Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute - Jonathan Howard

Cabal thought of the Silver Key in his bag and pushed his face another few millimetres. The muscles creaked a little, but it had been some time since he had felt something akin to joy. ‘Yes, Bose. I think with a little caution and circumspect prudence, combined with the will to take immediate action when the need arises, this could all go very well.’ He looked on towards the river. ‘Do those look like clifftops over there?’

Bose squinted. ‘I’m not sure. Perhaps. Why do you ask?’

But Johannes Cabal said nothing.

As it turned out they were clifftops, but the drop below them was ridiculous rather than vertiginous and entirely unsuited for ad hoc murder. It was little more than a bluff overlooking, by a height of a few yards, a sandy bend of the riverbank where perhaps once the Oukranos had considered meandering before deciding it was too much effort.

They stood atop the bluff in silence and admired the view because the view was impossible not to admire. The Oukranos river: as mighty as the Amazon, as broad as the Mississippi, yet as clear as a mountain stream. Light penetrated a long way down, allowing them to see the stony riverbed from the water’s edge out until the water grew too deep and blue and shadowed. Fish, extraordinary fish that had never swum in the seas of Earth, passed by or lazily beat their tails to hold position close by the rock- and pebble-strewn bottom.

Beside him, Cabal heard Shadrach breathe, ‘It’s beautiful . . . magnificent.’

‘I wonder what it’s like to swim in,’ said Corde.

Cabal had his notebook out again and was flicking through it. ‘Apparently it is safe, at least by Dreamlands standards. There may be a few things in it that will eat you, but they’re not common.’ He became aware of Corde’s expression. ‘Really, Corde, people swim in waters populated with crocodiles, alligators and sharks every day. Whatever happened to your defeating of fear, hmm?’

‘It is not fear. It is a rational caution,’ said Corde, falling back upon what Cabal now recognised as the standard Institute member’s response when scared. It was not a refutation nearly so much as a mantra intended to settle the speaker’s nerves.

‘As you wish. We should keep moving. The Animus awaits us elsewhere. Unless that’s it behind us.’ Any shame at the childishness of the trick was handsomely outweighed by the pleasure of seeing three grown men leap into the air, spinning about-face as they did so.

After the recriminations and finger-wagging – all of which Cabal ignored – were over, Bose said, ‘Look over there, about a mile or so downriver. Is that a quay?’

Cabal’s binoculars had also undergone a transformation, but only as far as becoming an unforgivably ostentatious telescope, all chased brass and inlaid with semi-precious stones. Cabal held it for a moment, glaring at it with downturned lips as if it were a mortal insult. Then, without comment, he snapped it out to full length and looked through it in the direction Bose was pointing. ‘Yes,’ he said, having finally got the telescope focused to his satisfaction. ‘There’s a small jetty with a boat moored there. Some sort of fishing boat, I think. The mast’s unstepped. I can see three people.’ He snapped the telescope shut and dropped it into his bag, ignoring Shadrach’s outstretched hand. ‘Hlanith is days away on foot, but perhaps only a day or so by boat.’ He started walking.

‘But what if they want payment?’ protested Shadrach.

Cabal didn’t pause, but called over his shoulder, ‘You are a rich merchant here. You can pay.’

‘I? But, sir, what shall I . . .’ At which point he noticed the bulging purse hanging from his belt. He opened it and, before the astonished eyes of his colleagues, discovered a multitude of thin golden coins of the Roman style. Each coin, however, was not stamped with the countenance of a Caesar but of a beautiful youth in profile, wearing a laurel that was not laurel. His expression was of tolerant indolence, almost sleepy, but the eyes beneath the half-closed lids were somehow ancient, knowing, and perhaps even wicked. Shadrach shuddered, and dropped the coin back into his purse. He hastened with Bose and Corde to catch up Cabal.

The fishermen, for fishermen they were, were taciturn, though not hostile. They listened in silence as Shadrach explained how urgently he and his colleagues needed to reach Hlanith, and did not bargain greatly when the subject of payment came up. They accepted a little of Shadrach’s gold, although later none of the party was sure how much had actually changed hands, only that it was ‘a little’.

