Daybreak on a Different Mountain

by Colin Greenland

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Walled off from a world it no longer remembers, the city of Thryn decays in arrogant isolation. Its ancient scriptures tell of the god,Gomath, who will one day return to perfect his city. But his return has been long awaited. In a bizarre coincidence of events, Lupio, a cynical and decadent young aristocrat, is unwillingly entangled in the prophecy. Appalled, he decides to break ancient law and flee the city. He joins up with Dubilier, a failed poet and dreamer, who is trying to escape from the death of inspiration and love. Together they travel through uncharted lands in search of the lost god. One of them wants to find him. The other certainly does not...

Release date: June 24, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 252

Sample

‘There must be some way out of here,’ said the joker to the thief.

Bob Dylan

Something had woken him. He slipped out of bed and reached towards the pile of clothes, but it was only roisterers straggling down the street. What was it they were singing? Something about forsaken love and broken promises, but alcohol mangled tune and words. They had a lantern bobbing on a pole; in the shadows and alleyways shapes ducked and twisted from the touch of its light.

Dubilier turned from the window, confused, half-asleep; unsure where he was. But that was Ali, that white glow on the pillow; she didn’t wake. He thought he could see her smiling in her sleep.

All evening she had been trying to tell him something, leading him through a maze of cryptic phrases and meaningful looks. It seemed she kept the secret intact in her dreams.

At dinner: ‘What do you think’s the worst thing about the city?’

‘The poor, the freaks …’

‘No …’

‘Disease. The rubbish everywhere.’

‘Do you really think so?’ She contrived to look amused, as though she never gave such things a thought and was entertained that he let them worry him. ‘Don’t you think boredom?’

‘Ali, darling, you’re not bored.’

‘I am. Thank you, Ibet, that’ll be all.’

‘You’ve got this place, and the villa; the antiques; the birds …’

‘I’m bored. It’s always the same. Nothing ever happens. Nobody goes anywhere or does anything. People are so predictable.’ She referred to them as to an inferior species, renowned for unsociable behaviour.

‘People?’

He was not good at concealing a disadvantage, was hopeless in card games. Alita pounced.

‘Oh, well, you, darling, you’re different. You’ve got your poetry …’

Which had been ambiguous enough. Ibet was standing in the background smiling, head bowed: it looked like the conventional posture of servitude, but he sensed collusion, conspiracy, elaborate traps closing.

He started to dress. The only thing he could match his mistress at was elusiveness; he’d shut himself up at home and try to concentrate on the poem. Whatever her plan, Ali couldn’t manipulate him if he wasn’t around.

He found her book. She’d been reading it all evening; she’d picked it up when Ibet had cleared the bowls and brought the amel jug, and had ignored him for an hour or more until he’d practically had to assault her. For a while he thought that might be it, that she wanted a little more challenge and a little less facility in their love, but she had stayed distant even when they were coupled, and when he thought he could safely complain to her about her book and the way she was neglecting him, he found he had only cued a ready and over-meticulous apology which turned into a rapturous description of the story. There was a Thrynian hero and his love, a simple wasteland maid, who managed to be surpassingly fair and graceful despite coming of commonplace parents, marsh-trolls, deshingen-aw-Jeswed For her he undertook feats and journeys without end (this was when Gomath was still a youth, before the Walling), and as they grew more tedious and repetitive, Alita grew more eloquent and Dubilier more annoyed.

At last he’d succeeded in interrupting. ‘And does he win her in the end?’

‘Oh, I don’t know – I haven’t finished it yet.’ She sighed. ‘But I think he must do, don’t you, after he’s worked so hard?’ Even lying beside her in complete darkness he’d felt that cool look.

