The Last Days Of The Edge Of The World (9 page)

“Who are you?” intoned the ghost, its voice thin and anguished.

Helen’s flesh crept. She didn’t mind. It was only a normal reflex action.

“Helen Hilversun,” she said, and added: “if your majesty pleases.”

The ghost-king bowed his head, very slightly. He turned, then, to point to the great horn, which hung on the wall behind the throne. His diamond-eyes looked first at the horn, then at Helen, and back and forth again.

Helen understood. Belek was under enchantment. He could not speak of the horn. There was something strange in the way he moved his eyes, and the expression on his face. Ghosts do not have a great capacity for expression, and are notorious for being unable to exercise strict control over their appearance. Belek was trying hard to indicate something, but Helen didn’t know what.

The horn was brass, seven feet from end to end, and its mouth yawned fully three feet across. It was curved into a shallow arc, and it hung from the wall supported by two steel chains extended from brass rings welded to its body.

Helen walked down the aisle and around the high table. It was a bit of a squeeze getting past the chairs at the end of the rank. The great hall didn’t seem so great with a crowd like this crammed into it. When she eventually stood before the horn she could see by the light of the match that two words had been graven into the metal about halfway along its length.

They were: BLOW HARD.

“Is that all?” muttered Helen. “All this fuss just for that. I could have guessed that.”

She spoke aloud, temporarily unmindful of the gathered throng. Then she remembered, and turned away guiltily.

Every glittering eye was fixed upon her face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I… think I’d better go now.” She took one step. Then she hesitated.

There was something about those glittering eyes. The ghosts looked utterly forlorn… desperate… tormented.

Their faces suggested greater, deeper pain than mere flesh could ever know. With ghosts, this is not unusual.

But Helen felt an urgency about the way these ghosts looked that was strange. She knew that they wanted to say something, but they couldn’t. A calculated super natural force was stopping them. Inspiration struck her.

She walked over to the ghostly courtier who sat at the right hand of the king.

“Excuse me,” she said. “May I borrow your chair?”

The ghost stood up and bowed.

It was quite a heavy chair—nothing like the throne of course, but still an impressive piece of furniture. Helen had to put the match down, jamming it into a crack where the upholstery was imperfect. Then she dragged the chair over to the wall, using both hands. She set it beneath the mouthpiece of the horn, and climbed up. She couldn’t shift the horn far, but found that she could swing the mouthpiece away from the wall sufficiently to allow her to set her mouth to it. She blew.

Her breath was swallowed up by the horn. Nothing happened.

She blew harder. No sound issued from the horn.

She blew as hard as she possibly could, and still nothing happened. The horn drank her breath without the slightest difficulty.

Helen turned back to the ghostly assembly, and said: “I can’t do it. I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it.”

Written on their faces was an anguish more terrible than anything Helen had ever seen. It was worse than anything her imagination could have conjured. It defied description.

She turned to the horn again, and looked hard at the mouthpiece. It was just a circle of brass—meant for a giant’s lips and lungs, no doubt, but still only a circlet of brass. She knew that she couldn’t work any magic on the horn—that was out of the question. But perhaps…

She didn’t mutter this spell, but spoke it loud and clear, careful of the pronunciation.

“Breath, breath, come and blow, help me now a wind to sow; wind into the horn must flow, sound a good note, high or low.”

Then she blew, hard.

And harder.

As hard as she could.

And still harder…

And from the mouth of the horn came the merest trace of sound—a thin, low-pitched whisper like the sound guitar strings make when the wind touches them.

Helen took her lips from the mouthpiece, but the sound went on. It grew in volume and rose in pitch, changed from a whisper to a cry, from a cry to a scream, from a scream to an almighty roar….

Helen leapt down, clapping her hands to her ears, and ran, not pausing to pick up the match or return the chair or even to go round the high table—she dived straight under it and came up in the aisle on the other side, and ran pell-mell for the oaken door, which still stood ajar.

