Will Elliott - The Pilgrims

Those lines of light — was that the inside of the door Eric had come through? Is that what the door looked like from this side? If so, it was off to the right, too far away, he’d have thought, to be the same door he’d fallen from …

A face suddenly appeared in mid-air, inside the rectangle lines. A young Asian man — Korean? — poked his head through the gap, mouth open with wonder. Another door, Eric thought. There must be others all over the world. But on this side, they all open here …

The hissing sound was loud in the thing’s throat now, rising with rage and threat. It stood, as again that horrible high-pitched scream shot out and echoed between the sheer valley walls. A call for help? A warning? The face in the door looked down, the young man too overcome with wonder to understand his danger. While the man-beast was distracted, Eric clicked open the briefcase.

The thing turned its head at the sound and looked directly at him, its mouth hanging loose. Its eyes gleamed like a cat’s.

Oh shit. Oh shit …

It turned back to the open door and made chopping motions with its staff, body convulsing like it was about to be sick. Then there was a crack! Something flew through the air: it looked like a shooting wave of heat, the kind that shimmers on a hot road. A sickening fleshy thud. The man fell from the gap in the sky, half his face pressed in and broken. He thumped to the ground and didn’t move. The door in the sky swung shut and the outline of light began to fade back to empty space.

There it is, Eric thought, numb and despairing. There’s the magic you wanted to see. There’s the magic you threw your life away for. Pretty, huh? Was it worth it?

The thing crouched down, shoulders hunched over, sucking in deep breaths, its eyes closed. Little coils of white smoke trailed like ribbons from the tips of its horns, the ends of which were now black as charcoal, as though the spell it cast had burned them.

‘I guess I’m next,’ Eric said.

It regarded him with eyes that seemed an animal’s. ‘You’re Shadow,’ it rasped.

Eric heard: your shadow . ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Your shadow,’ it repeated. Its voice was so deep it could have been a machine’s.

Eric looked down at his shadow, trying to understand. It was cast just faintly in a few different directions on the grass, in the fashion of being under stadium lights. He said, ‘I don’t know what you mean. But I’m not here to hurt you or fight you. I just … fell in. Didn’t know it wasn’t allowed. I’ll go back. Gladly.’ His hand went to the briefcase and quickly clicked open its other clip.

The creature cocked its head at his movements, raised a finger in warning. So ended his bid to get the gun. The little curls of smoke puffing skywards from its horns were thinning. ‘Your shadow,’ it said. It clutched at something in the air he couldn’t see, as if trying to grab a thread of hair. ‘Do you see? Lord’s thought a groping hand, winding and reaching this way, a tendril broken off the swirling mass. Do you not … feel it? It is unsure of its own designs . Conflicts with Master’s, perhaps stirs the pot of its own poison broth, but I shall not rebel.’ The creature bared its broken teeth as though in the grip of inner turmoil. ‘Two winds push here, I lean with the stronger. Depart now. Flee with haste, if flee you will. For his moods change.’

Eric, dismayed at its cryptic speech, tried to sift through for meaning. Flee with haste was all he could comprehend. Unless he knew better … ‘Are you saying I’m free to go?’

The creature waved a stiff hand around at the corpses and hissed like a snake. Eric took that for a very welcome yes . He grabbed his briefcase and ran, hardly daring to believe his luck.

Over his shoulder, he was sickened to see the creature stamping on the newly dead man, tearing up the corpse with its clawed feet. It crouched low to the ground, head down, and came up with blood on its chin. Eric had read horror novels and seen horror films in which all manner of gruesome death was served up as titillation. Yet now he froze. He literally felt a stiffening coldness spread through him and lock up his limbs as the creature’s yellow eyes met his, for, even from a distance, he saw it was eating the body.

The tower. Eric sprinted for it as fast as he could, glanced over his shoulder once to see if the thing pursued. Not yet, but now it got slowly to its feet. It threw back its head and another high-pitched scream rent the air. From far away, there came either an echo or an answering cry.

‘In here,’ a coarse voice called. Below him, a face! A small gap in the grassy turf. A hand reaching out. Right away he knew that face. It was the invader who’d come through the door first that night. Eric threw himself flat, crawled head-first towards the man. Rough hands closed on his arms and pulled him into a darker space. His legs gave from under him and he sank gladly to the ground, sucking dusty air.

The Otherworlder caught his breath in gasping heaves. Encasing him were the smooth, cool walls of a dark cavern. Sharfy marvelled at the young man’s luck on several counts, not least because he’d run just past the mouth of this groundman hole. Sharfy’s charity would not have stretched as far as going aboveground to wave him over if he’d sprinted off at a different angle. Even from a distance he’d recognised the young man from their brief excursion through the entry point.

Anfen and the others would be intrigued to have an Otherworlder brought back alive … what was the word Loup had used for them? Pilgrims. Whatever that meant. Them mages and their secrets and lore they didn’t share, just cos they didn’t think you’d understand it.

On tiptoe Sharfy observed the war mage, whose cries and rasps still echoed off the valley walls. How lucky of the young man to get past it. Suspiciously lucky. ‘Do you even know what that was?’ Sharfy asked him.

The young man shook his head.

‘War mage,’ said Sharfy, smiling. His smile was not pretty, he knew — he had a face full of scars and old pocks, a head like a bruised and dented apple. It invited people to recoil from him, to distrust him. No matter. If the young man was around long enough, he’d find Sharfy kept his word when he gave it. ‘Don’t have war mages in Otherworld, do you? No spells, you said. It should’ve killed you. Like it killed everything else that come through. Even a bird that flew in, it killed. It speak to you? They speak strange.’

The young man swallowed, still a little shaken. He was no warrior, that was certain. Too young for a magician, surely. ‘It spoke,’ he said. ‘I didn’t understand, but it told me to run.’

Sure, sure it did. He thinks I’ll believe that, eh? Fine, I’ll act like I do. But something happened, all right … ‘Stay there for now, get your breath. But no noise. There’s stuff in these tunnels we don’t want to hear us. Got it?’

‘Sure. Thanks.’

‘Don’t thank me, thank your dumb luck,’ said Sharfy. But he could not keep up the pretence. ‘Come on, how’d you get past it? You carrying a charm?’

‘No.’

‘Sure about that? I won’t steal it. You can tell me. I’m ugly but I keep my word.’

‘No charm. We don’t have spells, don’t have charms.’

Sharfy scoffed. ‘What do you have?’

‘Newsagencies and dumb luck, I guess.’ Eyeing off possible escape, the young man peered down where the tunnel curved off to the left, narrow at first but wider at the end. It was thinly lit by little glowing lightstones embedded in the walls, gleaming like pretty eyes. Then he jumped in alarm as an answering shriek to the war mage’s call came from off towards the castle.