Scatterlings

by Isobelle Carmody

  Walking beside her, Ford was lost in his own thoughts.

  Merlin thought of Danna, the boy they had left behind in the Valley temple, and wondered if the Citizen gods had taken him yet. She tried to imagine Danna reunited with his beloved brother, but could not. She saw his face slack and witless, his eyes empty of all expression and sanity, and shuddered. At the same time she knew Ford was right in saying Danna had a death-wish.

  Sensing her movement, Ford looked down, his tan forehead sheened with sweat. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I was thinking of the children in the temple,’ Merlin said. ‘This is a terrible world.’

  Ford looked at her without warmth. ‘Don’t pity us too much. When I was very young, before the Citizen gods came, I remember a warden getting honey from a stinger Hide. It was early in the morning and there was a mist just above the ground. He lit a fire under the nest and the stingers flew away. He dipped a stick in the honey and gave it to me. I remember how sweet that honey tasted. I can smell the smoke in the cold air.’ He looked at Merlin whose mind was reeling. She had told that story to Meer to prove she knew Ford, yet she knew she had never heard Ford speak of the stingers before that second. Was it possible this was Remembering?

  ‘Déjà vu is the illusion of remembering events and scenes which are taking place for the first time.’ Only this had not been an illusion. She had remembered Ford’s story before he told it to her. Remembered, she thought. Remembered!

  ‘I was happy then, but I was not always happy,’ Ford went on. ‘Now that I am grown, I am sometimes happy, but not always. Do you think it savage to accept that I cannot be happy always?’

  Merlin stared at him, struck by his words and the feeling that he was telling her something important. Everything that had happened since waking seemed bad, but when she thought about it, there had been good times. Sitting in the warm tent bath, eating with Bors at the food stalls, the moment of triumph when she had succeeded in joining the Valley road unseen. Moments of happiness, and maybe that was all anyone ever had.

  ‘You must grasp the chance of happiness when it flutters by like a bird,’ Ford said, looking at her.

  Merlin shrank back from the longing in his face, frightened by his intensity. A shutter fell over the brightness of his eyes and he looked back the way they had come.

  ‘How far now?’ Merlin asked, to fill the uncomfortable silence.

  ’Not far . . .’ Ford began, then his eye flickered sideways and he stopped.

  ‘What is it?’ Merlin asked, automatically lowering her voice to a whisper.

  Ford held his finger to his lips and crouched down, pulling her beside him.

  ‘What . . .’ Merlin began.

  ‘Run!’ Ford hissed, lurching into a hunched, soft-footed run.

  Merlin’s heart thundered and her breath rasped in her throat as they ran bent low through the flicking, stinging bushes. She was so intent on running she ran headlong into Ford who had stopped unexpectedly.

  ‘What is it?’ she began.

  Directly in front of them was Sear with more than fifteen other scatterlings ranged on either side, all carrying weapons.

  Ford raised his staff threateningly. ‘Get out of our way,’ he commanded, but Merlin could hear a pleading note in his voice.

  ‘Ford!’ It was Era’s voice, shocked, as she stepped out beside Sear.

  ‘Would you spill scatterling firstblood for her?’ Sear asked gently, his face stern.

  ‘I don’t want to spill anyone’s blood, but I am oathbound to her. Let us pass and no one will be hurt,’ Ford said.

  ‘Marthe has seen more, Ford,’ Era shouted. ‘She has seen that you will walk a path of terrible danger if you walk with her!’

  ‘We must talk, Ford,’ Sear said urgently. ‘There are things that have happened since you went. Mora has been killed by the Citizen gods, and Keha. They hunt us on foot now, in groups. They have grown steadily closer to the Hide. It is only a matter of time before they find us.’

  ‘Because of the flier?’ Ford asked.

  ‘In part,’ Sear answered. ‘They seek us not because we harmed their flier and killed a Citizen god, but because they think we have the treasure that was carried in the flier.’ He looked deliberately at Merlin. ‘Her.’

  Ford’s face hardened. ‘And now you would hand her over to them?’

