He threw himself at Tymon. His misshapen body had a terrible, tactile presence in the trance and he bowled the young man over with his weight, reaching up one clawed hand to swipe the air above his head. Tymon felt rather than heard the tear in the fabric of the worlds, before he fell through and down.
He crashed Veil, Wick’s full weight on his chest. Their combined impact on the floor sent up a cloud of glittering ice-dust, the particles hanging briefly in the gloomy sky before dissipating. Wick pinned him down, snarling in his face. Tymon’s own limbs had grown dangerously tangible in the prison world and he strained to hold his opponent at arm’s length, well aware that the other might rend him limb from limb even as he had rent his way into the Veil. The hole was still there, a bright gash in the darkness over Wick’s shoulder. Tymon could see the scene on the dock shining through it. Samiha had reached the end of the planks, her faraway figure bleeding light. If he could only break free, he might dive back through the opening and reach her.
But the ragged edges of the hole were gradually shrinking together, repairing themselves and shutting him out. Wick’s hideous strength prevented him from reaching the door. The acolyte’s jaw had lengthened into a slavering muzzle, fangs bared in Tymon’s face. He was half man and half beast, with a brute force to match. He snarled and snapped and dug his clawed fingers into Tymon’s chest.
‘I’ll eat you!’ he yelped. ‘I’ll gobble you up, just like your louse friend!’
‘What do you mean?’ cried Tymon, his heart constricting. ‘What have you done to Pallas? Have you killed him?’
‘Better than that.’ Wick raised his muzzle in a jeering howl. ‘I took his power. He had the Sight, but he didn’t deserve it. The master gave him to me as a present. I’m like the master now, you know. Superior. Strong. I took the stupid Nurry’s power and I’m going to take yours, too.’
Rage rose up before Tymon’s eyes like a fog. He had not known this. If he had suspected for a moment that Pallas was a fledgling Grafter, he would never have brought him to Argos city. No wonder his friend had been so susceptible to the sorcerers’ attack, he thought, anguished. In a burst of fury and distress, he heaved Wick to one side, rolled to his feet and threw himself toward the world-door. He knew that he had to end the trance at all costs. He was far too keen on killing his opponent now, to punish him for what he had done. And that would only fulfil the Oracle’s prophecy. He must return to the waking world at once.
Samiha stood straight and slim on the other side of the gap, her back to him as he scrambled toward her. He was astonished by how brightly she shone, how the white flames of the Sap welled through her grey garment. She was incandescent: he almost expected her to melt the snow on the dock beneath her feet. But before he was able to reach her, before he could pass the door, a crippling weight rammed into him and knocked him flat on his face again. Wick’s claws rent through his back. Tymon cried out in agony as the beast’s talons raked through his dream-flesh. The pain was utterly real.
‘Get off me!’ he gasped, rolling over to kick the slavering creature away from him. ‘Get off me, you monster!’
She had arrived. One more step and the chasm would take her. Samiha stood at the brink of the Void, and remembered. She remembered how it was to laugh and to cry, to love and to live. She remembered Galliano and Laska, Solis and Gardan; all those she had respected, admired and fought for. She remembered her father in the heyday of his life and in his long decline. She remembered her mother, a brief, bright smile in the hazy beginning of things, snuffed out too soon. She remembered the flowering melata in the city of her childhood, and the brown hands of the boy she loved.
She knew he was there, behind her. He had followed her to the last. It was imperative he remain unaware of the fact that she Saw him. He must be left to choose his course freely, for himself. The Kion turned around to face the guards on the dock, and beyond them the spectators on the quays, hushed and shivering beneath their damp cloaks. Her bright gaze looked past the gash in reality and Tymon’s head, past the two opponents fighting in the Veil as if they did not exist. The snowstorm was easing and the wind no longer whipped over the air-harbour. Samiha’s voice had a faraway clarity that echoed through both worlds.
‘Do you think you are safe from change, Argos?’
Tymon pulled himself laboriously over the threshold of the gap. It was hardly more than a slit now, and he had to fight his way through. He could feel the ragged edges stabbing at him like splinters, clinging to him like burrs, as if the Veil itself were reluctant to let him go. He managed with a supreme effort to kick Wick off him, and stand up just beyond the doorway. But the acolyte immediately lunged forward and caught hold of his right arm, pulling him half back into the Veil.