Dubilier was not a decisive man. He usually found himself hesitating until forced to act. He sat at her feet and wondered about waiting for dawn, having a confrontation; but he knew he couldn’t face her eyes when they opened again and focused on him, mildly surprised to find him perched on the end of the bed. He finished dressing and crept out onto the landing. The house was dim and fragrant. Automatically he took a handful of petals from the bowl and scattered them into the basin, nodded his head and then looked up. Gomath was smiling benignly down on him. Slightly guilty at his lack of attention, Dubilier summoned his thoughts and addressed the god with proper reverence. Guide me, Gomath, guide me today. As usual, the petals crumbled in the water, dissolved and left it clear. Yesterdays, thought Dubilier, sweet and gone. He was a child again, as so often when negotiating the eternal. His religious upbringing had been orthodox and exact. Now that old unconditional faith welled up: Gomath would come back and perfect his people, and he would have Alita again, like that day in the orchard. He found he was still holding her book. Resting on the sill of the shrine, he turned to a blank page at the end and wrote her a message. It started off very cryptic and cutting, but dwindled into lachrymose self-remonstration by the fourth sentence. He hated it. He tiptoed back to drop it by the bed again, his heart hammering in case she woke and caught him; but she didn’t. He felt quite brave and determined by the time he got down to the hallway: like a phantom in the night, he’d –

‘Aigu?’

It was the housekeeper, Ibet, coming from her cubicle by the front door.

‘Is there something?’

She stood like a shadow in her grey gown of service – did they wear them to bed too?

‘Oh. No, nothing, Ibet, I’m sorry I woke you. No, don’t bother, I’ll get my own cape. Please go back to bed.’

‘Yes, Aigu.’ She let him go by and open the front door. Mist sneaked in.

‘Ibet? Ibet, is that you? Who’s down there?’

An upstairs door opening.

‘Ibet, where’s Aigu Dubilier?’ Alita’s voice was drowsy.

Caught for a moment in the doorway. Ibet looked from him to the landing where her mistress would appear any second.

‘He –’

Panic and resolution united in him. The door shut quickly.

‘He was here a moment ago, Aigui. He said he had to leave at once.’

Alita was hurrying downstairs, pulling a robe about her. Dubilier, hugging his cape closed, headed into the labyrinth of crooked streets, raging. Like an adolescent boy surprised in the maidservants’ quarters; you graceless fool.

A dark shape grew limbs and scuttled out of his path, tripped and fell down a flight of steps, shrieking feebly. It bumped into something else, another clot of darkness that sat in the doorway gnawing. The little shape stopped, made no sound. The larger one snapped and spat.

Not far away in the gloom was another noise, a whine that continued without faltering. It was like a whimper of pain or misery, except that as it proceeded it rose and fell with measured regularity, as if it did for music to the creature making it.

The eater shook itself and growled. It had dropped the eaten and was grubbing unsuccessfully for it. ‘Worm,’ it said.

‘I – I’m sorry,’ said the little shape.

‘Ghuric. Little Ghuric. Yes, well,’ said the large one.

‘Who is it? I can’t see as well as –’

‘Ghuric. Tell you by your smell.’

‘Abri, oh, Abri, I should have known, you’re so clever in the dark –’

‘Worm,’ he repeated with satisfaction, and belched.

Ghuric was trembling, not daring to move away.

‘Tell me something.’

‘What, Abredos?’

He didn’t answer at once. In the hiatus the voice keened on through its lonely cadences.

‘That,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve heard it before, nights, down at the river. What is it? It’s got a rotten pain in the gut, whatever it is,’

‘Oh, Abri, can’t you smell her out too?’

Unerring, the fist crashed out of the blackness. Ghuric screamed and skittered up the steps again. As she ran she was flashed in silhouette against the low windows of a tavern: the body of a six year old, though the legs were short even for that, and she had to scamper like a maimed spider, putting her huge muscular right arm to the ground for support.

Abredos waited. Ghuric wasn’t very clever. When she was tired out, she’d run back and fawn on him rather than wait in the darkness for him to pounce on her.

‘Ghuric’

‘I went to find out for you, Abri, come on, I’ll take you, she’s only just over here, this way.’

He grinned and hauled himself up.

‘It’s Kavi.’

