The Way to Babylon Page 9

  Bicker put away the map. ‘I can see I won’t be needing this,’ he said with his ready grin.

  Riven turned back to the view before him. He rubbed his legs absently. They were sore and stiff, but he thought they would carry him to Glenbrittle well enough. It was the climb to the plateau that would really test them. He stood up, knowing that the best things are better not savoured too long, and turned away from the view to the path ahead. It was early afternoon. They had made slow time around the coast, mainly because of his own weakness. He had a grudging respect for Bicker’s fitness; the dark man could probably have been in Glenbrittle now if he had been on his own. He had a curious habit, Riven noticed, of taking out the map and staring at it with eyes that were unfocused, elsewhere; as though he were not really paying it any attention.

  They laboured on round the steep coast, disentangling their way through the strip of stunted oaks. It was a hot and awkward business, made worse by the packs they carried. Riven was a great believer in packing everything which might possibly be needed when he went walking. He even had a length of gaudy nylon rope in his rucksack, though he knew he would never again let himself get into a situation where he might need it. A strange thing is habit.

  ‘There’s the waterfall,’ said Bicker breathlessly, as they cleared the last of the trees. They were close to where Riven had seen the otter. He stared out to sea, but there was nothing in the waves today, not even a fishing float.

  They stopped for a moment so Riven could get his breath back.

  ‘They call the land beyond Glenbrittle Minginish,’ Bicker was saying, ‘and Skye itself is called Eilean something-or-other. Island of the Mists.’

  ‘More like island of the drizzle,’ Riven retorted, short-tempered because of his physical inadequacy.

  ‘Strange names. They don’t all sound Gaelic, either.’

  ‘They’re not. The Vikings colonised these islands off and on. A lot of the names come from the Norse.’

  ‘Vikings!’ Bicker seemed amused. ‘You mean blond giants with horned helmets and axes from the far north?’

  ‘They weren’t like that,’ Riven replied testily.

  ‘I thought they came from beyond the sea, not Scotland.’

  ‘This coast was mostly harried by Norwegians. Orkney and Shetland belonged to them, too, and the land up along the Pentland Firth.’

  Bicker whistled. ‘They got around.’

  ‘They discovered Newfoundland.’

  ‘I thought a... Spaniard did that.’

  ‘Columbus was in the Caribbean, four hundred years later.’

  ‘Where did you learn all this?’

  Riven shrugged. ‘College. But I thought everybody knew about Columbus looking for the back door to Cathay.’

  It was Bicker’s turn to shrug. ‘Shall we attempt the slope, then?’ he asked, losing interest. Riven nodded sharply. For someone so assured and obviously intelligent, Bicker had some strange ideas about history. Or perhaps his own field of knowledge was very narrow.

  The slope reduced them to their hands and knees, and Riven was in silent agony as he toiled upwards. There was nothing but rocks and the swell of the sea to be seen below, and the yellow grass under his nose.

  ‘It’s a hard haul, this,’ Bicker panted, a little way ahead. ‘But it’s the last hard part.’ Riven grunted assent, wanting only a respite. He had not even the breath to swear.

  And then they were at the top, sweating and breathing deeply. It had become suddenly warmer. Riven took off his pack and lay on the grass. The sky had cleared and was more free of cloud. It could almost be summer. Bicker stood with his back to him, eyeing the way ahead. Then he bent to fumble with his rucksack.

  Riven sat up. And swore.

  There was no Loch Brittle; no Cuillin mountains. The Skye he had expected to see was simply not there. Instead he was looking out on a wide expanse of rolling hills, green with new bracken and golden with buttercups, stretching like a vast sunlit sea of light and cloud-shadow into purple heights beyond, barred here and there with the glitter of a river, dotted with clumps and copses of dark trees, silent under the immensity of the sky except for the sigh of the wind that brushed the grass in waves. Far to the west—or what had been west until a few moments ago—there were the blue shapes of high mountains. They were a long way off, but Riven knew, without knowing how, that they were higher than any in Scotland. The sun lit up distant snowfields on their slopes.

