Page 10 of Inferno

Why the hell had he said no to Nerik? Just one little scrap of courage was all he’d needed, and instead, he’d turned tail and run like a frightened rabbit.

With a slow, dull ache in his chest, Yorin climbed the stairs in the dark and lit the lantern with a match. Three half-finished projects lay scattered about the tables in his upper room, and he took two halting steps towards the first one. He could finish pinning the sides together and put in some stays for the first fitting…

But somehow, as he stood there staring at the various pieces of cloth, Yorin’s usual enthusiasm for his craft failed to surface. Was this to be his lot in life, then? Sewing shirts alone in a dimly lit room, while he made the mistake of worrying more about money than about the people who could be his friends?

Abandoning his plans for both dinner and a bath, Yorin changed into his nightclothes and put himself to bed. Perhaps tomorrow, the world would seem brighter.

CHAPTER FIVE

It was long past sunset by the time Nerik made his careful way through the forest toward the Gate of Chalandros. From his cabin, north and slightly east of Minia, he took the well-travelled track up to the main road east to Azertel, then crossed the road and followed a small foragers’ track to the north-west. Once he reached the river, he abandoned the road altogether, picking his way through ferns, clambering over rocks, and weaving between dense stands of trees, as he inched his way ever closer to the gate.

There was a road that led directly up to the gate, of course, spitting its travellers out of the trees and onto a wide battlefield where the army of warriors would spend the next twenty-three days slaughtering any hapless soul who failed to have a firm strategy for getting past them. And to be honest, there were only two real strategies that worked. The first was to run away as quickly as possible. The fire-dogs, the unicorns and the vreki all stood a solid chance at that one, but any of the bipedal species would never be quick enough, what with two hundred fit, strong men ready and willing to run for literally hours through the forest to hunt them down.

The other strategy was to play dead. There were always a handful of courageous lunatics who came through the gate on the last day and basically fell to the ground amid their dead and dying brethren and then waited for the gate to close and the warriors to leave. Once they were alone, they would then sneak away into the forest and attempt to make contact with the other Chalandrians living on this side of the gate.

Of course, there were plenty of desperate boffins who were willing to try other strategies. Some tried to force their way past the army using strength of numbers. As far as Nerik was aware, no one had ever succeeded, the warriors outnumbering even the most coordinated attempts by groups of desperate and impoverished civilians. Others used their fellow refugees as a distraction, waiting until a band of salases or fenrigs were engaged in battle and then trying to slip away into the forest unnoticed. A handful succeeded each cycle, particularly if they tried the trick at night, but most were spotted before they reached the edge of the battlefield and summarily killed.

And so that was where Nerik came in. Because as much as he hated being anywhere near the gods-forsaken gate, he had a role to play in helping those handful of people make it to safety. Over his shoulder, he carried a plain brown satchel, older and simpler than the one he usually carried around Minia on his deliveries. Inside it was a bundle of rocks, each with one of Gosta’s notes wrapped carefully around it and tied with string. Usually it was one note per rock, but this time, there had been so many that Nerik had been forced to tie two or three notes around some of the rocks, leaving it up to the recipients to sort them out and hopefully not squabble amongst themselves as they tried to read them.

During each cycle of the gate – twenty-three days open and twenty-three days closed – there was exactly one opportunity for people on this side to send messages or supplies back through the gate. And apparently, only one Chalandrian in Minia foolhardy enough to come this close to the battlefield for the sake of ensuring those messages got sent.

Up ahead, Nerik could see the gap in the trees where the forest ended and the battlefield began. There was a quarter moon tonight, providing just enough light to fumble his way about without lighting up the whole forest like a festival. It was as good a compromise as he was ever likely to get, given that his night vision was nowhere near as good as a salas’s or a vreki’s, but it was absolutely imperative that he not be spotted. Hence his avoidance of the main road.

Nerik came to a stop, taking a few long, slow breaths to try and calm himself. By Arix the Lifebringer, he hated this part. He shifted from one foot to the other, wishing for the thousandth time that there was another way to do this. He set his satchel down on the ground, then forced himself to stand still. He listened carefully, separating wind from nighttime animals, making sure he could distinguish the rustling of a boar in the leaves from the footsteps of a guard. There was no reason anyone else should be out here at this time. The warriors wouldn’t return until the morning, and the clean-up crews who cleared away the dead bodies after each cycle had finished their job over a week ago.

But with his own life, and that of a dozen Chalandrians on the line, Nerik took no chances and cut no corners.

Some ten minutes later, he was satisfied that he was alone. And that meant it was time for the even more dangerous part of his task.

