Cold Angel Days (Dica Series Book 4) Read online

  Geran couldn’t keep a straight face and so certainly couldn’t answer, playfully squeezing where Falmeard would show if she moved. Keeping his gaze from Prescinda’s eyes, Falmeard explained that they were nearly ready, and in truth they’d only to climb aboard, something he couldn’t quite do as yet.

  Prescinda excused herself, as though she could somehow see through Geran, but asked that they wait whilst she brought them something for the journey. Geran giggled, as she’d done before, as she was wont to do, and slid her dainty hand from Falmeard’s member. He narrowed his eyes at her as she busied herself with their baskets.

  “They all look safely stored,” she said, a smirk threatening laughter. Falmeard adjusted himself and finally climbed aboard. He set the phlogran’s levers just right by which time he could easily slide from the seat and forward to the starting handle.

  A deft swing and the Phlogran snapped into life, soon settling to a swaying idle. Prescinda came out just then, carrying a towel-wrap that held something delicate which was carefully placed in Geran’s hands. Those hands as carefully tucked it away in amongst the baskets, blankets and rainwear the locker already held.

  “Take care, my doves,” Prescinda called as Geran climbed behind Falmeard, “and don’t take his mind off the road, eh, Geran! Try leave him be for a while,” and they waved goodbye as the phlogran darted across the yard, as it swept by the well and on beneath the gateway’s arch.

  The phlogran’s hefty judder rose to the gate’s old clock and there shook its remaining hand free. It fell unnoticed to the ground, its thin metal slipping neatly in-between two setts just as the phlogran’s wheels rolled over them.

  6 Star Holes in the Sky

  The phlogran’s short wheelbase and rather hard leather wheels meant it rocked and swayed alarmingly, the more so when they reached the bottom of the farm’s lane and there turned east onto the old Cambray Road. The road had had no known upkeep, not that anyone could remember, and so had suffered much weathering. A rain-cut bed snaked along its course although now turned dry and dusty.

  No one had lived in Cambray, not for a thousand years, and so few had cause to travel that way. The odd horse-drawn wain or cart perhaps, seasonal scythe-bearing migrant workers, maybe a lost stoom-wagon or two, but not much more, and not that often.

  As at Blisteraising, nearly all the castle’s narrow shards of fields were squeezed in between the buildings that had for so long formed a crust to the mountain. On their own side of the castle - its northern flank - most of those farms ran along a tract of land set between the ancient Upper Reaches and the lower, more gentler fall of places like the Lords Demesne.

  For Geran, the Cambray Road brought wonder and intrigue, her eyes sparkling and her lips softly parted. She’d stared, mesmerised, into the close passing jumble or out along new perspectives on old familiar views.

  At one of the many occasions when the phlogran had slowed, Falmeard heard a quiet gasp. He stopped the machine and turned, to find Geran wide-eyed.

  “In all my more than sixty years, Falmeard, I’ve never once been this far east. Do you know that? Never the once.” She beamed at him.

  A stripling, Falmeard thought as he smiled back. And seemingly yet younger still than when first we met all those years ago. When first we’d met again!

  He leant towards her, the weight of joy on his face, and kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose. “Save yourself,” he grinned, “for when we get back, hmm?” That grin soon bordered on a leer, nothing but a playfully feigned rebuff granted in return.

  A short squeal from Geran followed the phlogran’s sudden leap forward as Falmeard pressed on, back between dank divides in the once doughty domains through which the road now snaked. At last they came to a junction, across the far side of which ran a low but imposing wall.

  The leather wheels scraped and scrawped as Falmeard turned the phlogran and brought it beneath the wall’s overarching rise, its parapet passing not far above their high borne seats. They now headed south beside the wall behind which the Outer Courts had long been kept secret, slowly rising and drawing nearer the Star Tower.

  Could it have been, Falmeard wondered, that the gods had left some celestial tap running through a cold winter’s night, only to awaken to find it frozen to a column, frosted further by an early morning dew? The tower’s glittering rise should have been awesome enough, but its unbelievable thinness denied all further reason.