Still in near silence, but for the occasional softly growled command from the boat’s skipper, they made ready to cast off while their passengers settled in for the journey. Cabal did not like the fishermen, although he was unsure why. They were quiet and competent, qualities he usually found admirable in people, but there was something more about them that gently raised his hackles by the mildest degree. He could not define this sense, however, so he disregarded it as much as he might. Which is to say, he gritted his teeth and attempted to ignore the nagging sense of wrongness that badgered him at an intensity roughly equivalent to the product of a mild headache and a child with a kazoo. He sat in the bow upon a small barrel, oblivious to the conversational gambits from his fellows, and wishing bitterly that he still had his gun.

It was probably nothing, he told himself. The entirety of the Dreamlands was ‘wrong’. This was just another manifestation of that. As the fishermen cast off and guided their boat into the centre of the great river, Cabal tried to distract himself by watching Shadrach, Corde and Bose. Their earnest pointing and muttering soon bored him so much, however, that he returned his attention to the fishermen. They were swarthy men, but no more than most who worked outdoors for a living, and wore breeches, shirts of rough cambric and scruffy turbans in pale shades of yellow and blue. Their gait was not that of sailors, and Cabal concluded that they rarely if ever left the river. Venturing out of the estuary and hugging the coast to Hlanith was probably a major expedition for them. Yet they seemed unexcited, even blasé, to be going to Hlanith, and uninterested in their passengers. Cabal shrugged inwardly. Perhaps this was normal here. Giving up on them, he turned his attention back to his colleagues for the best part of fifteen seconds before giving up on them, too. Perhaps, he hoped, the changing landscape might give him some distraction from the tedium of the company.

Here, at least, he was not disappointed. The river and the wide valley through which it ran had a curious quality about them that, while just as mysterious as the curious quality about the fishermen, was far more pleasurable. After some careful analysis of his feelings, Cabal abruptly realised that this quality was ‘beauty’, about which he had heard so much and seen so little. On either bank, trees crowded nearly to the waterline, willows by the thousand. He had never heard of the like, never mind having ever seen such a mass of weeping boughs all together. Further into the forests – calling them ‘woods’ was not merely understatement, it was a barking lie – he could see taller trees, oaks, elms, scatterings of evergreens and even a few isolated palms and banyans. These were no forests that ever were, but had merely been dreamed of once, and the fruits of that strange vision had settled and grown. Cabal wondered what sort of man could have dreamed a dream of such a dream and dreamed it so strongly. He watched the trees slide by for another few minutes before concluding that this ancient dreamer, this weaver of the very fabric of the Dreamlands, was an idiot. He’d got it all wrong. Banyans, indeed. Such a dolt.

And as in contemplation of matters arboreal Cabal sat and mused, the Dreamlands sudde

Chapter 4

IN WHICH THE FAUNA OF THE DREAMLANDS PROVE UNPLEASANT

nly changed. It was not a slow transformation but, rather, the abrupt sense of dislocation one might suffer when feeling tired on a train journey, closing one’s eyes momentarily, and reopening them to discover that one is two stations past one’s destination and can’t go back until you reach Crewe. Suddenness and shock are conjoined in that moment, and that was what the four hopeful adventurers experienced when, abruptly, they found themselves no longer on the river but standing in a small clearing in a wood. They reacted differently, as befitted their humours. Shadrach cried out and whirled around as if beset by invisible imps. Corde’s hand fell upon the hilt of his sword, and he looked about, alert and ready. Bose simply stood stock still while his face warred between two expressions of astonishment, one wide-eyed and open-mouthed, the other furrow-browed and jutted-jawed. The resultant facial indecision caused his ears to flap slightly.

Cabal, for his part, stood very, very still. Only his eyes moved as he gathered data in an attempt to deduce what had happened. To one side of the clearing, the tree cover seemed thinner, and the sunlight penetrated, as if they were by a larger clearing or even at the edge of the wood in which they had unexpectedly found themselves. Ignoring the others, he moved quickly that way, pushed by a barrier of bushes between the trees and found the latter case was true. Before him was the bank of the Oukranos, the river stretching away to the other heavily forested bank. There was the flow, running from right to left (Typical, he thought. We are in the Dark Wood), and there was the fishing boat, beating into the wind and the flow as it headed back upstream, presumably returning to the jetty at which they had first seen it. Shadrach appeared at his elbow.

‘Hey! Hey! Halloo! Come back!’ he shouted, but the fishermen just waved and grinned. Shadrach’s shoulders slumped. ‘They’re grinning at us. Is that a friendly grin, or a wicked one?’

Cabal was otherwise preoccupied. ‘“Halloo”? “Halloo”? Has anyone ever actually responded to that cry with anything but derision?’

