The grey stone hilltop plateau was flat as a plate. Their campfire was off to one edge, near the shoulder-height ridge of stone that acted as a shelter, usefully hiding them from the seldom-used road directly below. This hill and the tall cliff across formed a gate for the long mountain pass the band had to travel through to gain access to the roads south and west, and which they should have travelled through last night, had not Sharfy, Kiown and the Pilgrim been too exhausted for it. The rest of the band was awake on the platform further down, cleaning their clothes and themselves as best they could, while the Otherworlder still slept, curled by the fire. It was a cold, dim morning. Thin streaks of cloud spread over the sky like slowly uncurling fingers.
The man sitting across from the Pilgrim on a piece of log by the campfire looked young and careworn at once, with a powerful athlete’s build, and — though his skin was light — something more acutely Oriental about his face than most others in Levaal. His hands dug into the hair by his temples and pulled it enough, surely, to hurt. He was not even aware he did this; in truth he was savouring the quiet and felt as at peace as he could while on the road in enemy country. Before descending into his own black thoughts, Anfen had watched the Otherworlder for a while, wondering what marvels of knowledge he had brought with him. Another hour’s sleep was the most that could be spared, for the hornet’s nest had been kicked, and they were still too close to it. This little shelter was probably as safe as they’d get until well south of here and out of Aligned country altogether. And there was no knowing what spots their windows viewed at any one moment.
Anfen says hello. Very funny. If Kiown had known how perilously close Anfen had been to whipping his head clean off when he heard about that, he would probably have turned and fled, not sulked and made excuses. Kiown thought he’d been hard done by when his troop leader drove an elbow into his cheek and knocked him out cold, the crack! of it still echoing in Anfen’s mind with a morsel of satisfaction. To yell at the guard had been impulsiveness rather than treachery, Anfen had hesitantly bet; but a saboteur could not have done much better. His hand squeezed around the blade of the sword that rested across his lap, and only when the edge bit into his skin did he know quite how angry he still was. He glanced abstractedly at the line cut across his fingers and wiped off the blood on his pants, hardly even noticing it.
Had the Otherworlder just stirred? He examined Eric’s face closely, then had to look away, for Eric’s face was now covered in blood and half smashed apart, its pieces like a broken plate held together by stretching, loose skin. Anfen was not alarmed or surprised by the sight; it was nothing new to him. He had, earlier, seen the young man decapitated, as clearly as if it were real. He had, whilst hearing Sharfy’s account of Kiown’s stupidity, seen the battered soldier’s jaw break off and drop to the ground. A blink later, it was merely Sharfy’s ugly, trustworthy face before him. He wondered if they had a name for this curse, or illness: whatever it was that caused the years of bloodshed and violence he’d been part of to flash before his eyes. It came and went, sometimes for weeks, and most commonly with newly met people.
Eric’s face was normal again. Nobility, Kiown had claimed, as though this made up for what he’d done. Anfen wondered. The young man was well fed, had no visible scars, had good teeth and grooming. His clothes seemed formal and well made. It was possible.
Anfen checked the sky again but saw no sign of any Invia. How long would his luck hold? He was Marked, and they’d see him from a long way away. He picked up the deadstone, rubbing it across his sword’s face: scrape, scrape, scrape. He could have had the sword enchanted with some useful effect, but preferred deadstone’s ability to bother and distract mages. Having to rub it on the blade every day, however, was a pain.
The sound made the Otherworlder stir. Anfen saw his eyes open a crack, then close, feigning more sleep. ‘Good morning,’ said Anfen. ‘There’s stew in the pot. Loup blessed it. It tastes better than it smells and looks.’
Eric yawned and sat up. He took in his surrounds, looking behind them at the cave cut into the hillside, through which Kiown and Sharfy had carried him. He said, ‘Are you going to cut my head off with that sword, or are you just sharpening it?’
Anfen tried to soften his manner, for he knew he looked flinty-eyed and that each battle and kill had changed his appearance, however minutely, so that by now death hung about him like a veil. So it felt. ‘Your head is safe enough. Nor am I sharpening this. Eskian blades don’t need much sharpening. They hold their edges. They’d want to, for the price.’
Eric stumbled to the fireside and took some stew from the pot. Anfen saw him hesitate, possibly unsure of the etiquette: how much should he take? ‘Have it all, if you’ve room for it. A hard road lies ahead. Worse than the one you came here by, no doubt. I know your name already. I’m Anfen.’
