by Jon Jacks
‘Cranden! So you did return!’ the beast lying in the large bed exclaimed hoarsely.
*
Chapter 29
1,000 Years Earlier
The interior of the carriage was sumptuously decorated yet, for Imp, it was still a prison. She was confined to its four walls, despite the great distance that would be travelled, that had already been travelled.
It had everything she needed, of course, including a plushly padded hole that served as a toilet. Food was served up to her through a hole in the bottom of the permanently, securely locked door.
Only attendants experienced in use of the Knowing were allowed to draw close to the carriage, even though the nearby outriders had been ordered to constantly block off its use.
With hardly anything to do within the carriage, Imp spent longer and longer in bed, either sleeping or reading the books she had insisted on being provided with: the trip across the empire towards the pass leading to the Blue-table Plains was a long and increasingly slow one.
She had had no right to make any demands, she had realised that – rather, she was fortunate that Haren had declared that he would be satisfied with her permanent exile as opposed to her death.
He could never forgive her for the killing of his sister; yet he could understand how an assassin might see such a death as inconsequential.
She had wanted Haren to Know how wretched she felt, but the queen had expertly veiled any such use.
Now, of course, she was more wretched than ever.
Often, as she lay in bed, she just wished she could die.
*
Chapter 29
1,000 Years Later
The beast almost constantly turned in his bed, briefly granting relief to one part of his sorely wounded body while another part now had to accept the pain of being in contact with the mattress.
‘Grusel: what happened here?’ Cranden asked as he concernedly knelt by the bed and tenderly stroked his friend’s blazingly hot brow.
‘Everyone was killed; my daughters, my servants, and – I suspect – my wife too.’
‘Why? Why would anyone attack you, when you weren’t doing any harm here? Was it because they feared you as a beast living here?’
Even as he said this, Cranden realised that the attack on the manor had had to be one far more elaborate and professional than any frightened mob of peasants could manage.
Grusel shook his head. It was only the slightest of moves, yet even this caused him to wince in agony. His body was a mass of deep wounds, most of which had healed badly.
Death for his friend couldn’t be long in coming, Cranden realised.
When Cranden had last been here, Grusel had explained his intention to inform the queen of the horrifying link between beasts and men, sending a letter to court via his wife, Heslinda.
Was it this that had brought a besieging army to the manor?
Heslinda and her daughters had welcomed Cranden warmly when, after observing this remarkable manor from afar for over a week, he had strode on two feet into the courtyard. They were glad to see him, this walking, talking confirmation that their recognition of a beast as their husband and father was sound.
They had kindly offered to let him stay. He had refused, explaining that what he had seen here had given him new hope that he too could be accepted in some way by those he still loved.
‘Who wants to know, Cranden,’ Grusel hissed weakly, ‘the truth of who we really are?’
For the very first time he saw Desri standing behind Cranden.
He smiled, grabbed his friend’s hand in a warm clasp.
‘So you did it, hey, my friend?’
Cranden smiled.
‘In a way: a way similar to that which you were the very first to achieve!’
‘And I was hoping to remain hidden from you when I heard you below! I thought you were someone here to steal, to cheapen and disgrace the life of my poor family even more.’
‘Your family deserves no disgrace, Grusel! I’ll find those responsible. I’ll ma–’
The hoarse guttural rasp could have been Grusel’s attempt at a wry chuckle.
‘The queen? You would kill the queen? The woman we fought so bravely – so stupidly – for?’
This from a man who had admired the queen: who had spoken enthusiastically of the way he had seen her in the middle of battle so confused it had been impossible to tell friend from foe. She had held off everyone about her so aggressively and skilfully no one had dared attack her.
Whereas Cranden’s mission had aimed to hold the pass against the threat of a Prenderean invasion, Grusel’s regiment had been sent up from the south to prevent a previous but now retreating intrusion from returning home. When Grusel had found himself transformed, he’d had little choice but to briefly move deeper into the Blue-table Plains, only safely making his way back through the pass once the fighting was entirely over.
‘Heslinda never returned from court, Cranden: it was just the army who turned up here. They thought everyone was dead, leaving us all here to rot. I had to bury them all. And as I buried them, I wished time and time again that I’d told you what I’d really found out on the plains.’
‘You did tell me, old friend: the Bone Carvers. You followed them for a while as they wandered across the plain. And when you came across the bones of long-fallen men in the pass, you saw ribs that had been elaborately carved–’
Grusel stilled Cranden’s talking with an urgently waved hand.
‘No, no: not that, not that! On my wanderings across the plain, I never saw the great cities of Crxuan, of Defresser!’
‘No one would have expected you to–’
‘No, Cranden, no! I mean these supposedly great Prenderean cities don’t exist! There aren’t even towns, not even villages. The only people living out there are the Bone Carvers!’
Cranden stared at his friend with a perplexed frown.
‘That’s not possible,’ he said uneasily. ‘If that’s true; who have we been fighting all these thousands of years?’