‘The hounds like it,’ said Shadrach, somewhat ruffled. Cabal did not reply, but simply looked at him as a lady mayoress might look at a good-hearted but simple-minded orphan on a civic visit to the county and district simple-minded orphan facility. ‘I’m a member.’ This did not seem like news to Cabal. ‘A member of the Ochentree Hunt.’

‘Tally-ho,’ said Cabal, in sepulchral tones. ‘But, to answer your question, those are wicked grins. Definitely.’

Corde and Bose joined them as the boat turned a bend in the river and slid out of sight, the crew still waving, still grinning, still wicked.

‘What happened just then, Cabal?’ demanded Corde. ‘How did we end up here?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cabal, opening his bag. It was interesting that he still had it, he thought, that both he and Corde still had their swords and, by the look of it, that Shadrach still had his purse full of coins.

‘You don’t know?’ said Corde, putting his fists on his hips, unconsciously striking an heroic pose. ‘We hired you because you were supposed to know your way around this place . . .’ He paused at Cabal’s index finger, raised in admonition.

‘No,’ said Cabal. ‘You secured my services – and do not refer to me as a hireling ever again – on the basis that I have dealt with unusual circumstances of a supernatural type before, and have survived with life and mind intact. As I emphasised at the time, I have no direct experience of the Dreamlands, and my knowledge is strictly second-hand. This was accepted by all of you, and it is rather too late in the proceedings to start whining about it now.’

Corde lifted his chin, the better to glare down his nose. ‘I was not whining about it,’ he said, nettled.

‘You were whining like a teething baby,’ said Cabal, watching Corde’s hand drift to the hilt of his sword. ‘Herr Corde. If you show steel, I shall kill you.’

Corde’s hand paused. ‘You’re very confident about that, Cabal.’

‘Why should I not be? I have had practical experience of fighting with swords, as distinct from fencing for sport. I am still here. You may draw your own conclusions.’

‘Gentlemen! Please.’ It was Bose, moving between them. ‘We are marooned and lost in a hostile land! Now, surely, is not the time for divisions within our party? United we must stand, gentlemen, for the alternative is oblivion.’

Corde’s hand twitched, then fell back to his side. Cabal, who had been on the point of verbally agreeing with Bose, instead kept his silence and allowed a carefully pitched mild smirk to cross his face. Thus, he was in the happy position of allowing Corde’s own pride to infer that Cabal considered him a coward, without actually having to go to all the trouble of implying it. It was the most effortless insult he had ever delivered, and its elegance charmed him.

Apparently unaware of the current of animosity that still ran between Corde and Cabal, and the potential differences it augured for the future, Bose seemed pleased by his peacekeeping efforts. ‘Mr Cabal, time seemed to jump. Is this something that you have ever read of in this or any similar context?’

‘It is not, which is suspicious in itself. One would expect such an effect to have been mentioned at least once in the great heap of portentous drivel that has been written about this place. Furthermore, it is not simply a skip forward in time, or – strictly speaking – the subjective perception of time that they use here instead of the real thing.’

Shadrach was nodding. ‘The fishermen. They seemed completely unmoved by what had happened. Indeed, they seemed party to it.’

‘Exactly so,’ said Cabal, quickly regaining the expositional high ground. ‘It is hard to imagine a chain of events by which all four of us would meekly agree to be marooned in the woods, so one is drawn to the conclusion that this has been engineered in some way by an external agency.’

‘To what end?’ asked Shadrach.

‘With that sort of ability, why didn’t this hypothetical agency of yours just kill us?’ said Corde, dismissively. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Believe what you will. You are in error if you attempt to ascribe Earthly motives to every mind in the Dreamlands. This could all be in the nature of a prank. Our death was not sought, only our inconvenience.’

‘A prank?’ This concept clearly did not sit well with Shadrach. If the Dreamlands were home to entities that could make time hiccup for a bit of a jape, then what they were capable of doing when they applied themselves hardly bore thinking about.

‘Or a distraction, or a pleasantry, or a comment, or something that cannot be interpreted by the human mind.’ Cabal shrugged. ‘Or it may just have been a fluke. A random fragment of awareness that momentarily settled upon us, Azathoth belching, the stars being not entirely wrong. Who knows? I doubt any mortal does. Whatever the intent, we must deal with the results. The very inconvenient results.’ He took the map from his bag and unrolled it once more. ‘Yes, there we are. The Dark Wood. We shall have to walk to Hlanith.’