The note grew, from a roar to a howl, from a howl to a boom that must surely have vibrated the Earth itself. …

As she reached the doorway the note reached its climax, which was a sound too big to be described, a thunder outside the Earth–-

With the thunderclap came a bolt of lightning, arrowing out of the boiling blue-black sky, not aimed at the tall towers of Mirasol’s keep but deep into the courtyard, hurtling deep into the encaged darkness to strike with astonishing violence the weathervane atop the old well. In striking home the searing white light of the electric bolt stripped away the shadows with an awesome flourish.

Following the lightning came the rain, in a mighty torrent, which washed the walls and the stairs and the floor of the courtyard free of the slimy dust of centuries.

Helen looked back and saw that the great hall was quite deserted. Belek of Beauval and his ghostly court were released from their enchanted bondage, gone to eternal rest. Even the moaning from beneath was gone, still forever.

When she looked back into the yard again, Helen saw the strange lumps which scattered the flagstones regain their colour and their form and their life. They became small coloured birds: goldcrests, bullfinches, yellow-hammers, robins, bluebirds and bulbuls. They fluttered up into the rain-filled sky, too buoyant with freedom to heed the great cascade, and they flew away.

CHAPTER NINE

My dear Prince Damian, (began the letter)

The words engraved upon the horn of the giant Faulhorn, which hangs in the Great Hall of Castle Mirasol, are: blow hard.

Your second task, as you doubtless already know, is to discover the name of the lamia who guards the forbidden city. I would wish you luck, but I am sure that you do not need it. I look forward to receiving your answer.

With best wishes, Helen

“It doesn’t seem quite so easy,” admitted Ewan. He was not just facing Coronado, but also the king and the prince. As soon as the letter arrived he had been invited along to the council chamber to discuss the matter.

“You can’t do it,” said the king. Ewan shrugged. “I won’t know that until I’ve tried, will I?”

“I won’t have it!” said the king. “I’m going to put a stop to this whole silly affair. Sending Damian off to the enchanted forest and the ruins of Ora Lamae… They’re just about the most dangerous places in the world. Who does this girl think she is? I simply will not have it.

Asking my son to risk his very life–-“

Coronado coughed, politely. The king hesitated. “Well,” he said, “she thinks it’s Damian that’s doing it. And anyhow, this boy’s one of my subjects, and in his way is just as dear to me as my son. So there!”

Coronado shook his head. “That’s not what I mean, sire,” he said. “The thing is that we don’t actually know how hard these questions seem to the young lady. To an enchanter’s daughter they may seem to be mere riddles. Perhaps she obtains the answers by magical means— crystal gazing or some other manner of divination—and expects us to do the same. We don’t know that she actually intends anyone to go to these places.”

“We haven’t got any crystal balls,” said the king, testily. “Or any other of the divi-things you were talking about. And it’s all irrelevant. I’m going to put a stop to it, and that’s that. It’s unfair!”

“It certainly is,” put in the prince. “I don’t think we should have anything more to do with these people. Let them rot in their creepy castle. Keep civilization for the civilized, I say.”

“Your majesty is reconciled, then,” said the prime minister in falsely honeyed tones, “to the ruin of his dynasty… and very probably of Caramorn itself.”

“There are other ways,” snapped the king, with an airy wave of his hand.

“Name three,” Coronado snapped back.

“Don’t you talk to me like that!” said the king. “Or I’ll…”

While Rufus Malagig IV paused for thought concerning the nature of the appropriate threat, Coronado interrupted. “Never mind,” he said, calmly. “Your majesty will please accept my resignation. I’ll collect my belongings and be gone by nightfall.”

The king’s jaw dropped, and he stared with open amazement at his ex-prime minister.

“You can’t do that!” he said.

“I have,” answered Coronado.

“You can’t just leave me. This is your mess as well as mine, and I demand that you stay and find a way out of it. It’s your duty. You don’t catch me backing down on my responsibilities, do you?”

“I don’t know, sire,” said Coronado. “Are you prepared to follow this through, then? Or are you still intent on putting a stop to it?”

The king’s face turned crimson. “That’s not what I meant!” he shouted.

“It’s what I mean,” answered Coronado, his voice still deathly calm. “This may be a dangerous game, but it’s the only game left to us. And if your majesty will forgive me pointing it out, Damian is not at risk. Ewan is the one who will take any risks there are to be taken. He does so, I might add, against my own advice. I suggested that we should bluff it out, and I still think that might be best. But while he’s willing to add to our chances of winning through, I’m willing to accept his help. I’d be failing in my duty if I didn’t. I think he’s a fool to do it—but if he’s willing, I can’t say no. And I can’t let you say no, either.”

