Last True World (Dica Series Book 3) Read online

  She remembered how he’d enlisted her, heard the words he’d used and those of her own they’d evoked, words that now slipped free of her mouth and slid down over the dew as they tumbled to the stream below. “He needs to sooth all his own hurts, a whole age-long lifetime of hurts, and in the only way he knows, by finding his own Naningemynd.”

  A verse drifted back to her, so achingly clear in her mind.

  ‘Naningemynd ganan nioere ta der aedre

  Hwaerh hayt prasses, licgardes en aeghwilc awierdnes loccianes,

  Eyn der land af ure dead,

  Eyn der land af aefreniehstan swefnen.’

  She got no further before Nephril’s voice itself began to drift into her mind, so lightly she was convinced they were in fact her own words.

  “Naningemynd goes down to the stream

  Where it tumbles, falls and soothes all hurts

  In the land of our dead,

  In the land of everlasting dreams.

  There will be found no remorse,

  No vainglory.

  No regret for a life ill spent,

  Or the yearned-for life of another.

  There will rest our own truth guarded from lies,

  Safe in its purity from a gross world.”

  The gentle touch to her shoulder, the slip of a hand to her waist, both brought the thrill of rare knowing. She turned to find her lips softly against Nephril’s, a strange, warm echo of their words making them glow. Nephril’s eyes were closed, but soon opened to carry a smile.

  10 Only Now a True Fledgling

  Smiddles Lane had indeed been the worst part of the morning’s journey, from Eyesget’s secluded corner to the College of Yuhlm’s bustling precincts. Despite numerous repairs to its ancient fabric, the lane still presented a rigorous test of any carriage and its driver’s skills, whether stoom or horse.

  Its steepness was its first challenge, but the potholes - the fast flow of rainwater repeatedly gouged - set it quite apart from all other ways. So demanding had it been that Penolith quite forgot her guilt at having left Cresmol behind to look after Nephril, and at such inconsiderate short notice. Eyesget was so remote it was simply impossible to summon help at short notice, and Penolith’s thoughts had soon become most urgent.

  Long before the Graywyse Defence - and the ancient salt marshes the wall had reclaimed and given over to Yuhlm - the coastal cliffs of Foundling Bay ran behind where the college now stood. Those cliffs had been of an unusually soft rock, not of Mount Esnadac’s own, and so had soon weathered from a precipitous wall to their current steep slope.

  The college looked out from above where prehistoric beaches would have swept beneath those sandstone cliffs, where much later a salty margin would finally mark the sea’s retreat. Had it not been for the close press of its neighbours, the college mill would have had a fine view across Yuhlm’s descending basin, to where the district slid into shadow at the base of the Graywyse Defence. Penolith, however, wasn’t going there for the view.

  When she at last drew into the college campus, and to its rather packed yard, she had problems finding a space for her carriage. Eventually, though, she slipped it in between a dray wagon and a rather imposing six-seater, a mass of ostentatious chimney vents punctuating its elongated engine chest.

  The watchman at the door recognised her as she hurried in, and he smiled. “Good afternoon, Lady Guardian. The steward is it?” and reached towards a panel on his desk.

  “Not today, Wellacre, although you can mention I’m here. No, I’d like to see Master Crowbeater if he’s available?”

  Wellacre’s brows lofted as he redirected his finger. A scratching sound came from his desk, to which he simply shouted, “LADY GUARDIAN PENOLITH, MASTER CROWBEATER.” More scratching. “AT THE DESK, MAIN ENTRANCE ... YES.” The scratching sound became somehow more annoying. “BY ALL MEANS, MASTER, STRAIGHT AWAY.”

  He turned her a friendly but efficient face. “Do you know the way to his study, Guardian, or would you like me to show you?”

  The only college windows with any view were those high up in the mill’s roof, where Steward Melkin and Lady Lambsplitter’s private chambers filled the gable end, above the old waterwheel - now defunct.

  Their place there was once a mixed blessing for the old wheel’s driveshaft entered into the loft space just below their rooms, making the floors often vibrate and shake. Another improvement Lambsplitter had made with her introduction of steam - furniture that had at long last settled down from its nomadic life.