  Marthe’s voice rang out: ‘Does it matter, when she is bound to go to them anyway?’

  Ford looked startled, then angry. ‘She is going because she chooses it. I’m not making her and neither will I stand back while you do it.’ Ford’s eyes darkened. ‘And tell me, Marthe, what do you know of Ranulf?’

  Sear looked at Ford incredulously. ‘You would question a Rememberer in such a way?’ He shook his head. ‘It is just as Marthe warned. You have changed, Ford. We did not come to take Merlin to the Citizen gods. Marthe Remembered that she would go to the forbidden city of her own accord.’

  ‘Then why did you come, if you knew there was no need to force her?’ Ford demanded.

  Sear stepped closer, ignoring the raised point of Ford’s staff. ‘Because I saw that we could make better use of this matter. They want her badly, and she means to go to them. What is wrong with our gaining an advantage from it? If she did not intend to go to the forbidden city, I would fight to keep them from her.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean by advantage,’ Ford said warily.

  ‘They want her badly enough that they will bargain with us. They don’t know she means to go to them. We can gain much in this exchange and we can make her safe return part of the bargain,’ Sear argued.

  Ford was clearly troubled, though he lowered his staff. Merlin realised he was torn between his bond to her and his alliance with the scatterlings. He said: ‘But can they be trusted in a bargain? There is much I have to tell you about the Citizen gods and their bargain with the Lord wardens.’

  ‘And I will hear it all,’ Sear answered soothingly. ‘But for now, we must travel.’

  Before Ford could respond, Era came up to him, her face full of scorn. ‘I do not know you, Ford. You threaten your sister and brotherbloods with weapons; you demand answers from a Rememberer; you accuse us of cowardice and treachery. Your time with this girl has changed you.’

  ‘It . . . wasn’t her,’ Ford murmured. He sounded confused and Merlin guessed his old clearcut notions of right and wrong had blurred so that he did not know what to trust.

  ‘It was,’ Marthe said without anger. ‘I tell you, Ford. It is not too late to turn from the path where she will walk. It is fraught with danger and you will be changed forever by what you see.’

  ‘Whatever you believe,’ Sear broke in. ‘You meant to take her to the forbidden city. Nothing has changed and wherever your loyalties lie now, you owe us this chance to change the balance in this war. Once I am inside the city who knows what I might . . .’

  Enlightenment filled Ford’s face. ‘So. The bargain – now I understand. It has nothing to do with the scatterlings. It’s for you.’

  ‘It’s a chance that will never come again. We will offer her to them on condition that I may go with her into the city.’

  Ford nodded at last, his expression unreadable. ‘I will agree, but only as long as they will agree to let me go with you both.’

  ‘No!’ Era shouted.

  ‘I think they will agree,’ Sear said slowly, and Ford nodded.

  Merlin was troubled by the rift between Ford and the leader of the scatterlings, yet she felt incapable of doing anything about it. Marthe’s awareness of her decision to go to the forbidden city had plunged her into despair, for how could the Rememberer know what she had decided unless the decision had never been hers to make? Again she was swamped by a feeling of helplessness, propelled by forces beyond herself.

  It no longer seemed to her that going to the forbidden city was the right course, only that she had no choice in the matter.

  ‘They want a puppet, but I will give them a mind which is capable of thinking
and choosing,’ the William voice vowed softly. For the thousandth time, Merlin tried to guess who William had been and who the ‘they’ were he often referred to.

  When Ford turned to her, she felt as if she were looking at him from a long way off. ‘What do you want to do?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘If you don’t want to go, I’ll fight him.’

  Merlin shrugged apathetically. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Ford gave her a baffled look.

  ‘There, you see?’ Sear said, sounding relieved. ‘There is no conflict. She wants to go to the Citizen gods, they want her, and we can profit from the barter.’

  ‘But what will they do to her?’ Ford asked still looking at Merlin.

  ‘Can we go?’ she said wearily. ‘Maybe they’ll just take their precious collar and let me go.’ She did not believe this, but Sear, puzzled by the reference, distracted Ford by questioning him. Before long, the scatterling leader was convinced the faulty collar was the sole reason for the Citizens’ search for Merlin.

