Read Online Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute by Jonathan L. Howard - Free Book Online
Authors: Jonathan L. Howard
Ads: Link
flintlocks, perhaps at some future date when the waking world was using death rays and germ bombs.
Cabal took up the sword by the belt and strapped it on. It hung neatly at his left hip, and added a pleasing weight to his stride that he knew a real sword would never match. Demonstrating none of Corde’s bashfulness, he drew the blade in a swift motion and tested its balance. Predictably, it was perfect, although it was no sort of weapon that he had ever held or even seen before. It was a rapier of sorts, but of a combative nature rather than for fencing: flat-bladed with a shallow curve that swept up to a right angle a finger’s length from the sharp tip. Cabal slashed and thrust at the air for a few seconds. An interesting weapon, he concluded. At heart a rapier, but with just enough sabre in its family tree to allow the easy hacking of unfortunates when the mood took one.
He returned it to its scabbard with precision, and looked up to see Corde watching him with interest. ‘You’ve fenced before, Cabal?’
Cabal noticed that familiarity was breeding sufficient contempt for them no longer to address him as ‘Mr Cabal’. ‘I have. Have you?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Corde drew his sword, and it was as different from Cabal’s as a Viking one-and-a-half-hander bastard sword is, unsurprisingly, from a rapier with a bit of sabre on the side. ‘Nothing like this, I grant you.’ He whirled the sword in the air and it seemed for a moment that its path was made of agleaming arc of solid steel. He swept it back again and then around his head, his eyes filling with undisguised joy. ‘It’s wonderful . . . wonderful!’
Suddenly his sword stopped in mid-air with a sharp cry of steel on steel. Cabal stood with his own once again drawn, halting Corde’s in an exact parry. ‘It is a dream, Corde.’ He lowered and scabbarded it. ‘Time is pressing, and we shall have plenty of time for you to demonstrate your dazzling swordsmanship. I would remind you that we have an entire world to search and we are by no means immortal.’ He took up his bag while Corde reluctantly slid his blade into its scabbard.
Cabal took out his folder of notes on the Dreamlands and found a flattish section of ground on which to unroll a map.
‘You have a map, Cabal?’ said Shadrach. ‘By all that’s wonderful . . . !’
‘Please do not become overly excited by it, gentlemen,’ Cabal warned. ‘It was drawn from the fancies of poets and the ravings of maniacs – which is to say much the same thing – and is therefore only slightly more useful than a blank sheet of paper. Why it is always poets, who are at the laudanum trough or gulping down absinthe, instead of somebody useful like cartographers, I have no idea. In any event, we have an unreliable map. And upon it, we are . . .’ Cabal stabbed his finger down ‘. . . here.’
The others crowded around and looked at the map. After a few moments of angling his head this way and that, Shadrach asked, ‘How can you be so sure?’
Cabal took up the map, rolled it and put it into his bag. ‘In all the Dreamlands, there is one particularly famous mountain, Mount Hatheg-Kla. We are about one mile up it.’ He turnedand pointed towards the cloud-wreathed summit. There was something unpleasant about the mountain’s perspective, as if there were simply too much of it and it had somehow furled itself just enough for it to be acceptable to the human psyche. Once inside the mind, however, it popped open like an umbrella with an unreliable catch, jabbing the sensitive fleshy parts with the spiky tips of its ribs and poking about with its contradimensional ferrule. Cabal, from long mental exercise, firmly closed the umbrella again and dropped it into the elephant’s foot of his super-ego. The others, less prepared, were struck dumb by the immensity of the prospect.
Insensitive to his fellows’ state, Cabal continued: ‘Seven miles further up is the highest any human has ever climbed. Barzai the Wise
Cabal took up the sword by the belt and strapped it on. It hung neatly at his left hip, and added a pleasing weight to his stride that he knew a real sword would never match. Demonstrating none of Corde’s bashfulness, he drew the blade in a swift motion and tested its balance. Predictably, it was perfect, although it was no sort of weapon that he had ever held or even seen before. It was a rapier of sorts, but of a combative nature rather than for fencing: flat-bladed with a shallow curve that swept up to a right angle a finger’s length from the sharp tip. Cabal slashed and thrust at the air for a few seconds. An interesting weapon, he concluded. At heart a rapier, but with just enough sabre in its family tree to allow the easy hacking of unfortunates when the mood took one.
He returned it to its scabbard with precision, and looked up to see Corde watching him with interest. ‘You’ve fenced before, Cabal?’
Cabal noticed that familiarity was breeding sufficient contempt for them no longer to address him as ‘Mr Cabal’. ‘I have. Have you?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Corde drew his sword, and it was as different from Cabal’s as a Viking one-and-a-half-hander bastard sword is, unsurprisingly, from a rapier with a bit of sabre on the side. ‘Nothing like this, I grant you.’ He whirled the sword in the air and it seemed for a moment that its path was made of agleaming arc of solid steel. He swept it back again and then around his head, his eyes filling with undisguised joy. ‘It’s wonderful . . . wonderful!’
Suddenly his sword stopped in mid-air with a sharp cry of steel on steel. Cabal stood with his own once again drawn, halting Corde’s in an exact parry. ‘It is a dream, Corde.’ He lowered and scabbarded it. ‘Time is pressing, and we shall have plenty of time for you to demonstrate your dazzling swordsmanship. I would remind you that we have an entire world to search and we are by no means immortal.’ He took up his bag while Corde reluctantly slid his blade into its scabbard.
Cabal took out his folder of notes on the Dreamlands and found a flattish section of ground on which to unroll a map.
‘You have a map, Cabal?’ said Shadrach. ‘By all that’s wonderful . . . !’
‘Please do not become overly excited by it, gentlemen,’ Cabal warned. ‘It was drawn from the fancies of poets and the ravings of maniacs – which is to say much the same thing – and is therefore only slightly more useful than a blank sheet of paper. Why it is always poets, who are at the laudanum trough or gulping down absinthe, instead of somebody useful like cartographers, I have no idea. In any event, we have an unreliable map. And upon it, we are . . .’ Cabal stabbed his finger down ‘. . . here.’
The others crowded around and looked at the map. After a few moments of angling his head this way and that, Shadrach asked, ‘How can you be so sure?’
Cabal took up the map, rolled it and put it into his bag. ‘In all the Dreamlands, there is one particularly famous mountain, Mount Hatheg-Kla. We are about one mile up it.’ He turnedand pointed towards the cloud-wreathed summit. There was something unpleasant about the mountain’s perspective, as if there were simply too much of it and it had somehow furled itself just enough for it to be acceptable to the human psyche. Once inside the mind, however, it popped open like an umbrella with an unreliable catch, jabbing the sensitive fleshy parts with the spiky tips of its ribs and poking about with its contradimensional ferrule. Cabal, from long mental exercise, firmly closed the umbrella again and dropped it into the elephant’s foot of his super-ego. The others, less prepared, were struck dumb by the immensity of the prospect.
Insensitive to his fellows’ state, Cabal continued: ‘Seven miles further up is the highest any human has ever climbed. Barzai the Wise
Similar Books