  Crowbeater’s own study window, however, only looked out onto Smiddles Lane, at about first floor level and where the corner of the mill appreciably narrowed the lane’s way. It was narrow enough for Crowbeater to read books over the shoulder of the opposing room’s occupant, which he often read in his own window’s meagre light; an unedifying prospect given the tallow merchant’s penchant for raunchy Dican tales.

  “Do come in, me good Lady. Please, please make thesen quite at ‘ome,” Crowbeater immediately called when she finally appeared at his doorway. “Just making some room so thee can sit theesen down in a bit o’ comfort.”

  He was lifting dishevelled piles of tattered books, many with loose leaves, and discarding them upon piles of others. Penolith noted how these days he seemed so alike those piles.

  The study was quite small, probably not quite as small as it now looked but small all the same. There were chairs and a desk, maybe a chest or two - certainly no bed - but all obscured beneath a sea of books. A fair bit of the floor was clear, though, so Penolith had little difficulty with the folds of her skirt as she made her way to the seat Crowbeater offered.

  The Master Scholar was not one for small talk or pleasantries, although convivial enough. Once both were seated, they asked after each other’s affairs in a vague or general fashion, but then soon ran out of words. It left Crowbeater expectantly peering into Penolith’s eyes, his mouth slightly agape, as if about to ask why she was here.

  A solitary lower tooth, a little blackened by pipe smoke and elderberry tea, peeped from the gap and drew her gaze. Penolith shook herself and quickly found Crowbeater’s eyes.

  “What do you know of the Aoide dar Tegan, Master Crowbeater? Is it something you’re familiar with, beyond its name of course?”

  His mouth snapped shut like a lizard’s, but then slowly opened to ask, “The Aoide dar Tegan, me Lady?”

  “Yes, the old ode.”

  “T’ancient ode!”

  “If you will, then yes, the ancient ode.”

  “T’one so cherished be thee’s own noble Lord Nephril?”

  She didn’t miss the loaded nature of his question. “Master Crowbeater? We are both fully aware of the significance of the ode in question. We’ve no need to chase one another about the bushes.”

  Crowbeater began rummaging in a nearby pile of books, at which she added, “I can remember it well enough, word for word, Master Crowbeater. You have no need to find it now.”

  “Thee may be able to, but I can’t!” he snapped back as he continued his search.

  “What do you understand it to be about, though, Master Crowbeater, eh? What learned meaning would you take away from it?”

  He yanked a slim volume from the pile, a small but triumphant grunt slipping past the lone tooth. “Meaning? Ha! Well now, hit reet on t’nub thee ‘as.”

  Crowbeater sat back heavily, a little wan-faced, and dramatically opened the volume into his lectern-like hands. He said nothing more, though, and so Penolith gave him his time.

  It was a while before she noticed he was no longer reading, but contemplating her across the top of the pages. When he realised he’d been rumbled, he returned to the book and coughed.

  “A riddle and a half, there’s no denying. True to say there’s as many answers as there’s eyes to read it.”

  “What’s your understanding, though, Master Crowbeater? How do you read it?”

  The honest pleading in her voice made Crowbeater falter, falter and feel sorry for her f
or some unaccountable reason. “’Taint nowt like what Lord Nephril believes it to be, that I do know.”

  When Penolith was unmoved, Crowbeater sighed. “Folk see in it what they want to see, it’s that kind o’ work, and the way o’ folk.” Penolith continued to wait. “It’s not surprising, not when thee consider the amount o’ time that’s passed since it were written, thousands o’ years ‘tween long dried pen and still living wet ear.”

  Crowbeater snapped the Ode shut, but Penolith didn’t flinch. He sighed again, but this time even more heavily.

  “There’s a lot we can’t possibly know about so long ago; what intentions were, how stuff were phrased, use o’ rhetoric, irony, parable, idiom.”

  That last seemed to stir the lady. “But you don’t believe Lord Nephril’s interpretation to be right, now do you, eh, Master Crowbeater?”