  ‘They know that once the collar is removed, we’ll have no proof and they’re safe,’ Sear said reasonably. Ford told him of Aran and Ranulf.

  Sear paled. ‘So, that is the answer. It has always troubled me that the best of us should be turned into traitors so easily. All the more important for me to enter the forbidden city. You say the Rememberer said she would put an end to the flow of visiondraught. I wonder exactly what that means . . .’

  He and Ford walked either side of Merlin, talking, but there was no friendship in their voices. They spoke like wary allies.

  At midday, Sear called a halt and they roasted strips of meat over a fire.

  ‘What about the eyeballs?’ Ford worried.

  Sear grinned, teeth white between grease-smeared lips. ‘That was part of the bargain. The eyeballs are not to fly, nor Citizen gods to kill any scatterling in the time of truce when we bring Merlin to them.’

  Ford’s eyes narrowed. ‘You have spoken to the Citizen gods before we had agreed? Then you must have intended to give her to them all along.’

  Marthe reached out a bony hand and squeezed Ford’s shoulder. ‘Do not look for deceit to cover your doubts. I told Sear that you would be taking Merlin to the forbidden city. It was his idea to convince the Citizen gods we had her and to make them call a truce to prevent more killing. The final bargain will be struck at the dome.’

  Sear bit into another strip of meat. ‘Once I saw how badly they wanted her alive, and Marthe told me she would go to them by choice, I saw what must be done. I went to the dome and convinced them we had her and would kill her rather than give her up. I said we would persuade her to come to them if they would allow entry to the city. Then we came to find you.’

  ‘I do not trust these Citizen gods in any bargain,’ Ford said.

  ‘You have lost your ability to trust,’ Era broke in suddenly, looking at Ford from the other side of the fire. ‘Where is honour without trust?’ She threw the strip of meat she was eating into the fire as if it had become bitter in her mouth. Ford watched her go with regret and Merlin thought: where is trust without honour?

  They walked well into the night before making a rough camp. This time Ford did not sit at the fire, but strayed about as if he were more restless than weary. Sear and the scatterlings sat around the fire talking and making plans while Merlin sat apart, leaning against a tree.

  Marthe came and sat beside her. ‘You set yourself apart. That is not good.’

  Merlin looked at the Rememberer squarely. ‘You think sitting with them would make me one of them?’

  ‘You choose to set yourself apart, so do not blame them when you find it a lonely choice. Whatever happened to you before the accident cannot be undone, and you must live with what you are. You choose to walk alone. You draw Ford away from his brother and sisterbloods. You must accept responsibility for your actions.’

  Stung, the fog of despair in Merlin’s mind dissipated slightly. ‘I didn’t ask Ford to do what he did. He did that on his own. It’s nothing to do with me.’

  Marthe laughed. ‘Of course it has something to do with you. It has everything to do with you. And you know it.’

  ‘I tried to make him leave me!’ she said angrily.

  ‘Did you?’

  Merlin flushed at the Rememberer’s tone, recalling her secret relief when Ford had insisted on taking her to the dome.

  ‘You try to pretend to yourself that you have no choice, only so that you need not take responsibility for the things you cause to happen. But that does not make them any less your fault.’

  ‘If you know what I’m going to do and think, then I don’t have any choice in the first place,’ Merlin cried.

  The cold anger faded in the Rememberer’s eyes. She reached out a grubby hand and touched Merlin’s arm. ‘The choice is always yours. Just because I can see what you will choose, does not mean the choice was made by someone else. And Rememberings change constantly as one action affects another. I told you once before it is not a certain business.’

  ‘You said you know I’m going into the dome.’

  Marthe nodded. ‘But I don’t know what will happen there. Remembering is a matter of seeing outcomes, not ordaining things to happen.’

  Merlin bit her lip. ‘I . . . I felt it didn’t matter what I decided.’

  The Rememberer sighed. ‘You must not give up choosing, else you might as well be a Void.’