‘The King will come,’ cried Samiha to the people on the quays. ‘Change will come. This is the Year of Fire, the beginning and the end. You will have to answer for everything you’ve done.’
The edges of the world-door clamped down on Tymon’s arm like a burning vice. Wick was still holding on to him with dogged insistence from the other side of the opening. He battled frantically to free himself, twisted and wrenched his arm in the crushing pressure of the gap, until he broke loose from the Veil and pulled Wick toward him.
His enemy was now the one stuck in the doorway. Wick’s face changed even as he clung to Tymon, his pain rendering him human again. His features became racked. The edges of the gap were fusing together through him, tearing his trance-form apart. He could enter the prison-world by force, but not escape it that way. He gave a bellowing groan, trapped in the vice of the door. Out of a corner of his eye, Tymon caught a blur of movement as the guards turned the blunt ends of their pikes toward Samiha.
‘As you have judged, so shall it be,’ said the Kion.
Her voice faltered on the last syllable. To Tymon, the last flakes of the snowstorm appeared to fall through the rippling Sap-fire surrounding her, incongruous. She might have spoken again, but stopped when she saw the guards ready their pikes, and lowered her gaze.
Tymon’s whole heart leapt toward her. He yearned to rush to her side, to shout that he was there, that he heard her and cared what she said. But he resisted the urge. He tore his eyes away from the Kion, summoned up the last dregs of his energy and hauled Wick out of the Veil, pulling him free of his prison with a sickening sound of tearing flesh. The acolyte screamed; the world-door snapped shut and disappeared as if it had never been. Wick’s trance-form knelt an instant blubbering on the dock, then winked out. By the podium, his real body slumped forward on the snowy boardwalk, twitching. Tymon spun back to face Samiha just as the guards thrust their pikes at her as one. In the frozen instant when the wood hit her chest, he saw in her bent form an exact duplicate of the sixth Letter: Loss. He shut his eyes, unable to watch her fall.
When he opened them again, the trance had ended. He was crouched on the floor of the cart, his body shaking uncontrollably. His back burned as if it had been scorched by flames and his right arm seared with pain. Samiha’s dazzling figure had disappeared from the execution dock. There was only white at the end of the planks, the white of snow and the foggy chasm beyond.
The priests who tolled the bells had left a candle burning in the empty room at the summit of the tower. It sputtered in a dish on the table as the girl named Jedhartha Aditi pulled herself through the trapdoor. She had been unable to resist coming here, drawn to the room under the bells like a moth to the flame. She had waited until the Kion was taken away, until the Fathers had re-emerged from the door at the base of the tower and the building was quiet again. Then she had hurried up the staircase and the ladder. A small white bundle on the floor caught her eye as she entered. She padded softly across the room to retrieve the abandoned shift of shillee’s wool, then slowly returned and sat herself down in the prisoner’s chair.
The Kion’s writing utensils were gone, the jumble of paper cleared away. Jedda bent over the table and laid her cheek on its smooth surface, cradling the white shift to her ch
est. She pressed her face to the cool wood and wept.
31
The morning after the heretic’s death, Masha shuffled down a corridor of the city jail to the cell where Tymon was kept in solitary confinement. She could not help uttering a cry of relief as the guard accompanying her opened the door. In the musty room beyond was her boy, sitting on the bark flags, alive and well. But his expression in the light of the basket-lantern was not right: nothing about him was right. She saw that as soon as he rose to greet her. He seemed in pain as he limped over to embrace her. But the trouble was more than merely physical.
They held each other for a long moment there in the damp prison cell. She let the guard put the lantern down by the door and withdraw, before she pushed Tymon away and gazed anxiously into his face. His eyes were bright, far too bright. Green God, he had suffered.
‘They made you watch her die,’ she breathed. ‘Stupid, bullying fools.’
‘Why don’t you sit down, Amu?’ He steered her to the mildewed pile of straw he used for bedding, as graciously as if it were a king’s couch. ‘You must be tired.’