  The air was balmy, pushing at his hair like a caress. And the smell—here was a place which had never known engines or factories. There was a smell of grass and new bracken on the breeze, a hint of pine resin from the woods on the higher slopes, a smell of soil, of growing things. It filled his lungs like a draught of spring water, and for a moment tears stung his eyes. Then the panic rose like a cloud in his throat.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  He whipped round to stare at Bicker, to see if the dark man were sharing the hallucination. His companion was studying the spectacle before them with something like rapture.

  ‘Bicker, what’s happening? What’s going on, for God’s sake?’

  The dark man laughed. ‘Calm down, Michael Riven. There is no need to be alarmed.’

  And Riven felt a thrill of terror lance up his backbone.

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. His voice shook. ‘What is this? What have you done?’ He stared at the wide land below, then looked behind him and saw the familiar headland where he had seen the otter, the waterfall sparkling down to the sea.

  ‘I have not done a thing,’ Bicker answered.

  ‘Who are you?’ Riven shouted, and as Bicker smiled at him he suddenly knew. He recognised him. And realised where he was.

  ...The world was a green and pleasant place, wrinkled with silver rivers and scattered with forests which no man had ever cleared...

  No. I must be out of my mind.

  ‘I am Bickling Warbutt, heir to the Lordship of Ralarth Rorim, a fortress of the Dales peoples.’

  The land was hard, but good. In the Dales, there was fine soil, rich enough for barley in the more sheltered parts...

  No. It cannot be.

  ‘It can’t happen,’ he whispered.

  ‘This is your country,’ Bicker said gently. ‘Here, real, in front of us.’ He spread his arms. ‘These are the labours of your imagining.’

  He found it impossible to think. His brain had seized up, had gnarled on to neutral. Part of it was already considering the implications of what Bicker had said, and part of it was screaming quietly to itself. Riven met the eyes of the man who had encountered the Rime-Giant with him in a dream. The man who was a prince in his own books—standing here now in hiking boots and a red anorak with a rucksack at his feet. Bickling Warbutt, heir to Ralarth Rorim.

  It doesn’t exist. It never has.

  He squeezed shut his eyes, refusing to think. Already a madcap race was going on inside his head as his imagination raced to understand this, to extrapolate reason from it. The rational part of him was still quietly gibbering to itself.

  ‘This-cannot-happen,’ he said in a low, steady voice. He stood up carefully, his legs like clay underneath him, and eyed the dark man warily. ‘How did it happen? How did I get here? Where has my world gone—where is the real world? What’s going on?’

  ‘Many questions. I can’t give you all the answers you seek, I fear. Some I will try for, others you will have to wait for.’

  ‘Tell me!’ Riven yelled, an edge of hysteria in his voice. His legs quivered and he half-sat, half-fell down again.

  Bananas. That’s it. I’ve flipped. Gone apeshit. Or I’m on one hell of a trip.

  ‘You are not mad,’ Bicker told him. ‘You must try to accept what you see here—what you find yourself in. I myself know something of how you feel, as have all of us who have been through one of the doors.’

  ‘Doors?’ Riven croaked.

  ‘We have come through a door from your world to mine—from the Isle of Mists that you name Skye to this place. T
o Minginish.’

  ‘Minginish,’ Riven repeated. ‘That’s on Skye.’

  ‘The land beyond the Cuillin mountains. I know. It is our name for our world.’

  ‘‘‘Our’’?’ Riven echoed. He blew air out through his lips. ‘I never called anything in my books Minginish.’

  ‘Not everything is as you imagined it to be,’ Bicker said. ‘I have read your books, Michael Riven. There is much else besides what is in them in this land.’ His face darkened. ‘And more arising every day.’

  Oh, boy.

  Riven gestured back the way they had come, to the familiar headland below and the waterfall. ‘That’s Skye there, down on the shore. That place exists in my world.’

  ‘It does,’ Bicker said. ‘But you cannot go back that way. If you tried, you would merely find yourself on the shore of the southern ocean—our ocean, not yours. The doors open only one way.’

  Riven held his head in his hands. ‘There’s got to be some sort of explanation for this. Quantum physics or something.’ After a moment, he looked up. ‘You’re saying that this corresponds to what I wrote in my books?’

  Bicker nodded. ‘For the most part.’