  Merlin hung her head.

  ‘And, girl, be gentle with Ford. He is a dreamer with a soft heart and a head that is sometimes softer. You hold him in your hand now, and that cannot be undone either.’

  Before Merlin could respond to this, Marthe rose in a rustle of cloth, and walked into the shadows of the night.

  12

  Though enormous beyond imagining, they were almost on the dome which covered the forbidden city before they could see it, because it was built in a deep depression. For this reason, and in spite of its enormous dimensions, the dome rose only slightly above the tallest of the giant trees. It was exactly as Ford had described. Made from milky glass, it had a pearl sheen which rendered it almost opaque. Indistinct shapes within the dome gave it a mystical air and Merlin saw how easily such a city would give rise to superstitions.

  The dome alone was enough to excite wonder. The coming of the Citizen gods would have seemed miraculous to the unsophisticated clans.

  The domed city reminded Merlin of something she had once seen: a miniature town set in a half dome of glass and filled with water. When shaken, the air was filled with glittering fragments making it seem as if silver rained from the skies. She could not recall when she had seen the tiny dome, but understood instinctively that it belonged to the hidden other part of her mind.

  As if evoked by the memory of the tiny dome, the William voice spoke: ‘This is all that remains of the knowledge of the lost world.’

  Merlin trembled at the thought that she might very soon have the answer to that voice and her lost memory and found herself wishing Sear would lead them more quickly.

  Marthe had not come back the previous night, but Sear merely said it was the way of Rememberers to come and go unexpectedly. He was too full of anticipation about what he might find inside the forbidden city to think of anything else. Merlin realised Ford was right about Sear’s motivation. At least half of his hunger to get inside the city stemmed from his fascination with the Citizens’ technology.

  Since her talk with Marthe, Merlin was no longer weighed down with hopelessness. There would be danger in the city for her and for any scatterlings who came with her. Sear thought he had it all worked out, but though he hated the Citizen gods, he still thought of them as he did himself. He did not see how different they were. Merlin thought she did.

  She had to try to stop the scatterlings coming in with her.

  Ford was still uncommunicative. The meeting with Sear and the scatterlings had not altered his new coldness towards her. She now regretted that she had been so blunt in her disparagement o
f him, but Ford would not allow her to apologise.

  ‘There is no need. You think I am a savage. This has not changed. Once this deed is done, I will recant my oathbond and there will be an end to it.’ He looked away as he spoke and a chill fell over Merlin, as if some great harm had been done in losing his friendship. Yet she could not lie to him. She did think he was a savage. She could not give him what she sensed he wanted from her, so there was nothing more to say.

  The ground all around the dome was cleared, and Sear called a halt where the trees ended.

  ‘Wait here. I will go and speak to them.’ His eyes glittered and Merlin felt a sense of terrible foreboding.

  ‘Sear, be careful. These people are not like you and the other clanpeople. They don’t think the same way you do,’ Merlin pleaded. But her words fell on deaf ears.

  ‘No one breaks a blood oath.’

  Merlin tried again. ‘To make an oath with anyone is easy. It’s just words. You have to respect and maybe even fear the person you make the oath with before it will bind you. Do you think the Citizen gods are afraid of you or care about how you judge their honour?’

  Sear’s face was stony. ‘Your words fly on a breath of corruption. Even a warden would not break an oath bound in blooding. I don’t know what clan spawned you, but keep your foul words behind your teeth.’

  Merlin felt the blood drain from her face. She noticed that all of the scatterlings were watching her with hostility, except Ford, who seemed to be concentrating on the dome, taking no part in the conversation. She saw they blamed her for Ford’s defection. Merlin wished the dark Rememberer were present.

  Sear disappeared into the trees and re-appeared some time later on the other side of the trees. He was clearly trying to conceal their hiding place, but Merlin was sure the Citizens knew exactly where they were. They wanted to take her alive, and that was the only reason they did not simply attack. They were afraid the scatterlings would kill her. They understood the clanpeople as little as Sear understood them.