Being as quiet as possible, Nerik began to strip off his clothing. Thankfully, tonight was dry, meaning there were no added difficulties to this part of the mission. On rainy or snowy nights, things got a lot more complicated.

Once he was naked, Nerik made sure the satchel was within easy reach, the strap lying on a rock for ease of handling. Then, sending a prayer to Arix for his luck to hold, he removed the obsidian gem from around his neck.

Instantly, Nerik reverted to his native physical form. Infernals were fire-based creatures, the essence of their life contained in a bed of embers in their belly. If the fire was burning hot enough, it could be seen as a faint orange glow in his lower torso, but most of the time, his burning core was hidden. The rest of Nerik’s body was black, composed of a combination of ash, soot and smoke. His eyes, though, would be glowing red, like the fire inside him, and he knew from experience that humans found his native presentation to be entirely horrifying.

In many ways, it was more of a risk to approach the gate in his native form. Any stray passersby who saw him would immediately recognise him as a demon. If he was found in his human form, he would at least have the opportunity to make a few excuses, try and talk his way out of the situation.

But as with so many things in Nerik’s life, the choice to use this form was a gamble. If he was found here as a demon, he would have the chance to run away, and given the darkness of the night and his own black form, he’d have a reasonable chance of escaping. If he was discovered in human form, however, he would likely be questioned by the Captain of the Guard himself. A civilian loitering around the Gate of Chalandros in the middle of the night was rather suspicious behaviour, after all. Then he’d have to explain why he was carrying a bag full of messages instructing ‘demons’ on how to evade the human army. Consorting with demons was considered to be treason, and it was entirely likely that if he was caught doing that, Nerik would suffer a public execution for his efforts. And so, in an attempt to preserve the ‘human’ life he’d built for himself here in Minia, he risked being attacked for being a demon instead.

Settled into his native form, Nerik carefully picked up the strap of the satchel, making sure to only use the tips of his fingers and holding the bag away from his body. The strap was made of sturdy leather, but given enough heat, leather would still burn.

He picked his way to the tree line and took a long, slow look around. The battlefield was empty and silent, but for a lone owl hooting from time to time on a nearby tree stump.

Nerik felt a swirling eddy of heat inside himself stir up a cloud of ash, making his body itch. Such was the degree of his nervousness that he’d lost control of the edges of his fire. Gods damn it, the sooner this was over with, the better.

But nonetheless, he mustn’t rush. Rushing led to mistakes, and mistakes led to death.

Checking once again that he was alone, Nerik crept across a hundred metres or so of open ground, until he was right beside the towering stone wall that housed the Gate of Chalandros. When the gate was open, it displayed a swirling silver portal, five metres wide and just as high. Now, though, while the gate was closed, it was covered with a massive stone slab.

The slab itself was both immovable and impenetrable. Numerous plans had been enacted in the past to try and prevent it from opening, or to destroy it entirely. Nothing had made so much as a dent on the stone, and while to the Chalandrians, this made total sense – the gate was a work of some ancient and powerful magic that resisted all attempts to interfere with it – to the humans, who didn’t believe in magic, the indestructible nature of the gate remained a conundrum.

Nerik set his bag down and emptied it onto the ground. Each little parcel had to be set up so that it was close enough to the gate that someone could easily reach through and grab it, without having to cross the gate entirely, while at the same time, being far enough away from the gate that they didn’t accidentally get dislodged when the stone slab opened. It would do so at exactly midday tomorrow, the stone rolling away entirely by itself.

Nerik set the nine obsidian gems Kit had given him along the eastern-most edge of the gate, for no other reason than that he’d been doing so for the last dozen cycles, and sticking to the routine would help those on the other side find what they were looking for. Each one would allow a person to disguise themselves as a human once they activated the glamour spell contained in the obsidian. The spells were all fairly similar, but contained variations according to the species they were intended for. Salases, for example, had horns that needed to be glamoured, while hadathmet had tails, and fenrigs had spines on their shoulders. In an emergency, one could use a gem that had been designed for a different species, but the result was often imperfect and uncomfortable.

That part taken care of, Nerik then lined up the rocks along the rest of the length of the gate, taking care to touch only the rocks themselves, and not the letters attached to them. There was no point going to all this trouble to deliver the messages if he burned half the words and rendered them unreadable.

He tried to arrange them so that they were easily accessible, but also somewhat random. The gate was subject to close scrutiny, and a neat row of similar sized rocks all lined up together would draw instant suspicion. If the warriors discovered that someone was sending messages back through the gate, they’d immediately set up a permanent guard here, and then the Chalandrians’ last and only avenue of communication with their homeworld would be lost – something that must be avoided at all costs.