Kavi was dreaming she was lighting the candles. Kavi was dancing. Each time she turned, there were fewer citizens there. A candle in the corner wouldn’t light. Something was stirring in that corner, in the shadows, but when she looked it wasn’t there. Lead us, Gomath, lead us, she sang, and the citizens followed her. Lead us from the marsh of the Outwall. Lead us from the lairs of Jeswed. Lead us to the citadel of perfection. In the pool someone was jumping up and down. Lead us to the mountain of our inheritance. There was rumbling in the vaults. If only she could dance better, she could save the citizens; but there were no citizens left. Husband, she prayed. The statue pushed its face into hers, its expression twisting, strangely regretful. They had grabbed hold of her to pull her off the dais – as if they knew how to save anything! But there was a horrible shadow on the statue’s face, the shadow of something behind her. She tried to sing, but no sound came. In the lurching pool the blossoms became brown frogs which swam away at once. Kavi was out on the hillside, looking down on a desert whose sands seemed to writhe and swirl. Someone was trying to make her accept a flower. She felt regretful, relieved. Kavi tossed in her blanket, crooning ceaselessly. There were cobwebs in canopies around her, and everywhere the green mist. Framed in the opening of the cellar two figures sat hunched.

The sun rose and wearily began to clear the mist below. A few figures appeared in the streets, moving lethargically or with furious haste. In an Aigudan district a cleaner came out to pick half-heartedly at the litter and poke a drain. A scrawny teenage girl led a line of smaller children up the hill to play in the deserted temple. Queues grew at the food dispensaries. At last the boy could be seen coming back with a basket on his arm. He dawdled through the streets, jostling other boys, glancing upwards from time to time apprehensively.

Lupio smiled grimly. Come on, lad, he thought, you know I can see you.

The boy stopped to rest several times on the way up. The basket was growing heavier and he changed arms repeatedly. He was plumper than most boyservants because Lupio was more prodigal than most masters. He pushed open the massive door and squeezed into the Iigril. At length Lupio heard him faltering breathlessly upstairs. The footsteps paused at the door while Hifran tried to compose himself. Lupio waited until he knew the boy was just about to knock and then called, ‘Come.’ He leaned back on the balustrade and watched him stagger to the table, lifting his burden with both hands.

‘Jumox said I should bring it to you first, Aigu.’

‘Bring?’

‘The food, Aigu.’

‘Ah.’ He came and stirred the basket’s contents with a languid hand. ‘So this is what you’ve left me, is it?’

‘Aigu?’

‘Pinched all my breakfast and went back for another lot.’

‘No, Aigu!’

‘You took your time, Hifran.’

‘I haven’t taken anything, Aigu!’

‘Well, I hope not. You’re far too fat anyway.’

‘You said you liked me to be fat!’

Lupio looked into the injured, uncomprehending eyes. ‘Hifran, for Gomath’s sake unpack that basket and let’s eat.’

Hifran beamed. This he understood.

When his Aigu had been eating for a while, he felt things might be a bit less delicate. ‘Aigu?’

‘Mm?’

‘Shall I go home afterwards?’

‘Yes.’

A pause.

‘Aigu?’

‘Yes?’

‘Why do we come here?’

Lupio reached for a slab of grey bread and broke off a corner.

He sniffed it circumspectly, grimaced, and ate some before replying.

‘Do you know what this place is, Hifran?’

‘It’s the Iigril. All the Aiguda used to come here and discuss important things.’

‘That’s right.’

‘They don’t come here any more, do they, Aigu?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why do you think?’

Hifran paused mid-mouthful to consider. ‘I suppose because there aren’t any important things left to discuss.’

Lupio laughed. ‘That’s right. You’re absolutely right.’

‘Then why do you still come?’

‘I like the paintings,’ said Lupio. ‘I like the books and the tapestries and the scrolls and the carvings and the mouldy old instruments and the rusty old weapons.’ But there was no joy in his eyes as he said it.

Hifran thought about it. He twisted round in his chair to look at a wall-hanging behind him. It was heavy and very, very old. He recognised the pictures: that was Gomath, and the Cirnex, going to the mountain.

‘That’s a tapestry, isn’t it, Aigu?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Do you like that one?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then all those ones in the dancing room, the ones you cut up with your sword – were those ones you didn’t like?’

Lupio stood up without answering. He went back to the balcony and gazed down for a while. Then he returned and stood at the head of the council table. ‘Hifran,’ he said, ‘come here. Come to me.’