  ‘So you have Rime Giants and wolves and suchlike?’

  ‘Yes. More than enough of them.’

  ‘And... characters,’ Riven said in a wondering voice.

  ‘Ratagan, Murtach, Gwion... they are here, as I am,’ Bicker said softly. Riven felt the hairs rise at the back of his neck.

  Jenny.

  ‘Is there a dark lady here—or a girl? Shit.’ He remembered. The girl at the bothy who had not been a dream.

  ‘There is not,’ Bicker said hastily. Too hastily.

  ‘There may be.’ Riven groaned. Mother of God, what have I done? ‘No,’ he said. ‘This I can’t take. It is obscene. I don’t know what the fuck you want with me, but you’re not getting it. I’m going home, and you’re not stopping me.’

  ‘You can’t go back that way,’ Bicker told him harshly.

  ‘Go find yourself a bloody quest or something, but leave me alone.’ He threw on his rucksack and started off down the slope to where the waterfall fell into the sea.

  ‘You can’t go back!’ Bicker shouted at his retreating shape. Just watch me, he snarled silently.

  Behind him, the dark man sighed and began unpacking gear from his own sack.

  BY THE TIME Riven had toiled down and up the headland again, it was nearly dark and his legs were screaming outrage at him. He was shivering, for with the setting of the sun it had grown cold, and the stars—strange stars—spattered the sky. At the top of the slope he found Bicker waiting for him beside a bright fire, wrapped in a cloak. He threw down his pack and croaked, ‘Son of a bitch.’ Then he collapsed by the embers. He did not care if this was Skye, Earth or Oz. He was exhausted, and sure he had sprung something loose in the climb. When Bicker, dressed now in dark supple leather and belted with a sword baldric, threw a cloak around him, he did not protest.

  The fire crackled, fluttering in a breeze off the sea. Bicker’s eyes were watchful and flame-filled as he reclined beside it.

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  Riven nodded. Bicker nudged a small black pot out of the fire. He wrapped his fingers in the hem of his cloak and passed it over. Riven took it in the same manner. It was broth. He bent over it and the appetising smell curled up round his nostrils. He blinked rapidly, and then there was a great, dry sob in him that felt as though it would break his breast. He fought, but it mastered him and racked out into the fire lit darkness. Another followed it, and he clutched at the pot until his hands were burned through the cloak.

  ‘Ah, Christ,’ he said thickly. Stop it. Stop it, man. But the golden tears sliced like knives down his cheekbones. The air seemed close and full of unseen faces, crowding round him. He sobbed again, his teeth grating and the lovely wholesome smell of the broth filling his head. Something that had been broken in him stirred again, and he thought the pain of it would kill him.

  He blew on the broth, and drank it in scalding sips at last. When it was finished he lay back on his rucksack and stared at the night sky.

  ‘Bicker,’ he whispered, ‘what’s happening to me?’

  The dark man’s face was twisted with a pity that would once have set Riven snarling. ‘If I knew that, then many of my own life’s questions would be answered also. Let it lie for a while. You need rest, and the daylight is a better time for the answering of questions.’

  Is it? Riven wondered, and he stared out at the blue darkness beyond the fire, suddenly afraid of what the morning would bring him.

  ‘How did you get to Skye?’ he asked.

  ‘Through another door, one up in the northern mountains—’ Bicker hesitated.

  ‘The Greshorns.’

  ‘Yes. The very same. There is a mountain there called the Staer. On a ledge near its summit it is possible to pass from Minginish to your world—to the Isle of Mists.’

  ‘What started this? How did you find these doors? What do you want of me?’

  Bicker shook his head and threw more of the dried heather curls on the fire. They flamed up brightly and their scent filled the night air.

  ‘The story is a long one. I will not tell it this night—’ Here he flashed a glance at Riven that said he would argue the matter no further. ‘Tomorrow I will try to explain a few things...’ He sighed, looking tired himself. ‘It is not an easy thing to tell, but you have the right to know. Indeed, you will have to know. For now, go to sleep. I will watch over us for a while, though the fire should keep the beasts at bay.’

  ‘Beasts?’ Riven queried.

  ‘Go to sleep,’ the dark man repeated.

