Clovenhoof (53 page)
Celandine quickly assessed her position amongst the pews. The problem, she realised, was that it was a temporary hiding place and one she could not leave without being seen by anyone standing in the chapel. Furthermore, the only exit from the church was through the porch and, as long as one of the soldiers stood guard there, neither she nor Barbegris could escape the building. The only other door leading from the chapel was much nearer to her but it led to the crypt and, though the crypt door could be bolted from the inside, she would then be quite securely trapped.
Still, she decided, better to be trapped than captured. She crawled to the end of the pews and was considering when to make a dash for the crypt when Blue Eyes stepped out in front of her, filling the gap between the benches and barring her way.
“Found you,” he grinned.
Celandine saw that he now held Ardilla in his fist and reacted instantly, turning the stone squirrel into a ball of razor-edged spikes. Her skill with the oneirium was faster than his pain reflexes and, before he could drop the thing, the needles had penetrated his flesh, running through him and thrusting out of the back of his hand like a sudden growth of bloody black hair.
Pain robbed Blue Eyes of his voice. He fell back against the wall, wide-eyed and horrified and silent.
Celandine leapt forward and over him and sprinted for the crypt door. Tattoo shouted out a warning but there was no one to stop her. Through the door she ran, down the steps and into the unlit spaces of the crypt.
She lingered there for a few seconds, panting hard and then, with a lurching stomach, remembered the bolts on the inside of the crypt door, the ones she had entirely forgotten to throw across.
“Numbskull,” she wailed softly and ran back.
A figure loomed in the doorway as she neared and she stopped dead. The man grabbed at the door and swung it shut, plunging the crypt into total dark. There was the grating sound of one, then two bolts being dragged across, followed by a barraged of thumps on the other side of the door and then silence.
Celandine stayed as she was, unsure as to exactly who was inside the crypt and who was outside it. A hand took hold of her wrist. She tried to pull away.
“It’s me, stupid girl.”
Celandine sighed enormously at the sound of that coarse, petulant voice.
“Father.”
“Homph. At least you waited for me.”
The soldiers took up banging at the door again.
“We’re trapped,” said Celandine.
“Homph. Would be if I hadn’t picked up your discarded plaything.”
“Ardilla?”
Barbegris didn’t reply. He let go of Celandine’s arm so that he could work on the oneirium with both hands free. Celandine knew what he was doing; he was using Ardilla to build a gateway, a skill that she was far from attaining. The gateway would be a temporary one and a small one at that, but permanent and large enough for them to escape through. The only real question was whether he could build it before the crypt door was broken down.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Far away,” said Barbegris and his bitterness was unmistakable.
Barbegris worked as the hammering continued.
“Nowhere to run,” came Tattoo’s muffled shout. “We’ll get you both in the end.”
Barbegris chuckled dryly.
“Homph. We’ll have a month’s head start on them. It’ll take them a week just to get to the seagate at Muchmiel.”
There were gunshots. The soldiers had changed tactics and were trying to shoot their way through.
“Father!”
“Shhh! Almost there.”
A pinprick of light, so bright in the utter darkness of the crypt, appeared on the nearest wall. By its tiny starshine gleam, Celandine could see Barbegris’ hands enticing the gateway into a larger shape. The pinprick expanded smoothly until the gateway was a rough circle, two feet across. The oneirium was stretched to a wire-thin band around the circle’s edge but it held.
Through the gateway, Celandine could see tall grass and low cloud. A cool wind blew slowly but steadily in from the new world.
“Pressure differential,” noted Barbegris. “Never mind.”
The door to the crypt gave an ominous crack and Barbegris pushed Celandine through the gateway. She tumbled forward and onto soft earth. Tough blades of tall grass crinkled underneath her.
Barbegris was through too and rapidly closing the gateway, which on this side hung in the air, seemingly unsupported.
Celandine stood up and regarded the world they had landed in. They were on a slight hillock that, in every direction, overlooked a vast grassy plain which stretched to the unbroken horizon. There were no trees, no buildings. There was nothing but grass, tall, thick and rippling in the breeze.
“Where are we?” she said.
Barbegris didn’t reply for some time.
“I had such plans for that money,” he said softly and there was a quality of regret in his voice that Celandine had never heard before and she turned to look at him.
Barbegris stood unsteadily at the very summit of the hillock. The gateway was closed. The oneirium was a formless lump in his hand. The front of his robes was soaked from stomach to thigh with blood and it was quite clearly his.
Barbegris fell down, very slowly. Celandine dashed forward to hold him as he finally collapsed onto a bed of grass. She helped him straighten his bent legs. He clutched his stomach and gazed up at the sky.
“This is Aphid,” he said faintly. “Mount Tepper. Highest point in the whole world. Not been here since…” He trailed off into silence.
Celandine tried to lift his hands away from his bloodied robes so that she could perhaps get a look at the wound but the old man resisted.
“Divinities! He wasn’t even aiming properly. Why does nothing ever go right for me?”