The boy looked worried as he approached. The Aigu Lupio took him in his arms and hugged him. The boy struggled. ‘No, Aigu, please, not in here –’

‘Why not?’

The boy’s eyes hung fearfully on the dark tapestry. ‘Gomath,’ he said.

Lupio didn’t even glance over his shoulder. He bent and kissed his mouth. ‘No such person,’ he said.

Dubilier crossed out the fourth word of the five hundred and sixty-second line and wrote another word above it. Then he crossed that out and rewrote the original word. Then he crossed out the whole line. The light from the window crept gradually over the desk. He stared at it unseeing, chin on hands.

Alita woke late, turned over, and reached across to the other side of the bed. She found only an empty pillow. She opened her eyes in surprise; then amusement; and then something like pity. She wriggled deeper under the covers and lay diagonally across the bed, flexing her toes against the cool sheets.

There was a clepsydra on Dubilier’s desk. All the water had run through. He’d forgotten to refill it, and Jumox, the housekeeper, was not allowed into the study. Now the water was evaporating: time, stagnant, running backwards even. He shouldn’t have been so impulsive. It wasn’t as if she’d said anything, after all. Now she’d be upset and frosty with him. If he went back straightaway – No, he let himself be pushed around far too much. She’d always said so. He was resolved: the poem. He counted what he’d achieved that morning. Minus eleven words. Just what you’d expect, with time running backwards.

She put the other pillow behind her and shook a handbell. Ibet came in with a steaming mug and fruit on a tray. Alita sipped and set it aside. ‘Sing to me.’

They’d spent most of that summer in her neglected orchard, persimmons ripening in the branches overhead like promises. Dubilier frowned. He wanted to get all that into the poem, for the symbolism, but the season had escaped him again. He wondered who had eaten the fruit.

Now it was nearly spring. Outside his window the lawn sloped away, dull and colourless. Even the buds looked tight and mean. The gardener went by with a bag of poison.

‘Take these eyes so swollen and red,

Swollen and red from weeping,

For my heart is yours, but my heart is dead,

And they wept it out of your keeping.

Take these lips so pale and wan,

So pale and wan from crying,

For my heart is yours, but my heart is done,

And they mourned it a long time dying.

Take these hands so withered and worn,

Withered and worn from pleading,

For my heart is yours, but my heart is gone,

And they nursed it as it lay bleeding.

Take all of me, mistress, or leave me alone;

You have worked all your will to defeat me –’

‘I bet, I bet, what a dirge!’ said Alita, and laughed.

‘Yes, Aigui, it goes on:

And while I am yours, I am dead as a stone,

but it ends:

But a new love is waiting to greet me.’

The Aigui Alita studied the placid woman in grey. She learned nothing.

Casting about the room for something else to entertain her, she found the book lying by the bed and read his note again.

‘Why did he have to write it on the last page?’ she demanded pettishly. ‘I haven’t even finished the story!’

Kavi came up with her blanket under her arm and nearly fell over the huddled form. It squeaked.

‘What is it? Who’s that?’

‘Hnnn …’

‘Don’t you know better than to sleep where citizens can fall over you? Who are you?’

‘Forgive me, Previs Kavi. Ghuric. I’m Ghuric. I was one –’

‘Speak up!’

‘My name is Ghuric. I was one of your temple-girls, Previs, when I was little – when I was young.’

‘Before you stopped growing, eh? Well, yes, I can see now. Ghuric. Yes, you still look like a little girl, but I can see now you’re old, aren’t you? Old enough to have been at the temple. Ghuric’

‘Yes, Previs Kavi.’

‘Faithless, the temple-girls. All of them. What are you doing here?’

‘Forgive me, Previs Kavi, I’m sorry for being in your way, but we were so disturbed last night, I must have just dropped –’

‘What do you mean, disturbed? Who disturbed you?’

‘You did, Previs. Your singing, I mean. I mean, I mean – it was very beautiful –’

‘Was I singing?’

‘Oh, in your sleep, Previs, I mean, please.’

‘What was I singing?’

‘I – I don’t know, Previs Kavi.’

‘You were a temple-girl, what was I singing?’