She was. She did not argue with him, but lowered herself onto the straw with a sigh of discomfort. Her old bones ached from two days spent in just such a cell. She had not been badly treated in prison, simply deposited in a corner and ignored. It had been enough, at her age, to leave her joints stiff and her lungs congested. At least they had given her a light, she thought, fuming. They had kept her Tymon in darkness until this morning, in this wooden tomb. After all that he had been through.
‘People keep talking about the execution,’ she blurted, ‘like it was some kind of miracle. I wish they’d stop.’
‘What do they say?’ he asked as he sat down beside her.
She could tell he was only being polite. His eyes slid away from hers as he spoke. He did not want to talk about the heretic’s death. She berated herself silently for having brought up the subject: that was not why she was here.
‘Oh, they say there were signs and omens,’ she answered, with a dismissive flap of her hand. ‘A fellow fell ill on the quays with burns all over his body—’
‘Burns all over his body?’ He did look up at her then, his expression troubled. His tone was sharp. She demurred hastily.
‘Overwrought rubbish. Anyway, I wanted to tell you that we stayed away, Bolas, Nell and I. Several other folks, too.’ She sniffed derisively. ‘Let the priests think it was because of the cold. But not everyone in this city eats carrion. Bolas tried to visit you this morning, by the way,’ she added. ‘They wouldn’t let him into the jail.’
‘It’s just as well,’ he replied, the frown lifting from his face. ‘You’ve both spent quite enough time here. Is it a complete acquittal?’
She nodded. ‘A proper Absolution, signed by the Saint himself. I still don’t understand.’
‘There’s nothing to understand, Amu.’ He shrugged. ‘They’re fools, like you said. Hot one minute and cold the next.’
She narrowed her gaze. She knew him well enough to doubt this assessment. ‘I heard strange things about you,’ she began carefully, ‘which I know to be untrue.’
‘They accuse me of being a Lantrian spy,’ he answered with perfect equanimity, unfazed by the falsehood.
‘Which isn’t true. Why do you stand for it?’
‘Truth is a strange business.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘It’s the only thing that both is and isn’t at the same time, depending on how you look at it.’
Masha snorted. ‘Don’t give me that philosophical rot,’ she rapped out, impatient. ‘You’re very offhand about all this. Did you tell the priests that pack of lies to get freedom for Bolas and myself?’
‘The priests were the ones who told the lies,’ he answered, in an attempt to placate her. ‘I only found out what they were accusing me of later. By then it was too late. I’d signed a confession admitting to all counts.’
‘I don’t believe you signed their nonsense paper! You could have guessed they’d pull a trick of this sort!’ Her distress and fear for him made her brusque, sharper with him than she would have liked. ‘This will stay with you for life, Tymon. You’re lucky they aren’t executing you. This isn’t just running away and taking up with bad company.’
‘I’ve kept the very best company in the world,’ he answered softly. ‘I’ve talked to prophets and oracles. I’ve known saints. I’ve broken bread with a queen.’
‘You’re talking like a sainted fool yourself,’ she snapped.
But her voice cracked and the stupid tears welled up in her eyes. She allowed him to embrace and comfort her again. It was infinitely sweet to have him by her, a joy that would be all too shortlived.
‘They’re sending you away to a plantation, I hear,’ she said dully.
‘That’s right, Amu.’ His voice grew urgent as he murmured in her ear. ‘And I have some favours to ask of you before I leave.’
‘Go on.’
‘The friend I travelled with — Pallas. We had an argument I regret, and I didn’t see him again before he was arrested. I have to hope he’s still alive. He might even have been freed after — after whatever they did to him. He might have been badly beaten or drugged, Amu. He needs our help.’
She dabbed her eyes with a corner of her shawl. ‘I’d be happy to do anything I can, my sprout,’ she muttered, peering over her shoulder at the closed door of the cell. The guard would doubtless be on the other side, attempting to eavesdrop; she had spoken far too loudly already. ‘But finding him won’t be easy. If he’s been freed, and he’s in a bad way like you think, he could be anywhere. Bolas could have a look around the air-harbour, I suppose …’
‘Not Bolas: Nell,’ he whispered. ‘She knows friends of mine who’ll help. She’s smart, Amu, smarter and braver than most people give her credit for. That brings me to my second request. I’d like Nell to give my friends a message, this morning if possible. I’d be grateful if they could look for Pallas. Also, they need to know: there’s a delivery waiting for them at the Doctor’s house.’