Eric ate ravenously, pausing once to feel the bulge in his pockets, checking that something was still there. Anfen saw a bloody mess in one of the young man’s eye sockets, an eye recently gouged out, the face black with bruises. He saw one arm broken in two places and lying inert and useless, still clutching the wooden bowl half full of stew. He shut his eyes and things had become normal again when he opened them. ‘You’re nobility, I’m told,’ he said.
Eric glanced up at him. ‘Sort of.’
‘Sort of? How do you mean? What exactly is your title?’
Eric’s mouth was too full to speak. He chewed for a while, which conveniently gave him time to ponder an answer. He said, ‘We have a custom, where I come from, not to give details of our families and how they’re connected. I am not the highest placed, or even especially highly placed.’
‘But your absence would be noticed?’
‘Yes. It will be.’
So, he was not sent or ordered to come. Did he wish me to think so? ‘Do they know where you went?’
‘I left word of it. I don’t think the door itself is something widely known. Yet.’
‘They will close the entry point soon,’ said Anfen, setting his blade back in its scabbard, for the Otherworlder’s eyes kept nervously returning to it. ‘What are the likely consequences, do you think, of your absence? An expedition here?’
The young man pondered that for a while. ‘I’d say if my world — Earth, we call it — found out about this one, they would make a very big fuss. They’d probably send in some explorers and the like first. If those were attacked, they might send armies. What would result from that I couldn’t tell you.’ Eric frowned. ‘Your fire,’ he said. ‘There’s no smoke. I smell it but can’t see it.’
‘We are on a hilltop in enemy country,’ said Anfen with a shrug. ‘Why wouldn’t we have treated the wood? We have a magician with us.’
For some reason Eric laughed. ‘Right you are. Silly me.’ He attacked his food for a while, then said, ‘I just remembered something. Kiown said you own me now. Is that how you’d put it too?’
‘We don’t own you. You’re free to go at any time, if you wish.’ A lie, of course; why not first try things the easy way? ‘My advice is that you come with us back to the Council of Free Cities in Elvury, the nearest Free City. It is the safest thing for you. This is Aligned country. Wild things and Inferno cultists infest the rural parts. In Aligned cities, you’ll be enslaved or killed. Even if you find some place to dwell and hide out, you’ll likely starve. They are short on food these days, except when the citizens decide to eat each other. You will be safe and fed with us, at least.’
Eric set aside his empty bowl. It seemed he could spot a lie when he saw one. ‘So, I’m really free to just up and walk away.’
‘You are as free to do that as you are to jump from this hilltop right now and bounce your skull on the road below. The results would be similar. A waste.’
The Otherworlder sighed. ‘A friend of mine may have come through the door after me. Your friend Sharfy stopped me from going back to save him from that thing, that war mage. I won’t tell you I’m happy about that.’
‘And just how would you have saved him, Eric?’
Eric winced. Ah yes, there is a secret or two here, thought Anfen. What is it? A weapon? A power of some kind? Not enough to overwhelm Sharfy’s knife, obviously, but enough to flummox a mage? Enough to get past a mage in the first place — some kind of disguise?
The Otherworlder quickly said, ‘I don’t know how I would have saved him. I don’t know why it spared me. You’re right. Maybe the second time around, it wouldn’t have.’
‘Then perhaps you owe Sharfy some thanks.’
‘Maybe so. And you’re right about all the rest. If you’ll have me, I’ll come. But … you don’t want me just from the kindness of your heart, do you?’
Anfen smiled. ‘No. What your presence means to the Mayors I can’t say. They delight in confounding my predictions and advice. But they would prize you.’
Eric weighed this up, too. ‘Why do I understand things the rest of you can’t? Sharfy said it was some magic in the door itself. Or something.’
Anfen pondered, staring into the distance. He was glad to look away from Eric’s face, which had now peeled and shrivelled as though it were long dead. ‘The question is deeper than you may think,’ he said. ‘There were scholars and mages who studied Pilgrims like you, and the entry point, and Levaal’s very creation itself. But their work has been destroyed or seized. I was high-ranked in their armies; I did some of the seizing.’ I co-ordinated it, ordered it, kicked down doors with my own boots, killed with my own hands, ordered ditches dug by roadsides and in the woods, filled them with corpses by the dozen. And I was very, very good at it all. ‘Then I began to read some of the books instead of burning them. And I decided to stop taking the castle’s orders. Far too late, of course.’ Because it’s nice to be promoted and made a hero, isn’t it, and be told sweet noble words about the foul things you’ve done? He sighed heavily. ‘All I can tell you is that all things here, people, events and forces, are like little numbers in a puzzle being solved by a great mind.’
A log popped on the fire with a shower of sparks. ‘Whose mind?’