The king subsided, and so did Coronado. Rufus Malagig IV glanced at his son, and then stared very hard at Ewan.

“You’re actually prepared to go to the Forbidden City?”: he asked. ‘To hunt for a lamia?”

“Yes,” answered Ewan.

“Why? For heaven’s sake, why?”

Ewan bit his lower lip, and furrowed his brow. “I’m not sure that I can explain it to you,” he said. “But it seems to me that I’m somehow committed. Ever since … well, I went to the enchanted forest because I thought it would be fairly easy. It wasn’t. But after what happened there… I don’t know how or why…but something turned me around in time. It took me back the best part of a day, so I wouldn’t be late with the answer. And it’s as though it has tied a knot in my lifeline. And bound up in that knot—I don’t know how or why—is… not a compulsion exactly, but….”

The king’s gaze flicked abruptly back to Coronado.

“You know what this means?”

“I know,” said the prime minister.

“I don’t!” complained Damian.

“It’s an enchantment,” said the king. “Someone’s put a spell on him. And if it’s on him, it’s on this whole business.”

“I don’t think we can back out,” said Coronado. “Whether we do or not, Ewan is going to the Forbidden City. Whether we involve ourselves or not, he’ll get the answer to the question… or fail in the attempt. I’m afraid that the set of verses lurking in your library, sire, is a piece of magic… and it’s still active, even after all these years.”

Damian looked sideways at Ewan and edged away from him. He didn’t like the idea of standing next to persons afflicted with curses.

“I don’t like this,” said the king. “I don’t like any of it.”

“Nor do I,” said Coronado. “But there’s one thing we mustn’t overlook.”

“What?” asked the king.

“If we carry on, it might just work. We could end up with a royal marriage and a saved kingdom.”

Ewan coughed politely. Coronado looked at him questioningly.

“I understand your preoccupation with the political aspects of the problem,” said the boy, “but it seems to me that there’s something else that might warrant thinking about.”

“Which is?” prompted the prime minister.

“Just supposing,” said Ewan, “for the sake of argument, that we manage to get through the whole set of six questions—thus, of course, fulfilling the requirements of the bargain—we will then have completed the spell. What I want to know is what will happen then? What’s the spell for? What does it do? So far it appears to have disenchanted Methwold forest—and I suspect it may have had the same effect on the haunted castle— and perhaps the second verse has similarly limited objectives. But the third verse is different… and I believe that it all forms a coherent whole, in any case.

“We’ve begun to work out the pattern—all right, we carry on. We complete it. But what happens next?”

Coronado and the king looked at one another grimly. Prince Damian shook his head. It was a very good question. And nobody had an answer.

In the meantime, Helen’s thoughts were just as confused and uncertain. She, too, was a prisoner of the pattern that had now been established. She had a memory, though a vague one, of the conversation with the image in the mirror. She could not quite remember what had been said, but the three verses of the last will and testament of Jeahawn Kambalba were burned into her mind.

Although Ewan had the facilities of the palace library at his disposal it was Helen who was in a better position to know what kind of thing she had become involved in. Ewan could look up the biographical details of Jeahawn Kambalba’s career, but Helen knew what some of those details meant.

Jeahawn Kambalba had ended the wars of enchantment that might otherwise have been deadlocked for a thousand years. Through curse and countercurse, barrier and blockade, illusion and dimension he had battled his way to the core of each source of the magical blights that lay upon the land. Had any two of the four great mages—Elfspin, Viranian, Ambrael and Jargold—truly combined their powers they could have defeated him, but although there were notional alliances and agreements and treaties, each of the four mistrusted his allies as much as his enemies. One of the four had been utterly destroyed, one stripped of his powers. The other two were brought before a court and consigned to eternal prisons. The wars had ended. The one thing Jeahawn had not managed to accomplish was to undo any significant portion of the damage which the four and their many allies (human and inhuman) had done to the land itself. That kind of power could not be summoned instantaneously, but had to build over a period of time.