‘I – it was – what you used to sing, Previs, in the temple. Spells, and –’

‘Spells?’ That seemed to enrage the old crone. Ghuric felt dizzy. What could she say to appease her? Frantically she tried to remember, anything. She looked around. Abredos had gone to work.

‘I don’t know, I – Gomath-songs, it was. You used to dance, and sing –’

‘Cretin!’ That had made it worse. Hopelessly she looked round again.

‘I was so young. He’s older than me.’

‘Who?’

‘Abredos.’

‘Who?’

‘The rivergateman.’

‘He was here? He’d know what I was singing?’

‘Abredos. He’s clever, he’s not little and silly like Ghuric, he’s got a good brain, he’s got sharp ears, he’ll remember for you, anything you want, Previs.’

‘Take me to him. Wait. Carry my blanket.’

She bent and laid it across the little creature’s back. The two women hurried off down the fetid street to look for the remnants of a dream.

Jumox came into the kitchen. Cheredep looked up from the table where he was marshalling the crumbs into a pattern with the tip of the breadknife.

‘Where’s that boy?’

‘Is he not back yet?’ he asked idly.

‘No he’s not.’ Jumox was irritated, though this was evidently not a new annoyance. ‘Next time I shall tell him to come home first and Aigu Lupio’ll have to wait for his breakfast.’

‘You sent him there first, did you?’

‘I did.’ She sat down, shifting uncomfortably. ‘He’s got to eat or he’ll drink himself to death.’

‘We should just pretend we don’t know where he is,’ said the cook. ‘Then he’d have to come home.’

Jumox pursed her lips and gave a disapproving frown. She knew the suggestion hadn’t been made seriously, but that kind of talk wasn’t right.

They sat in silence for a long while. Cheredep stroked the crumbs into a long snaky line. ‘There’s no food in the house,’ he said needlessly. A door creaked and Jumox looked up, but no one was there.

‘Where is that boy?’ she said again. ‘What’s the Aigu doing up there – giving the boy history lessons?’

‘Physical education, more like,’ grinned Cheredep. ‘Physical jerks!’ Seeing that he was being ignored, he rewarded the joke by laughing loudly. He picked up the knife again.

The yard door opened suddenly and Hifran hurried down the steps with his basket. ‘I’ve brought the food,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’ He was red and out of breath, his grey tunic crumpled.

The cook put down the knife. ‘Why,’ he said slowly, ‘are you late?’

Hifran looked at the floor. ‘Aigu Lupio needed me.’

The cook leered at the housekeeper, but she wouldn’t notice. ‘Physical jerks,’ he said softly.

‘Here’s the food,’ Hifran said to her, ‘and here’s the drink, though the Aigu kept most of it –’

‘What’s your hurry now?’

‘He said I could have the rest of the day off once I’d brought it.’

‘Well, tidy yourself up before you go,’ Jumox told him as she bustled back and forth to the pantry. Cheredep sat and watched both of them. ‘You’re a proper mess. Just look at your tunic’

Hifran didn’t, but he brushed at it with his hands as he ran back up the steps.

‘Afternoon off,’ said Cheredep with casual scorn. ‘There’s work to do here, you know,’ he called after the hurrying boy.

‘He’s a disgrace to us all,’ muttered Jumox; but she didn’t define who she had in mind. Bottles clinked on stone flags. Cheredep stretched. He began to fill a pipe.

The great door boomed behind them, shutting out the weak light and air. Ghuric hesitated at the top of the steps, eyes and lungs adjusting to the smoky gloom. ‘Can you see him?’

‘Idiot! I can’t see anything in this –’ She waved her stick impotently, beginning to cough. Ghuric reached for her with her lesser hand. Like some old and crippled crustacean, they stumbled down together into the Hall of Beggars.