  Neither Falmeard nor Geran spoke, not when they came through the arched gateway into the Upper Reaches, nor as the phlogran bore them along that district’s many ways. Only when they’d turned due east onto a broad avenue, did Geran now squeak in sheer delight, “By Leiyatel’s grace!”

  Before them, where the slate grey stretch of the avenue drew their gaze to its end, seemingly near enough to touch but still some way off, a static storm of flickering blue and white light served as the Star Tower’s base.

  They’d have sworn it slowly spun, despite nothing moving, deceived by the tumult of bright pinpricks that seethed from its bowels, that cascaded out as fans only to be sucked back in, forever tumbling, forever flickering and flashing and falling away.

  Ranging across streets and terraces and back alley ways, mindless of cot or mansion or proud civic hall, lofting clear of the prosaic, of the mundane and the dour, a monumental spume of crystal seemed to draw down the very stars - every one of them, in all their glory, and to which Falmeard could only softly breathe, “Bleeding ‘eck!”

  Despite the unearthly shock as they now stood at its base, he still heard a small voice nagging at the back of his mind. Pricking star holes in the sky, it offered, not that he understood any the better now than before. He knew, though, that he’d suffered a loss, felt that something of the thought had departed him, as though drawn out on the sudden pain he felt in his chest.

  “Pricking star holes in the sky, eh? But I mustn’t forget from where I came,” he promised himself through gritted teeth, then realised he'd spoken aloud and so turned a wary eye to Geran.

  “What?” she absently breathed, to which Falmeard said nothing, nothing at all, horrified that nothing was about as much as he now remembered. Even the pain in his chest had slipped from his mind, although an emptiness remained, seemingly deep and dark.

  He felt Geran trying to catch his eye but could only turn away, for some reason embarrassed, as though she sought something of her own he no longer held.

  They’d spent too much time here and so finally pushed on east, down Mount Esnadac’s lopsided shoulder towards the Scarra Face.

  Falmeard felt more and more memories steadily slip free until he fought hard to remember that he’d a need to remember at all, but even that soon trickled through his loosened grasp. It seemed to fall to the road behind them until finding a convenient nick in which to make strange bedfellows of the few sparse blades of grass that there did grow.

  7 Light’s Fast Fading Magic

  Geran slid her arms more tightly about Falmeard’s waist and squeezed, but he seemed only to tense, which worried her. She leant in closer, rested a cheek against his back and watched the darkening properties sweep by in a blur. Occasional gaps gave a glimpse of tallow-coloured clouds, squatting on the far distant Southern Hills.

  She’d asked a number of times how far they’d still to go, but Falmeard had only answered, “Not far, not far at all.” Each time he did so, though, he seemed a little less sure, convincing Geran that maybe she had indeed seen some of the same streets twice.

  The sun had slanted its way west by now, sinking not into the sea but behind hazy, yellow clouds in the far southwest. Not dusk lent of the earth’s own shadow but rather a premature dimming, as of a bright day seen through a tavern’s smoke-stained windows.

  “You lost, Falmeard?” Geran teased, the humour spoilt by an edge to her voice.

  She felt him tense again - the touch of a nerve perhaps. “No, no, not at all.” The briefest of pauses and then, “It’s these damned streets.”

  “W
hat about them, Falmeard? They look no different from the ones in Utter Shevling, and they never got us lost!” A smirk sneaked into the wake of her words.

  “We’re not lost ... just ... just having problems keeping to the right way, that’s all.”

  “I thought you knew the way. That’s what you said this morning before we set out.” Geran had by now leant around Falmeard and found herself looking at his profile, the profile of a closet worried man, a man who still strangely avoided her eyes.

  This isn’t like him, she thought. He’s usually so sure of himself, which he’d certainly been at breakfast.

  She glanced back, reassured by the Star Tower. Before them, though, their way dropped steeply towards the castle’s far distant outer wall, to a gap in its massive march that suggested a gate, no doubt the Eastern Gate. How magical, she thought, but knew it to be but the magic of a moment so soon to be lost, and most worryingly to the fast fading light.