‘The Dragon’s. Don’t confuse It with those lesser ones you may hear of, the dragon-youth, imprisoned in the sky. I refer to that which made this world, or at least decided its natural laws. Perhaps the Dragon meant for people to travel between worlds, and wanted knowledge to be exchanged, or stolen. More little numbers gathered for the solving of that enormous puzzle. That may be why It laid such a condition at the boundary. You may be an ordained Pilgrim, long ago predicted. Who knows? The easiest way to put it is a phrase you may have heard by now: as the Dragon wills.’
Eric looked both impressed and sceptical. ‘This Dragon. Is it real? I mean, are you giving me a religious explanation? An actual history? Do you worship it?’
What strange questions, Anfen thought, especially that last one. He frowned. ‘It’s real, though none have seen It in the flesh. We have only seen signs of its passing, from times It roamed the land, huge and awake. Footprints hammered into the world’s crust, shed scales buried deep. We suspect It sleeps underground, near the castle, for there’s heavy magic in those parts, and the gods do not go near it. No one swears to It, that I know of. Why would they? If you found a great sea or mountain, would you worship it, just because it is greater than you? We do not, unless it may have bearing on us, hear our prayers and answer them. Sometimes the Great Spirits do. The Dragon does not, unless in ways we can’t see or measure. And if It does have a hand in our fate, It must mean us ill, for things have gone badly. I hope I answered you well enough.’
Anfen glanced at the sky again, and for a moment his heart raced — a shape moved up there. A bird, probably. He’d soon know if it wasn’t, that much was sure.
Eric said, ‘You’ve answered well, but I have to tell you, this is all totally weird to me. Why was I brought here? Why me? If you could understand how insignificant I was back there-’ he cut himself short.
‘Insignificant amongst the other nobility, you mean?’
‘Well, yes. You know, there are court jesters more important than me. I wasn’t all that high on the ladder, really.’
The Otherworlder’s limbs had all been hacked off. Blood pooled about him, stumps of white bone glistened. Anfen shut his eyes. ‘You may or may not have been summoned. I can only say what I know. For some reason the entry point opened up. Loup, our folk magician, foresaw it. He was adamant we seek it out, adamant in a way I’ve never seen him, though he wouldn’t say why it mattered. And still won’t. As we were already nearby on other business, I relented. And here you are.’
‘Where is this castle? I only saw a glimpse of it before.’
‘Behind us. Stand atop that rock there.’
Eric did, peering over the top of the plateau’s shelf to see what had been obscured before. A huge white shape in the far distance gleamed like a piece of fallen sky. It looked like a long, fat dragon lying asleep, its head resting chin first on the ground, front paws to either side, a tail curling behind the bulging round mass of its middle.
Anfen tried to imagine how the sight would affect him, with eyes new to it, but could only think of the orders that came from its upper halls, and the beings who gave them, and he felt only hate, dark and bitter, so strong it almost numbed itself from being felt.
Eric however looked almost dizzy at the sight. ‘Wow,’ he said, and laughed.
‘You were underneath that, some hours ago. The entry point through which you came is above and behind it. An impenetrable cliff runs around like a fence behind: no doubt you saw it. It is said Otherworld is differently built, that you may walk in one direction forever, eventually passing the point you started. Is that so?’
It seemed a cool breeze blew from the castle’s direction, ruffling their hair like a friendly hand. ‘Technically, yes. Who built it?’
‘It was here before we were. Only the dragon-youth or the Great Spirits could properly answer you. And they keep their secrets. Mages of the old schools hollowed it out with chambers, halls and stairways. Then they gave it to the cities, which were all Free Cities, back then. To make a long story very short, Vous and his cohorts stole the castle, then began stealing the cities. They are still busy with that task today, among others. And they will succeed. It is a question of when. Are you good with a sword, Eric?’
‘Not yet. But I’m going to learn.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yes.’
Anfen sat by the fire. There was much to think about. ‘Any magical talent, Eric?’
‘Not yet. But again, I’ll learn.’
‘I’m afraid if you can’t already see magic in the air, you’ll never be able to wield it. Magic is a perilous trade. Why would you want to learn it?’
‘I’m here for a reason,’ Eric said. ‘Since no one’s told me what it is, I’ll decide. I’m going to be the greatest hero you’ve ever heard of.’
Sharfy already is, Anfen thought with amusement. The young man could have been joking or not, it was hard to tell. Perhaps he’d been driven insane by his trip into a new world. It was certainly a stupid thing to say, if he meant it. Anfen saw blood gushing out Eric’s slashed windpipe and looked away. ‘Welcome, then,’ he said.