*
Chapter 30
1,000 Years Earlier
Haren had ensured that Imp was left on the other side of the pass with a suitably robust horse and enough water and bare provisions to enable her to reach the nearest Prenderean town, Mujarea.
There was no sense in her trying to return by turning back through the pass: the commander of the large force of men sent to escort her to the border had warned her they would remain here for at least a year.
The area stretching out from the base of the mountain range and leading down into the plain was rocky, barren, with few animals to hunt to help her eke out her scant supplies. She travelled mainly by moonlight, when it was incredibly cold, rather than throughout the day, when it was unbearably hot.
She used the sun and stars as bearings, so when she failed to see any signs indicating she was at last approaching Mujarea – not even scattered homesteads, travellers, some form of road – she began to fear her growing thirst and malnutrition was affecting her capabilities more than she had realised.
For a while, she turned more towards the north, hoping she had simply stumbled past the town too far to the south. When this failed to turn up any sign of civilisation or even human life, she turned and headed south.
As both her provisions and any game to hunt dwindled, she began to prepare herself for death. She knew, of course, how to utilise her own mount to prolong her life at the expense of its own: but she saw no reason why she should cause the death of this poor innocent animal.
Stripping off the horse’s harness and saddle, she gave her a slap to the flanks to urge her on her way.
Sitting down amongst a pile of relatively comfortable rocks, she rested her back against the taller ones. She was already strangely delirious, as if her preparedness to die was hastening the deterioration of her consciousness. Her vision was increasingly hazy, everything before her becoming mirage-like, indistinct.
‘May the Great All Knowin
g welcome me.’
Her voice, like her vision, her thought processes, were rapidly fading.
The horizon shimmered, in the rising heat haze rippling as if everything had turned to water. Everything was blending, becoming as one, no longer separate but entwined, intermingled.
At first, she thought the oncoming tribe was all part of her hallucination, the figures just hardening whirlpools of the rising heat.
It was only when they were a hand’s breath away that she realised they were real.
For that was when they welcomed her to the tribe of the Bone Carvers.
*
Chapter 30
1,000 Years Later
Cranden’s referral to the Bone Carvers and their carving of the skeletons made Desri recall the day she had felt the odd shape of her own rib.
It seemed crazy, she knew, impossible even: but was there a connection?
She wondered, was it possible to…
Could she Know herself?
She thought only of where she wanted her mind to be.
Still within herself, but in another part of herself.
She let her thoughts flow throughout her own being, to spread like waves of water flow into every corner, every space, within their receptacle.
She wrapped those thoughts in particular around her lower rib. Caressed the bone with fingers of Knowing.
She felt and admired the intricate beauty of the carving there. She looked carefully over the markings, the tattoo-like symbols.
And there, surprisingly, she was welcomed into the tribe of the Bone Carvers.
*
Chapter 31
1,000s of Years Ago
‘You are destined to overthrow the queen.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘We created you while you were forming within your mother’s womb; when all elements are delicate and malleable, especially to our thoughts, our hopes, our wishes.’
‘This is the meaning of the carving?’
‘This is the meaning of your carving: for others, it is their privilege, when they realise they are ready, to leave your world for a more fulfilling life amongst us.’
She sensed the loving presence of her mother, the mother she had falsely believed had died. She felt that love, that longing to be together, to be as one once more.
‘These are the ones we think of as the Disappeared?’
‘At first, they recognise themselves as the beasts they really are. They seek out other beasts, and so we send out other beasts who will escort them safely here.’
‘Why take my mother? Why do you steal these people from us?’
‘Because she shows us how to love those who fail to appreciate her, who take her for granted – yet she never, ever, took those she loved for granted.’
‘Is that why the queen fights you? Because you take all these people from us?’
‘We fight no one. We have no one amongst us who wishes to, or sees the need for us to fight.’
‘Then – who are we fighting?’
‘Yourselves, as always. You can, if you think about it, only ever fight amongst yourselves.’
‘Those fighting a supposed attack? And those attacking a supposed internal enemy?’
‘Without their suffering, how could there be any Knowing?’
*
Chapter 32
1,000s of Years Later
The queen’s capital city of Greforel had now been under siege for six months.
Desri and Cranden’s vast army of beasts had relentlessly pounded the city walls with a large variety of ingenious siege machines: the many wheeled towers, pushed under a hail of arrows and pouring hot oil towards the equally towering fortifications; the battering rams, rammed home with more force than humanely possible when handled by huge beasts; the gigantic slings, the oversized crossbows, propelling boulders, flaming balls of pitch and thick bolts through stone and man alike; the huge screws, eating daily into the earth, the intention to undermine the heavy walls.
Grusel had declared such a coordinated force of buisoar impossible, pointing out the problem of communication: most beasts still remained too inhuman to take part in any reasoning, let alone conversation.