  “No. No, I can’t say I do, although he’s carried a lot o’ minds with him, I’ll give him that. More to do with his silken tongue I reckon, more than any intellectual rigour.”

  Penolith remembered back more than thirty years, to their return from Nouwelm when Nephril had expounded about the Ode at the Farewell Gap. He’d made it sound so clear and convincing then, but was it Crowbeater who was right?

  She herself couldn’t tell, she knew that, for her blood had long been wrought to follow Nephril’s lead; unthinkingly, unreservedly and, she had once thought, forever.

  Why had the others acceded; Melkin, Lambsplitter, Drax, Pettar? Why had Nephril’s apparently singular view of the world held such sway? Was it because they’d all been right and she was now only a misguided doubter?

  11 To Culture Credence

  Leigarre Perfinn was a place whose setting and appearance seemed at odds with its significance. It was a location that had nothing to do with the minds of men, nor their sentiments or sensitivities, a place dictated only by the wants of mechanicking.

  It sat - or to be more precise, appeared - away in the Upper Reaches, well above the ancient wall that marked those elevated districts. Had it not been for its unusual colour then it would so easily have been overlooked.

  Although surrounded by an inconspicuous wall, atop which ran an equally un-noteworthy fence, Leigarre Perfinn’s external presence largely amounted to little more than a small, yellow, circular building. Its greatest note, without entering in, was the view from its south-facing aspect. With the overgrown mess of its grounds behind any visitor, they could take in a vast expanse of the realm’s southern districts, and far beyond.

  Most immediate was Bazarral, instantly drawing the eye down to its sumptuous swathe, running from its great harbour in the west to Galgaverre’s squat and square seat in the east. The city snuggled up close to and ran along the very edge of the Esnadales, where their gently rolling hills and dales steadily rose onto the lowest slopes of Mount Esnadac.

  The day may have been grey but the Southern Hills still stood out clearly that afternoon, stretching lazily along the far southern horizon. They lent the view a pastel-mauve tinge of distantly rising heather.

  The harbour gave gateway to Foundling Bay, and beyond it the Sea of the Dead Sun, somewhat brighter and bluer as it reflected the perennially cloudless sky above the Crystal Plain, far away to the west.

  It had only been in the past thirty or so years that ships had ploughed their way extensively across the sea’s still waters, carrying growing trade along the coast. Way out, though, near the horizon, a recently arrived lone, black speck remained as yet unnoticed.

  Far inland, beyond the low and indistinct mass of Galgaverre, the Eyeswin Vale spread a flat, green fill between the mighty Eyeswin and Suswin Rivers. The teal, ochre and burnt umber smudge along its furthest eastern edge marked Wetwold’s own stain, bordering the Plain of the New Sun’s desert.

  Although there was an arc of blue above the shimmering desert, the heat inevitably drew in cool, moist air from the eastern march of the mountains to the north. By the time that moisture had crossed into Dica, it had plastered smooth grey sky above Wetwold, thin drifts of rain falling from it like distant curtains.

  Lady Lambsplitter took a final look at Galgaverre, tutted and turned back into Leigarre Perfinn’s overgrown grounds. Although the old, broad driveway had been cleared some few years ago, its surface still looked black, stained by the earth that had long encased it.

  The driveway had been made little more than passable and so remained bordered by overhanging bushes, keeping the way’s wet stone flags jealously from the sun to their very own dank, dark-green shade.

  “It’s a damned danger,” Lambsplitter muttered as she tentatively kicked her boot against its moss-strewn stretches. “Can’t be carrying precious things along here. Far too risky.” She made a mental note before scraping her dirtied boots against an incongruous doormat, laid at Leigarre Perfinn’s rather homely entrance porch.

  The space she came into, however, was nothing more than an empty dome. Its white-tiled walls were bright with daylight, subtly channelled to its apex. She stepped into a broad hollow at the centre of the floor, a shallow circle of steps.

  At the bottom, she stood in the middle of a small, round section of floor and watched the steps slowly rise past her. Their risers smoothly vanished until the whole flight rested above her head as a flat ceiling, a hole directly above her.

