should find a new start in the new city of Salvação, and a new star that changed colour. Captain Solo, as well as being pleased at our compliments about the ship’s speed, told us a little about Salvação. He said that it was a new city built of warm red and yellow brick and was a friendly place unless you were a heretic. They worshipped the Elder Gods, so considered followers of other gods heretics.

On the afternoon of the third day the schooner put in to Salvação. The city lay on a peninsular that was surrounded by the river Sangue, that ran a muddy red from the clay soil. We could hear and smell the sound of humanity engaged in commerce as we approached. We walked from the quayside into the city and all seemed very normal except that from the walls Alec and I noticed that there were large crosses lining the road to the city from the south east, with semi-mummified corpses on some of them. Alec said that he thought some were moving, so still alive. We could also see a man on the road who was bearded, wore robes, had a staff in his hand and looked very weary. Alec looked through the binoculars and saw that he was a young man with a dark stain on his side, and that he was still there when he changed the setting on the binoculars. We could see which gate he would use to enter the city. It was one that opened into a square with a large ornamental but functional fountain. We booked into a good inn that overlooked this square. To pass the time, I and most of the others sat at a table outside the inn with our drinks and the eggs still in their cart. We were taking no chances of either losing them or not having them to hand when an Elder God appeared.

Alec went to the Temple of the Elder Gods, and discovered that it had altars to many gods but not Bast. It even had a shrine to the Horned God in a corner with a stained glass window behind it that was like the one we saw in Dylath-Leen.

The man came in through the gate about half an hour before it was due to close. Eliza spotted that he had marks something like nail holes on his hands and feet. He came up to us and his eyes lit on St John. Eliza asked if he was who he looked like and he replied,

‘I am that I am.’

St John got him some water to drink and to wash, and we asked him about the verses. He recited them perfectly,

“Open unto me the way Umr at-Tawil;”

“Across the angles of time and curvéd space,”

“Let the passage be free unto the Crawling Chaos”

We gave him the eggs despite the obvious confusion of the dreamers who partly recognised him as a god of their world. Eliza told us later that she had seen a patch of light, a nimbus, over his head. Ezekiel recognised him as an Elder God, Yusa bin Yusuf, but could not remember much about him.

He gave us a six inch diameter silvery orb that was surprisingly heavy and then left. We had no idea where he had carried it. Barbara felt that there was a soul in the metal sphere and this gave us a new problem. Was it Jerry, or someone else, and should we break the sphere now to release the soul, or do so after leaving the city. And if we did not break it here, where should we break it? We spent a considerable time debating what to do. The exchange of four souls for the one in the sphere also struck us as strange and we wondered about that, and what would happen to the four in the eggs.

Finally we decided to break the sphere inside the inn, so dropped it on the floor of one of our rooms. There was a very loud crack, sparks and vapour. Then we saw a naked boy on the floor, rubbing at his eyes but all in one piece. He was in shock so we gave him Eliza’s cloak, a herbal tonic and Alec told him that he was a policeman – which must have sounded a strange comment coming from a man in armour! The obvious question was whether he was Jerry, and he said enough that the others were convinced that he was and they had indeed found the fourth of their missing children. We put him to bed to rest for the night.

In the morning, Barbara and I went shopping to get him clothes and also a travelling bag, knife and a cloak that would double as a blanket. Alec and Ezekiel went to the harbour to find passage for the seven of us to Celephais and booked berths on the Dawn Trader. None of the ships were going to the Six Kingdoms at the moment because of pirates. Eliza talked with Jerry and tried to explain what had happened, and that he had been stabbed to death. This went so badly that he decided that the stabbing was a bad dream. He came to think that he was on a summer holiday. He was a healthy young man, in good physical condition, and the others told me that he had been good at sports. I could see that he was interested in the armour and weapons that Alec and I had, so before boarding the ship we went to a weapon-smith and I bought a broadsword for him and two wooden practice swords. I could have taught him the use of a rapier more easily, but a broadsword would be a better weapon for someone of his physique.

He enjoyed the week’s voyage, or cruise as he called it. I taught him what I technique I could using the wooden swords and he built up his strength. By the time we arrived in Celephais he had some skill with the sword and was eager to learn more. His old life was like a dream to him and he had no inclination to return to it. King Kuranes, the sovereign of Celephais, greeted us after our arrival and was willing for Jerry to stay at his course and train as an esquire. I had suggested that he could come with me to Etruria, where he would also have been welcomed. However, I was content for him to stay at ageless Celephais where Friday had become like a young princess. He knew that Giles was at Etruria so he might sometime travel there. We had told him that Isabel was at a temple in Dylath-Leen, but he had, wisely, lost interest in her.

After this, the Dreamers went to a room privately, and we saw them no more. I also had the remarkable experience of awaking within a sad, distressed, mad-woman. She was in a room alone, where others came to talk with her to calm her mind. I realised again that she was Belinda, and the two of us were one. We talked together, within our head so that others should not think we were madder than she evidently was. I learnt of her world and she of mine. She became less obsessed as she remembered the battles we had been in, the carnage we had seen, and the regard in which our family held us in Alba Longa. Her unhealthy fixation on blood waned. I recalled her knowledge of the history of her land, and of an empire called Rome that was an interesting counterpart to my own city. The future conquests of our king may match the vast Roman Empire.