Desri had surmounted this problem with a carefully ordered hierarchy – those like Cranden and Grusel being the commanding officers, the next rank made up of those with a slightly lower level of human consciousness, enabling these in turn to hand out orders to those just slightly below them in human capabilities. In this way, with the command structure stretching right down to beasts who retained hardly any human sensibilities at all, almost every beast they had come across had been conscripted into their vast, unbeatable army.
Over twenty years, now, they had fought battle after battle against their wholly human foes. Battle after battle had been won, even though they had lost uncountable numbers of their own troops along the way. Grusel had died long ago, but from his old, incurable wounds; yet he had died seeing the very first successes of the rebellion.
The queen herself had frequently been seen on the walls of the besieged city, rallying her exhausted troops when everything had seemed hopeless. Desri’s own troops had cheered elatedly when a lucky shot from a crashing boulder had appeared to send her flying from the battlements. Within the hour, however, she was back on the walls, urging her men onto ever-greater feats of valour and stubbornness.
As always, Desri had to admit, the queen appeared as a blaze of light amidst the carnage – her red hair gleaming like a vengeful flame, the white armour shining as if she were some protective angel descending to aid those pleading for her assistance.
There were many times that Desri had to wonder if the queen had elements of magic at her disposal. Many times, too when she doubted that her rebellion against the queen would ultimately be successful.
She had read in the history books of the last major rebellion against the queen, one led by an ex-assassin called Impersia and her lover, Lord Haren. Although it, too, had managed to fight its way through the empire towards the gates of Greforel, it had failed to breech the great walls, the queen surviving to re-impose her rule.
Had this Impersia also discovered that the supposedly ever-threating Prenderean Empire didn’t actually exist, Desri wondered, using that knowledge to persuade Lord Haren and his men to follow her in rebellion?
The many years of wading through blood, of sleeping on ground laced with iron ore, had somehow gradually dyed Desri’s previously blonde hair into the same flame red of the queen’s. Her armour, although of silver rather than white, sparkled in even the dimmest light. As such, she cut a magnificent figure against the strangely stooped man she invited into her tent that night: a man seemingly made more of wood than flesh, his body so often beaten, his bones broken so many uncountable times, that he required splints of every kind to stand, let alone walk. His crutches were padded with material, to quieten his approach, to aid him in his chosen trades of deceit, thievery and treachery.
It was this man, however, who would enable Desri to overthrow the queen.
*
It had, of course, been this man’s destiny to lead the small group of armed buisoar up through the hidden, narrow tunnel leading into the very heart of the city itself.
All citadels, even the supposedly most impregnable, have these weaknesses deliberately built into them under the misapprehension that they merely allow a besieged city contact with the outside world. Yet it is the business of men like Trogic to learn of these ways, as they aid their own professions of smuggling and secret messages.
These traits of misbehaving, this final essential task, have all long being carved into Trogic’s life, if only he would Know it.
The buisoars that storm through Greforel’s darkened, sleepy streets are ruthless – bestial – in their determination to force their way through to and open up the gates that allow in the rest of Desri’s patiently waiting army. The advance of the buisoar regiments is now unstoppable, the fall of Greforel at last inevitable.
> At the doors to the palace, the only man preventing Desri and Cranden entering is a general who limps painfully as he approaches them.
‘Barane!’ Desri breathes in surprise.
General Barane does his best to ignore her, his eyes on Cranden rather than her.
‘Her Most Knowing Majesty, the Great Queen of All the Knowing World, grants audience with Her and permission to speak.’
As he looks towards and speaks to Cranden, he suddenly lurches closer towards Desri, the dagger he already holds in his hand curving up towards her lower rib.
Desri has fought and killed many better men than this.
As with one hand she deftly turns the plunging dagger aside, with the palm of the other she smacks Barane hard beneath his nose, sending his own nasal-bone shooting up into his worthless brain.
*
Chapter 33
1,000 Seconds Later
The buisoars accompanying Desri and Cranden as they confidently strode through the palace’s many room didn’t see themselves as beasts, but as men, warriors malignantly transformed by an evil magic.
As such, they appreciated the richly decorated walls and ceilings, admired the vast paintings of epic battles, viewed with interest the ancient weapons set out in geometric patterns. They were clothed in the cloaks and armour of men, tailored to accommodate their huge size and oddly shaped backs and legs. They walked on two legs, not four, though they had forgone what had been found to be painful boots.
Like any men who have undertaken a long siege, they are also hungry. Those laying siege to a city often find themselves almost as short of food as the besieged. Of course, if the myth of the beasts’ fondness for human meat had been true, there would have been no shortage of food, with so many of the city’s defenders dying each day. Yet the beasts who retained their human sensibilities naturally refused to touch what should have been this ready source of nutrition, seeing eating it only as the worst form of cannibalism. And although the lower ranks of more bestial beasts refused to recognise this distinction, it was a stipulation imposed on anyone serving in Desri and Cranden’s huge force.