‘The Doctor?’ muttered Masha. ‘You mentioned someone with that name the other day — isn’t he dead?’
‘Oh yes,’ he answered, imperturbable.
She blinked in consternation. ‘I don’t understand.’
He glanced meaningfully toward the door, so that she grasped the reason for his reticence. ‘My friends will know what I mean,’ he said.
She heaved another sigh, acquiescent, and gazed at him forlornly.
‘I would so much have liked …’ She trailed off then started again, her lips trembling. ‘I would have liked you to get away from the priests and start a new life, even if it was in the colonies … Why did you have to come back, Tymon? Was she really worth it?’
There was a moment of awkward silence as he tried, and failed to answer.
‘I see, my dear,’ whispered Masha after a pause. She took his left hand in her own; the right he kept curled protectively in his lap, as if it were hurt, she noticed with a twinge of worry. ‘I see that she was. I’m so sorry.’
‘That’s alright, Amu. You can’t help any of this.’
‘But I could have helped you, once.’ She made the confession in a rush. ‘I encouraged you to take part in all that Rites business. I told myself that’s how the world was and there was nothing we could do about it. But I knew deep down it was wrong. I shouldn’t have encouraged it. And now I’ve been served, I suppose.’ She hung her head.
‘Oh, Amu,’ he said, pulling her shrunken form close to him again. ‘It doesn’t work like that. I’m not paying for your sins. I’ve got enough of my own, believe me. Listen, I wanted to tell you to take good care of Bolas while I’m gone. Don’t let him make any foolish choices. Tell him I know other people who want the same thing he does, but they’re going about it the wrong way: they’re becoming what they want to change.’
She nodded, understanding him this time. ‘I shouldn’t have scolded you earlier,’ she admitted, smiling through her te
ars. ‘I see now that you’ve made the right decisions. I always wanted the best for you, you know. I wanted you to be someone. It may seem strange, considering that we’re sitting here in a jail cell, but I think you might have become just that.’
He laughed. ‘You could say that I’m someone, Amu, yes. Even if it isn’t strictly myself.’
They did not have much longer together. Within a few minutes the guard was back in the cell, grabbing the lantern and pulling the old woman up from the straw without ceremony. Her fingers dragged a little on Tymon’s tunic before she allowed herself to be led away. The door slammed and the light vanished with it.
The young man sat motionless in the darkness. The front of strength he had maintained with a supreme effort for Masha’s benefit dissolved, and he bowed his head to his knees, exhausted. His right hand twitched convulsively on the floor of the cell. The skin on his back and arm, which he had hidden carefully from his adoptive mother, was inflamed and scored by marks like white scars, the physical imprint of his battle with Wick.
The wounds he had incurred during the trance had been transferred to his physical body through a process he did not fully understand. He shuddered to think of the crippling injuries the acolyte must have sustained, trapped between two worlds. He knew he himself might have played the part of either victim or murderer on the dock that day; the fact that he had escaped both extremes filled him with dumb relief. Prophecies were subject to change after all, and not always for the worse. But not even this triumph against fate could bring Samiha back. He was glad of the gloom in the prison cell. He had no wish to be seen weeping.
Besides, there was the problem of the voice. The darkness spared his eyes and his isolation was a mercy. But the voice that had echoed in his head ever since the execution gave him no relief. It did not come from outside him. He could not get away from it by plugging his ears, or muffle it by throwing his blanket over his head and humming loudly, rocking back and forth on the floor. It seemed to well up from the very core of his being. He had not forgotten that to launch a trance in Argos city was to risk opening one’s mind to creeping madness. Perhaps this was it, he thought. He had lost his grip on reality and was condemned to hear that twittering voice in his mind for evermore. It was frustrating: he was not even allowed to experience his grief in peace.
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