The Dream Archipelago by Christopher Priest

Author:Christopher Priest
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 978-0-575-08682-1
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2010-12-21T05:00:00+00:00

As the forest thinned they emerged on to a narrow strip of scrubland and rocks and approached the edge of the cliffs cautiously. The ground was broken and littered with loose stones and boulders, hard and barren. Sheeld’s oppressive fears about thrymes began to fade away.

From the clifftop he was confronted with an unexpectedly magnificent panorama across the sea and he stood for a few moments to stare at it. Alanya continued along the path by the edge of the cliff.

‘The house is down here!’ she called.

He was invigorated by the stiff breeze from the sea and the sensational and dizzying view from the clifftop, but Alanya was hurrying away. With some reluctance he followed her down a steep slope along the face of the cliff itself to where some steps had been fashioned out of the rock. After these the path curved with the face of the cliff, descending at a more shallow angle to a natural hollow. Here, on ground which had been partly levelled, supported on wooden piles, was a wooden cabin with broad picture windows facing the view. Behind, another lane led up a natural shallow acclivity, winding up to where it was soon lost in a burst of vegetation, another route back into the forest.

The front of the cabin had a wide balcony and on it was a long upholstered swing chair with a coloured canopy. Alanya had gone straight to it and was now rocking to and fro, with her legs raised and tucked under her body. She was watching him with a coquettish expression.

Sheeld had seen something of these cliffs from the sea, as his ferry approached Trellin Town shortly after dawn. They ran along part of the south-western coast of the island, where the inland range of mountains met the sea. They were a famous sight, much painted and photographed. There had in fact been a large painting of the cliffs in the saloon bar of the ferry Sheeld had crossed in. As a vantage point for viewing this part of the Archipelago the Trellin cliffs were unrivalled. The view was privileged, a sight not seen by many, as only a few houses were allowed along the coast and the cliffs and the territory surrounding them were the private property of a select few.

Before Sheeld was a dazzling sea- and island-scape. There were something like nine or ten large islands in view, each one rising darkly from the turquoise sea and bordered with a dazzling strip of surf and beach. In the perfect visibility of the afternoon he could see the closer islands in stark detail, even in spite of the distances they must have been from him, but the ones on the horizon were only just visible in the oceanic haze.

Sheeld was still unfamiliar with the topography and configuration of the islands, but he knew that most of the ones he could see were part of the Aubracs and that one of them, probably the large one out towards the westerly horizon, was Grande Aubrac itself.

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