Now one of the guards answered, his voice slow. “I…we had heard rumours.”
“I was lost beneath the hanging wall, but I escaped, and so can you. Tell me, would you like to escape beyond the hanging wall?”
“And what is there for us?” one man cried, his voice harsh. “We are condemned men. Outcasts.”
Maximilian was quiet for a long moment. “Well,” he eventually said, very quietly, “it seems I am now king, and I would condemn you to the same fate I am condemned to.” A small smile playing about his lips took the harshness out of his words. “I condemn you to service to the realm. I have need of an honour guard. Someone to stand at my back, to carry my personal standard. Will you agree to form part of this guard? Swear your allegiance to me, and to me only?”
“You would take such as us?” one man asked.
“You forget that I was once one of you,” Maximilian replied, his voice hoarse with emotion, “and I would be proud to take such as you. Come, will you swear allegiance to me?”
Their hesitation dissipated. “Yes!” one man cried, then another, and then all raised their voices.
“With a harsh clatter, their chains fell away.
“Thank you, Drava,” Maximilian said under his breath, then he extended his hand so that all the men, former guards and prisoners alike, could kiss it and pledge their allegiance.
Garth simply stood there, astounded. Eventually the men rose to their feet, their shoulders and backs straight now, pride and hope shining from their eyes. Several even smiled. As Maximilian moved forward, they fell in behind Garth and Egalion.
“Egalion,” Maximilian called. “I leave it to you to arrange these men in some order. No doubt others shall be joining us soon enough.”
“No!” Furst screamed, jamming his fingers into the wire of the door and shaking it furiously, “No! It’s not my fault! I don’t deserve to die!”
Cavor’s eyes were now numb with terror; his right arm was unmoving, and the hand where it poked out of the sleeve of his jerkin was pale and veined like the finest marble. His left hand scrabbled ineffectually across the floor of the cage like a drunken spider.
Slowly, slowly, the cage was sliding downwards, and with each passing moment, its slide increased.
Along with the weight of Cavor’s arm.
With each bend in the beautiful tunnel they came across further bands of men, more than Garth knew should be in this particular tunnel, but this was a dream, and oddities were allowed in dreams.
At each group, all without exception huddled terrified by the unexplainable events about them, Maximilian squatted calmly and asked them to swear their allegiance to him, to trust their lives to him.
None refused, nor even hesitated.
The orderly file behind Garth soon stretched out of sight, the men stepping confidently and with obvious pride. Egalion had completely got over whatever surprise he’d felt and was now busily marching up and down the file of men himself, organising them into semi-regular units.
Turning to watch them occasionally, Garth realised that without the presence of chains it was difficult if not impossible to tell which men had once been prisoners, and which guards. Along with the chains had fallen away subservience, hopelessness or bravado—as well as a good deal of the filthy gloam dust. With each step the column took, more of the loathsome grime evaporated away, until healthy flesh glowed in place of the caked darkness.
Garth shook his head and paused as Maximilian reached yet another group; was this the fortieth or fiftieth group? He’d totally lost count.
Now the wail of Cavor’s despair was matched only by the tortured scream of metal as the cage plunged into the depths of the Veins. Furst knew that they should have struck the bottom a long time ago—What was happening? What enchantments had them trapped in this nightmare?
About them green light cradled them serenely, although strange dark shapes shadowed and flickered past the outside of the wire cage.
Maximilian was the first to notice them. He rose from the group of men who had just pledged their allegiance, and frowned at the dark shapes that shadowed through the glass walls. They were not a part of the ocean at all—for the shapes of the ocean fish floated by well beyond them—but seemed trapped within the glass itself.
Then Maximilian’s eyes dimmed and filled with tears as the shapes took form, and resolved into limbs and torsos and heads. Eyes pale with despair glowed at the watchers within the tunnel.
“What is it?” Egalion asked softly from the rear. “Who are they?”
“They are the lost souls of those who died in the Veins, Egalion,” Maximilian replied. “Dead, and cast into the pits to rot unlamented. I…I do not know what to do for them.”
Drava stared at them—the light in the tunnel had dulled because of the profusion of dark shapes writhing through the glass. Abruptly he let Ravenna’s hand go and he placed both of his against the hanging wall, his face frowning in concentration.
“They have watched you, Maximilian,” he said slowly. “They have watched you die and then live to laugh again.” His face softened. “They want to do the same.”
Maximilian gestured helplessly. “The dead are beyond me, Drava. I cannot…I do not know…”
“No,” Drava cut him off. “No. There is nothing you can do for them…but there is something I can do.” He turned his head slightly. “Ravenna, will you come stand with me, place your hand on my shoulder?”
Garth watched a little jealously as Ravenna stepped up and did as Drava asked. He had not minded the attention that Maximilian had paid Ravenna—somehow that seemed only right—but this supernatural creature seemed too proprietary for his liking.
“Ravenna,” Drava asked, “these lost souls want to live and laugh again, but I fear their human form is beyond me.”
“They yearn for the sea,” Ravenna said softly. “To them it represents freedom.”
“So what would you suggest, my Lady of Dreams?”
She smiled slowly, then leaned close and whispered in Drava’s ear. He laughed delightedly, and his fingers twitched on the glass, as if he wanted to clap his hands.
The shapes writhed with greater urgency.
“So you have said,” Drava whispered, suddenly sombre. “And so it shall be.”
The writhing ceased, and for a moment the trapped souls gazed at those inside the tunnel with wide, startled eyes.
Then, gradually, very gradually, they began to change.
Bodies thickened and darkened yet further. Legs melded and arms widened and shrank. Heads became smoother, and the features of their faces blurred and then ran together. Eyes rounded, then enlarged and blinked with serenity and humour.
“Seals!” Garth cried in amazement. “They’re turning into seals!”
“Can you think of anything better?” Drava called. “As seals they will enjoy limitless freedom. They can laugh and clap and bark their joy to the sky if they wish, or slip silently into the water to play with the dolphins in the shadowed depths. Their life will be one of constant laughter and delight. I can think of no better life.”
“Nor I,” Maximilian said softly, tears running down his face. “Nor I.”
Cavor was silent now, but Furst knew he was not dead because such pain could not shine from the eyes of a dead man.
But apart from those agonised eyes, Cavor had turned completely to marbled stone.
The cage continued to plummet downwards, weighted beyond recovery.
On they continued, men in their hundreds and then their thousands rising from their huddled groups on the floor to pledge their allegiance to Maximilian.
This would be, Garth thought a trifle numbly, an honour guard like no other.
Eventually, when he thought he would drop in weariness, Maximilian called a halt. Unbelievably they had come to the end of the tunnel. Before them lay the shaft, but the cage had gone.
Maximilian stepped to the lip of the chasm and peered upwards. “There is a ladder inside,” he called, his voice echoing about the shaft, “and I can see the sun burning overhead—no more than fifty or sixty paces above us.”
Impossible, Garth thought wearily, but nothing was impossible wrapped as they were in this dream.
Maximilian stepped onto the ladder and climbed swiftly upwards, disappearing from sight almost immediately.
Sighing, Garth stepped on after him, then Egalion, and then the first of the thousands behind him.
As the men filed onto the ladder, Drava took Ravenna by the hand and pulled her gently to one side.
“Sometimes,” he said very quietly, “the Lord of Dreams finds his existence a lonely one indeed. And loneliness breeds sadness.”
She remained still, silent, but she did not pull her hand from his.
“And surely some days, Ravenna, you find the marsh tiresome, your days overlong.”
Still she said nothing, her eyes on the men filing past them, but she leaned her body closer to his, and he could feel the slight tremor that rippled through her.