  Here, light leapt into the darkness from long, opaque slits that ran around the circular outer wall, vanishing at an angle down a stairwell. Lambsplitter clattered her way down until she came out in another circular room, somewhat larger but this time flooded with light.

  Mirabel stood with her back to her mother, staring intently at a featureless door set in a large column that jutted up from the centre of the floor, one that came to a blunt point above their heads. “Is this the one?” she asked without turning.

  “Yes, dear, the very same.”

  Lambsplitter was struck by her daughter’s outline, stark against the dull sheen of the curved and rounded door. She’d always had a promising shape even as a child, but now it had quickly blossomed far beyond simply turning heads.

  She could even stir a Bazarran in his first year of three, Lambsplitter thought. Make him light-headed with the lend o’ blood.

  She smiled albeit coldly, but her voice was strangely warm. “I’ll show you around, my dear, whilst the engers are here. Make ourselves busy, eh, ‘til they’re gone.”

  Every one of Leigarre Perfinn’s hundreds of subterranean storeys was perfectly round, each linked to its neighbours above and below by a shallow, metal stairway that ran around the outer wall, where doorways were reached by short bridges across the stairwells.

  Through the very centre of every floor a hollow, shiny, metal column - some ten yards across - rose from almost two miles below. Where Mirabel now stood, at its parabolic summit, she continued studying its only door.

  Lambsplitter drew her daughter away to spend their idle waiting-hours elsewhere. They didn’t descend too far, though, for Leigarre Perfinn was still quiescent, still buried deep in sleep.

  The engers were only engaged in restoring its principal upper spaces, those still cool enough to reach. Beyond a certain depth, the heat made life simply untenable.

  Whatever tasks they were about, the engers were at them for far longer than Lambsplitter had hoped, but did eventually all traipse past, up towards the dome. “Evening, Ma’am,” the last one called in to her as he passed her door, but was soon gone before Lambsplitter could answer.

  She heard his footfall leave the stairway and echo across the room beneath the dome, followed by the whoosh of the crater’s steps lowering back and sealing the way. It left them quite alone whilst Leigarre Perfinn settled back into its time-wearied silence.

  Without needing to call Mirabel, they both came together at the central column’s door once more. “Well, Mother, how does it work?”

  Lambsplitter froze for a moment, froze and stared at the door, marvelling yet again at its utterly blank and featureless expanse. “Such an unpre
possessing door to such a wealth of power,” she finally said, more to herself than her expectant daughter.

  Lambsplitter felt her hands go clammy, a rare thing for her, and it seemed hard to pull her gaze away. “Not today, dear daughter. I just wanted you to see it, that’s all, nothing more, just to let you feel its strange warmth, to place the vision in your mind and so make your next schooling that bit easier. Not that there’s much more left.”

  “Then why are we here, Mother?”

  Without a word, Lambsplitter drew her daughter away from the door and to the stairs, down a single flight to the floor below and there led her to what appeared to be a round, metal sink. From her peajacket, Lambsplitter withdrew a thin segmented panel, not much larger than her hand, which she clicked into place beside the sink.

  “Try not to look too hard,” Lambsplitter warned, and let her hand flit over the panel.

  There was a sudden blur of shapes and colours across the sink, at first one way then another as Lambsplitter appeared to look far beyond it. Mirabel couldn’t help but follow the shapes, making her soon feel dizzy, only looking away when she began to feel herself fall.

  By now her mother was too distracted, her face taut with concentration. Mirabel staggered back, avoiding a fall but in the process catching the right angle to glimpse the Towers of the Four Seasons glide smoothly through the sink. Most disconcerting of all was how they appeared to be thousands of feet below her, as though she’d suddenly grown wings and flown.

  Mirabel was drawn between staring and gipping, between her fascination and her disoriented stomach. It was only when the movement stopped that her throat lost the stain of bile and her eyes steadied.

  At first she’d no idea what she was looking at, although by shifting her position it all seemed to come into focus, all stopped swimming from one eye to the other.