‘That you had not previously—’ began Corde, but he was cut off by the increasingly testy Cabal.
‘Yes, that I had not previously considered. This world is disturbingly arbitrary, random . . .’ he looked for some term that would effectively communicate how repugnant he found it ‘. . . whimsical. I ask you, who spent so much effort planning for contingencies, did you ever consider anything even approaching our current situation?’ The question was only partially rhetorical, but Cabal was glad of the silence it provoked.
Into that silence crept the ever-perturbable Bose. ‘So . . . what do we do next? Shall we abandon the endeavour?’
Cabal shook his head, angry with himself for the weak leash on which his temper tugged eagerly. ‘That is not a decision for now. We cannot spontaneously leave the Dreamlands whenever we want to. We must either exit via another gate opened by the Silver Key—’
‘Will it be necessary to destroy some other hapless soul, Mr Cabal?’ asked Shadrach, coldly.
‘Usually not,’ said Cabal, blithely unaware of any implied criticism. ‘Gateways of the Silver Key rarely manifest in living creatures. Luckily, on this occasion it chose to do so in a poet and writer, not somebody important or useful. As I was saying, that is one way of re-entering the waking world. The other is to find a rising path, which brings one up and out physically from the Dreamlands. Those are few, and extraordinarily dangerous.’
‘As opposed to the nest of security and comfort in which we find ourselves now, eh, Cabal?’ said Corde.
Cabal looked at him coldly. ‘By comparison, yes, Herr Corde. This is a nest of security and comfort.’ He looked down the path leading away from the clearing that had once held the creatures, their kin, their homes and, presumably, their pets. ‘This must lead somewhere,’ he said, and without waiting for agreement, he set off down it. The others quietly followed.
Chapter 5
IN WHICH CABAL WANDERS FROM THE BUCOLIC TO THE NECROPOLITIC
The path did indeed lead them somewhere – and somewhere practical rather than to a cottage made of gingerbread or full of bears or dwarfs or all three. They emerged from the Dark Wood on a long, rolling meadow that sloped down towards a tree-lined road bounded by small fields of corn. The heavy silence that had travelled with them was lifted by clear air and sunlight, and their mood – but for the impenetrable sullenness of Johannes Cabal – lifted too.
‘That will be the road for Hlanith down there, eh, Cabal?’ said Corde, unaware of or unconcerned at Cabal’s metaphysical torment. ‘Finally, a bit of good luck on this expedition.’
‘Perhaps so.’ Cabal signalled a halt by the simple expedient of stopping and expecting everybody else to follow suit. He took out his telescope and surveyed the terrain. ‘There are a couple of people down there by the road. We shall ask.’
‘Isn’t that risky?’ asked Bose.
‘In this place, even blinking is fraught with peril. Yes, it is risky. They look like a pair of yokels doing whatever it is that yokels do during the day, but they may turn out to be hideous monsters intent on chewing out our spleens.’ He shrugged. ‘It happens, but what is one to do?’ He started walking again.
Bose pattered along in his wake, like an anxious pug. ‘Do you think that is likely?’
‘No. Yes. Perhaps. How should I know? I am a stranger here myself.’ And so, having put Bose’s doubts to rest, or not, he fell back into a ratiocinatory silence from which he would not easily be dislodged.
As they approached the road, Shadrach commented disapprovingly, ‘Look at those sheep. They’re in among the corn. They’ll bloat and die from eating it.’
‘You seem very knowledgeable on the matter, Mr Shadrach,’ said Corde.
‘I come from a farming family,’ said the tall, thin, ascetic and thoroughly unbucolic Shadrach. ‘We kept sheep on the top moor, and Heaven help anyone who let them get into the cornfields down by the river.’
They were now only a few dozen yards from the couple by the road, and conjectures could be made without recourse to a telescope. If they were hideous monsters with a penchant for spleen, they carried it well; Cabal’s guess of ‘yokels’ seemed far closer to the truth. They were young people: he a shepherd in a blue smock and red vest, brown-booted and gaitered, a wooden flagon hanging from his belt, his hair a coarse, wiry brown, his sideburns hedgelike; she equally rustic, though apparently wearing her best red dress and white embroidered blouse. A young lamb lay in her lap, crunching sour apples. Judging from Shadrach’s angry intake of breath, this was also something sheep should avoid. They were sitting by the edge of the road between the trees, chatting and giggling, and altogether unaware of anything else outside their sphere.
‘Excuse me,’ said Cabal, ‘how do we get to Hlanith from here?’ He did not ask if this was the right road for, on closer acquaintance, it clearly wasn’t much of a road at all, just a narrow avenue between two rows of unkempt trees. Perhaps once it had led to a great house or estate, but now it was overgrown and even pitted deeply enough in places to create small shadowed pools, one of which the girl was cooling her bare feet in.
The shepherd boy looked up at them with dull surprise, the natural stupidity in his rubicund face plainly enhanced by drink. Behind him, the girl leaned over to look at the newcomers. Her action was coy, but her expression was knowing, and Cabal disliked her for that just as much as he disliked her beau for his bovine inanity.
The boy scrambled to his feet, belatedly alive to his dereliction of duty. ‘Jus’ a moment, yer ’onours, jus’ a moment.’ He ran off to drive the more adventurous sheep from the corn, leaving Cabal’s party in an awkward silence with the girl. She, for her part, did not rise, but remained seated on the green swathe, idly playing with a strand of her russet hair and smiling slightly at them. Corde smiled back, to Shadrach’s disgust, Cabal’s incomprehension and Bose’s blithe ignorance.
‘I wonder, my dear,’ ventured Corde, eliciting a quiet snort from Shadrach, ‘if you could direct us to Hlanith. It can’t be far from here.’
She did not speak, but replied by pointing at the end of the avenue to the south and gesturing vaguely eastwards. Then she went back to toying with her hair and smiling at him.
‘Thank you,’ said Corde, low and slowly, and there was a definite air of twiddling a thin moustache, if he had been wearing one.
‘Thank you, miss,’ said Shadrach, in a tone of subdued outrage. ‘Come along, gentlemen.’ And he led off to the south, followed by Cabal, Bose and, in a desultory fashion, Corde.
As they walked away, the shepherd came back, his hands cupped around some interesting insect he had found. He watched them go with a dull lack of understanding or even remembrance. Then their presence slipped from his mind altogether and he sat down by the girl again to show her this new treasure. Corde watched all this over his shoulder and laughed. ‘As pretty as a picture,’ he said to the others.
Shadrach would have none of it. ‘A particularly vulgar picture. The product of a coarse and depraved artist.’ But that made Corde laugh all the more.
The girl, for all her dubious taste in suitors, was at least a reliable guide. The avenue ended beside a road between high embankments and topped with trees and bushes. It was clear and frequently travelled; they met a tinker coming from the east who confirmed that they were on the Hlanith road, and shortly thereafter they got a lift on a wagon taking fodder into the city. The four men perched on the swaying pile of hay with differing degrees of assuredness and dignity, and even gave voice to their belief that the expedition was past its stumbling stage and was now properly under way.