Саймон Морден - Down Station

It came back to her. She could fumble her way around the base of the cliffs. Sometimes she had to cling on to the rocks as the waves rushed up and tried to suck her down. From cold, she went to freezing numb, but she carried on.

‘Crows? Crows, you bastard. Come out.’ She’d lost her falcon’s sight when she’d lost her falconhood.

A wave drew down strongly behind her, and returned twice as hard. She gasped as the wall of green water hit her, and gasped again as her fingers started to tear free.

A hand came down and lifted her easily out of the surf.

‘Climb higher,’ said Crows. ‘There is a ledge.’

He half-carried her up, and set her down before shrugging off his sea-drenched cloak and wrapping her in it.

‘How did you find me? Where are your clothes?’

‘You stole my map,’ she said, drawing the edges of the cloak around her as tight as she could.

‘And you lied about the portal.’ The whites of his eyes and the white of his teeth as he hissed out his words were all she could see.

‘I did not. It was here.’

‘It is not here now, Mary, and portals do not vanish. They exist in both worlds: that is what gives them power.’

‘This one disappeared. It just went.’

Crows took her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘They do not vanish,’ he repeated. ‘Where is it, really?’

‘It’s here. Here.’ She shook herself free and looked around. There was the headland, and the line of broken rock leading to the stack. ‘There. We stepped out into the sea right there.’

He left her and went to where she pointed, and she followed, still trying to hold his black cloak around her.

‘There is nothing here,’ he shouted over the boom of the waves.

‘It disappeared. It looked like the entrance to an Underground station, and then it disappeared, even as I was looking at it. What does it mean, Crows? Why did it go?’

Crows slapped at the rock with his hands and gave a grunt of frustration. The cliff was blank: no door, no brickwork, no faded sign. The sea swallowed up their feet, regurgitated them again.

‘The portal I came through is still there, though it is closed to me. I have seen other portals too. I have never heard of one just vanishing before.’

‘But it was here. Just… here.’ She scrubbed the spray from her face. ‘I thought they all did that, after you pass through. Fade away until they’re opened again.’

‘No. And the power that comes from them connects with other portals. With this one dead, the lines will have shifted.’ He hit the rock again, just to make sure. ‘Are you telling me the truth, Mary? Was the portal really here?’

‘Yes. It was right here. Now it’s not.’ She turned away and started to pick her way back to the seaward slope.

He was following her, but only when she was out of the surf and up on dry land did she face him again. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘Why? Because I had to. Such knowledge is precious, and we each guard our own carefully. I told you as much.’ He reached out for his cloak, his long fingers snagging the hem and pulling it towards him. She resisted.

‘You could have copied my map, and I wouldn’t have minded.’

The thought seemed to confuse him.

‘You watched me do it. All you had to do was ask. I even owed you: you saved me from the wolfman, you took me to your castle, you fed me and taught me about magic.’ She was cold to the bone, and still she shivered at the realisation. ‘You did all that just to get me to tell you where the portal was, didn’t you?’

‘No. Not all. My motives were… confused.’

‘The fuck they were, Crows. I thought we were, I don’t know, friends.’

He looked away. ‘People like us do not have friends. We are kings and queens, Mary, and we are naturally rivals. We raise castles, we must rule alone: it is for others to obey us willingly or otherwise.’

‘Fuck you, Crows. Fuck you.’

‘You want it,’ he said. ‘You want to be your Red Queen. It is always what you want to be.’

‘Not like that.’

‘However else? There is only one way: seize power and keep tight hold of it. I have let mine slip away, so now I must take my leave and try my luck elsewhere: this portal has gone, and without it the castle will fall.’

‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t my fault.’

‘Sorry?’ He blinked. ‘Sorry? Do not be sorry. This is momentous. This will shake Down to the roots of its mountains. I can sell this knowledge, and it will make me rich. Do not be sorry, Mary.’ He pulled harder at his cloak, and gathered a handful in his fist. ‘Now, I have to go.’

‘You can’t,’ she said. She wasn’t going to tell him, but it just came out. ‘The wolfman is on the shore, looking for you.’

‘Is he? You managed to slip past him, didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t… It wasn’t like that.’

‘The wolfman can howl at the moon until his throat is raw. He will not catch me. I doubt he will even see me.’ His expression softened slightly. ‘A geomancer◦– like her, like me, like you◦– does not suffer rivals. Stay away from the wolfman, yes?’

He walked towards the shore, and the cloak inexorably slipped from her shoulders. She was cold again.

‘Crows?’

‘Do you remember how you got here?’

‘I, I flew.’

He looked sad and shook his head. ‘I know. I know what you are, I know what you are becoming. I have done what I can to help you, but this has come upon you too soon, Mary. Far too soon. It will master you and leave you nothing but a beast, with a beast’s mind, and no memory of what you were. Even now you are struggling to remember.’

He kept on walking, down the rocky shore and into the sea. She wondered what he was doing, what he thought he was doing. The waves lashed him, breaking over his head, and still he kept on.

When he was past his waist, he turned, opened his arms wide and fell backwards into the foam-flecked water. The sea took him.

‘You’re wrong! I do remember,’ she shouted after his wake. ‘I remember everything.’

The sea boiled and seethed, and a sinuous coil of scales burst out and up. It roiled and rolled, then submerged with a smack and a clap. A head, serpentine, sleek and glistening, emerged in its place, blinking a pale membrane across its dark eyes. It kept on rising until it towered over Mary, then it looked down at her, indifferent to her fate, peering at her as if she was nothing more than a rock or a flower: a specimen, interesting for a moment, but ultimately forgettable.

The head turned, plunged down into the deep, the body following in an arc of writhing water. The tail, fringed with spiny fins, flicked up for a moment◦– and then it was gone, and she was left freezing to death on an island in an unknown sea, the wind and the waves tearing at her.

She knew there was only one way off, the way she’d arrived. She’d never swim to shore, and if she tried, the wolfman would only find her drowned, limp body washed up on the strand line.

By the time she reached the edge of the cliff overlooking the headland, she could barely feel her skin. She was disembodied. And as if in a dream, a dream in which she could fly, she staggered◦– just like Crows had walked into the water◦– stiff-legged to the precipice and tumbled over the edge.

‘I can get through the window, if I can get up there.’

Stanislav thought hard, chin on chest. Then he raised his head. ‘If you fall, you will alert the guards. But it is our best option. Otherwise, we will have to face them anyway, and the geomancer will know we are coming.’

Dalip had never climbed anything more complicated than gym equipment. There was a parapet he could stand on, and then a rough stone wall to ascend. He’d have to traverse to the window. He had no idea if he could actually accomplish what he’d just said he’d do.