  THE DAWN WAS bright and cold, the sun burning its way through streamers of pink and scarlet cloud on the western horizon and lighting up the dew on the grass and the stones. Birdsong flickered up and down the hills, but there was no other sound.

  Riven lay watching the sky for minutes after waking. Bicker was already up, doing something to what was left of the fire. Riven felt the damp of the early morning through his sleeping bag and the beginning of protest from his wrecked limbs. Walking would be hell today.

  It was not winter. This was not the same place he had set out from the morning before. This thing was truly happening to him. It was as real as the brilliant dew on the ground, or the rising breeze that pushed the clouds aside and left the sky a deepening blue—more blue than he had ever seen before. No pollutants here. No cars. No smoke worth mentioning. The air was as clear as sunlit diamond.

  This is not Skye. It is not even Earth.

  He closed his eyes briefly, feeling slightly sick. Bicker had promised to do some explaining today. He had better.

  He sat up, wincing. His companion was heating a mess tin full of mush over a primus. Evidently the fire had been beyond resurrection.

  ‘Good morning,’ the dark man said. ‘I trust you slept well.’

  Riven nodded, and crawled out of his sleeping bag. ‘Shouldn’t you be cooking rabbit on a spit or something?’

  Bicker tested the steaming mess, and seemed satisfied. ‘For the moment, this is more convenient. We have a fair few miles to make today.’

  Riven stifled a groan. Just what I need. He noticed that the rucksack had been replaced by a leather holdall, and there was a scabbarded short sword lying across it. He shook his head.

  I don’t believe it. Swords and bloody sorcery.

  ‘Should I call you Prince Bicker?’ he asked, struggling into his boots.

  The dark man smiled. ‘Here in Minginish we are not so formal. Bicker will do. The word “Prince” is only used in your book. It does not correspond to my rank in my own country.’

  ‘My apologies,’ Riven rasped. ‘I’ll try to get it right next time.’ He fumbled in his rucksack for provisions. He needed coffee before he could even think about functioning. Bicker watched him with keen interest, spooning gobbets of his unspeakable breakfast into his mouth.

  ‘What the h
ell is that?’ Riven asked him when he had his coffee bubbling nicely.

  ‘Bacon and beans in a bag,’ Bicker answered. ‘It is another of the things from your world which I will assuredly not miss.’

  Riven sipped his coffee. ‘How well do you know my world?’

  ‘I have spent a long enough time there. At first it was terrifying, for I was not sure if I would find my way home. It was I who found the first door, by accident. And it was a long, weary time before I found the one that would take us back—the one we have just passed through ourselves.’

  Riven frowned. ‘What the hell is going on? What is the point of this? How did it happen?’ He knew there was something like hysteria edging into his voice, but he was too bewildered to care. These things do not happen in real life. Another world. His world, for Christ’s sake.

  Bicker finished the last of his food, and stood up. ‘We had best be moving on. We can talk as we travel.’

  They packed their gear. Bicker stowed the primus away and slid his sword into the baldric, which made Riven stare. He would have laughed, had he not been afraid of how it would sound. In a few minutes, the blackened fire circle was all that remained of their camp, and Bicker covered even that with stones and plucked grass. Then they set off northwards.

  DESPITE HIMSELF, RIVEN found that he was responding to the beauty of the land they were traversing. As the morning wore on, it became warmer, and he sweated under the rucksack with his legs complaining ceaselessly, but even so there was peace of a sort to be had here. He could enjoy the simple emptiness of the land, unscarred by man, untenanted. There were no roads, no telegraph wires, no jet trails in the sky; no litter. And almost no sound. Except for the wind and a few birds, the country was silent, quieter even than the bothy had been, for there the sea had been a constant companion. He could have enjoyed this were it not madness to be even seeing it, walking on it. He tackled Bicker again.

  ‘You promised to tell me how this came about—why you came to Skye. Why you have brought me here.’

  The dark man sighed. ‘Indeed, I did.’ He walked on for a few seconds, his face closed. ‘It is a long and tangled tale I have to be telling you, so you must bear with me. Storytelling is not my strength. Ratagan is the man for that.’ He glanced at Riven quickly. ‘But you would know that already.’