  The phlogran’s chatter suddenly bounced darkly back at them - deafeningly loud - as they swept through an arch. They dropped steeply to a much lower wall, and there shot east along its top, between its ancient battlements.

  Geran was about to speak when she caught sight of the mountain’s newly revealed outline, now far above them to the south. Its long, level ridge - along which they’d spent much of the day getting lost - now looked little more than a black silhouette against the cloud-streaked southern sky. At its eastern end, however, it fell sheer some thousand feet or more.

  “The Scarra Face,” Falmeard called back when he noticed her staring, as though revelling in a newfound memory. “An obstinately difficult place to get to from the Heights,” he added with feigned authority, in way of an excuse. “Only the one road crosses it you see - the … the … the Aerie Way, yes, that’s it.”

  “Where we’re supposed to be, if I remember rightly,” Geran said through gritted teeth, “where the Viewing Gallery’s supposed to be.”

  Unseen, his face flushed. “We can follow this wall to the east, to a junction a few miles off,” he hurried, as though in pursuit of a fast faltering memory. “We can pick up the Old Wall there, I'm sure, where it leads south to the Scarra’s balconies. It’s honestly not that far now.”

  He glanced back, worry in his eyes. “Sorry,” he offered. “Maybe not quite that near. It’s just that it seemed a whole lot simpler this morning. I don’t understand.”

  Although she couldn’t quite see his face, she could feel his sheepish grin, and it softened her heart, made her force a smile despite her growing fears. “So,” she finally said, trying to keep her voice level, “what in Leiyatel’s name do we do now, Falmeard, given it’s already beginning to get dark?”

  “Well ... err ... this wall’s certainly not the best place to be for the night.”

  “For the night! What are you saying? You don’t mean we’ve to spend the night out here do you?” Panic rose in her chest.

  “There’s nothing for it, Geran, but at least we can get ourselves to the Old Wall before we lose the last of the light. We might even find some decent shelter down there.”

  “Shelter? What in the blazes do you...” but Geran’s mind quickly chose denial, leaving her sullen.

  They’d been slowing all the time they’d talked until, as the jaundiced light finally gave way to dusk, Falmeard brought the phlogran to a dawdle. Geran immediately felt warmer, her body heat having been wicked by the passing cooler, early-spring evening air.

  “It’s now colder and darker,” she fretted as she bit her lip and forced back a tear.

  She knew Falmeard peered hard ahead into the gathering gloom and felt him shiver a little, so she put her fear aside and leant out to lend him her own eyes. Just as she did so, she caught sight of a flicker of light to the north. It soon vanished, as though it had only briefly surfaced from the lake of black ink that now seemed to fill the castle’s ways.

  There it was again, an arc of yellow sweeping through the air, casting roof-shaped shadows that billowed and shrank away.

  Geran slapped Falmeard’s thigh, making him jump. “Hang on! Nearly sent us into...”

  “Look! There,” she urged, pointing to the north. “What’s that?”

  Falmeard followed her ghostly outstretched arm as the phlogran idled to a halt.

  Whatever it was, it was plainly moving. It threw light in gay abandon, great fans of it soaking across the now jet-black night, but again vanished for a while. When it reappeared, it seemed steadier, only the occasional shake.

  “I don't know,” Falmeard finally admitted. “Whatever it is, it’s heading our way, maybe along the Old Wall. Come on. Hold tight.”

  The phlogran burbled noisily before lurching forward, bringing Geran’s legs sharply against Falmeard’s elbows. Whereas it would normally have made him laugh, this time, worryingly, he made no mention.

  They were fortunate the stars had by now pricked their way through the retreating dusk air, lending a little light to help Falmeard, to keep him between the parapet walls. Not enough to allow them much haste but enough to keep them moving, slowly closing the gap with the distant yet fast approaching light.

  They were soon completely engrossed, though, staring ahead, avoiding the walls - until it was too late.

