‘Yes, indeed,’ said Cabal. ‘Apart from the trifling facts that we have no idea where the Animus is, whether its whereabouts are known to anyone in Hlanith, or – and this is my personal favourite – if it even exists. Apart from those caveats, yes, everything is going swimmingly.’
Hlanith, however, was no disappointment on first sight. The land around it was low and marshy, but approached from many directions by causeways both natural and artificial. These converged on a great sloping plateau no more than a few dozen yards higher than the surrounding marshland, a plateau that sloped gently down towards its seaward side. The granite walls that ran around the town proper were almost unnecessary to the defences – the approaches could be made very difficult to any enemy – but it seemed that the town architects had felt that walls were necessary, so there they were.
Their wagon clattered up an artificial causeway whose length was broken here and there by bridges to let the highest tides wash in and out of the marshes unimpeded. The illusion of reality was remarkable, Cabal admitted to himself. The sea breeze blew in and brought the smell of brine with it. Gulls, identical to the birds of Earth, as far as he could see, wheeled and cried over the hummocks of harsh sea grass growing across what seemed to be the estuary of a great river that had disappeared. He watched as a gull flipped a fish out of a shallow pool where it had been stranded, immediately starting a fierce squabble among the rest of the opportunistic flock.
The wagon paused briefly at a guard post close to the end of the causeway. The guards’ questions and search were so cursory and disinterested that it seemed Hlanith had little need of any defences at the moment, natural or artificial. The wagon was directed onwards across the drawbridge and under the portcullis of a small keep that was built across the full width of the causeway – an artefact from a less settled time and a precaution against a dangerous future – and ten minutes or so later, they were clambering down and thanking the wagon driver outside a gate in the town wall. He, for his part, surprised them by refusing to take payment, and wished them a pleasant stay in the city before parting from them.
The guards on the gate were only fractionally more interested in Cabal’s party than the ones on the causeway had been, but only as far as discovering that they were new to the Dreamlands. They asked if they had come via the Enchanted Wood, and Cabal lied, and said that they had. He suspected that if the guards heard that their route had taken them through the far more dangerous Dark Wood, then there would be more questions, starting with ‘So, why aren’t you all dead?’
Once the guards’ initial prejudices that they were dealing with a bunch of tourists was confirmed, the expedition was allowed into the city proper. None of them were quite sure what they had expected Hlanith to look like, and this was as well for every expectation would have been beggared. The town was medieval in flavour, yet peculiar in execution. There was something very Scandinavian about the tall, peaked roofs, yet the crossbeams and plaster seemed more Tudor, and the mixture of thatching on some buildings, while their immediate and otherwise identical neighbours were tiled in the Mediterranean style, just seemed wilfully contrary. Bose looked around with hands on his hips, every inch the gormless tourist. ‘Well I never,’ he kept saying, which was both true and redundant.
‘Well, Herr Cabal,’ said Shadrach. ‘How do we proceed from here?’
‘We search, and we research. Herr Corde, you strike me as a man who would be at home gathering intelligence in a tavern. I would suggest you find somewhere busy and not too disreputable and start there. Herr Bose, there must be some form of library or university here. In your persona as a magistrate, you may be able to gain access to an archive that we cannot. Learn what you can, or at least gather lines of investigation that may prove fruitful. Herr Shadrach, Hlanith is primarily a trading centre and the mercantile guilds will surely be strong. Merchant ships criss-cross the world from here and may have brought back some useful data for us. I would suggest you make the acquaintance of the local merchant princes and discover what you can. We should all make our own arrangements for somewhere to sleep, then meet on the morrow.’
This seemed like a sensible use of their time, and none had any problems with it, beyond an understandable lack of confidence as to how well they might get on with the locals. This was quashed by a heavy implication from Cabal that they were subject to the influence of the Phobic Animus and so were behaving like – and this is not the exact phrase he used, but certainly gives a sense of it – a ‘big bunch of jessies’.
‘And what will you be doing all this while, Cabal?’ asked Shadrach, as he doled out coins to the others, mostly to Corde, who reckoned he might have to get in a few rounds of drinks, a duty he seemed very happy to be taking on.
Cabal did not answer immediately, but looked down the long avenue at whose head they stood to the defensive wall that would seal off the docks in case of seaward invasion, and beyond to the oaken wharves and ships, and still further to the great blue-grey Cerenarian Sea. ‘There are other questions to be asked, and other sources to be questioned,’ he said distractedly. Then, drawing himself back to the present, he added, ‘We will meet here at midday tomorrow to exchange what we have discovered and to decide what to do next. Are we agreed?’
And so they parted.
Cabal did not make enquiries: experience had given him instinct. He simply followed his whims until they brought him, as they always did, to the graveyard. In this particular case ‘graveyard’ was a poor sort of term for a true necropolis, a labyrinth of lanes and alleyways bordered by tombs like stone huts, opening out into fields of grave markers, and squares where the municipal buildings were great mausolea and temples to the departed souls. It might seem strange that there was death within sleep, but the truth of it was that the Dreamlands were as real as anywhere else, at least while you were within them. Judging from this town of the dead that nestled within a city of the living, many would never leave.
Cabal had entered the necropolis at its western gate, and walked until he found himself at its heart, a great circus – in the ‘metropolitan’ rather than ‘three-ring’ sense – of white gravel encompassed by great curving kerbs of stone tall enough to sit upon, which Cabal did. The kerbs were periodically broken by the beginnings of avenues that radiated outwards to every corner of the enormous area. Cabal watched a funeral enter the circus and depart down one of the avenues, a long column of figures in all encompassing black veils fore and aft, with a much smaller group of soberly dressed men and women following an open hearse drawn by six black horses. These latter people were dignified rather than mournful, unlike the veiled figures that sobbed and wailed and struck postures of extravagant spiritual distress. Cabal waited until the funeral had largely processed on to the avenue before getting to his feet and walking after it.
He caught up with the rearguard professional mourner and coughed until he gained its attention. ‘Excuse me, madam,’ he said. ‘I was wondering if you could perhaps help me?’
‘You can start by calling me “sir”,’ said a bass voice from within the veil.
‘Yes, quite. My mistake,’ said Cabal, after the shortest of pauses. ‘I was thinking that in your profession you must have a good knowledge of the layout of this necropolis and—’
‘Look, squire, I’m working,’ interrupted the mourner, continuing to strike attitudes of mortal grief. ‘The punters have forked out for forty mourners, not thirty-nine. If you want to talk, keep up and look mournful, savvy?’
‘I don’t have to be extravagant about it, do I?’ Cabal was watching the others, who looked like nothing so much as a dance troupe extemporising on the theme of electrocution.