On the floor the air was slightly clearer but no less rank. Piles of battered and discarded objects lay everywhere, and lying among them were animals and people in rags scarcely distinguishable from the refuse. At the far end a large fire burned an ill-tempered and uneven red. This was where most of the inhabitants were gathered; a flame occasionally revealed more of them clustered on ledges and balconies, in niches of disintegrating sculpture. Ghuric and Kavi trod between bodies to the fire. Several recognised Kavi, the Previs-aw-Gomath. The younger ones roused themselves to jeer but others, closer to her own age, looked aside uneasily as though catching sight of a mirror. The greatest fraction, and the oldest there, gaped vacantly, so that there was nothing to distinguish them from those who gaped and did not see her, or did not see anything at all – or from the antics and gargoyles whose faces blistered the architecture. Children believe that a grimace made when the wind changes will be fixed, frozen, forever. It had been centuries since the wind had changed in Thryn.

A man stood up, arms akimbo, to block their path. ‘This isn’t the place for you, Kavi.’ He was a burly old man, grey-skinned and completely hairless. He seemed to hold some authority among the freaks and derelicts. ‘Why did you bring her? Take her away.’

‘She wants to see Abredos,’ said Ghuric.

He gazed around. Finally he said, ‘He’s not here. You’ll have to go down and find him.’ Ghuric made to scuttle off. ‘Don’t leave her here. Take her with you.’ He gave her a flaming stick out of the fire.

There was a recess, more steps, and a low door. Once through it the women found they could breathe more easily. The predominant stench changed from stale flesh and smoke to damp and decay. The dancing light showed that they stood at the top of a stone staircase curving down to cellarage. They descended, haltingly, into dank arcades of stone. Ghuric swung the torch. On all sides pillars marched motionlessly away into the dark.

‘You’ve blinded and choked me with smoke; do I have to rot in the damp now?’

‘Shh, shh,’ hissed the midget, agitated. ‘Listen.’

‘What?’

There was a faint trickling of water. Ghuric strained her ears. ‘This way, Previs.’

For a long time they walked without speaking. Their flame carved columns out of the blackness ahead and the blackness behind dissolved them again. The new columns started to be dimmer.

‘Can the Previs-aw-Gomath walk faster? The fire’s almost out.’

‘The Previs-aw-Gomath does not scurry like a thief or an animal.’

They limped on. The torch went out. Ghuric moaned, but fear of Kavi was stronger than fear of darkness, and she reached for the withered hand again. They found that the columns were solid even though they were invisible.

As her eyes grew to the dark Ghuric began to see the faintest of glimmers a long way off, like the glow of diseased water. ‘The river, Previs,’ she said eagerly, ‘can you see it?’

At that moment there was a scuffling, scampering sound ahead. Ghuric gave a little cry and stopped, petrified. Towards them hurtled a shadow, fast and low.

‘Who?’ it cried, its voice oily and threatening.

‘Abri!’ yelped Ghuric, terrified.

A face made itself in the dark, black on black: the grimy face and vacant black eyes of Abredos. ‘Ghuric,’ he said. ‘Well.’

‘Abri, the Previs-aw-Gomath, Previs Kavi. Here she is. She wants to ask you something.’

‘Well.’ He grinned, malevolently. ‘Honoured.’

Ghuric explained. He sniffed at the Previs and then roared with laughter. ‘She!’ he wheezed. ‘Mother of Perfection! Sings the same song all night; can’t remember it in the morning!’

Kavi struck out with her stick. There was a crack and a cry of pain. Disembodied, her voice was even more imperious. ‘What was the song?’

He sniffed. ‘You were dreaming. What’s the matter?’

‘Gomath, you faithless, ignorant hog –’

He snorted and laughed.

‘Gomath is coming.’

‘Pthegh!’

‘He sends his night-messenger the Cirnex, who speaks in dreams, the language of night, that men don’t understand. What was I singing?’

Abredos thought about it. He scratched himself, growing bored with this. ‘You sang “Lead us, lead us” for a good while.’

‘I remember that,’ said Ghuric.

‘Shut up. Then you sang something else.’

‘What?’

‘Some rubbish, I don’t –’

‘Tell me or I’ll beat you.’

‘Like you were welcoming somebody. Somebody come a long way.’

‘The Cirnex.’ It was á whisper. ‘The Cirnex-aw-Gomath.’

‘Ay. Right.’ Abredos cleared his throat and spat. There was a pause.

‘Is he here?’ The Previs seemed to be having difficulty speaking.

‘What, here?’

‘He comes in dreams and in the dark places of the city.’ . . .