“I…”
Celandine could feel panic starting to rise within her. There were things she knew she should be doing. She told herself she needed bandages, a medicine chest but she knew what she really needed was a hospital and someone else to take charge. Panic swiftly soured into frustration and anger.
“I’m going to kill them.”
“No. No profit in revenge. You not learnt anything from me?”
She cast about her again but the landscape hadn’t miraculously changed in the past minute.
“Why did you bring us here?” she asked desperately.
“Such plans,” Barbegris groaned. “I didn’t want to die poor. I wanted to make it up to you, to your mother. I let her die. Didn’t tell you that.”
He had never mentioned Celandine’s mother’s death before. He never spoke of it. She had never asked.
“I fought against the demon Otokuma in Immonda,” he said. “I drove him away but your mother…” He shook his head and smacked his lips dryly. “You got any drink?”
Celandine shook her head. Barbegris tutted.
“Then your father…”
“You knew my father?”
“Homph.”
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.” He paused for breath. “No. Your father…” He raised one hand and laid it over his eyepatch. “All messed up now. They found Gibberdog together and Maria left a gateway, hidden away.”
“What is Gibberdog?” asked Celandine. “What was that about me being the key to it?”
“The last great treasure,” he managed to whisper. “Maria hid the gateway so I … We couldn’t find it.” The effort of speaking was becoming too much for him.
“Hush, father,” said Celandine gently.
“Don’t hush me, girl!” he replied firmly, with a smidgeon of his old fire. “Homph. I’ll have an eternity of hush soon enough. You’ve got to go to Library of Souls in Nachista.” He fought for breath and coughed weakly. “Repeat it.”
“The Library of Souls,” said Celandine obediently.
“Where?”
“Nachista.”
“Good. Find your book. That’s the key. Gibberdog will be the making of you.” He relaxed visibly, exhaling hard. “Now, pray for me. I’m going to need it.”
“No, father. You can’t die.”
Maybe he grinned or maybe it was a grimace of pain.
“Of course I bloody can.”
He closed his one eye and almost immediately slipped into sleep. Celandine moved his pale hand aside and inspected his injury but it was just a mass of dark red stickiness across his scrawny torso and she had no idea what she could do for him.
So she prayed. She took the sealed pot of blue tilak from the pouch at his belt, daubed the powder on his forehead and prayed. As afternoon tumbled into evening, she prayed to Dv Bunuel, the Lady of Thorns, who heals the sick. She prayed to Dv Pantaleon, the patron of doctors, to Dv Cascia who looks after those who are alone and to Dv Liminis the gatemaker, whose course Barbegris had tried and failed to follow.
The red sky of evening deepened into the purple black of night, the grasses came alive with the rustling sounds of a billion insects and Celandine continued her vigil by dim starlight but now she invoked different divinities. She prayed to Dv Madron who eases pain and to Dv Nicholas of Tolentino who comforts the dying, and when she could no longer see Father Barbegris’ breath misting in the air, she prayed to Dv Kinneal who pleads for the souls of the faithful, to Dv Constant who weighs the hearts of men and to Dv Magortam who holds the keys to the Waters of Heaven.
About the authors
Heide Goody
Heide inflicts unsuitable content upon the world by whatever devious means she can find. Technical documents in her day job have been found to contain coded messages if you read them backwards.
She is, with Iain Grant, co-author of
Clovenhoof
. Her first solo novel,
Million Dollar Dress
, is published by Pigeon Park Press as an Amazon ebook.
Heide lives in North Warwickshire with her husband and children.
Iain Grant
Iain’s horror stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies (
Dark Tales, Song of the Satyrs, Absent Willow Review, Volume Magazine
). His short story,
Six of the Best
appeared in the Tindall St Press anthology,
Roads Ahead
, and praised by the Guardian newspaper as ‘quirky’. He still doesn’t know what that means.
He is, with Heide Goody, co-author of
Clovenhoof
. His first solo novel,
A Gateway Made of Bone
, will be published by Pigeon Park Press in early 2013.
Iain lives in south Birmingham with his wife and two daughters.
Heide and Iain’s thoughts on collaborative writing can be found on their blog, Idle Hands.
www.mrclovenhoof.blogspot.co.uk
Clovenhoof
Heide Goody & Iain Grant
Pigeon Park Press
‘Clovenhoof’ Copyright © Heide Goody and Iain Grant 2012
The moral right of the authors has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except for personal use, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9571754-3-3
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9571754-4-0
Published by Pigeon Park Press
Dedication
To our test-readers Helen Allan, Orion Andrews, Sarah Bowen, Richard Castell, Chrissie Daz, Simon Fairbanks, Chris Garghan, Kate Goodman, Danielle Green, Misha Herwin, Victoria Hudgson, Mat Joiner, Rosie Phenix-Walker, Martin Tomlinson and Richard Wantuch who helped shuffle things around, remove the unnecessary and point us towards the funny stuff.
To Martin Sullivan for his beautiful cover artwork and Neil Price for being Clovenhoof’s body-double.
But most of all…
To our significantly better halves, Simon and Amanda, for putting up with us and Jeremy Clovenhoof for the last year or so.