‘Is Laryon on his way?’
‘Regretfully not,’ said Nyer. ‘He has encountered a problem with certain of his staff.’
‘I see.’ Styliann’s eyes narrowed. People didn’t usually pass up one of his invitations. He made a note to speak with the Master presently. ‘Now, Dystran, the DimensionConnect research, it is in an advanced state, I trust?’
Dystran looked to Nyer, who gestured him to speak.
‘Yes, my Lord. We are testing in the catacombs.’ He smiled before he could help himself.
‘Something amuses you?’
‘Sorry, my Lord.’ Dystran’s cheeks suddenly glowed red beneath his short brown hair. ‘It is just that we had to improve drainage rather urgently after the initial, highly successful test.’
Styliann raised his eyebrows.
‘Keep to the report,’ said Nyer.
Dystran nodded. ‘We have made three successful tests of the DimensionConnect spell, linking our dimension with that of another. Having made the correct calculations, we were able to steer a course of water between the two, unfortunately flooding one spell chamber.’
‘Excellent,’ said Styliann. ‘How long before we are ready for a live test?’
‘Any time,’ said Dystran. ‘The only question remaining is one of mage linkage. We assume that the more mages casting, the wider the channel. However, there are risks involved.’ He paused. ‘Finally, dimensions are not always in alignment, and although we can calculate when they will be, we have no control over exactly when it is possible to cast.’
Styliann frowned. ‘What are the alignment windows?’
‘Between several hours and several days. We are still searching for a pattern.’
The Lord of the Mount nodded. ‘That will do. Dystran, I need you to bring your team of mages up to speed for a large-scale live test. How many do you have?’
‘Thirty,’ said the mage.
‘Your view, my old friend?’ asked Styliann.
‘It is the ideal offensive weapon for the pass,’ said Nyer.
‘Naturally.’ Styliann smiled. The door to victory opened once again.
Later, Styliann held communion with Laryon and what he heard took the smile from his face. It was sad when old friends began playing power games with him. It made him angry.
Flesh was being sucked from his bones. Blood was pouring into the skin of his face. He could feel it swell until his cheeks burned with pain, and then swell yet more. Hirad’s hands tightened reflexively, right hand attempting to crush the hilt of his sword. Eyes open, unclosable, seeing nothing but blackness mottled with grey. If he could have turned his head he was sure that he wouldn’t have been able to see any of the others. Were they even there?
He could hear no sound but for the blood thrashing through his veins and his brain shouting at him to make sense of it all. Was he walking? He thought not, but he was certainly moving. Where didn’t matter. He just wanted it to stop before the flesh was torn from his body and his blood surged into the void. Even then, he found himself thinking that he would still be moving. He felt a pulsing spread through his body. It began in the pit of his stomach and moved swiftly to enmesh his entire being. It was hot. Very hot. The blood felt as if it would boil his veins, melting them away.
Light.
The end of eternity.
A fall. Hard ground. A dimming of the light.
Hirad was sitting in an open space and it felt high up. No reason for that. It just felt that way. He looked left and right, counting the rest of The Raven off in his head. They were all there, all sitting, all looking at each other. Behind them, the rip hung in the air a couple of feet from the ground. The end of the rope that bound the chest hung in a slight bow. Hirad tracked it to the chest, which was lying on its side next to Ilkar. And behind the rip, a sheer drop into nothing.
Hirad stood up on juddering legs, quickly subsiding to calm, and drank in his first sight of another dimension. With the blood settling back to a normal pace through his veins, he felt the hairs all over his body stand as he breathed. He hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t this. The air tasted different, dry and tinny, and the whole atmosphere was strange and cloying, slightly irritating to the skin and eyes.
The sky above them was dark, filled with cloud boiling across the sky, though he could feel only a light breeze on his face. He could see no break in the cover yet a half-light spread from the horizon where the black of the cloud met the black of the land.
And they were standing very high up. The feeling was confirmed by simply looking down a few feet behind and to his right. The rip was positioned at the very edge of the plateau on which they had landed and the drop was sheer immediately to both sides. Lightning, red and harsh, flared and sheeted across the land, illuminating nothing, only reinforcing the impenetrable dark. Almost as one, The Raven paced further from the edge, each man noting the small margin for error when they made to return to their own dimension.
But he knew what it lacked. Sound. Apart from the breeze sighing in his ears, he could hear nothing at all. No voices, no animals, no birds. No sound of any life whatever. Even the lightning behind them was silent. It made him uneasy. It was like standing in the land of the dead.
Hirad tracked the land to his left until his line was broken by a building. Of sorts, anyway. Gazing straight ahead across the open ground - and it was ground; soil and vegetation ruffling in the gentle wind - he saw a jumble of ramshackle structures. Broken timbers, crumbled stone and cracked slate littered the area and he could see the dereliction stretching away for what had to be five or six hundred yards until it stopped abruptly, presumably at the farther edge of the plateau.
Beyond that, another rip hung in space. And as his eyes adjusted to the light, he could see all around them, but scattered distantly, rough columns of rock which expanded at their heads to form more plateaux, disc- and oval-shaped. Clearly, they were on a similar structure and the realisation unbalanced him briefly. He thought he could just make out more buildings on the other discs, some towering like palaces. But no more light. Nothing moved but that under the sway of the breeze.
‘Nice place,’ muttered Talan, his voice sounding loud in the quiet.
Hirad started. ‘Gods in the ground, what is this place?’ The barbarian wished fervently The Unknown were there. It would have calmed him just a little.
‘It doesn’t make sense to my mind,’ said Denser. ‘How did they come to be up here, and how do they get from this platform to any of the others, and how do they get these buildings up here . . . ?’ His voice trailed away, his hand still pointing vaguely in the direction of the derelict village on the platform, if that was what it was.
‘And who were they?’ asked Ilkar.
‘That’s assuming they’ve all gone,’ said Talan.
‘You’ve all thought that far, have you?’ asked Hirad. ‘Personally, I’m still debating jumping straight back. This place makes my skin crawl.’ He could feel his heart beating fast again.
‘But isn’t it fascinating?’ said Denser. ‘This is another dimension. Think what that means.’
‘Yeah,’ said Hirad. ‘It’s totally different, it makes me feel bad and I get the feeling we shouldn’t be standing here.’
‘Different but in so many respects the same,’ said Ilkar. He bent down and grabbed a handful of earth. ‘Look. Soil, grass, buildings . . . air.’
‘But no noise. Do you think they’re all dead, whoever they are?’ Denser started walking towards the remains of the settlement. Reluctantly, Hirad followed with the rest of The Raven, chewing his lip, the sword in his hand providing no comfort whatever. The place was oppressive despite the lightness of the air, and the lack of noise made him dig repeatedly in his ears with the forefinger of his left hand, searching for the reason why he couldn’t hear anything other than the sound of their feet and breathing.