Page 76 of The Simurgh
Silas settled his grip. He drew his arms back, shoulders bunching.
And struck.
Only to find open air.
The tortoise-like monstrosity surged ahead, ploughing its hill-like structure through the impossibly thick mud. Utterly uninterested in a battle of any kind.
He released a startled cry as two more of the creatures barged past. None of them paid him or his sword the slightest mind. The strange herd of moving hills passed on by, making the earth rumble and the mud flick. He used his sword to shield his face from the flying sludge. A herd was exactly what this was. And they were doing what any decent herd does when it is frightened.
They were stampeding. Granted, it was the oddest stampede he’d ever seen, but the only fight here was the one to avoid being trampled.
The rush lessened, the crowd of panicked snake-headed tortoises dwindling down to the very last stragglers. The smallest of the creatures, more lump than mountaintop, red tongue darting, peered back the way it had come. Whatever it saw there did not please it, for it let out a bleating cry and dove down beneath the mud, sending waves of thick sludge unfurling in every direction.
Silas quick-stepped out of the way, the boots taking him beyond reach of the sudden surge. He spared a glance for the fleeing herd, which was now little more than soft rises in the marshland, vanishing into the indigo mist.
He looked back to where they’d come from, and his veins flooded with hope.
The marshland’s end was in sight.
Not so far ahead lay a very definitive line of glittering flora. He squinted, unsure what he was seeing, forest, likely, a woodlands, or perhaps an exotic jungle, for all the vines that seemed to hang from nothing but the air itself. It was dense and exquisitely beautiful in how it glinted and shimmered and shone with colours he was not sure he’d ever seen in a rainbow.
The mist that blanketing much of this land now shifted from the top of the forest, sinking into the foliage, allowing view of what lay beyond.
Towers. A great number of them. Jutting up out of the growth. All simple in design, single rises of chalk-white but each of differing heights, with some reaching so high he had to crane his neck, and even then he could barely make out their tops . All were rounded, with no sign of any windows and all had the same cobalt-peaked caps with gold trim that resembled coronets.
‘Get us there, now.’ The longsword shifted from his grasp, the scythe reshaping itself into the kite once more. ‘But keep low.’
It was one thing to not have been discovered so far, strange as it was, but entirely another to flaunt that luck and make his approach glaringly obvious.
The kite’s rope remained short, so he had the sense of skiing over the landscape, more so than flying. The journey was brief, and he was set down just before the forest. The ground was carpeted in opalescent flowers, stalks studded with round white orbs, like pearls. With the scythe reshaping itself around his finger, Silas needed only one stride with his fanciful boots to reach the cover of the forest. None of the plants were truly familiar, but his innate knowledge of flora had him drawing comparisons. That curved plant there might resemble a palm tree, if palm trees had tiny golden bells dangling like a bunch of grapes from the salmon-pink fronds, and there a rose bush, if such flowers normally opened and closed their petals like butterfly wings.
Beautiful as it all was, Silas had no time for it.
He ran on, dirty and heart sore, the mud drying in unwelcome places on his body. Was the towers his destination? What other choice was there, with the bandalore still silent?
Silas ran deep into the forest, which made no nefarious move to stop him. No ravens watched from branches, no forest folk sought to distract him. Having such luck on his side was not comforting. Not here, in the land of fae and sorcerers. If he were not in such a damned hurry, he might worry more on why it was he’d seen no more than rampaging tortoises so far, why the vines were slipping out of his way as he ran, rather than tangling him up for safekeeping, the way the bluecaps had trapped the purebreds in crystal in the Forest of Dean.
Silas’s boots brought him to the far edge of the forest so quickly he almost rushed out into the open. He dug his heels in, skidding to a dramatic stop just shy of where he’d be without any concealment at all. He caught his breath behind one of the odd palm-like trees, the bells jangling softly above him.
The towers were so numerous. A veritable city of them, so far as a rescue was concerned. Great windowless monoliths of white stone.
Silas moved his gaze from one tower to the next, hoping he’d feel something, anything, that might lead him to the right one. There was nothing, no melody, no whispers, not a lick of certainty.
Certainly Silas could climb them, but he could be here a month and not find the right tower. Pitch did not have that much time, he was very certain of that.
Was the daemon even here at all? Perhaps it was not the shielding of the cloak that prevented anyone from pursuing him, rather that he was all alone to begin with. The Erlking and his court watching from afar, bemused as he ran about like a rat caught in a maze. It certainly seemed an amusement the UnSeelie Court would enjoy and their trickster king relish.
Silas punched at his thigh, frustration bubbling over. His blow caught at his coat pocket, where a firmness reminded him of the tarot cards he carried.
He drew them free.
Death. Devil. Two of Cups.
And the last.
The Tower.
‘Oh Christ,’ he breathed.