  “SHIT!” Falmeard cried as light flooded about them, Geran’s eyes pained by the glare. The phlogran braked, lurched and slid noisily sideways, almost tipping over as an ear-splitting horn blasted the air apart. Before sickening fear flooded through her, Geran distinctly remembered hearing people, remembered hearing them scream.

  8 A Late Night Service

  “What in the blazes were you doing coming straight out like that, straight in front of me? Scared the living daylights out of me you did. Thank your lucky stars there’s no damage, not that I can see.” The driver shielded his eyes from his coachbank’s lanterns, checking again but this time less frantically. “Leiyatel knows what t’gaffa would say if I went back wi’ more.” He thought better of what he was saying and shut up, content now just to run his hand over the coachbank’s mudguards.

  Its few passengers all stood around Geran, all looking a bit lost but at least content she was still in one piece. Dazed still, she sat on the ground and gingerly held her head.

  “You sure you’re alright, Geran?” Falmeard asked as he squatted beside her. “I’m amazed you’ve not broken anything.” His lips drew taut and he swallowed with difficulty.

  The driver broke in. “What were you doing driving around without any lanterns on anyway? You not right in the ‘ead or something?” A smirk forced itself on Geran, making Falmeard hang his head.

  “We got lost,” she informed the driver, surprising everyone by how assured she sounded. “Well and truly lost!” Her tone had become acerbic. “We should’ve got to where we were going well before losing the daylight. I don’t think my friend here,” and she patted Falmeard’s shoulder, “realised just how near we’d got to you.”

  She smiled at the driver, her eyes twinkling in the light of the coachbank’s lanterns. He seemed captivated somehow; silent, thoughtful.

  She reached a hand out to Falmeard, took his arm and steadied herself as she rose. “We saw your light and ... well, I suppose we panicked a bit, rushed to catch you before you could pass us by.” She smiled, as softly as she knew how, and lowered her face, looking at the driver through her lashes.

  “Well,” he mumbled, “I can maybe see how it might ‘appen, like.”

  “Just when are we going to be on our way, driver?” a surly looking passenger pressed. “We were due to get into Bazarral late enough as it was. I could do without being even later. I’ve a long day ahead of me tomorrow.”

  When the driver didn’t immediately answer, the passenger - a rather rotund, self-important man with small-set eyes well hidden within a flushed face - pushed himself between them and addressed Geran.

  “Where were you heading to, miss?”

  “The Scarra Face,” answered Falmeard. “I left my ... my other carria
ge there when it ran out of naphtha. We were on our way to...”

  “Scarra Face?” the driver queried. “Odd place to run out.”

  “I don’t care if it were the moon,” the passenger said, “but if we’re going that way,” and here he looked at the driver who nodded, “then why can’t they just tag along behind us, eh? Follow the coachbank’s lead,” and so it was done.

  In fact, Geran enjoyed the relative comfort of riding on the coachbank, distracted at great length by the rotund passenger’s recounting of how demanding were the varied responsibilities of a purveyor of the realm’s finest hosiery wares. He even presented her with payment of a kind - for her captive attention - in his magnanimous gift of a sample of stockings. Hmm, she thought as she graciously accepted them, not the colour Falmeard likes me in at all.

  The journey down the Old Wall towards the Scarra passed uneventfully. The coachbank - the last that day from Eastern Gate to Bazarral - turned off onto the new road through the Northern Balconies, as they’d been named for the purposes of the timetable. Studiously, Falmeard followed closely on.

  By the time they drew along the Aerie Way - the coachbank now tight between the sheer cliff rise and a low parapet wall - the moon had begun to peep from behind the silvery march of the Grey Mountains to the far northeast. Its meagre light brought some hint of their lofty perch, clinging there to the lonely Scarra Face. It also coldly revealed the view across the Eyeswin Vale, almost a thousand feet below.

  The vale carried the meandering Eyeswin and Suswin rivers, both giving out from the marshlands of Wetwold in the south but diverging each to the north and west. Of all the Scarra’s aspects it was the one to the east that had once drawn the crowds to its Viewing Gallery for there hung the promise of a desert mirage.