Exhaustion betrayed her at last, the price for weeks of homeless wandering. She must have fallen asleep; from one moment to the next, she felt a heavy weight on top of her. Strong arms dragged her out from under the bench and a hand was wrapped across her mouth, so that she could not cry out. She struggled against Gowron’s grasp, his breath sour in her face. He did not speak. The moments became long, a single-minded tussle of weaker and stronger muscle, bone against bone. He used his weight to prevent her from rising, pinning her wrists together with one hand and rummaging with the other in his jerkin pocket. Jedda caught a fitful sparkle of orah as he withdrew the sliver she remembered all too well.
‘What are you doing?’ she heard Wick protesting from the other end of the air-chariot. ‘We talked about this! She’s mine! I decide when!’
‘I’m sick of your damn game,’ growled Gowron. ‘I’m going to have some actual fun tonight.’
He cursed as Jedda jerked her head to one side and prevented him from pressing the orah into her forehead. It was the same stub of the stuff he had used against her before she travelled to Argos, unmounted on any pendant. She thought in panic of his hold over her then; she remembered Pallas’ fate in the seminary dungeons, and struggled against her opponent with renewed vigour.
‘Stop it!’ Wick’s silhouette bent over them, trying ineffectually to pry Gowron loose from his prey. ‘You’re ruining everything, you damned fool!’ he groaned in frustration.
Jedda whipped her head round out of Gowron’s reach, pressing her cheek to the floor of the air-chariot as he attempted to subdue her again. The ex-priest pronounced a furious oath.
‘Let go of me!’ he hissed to Wick, for the younger acolyte continued to tug at his shoulder. ‘I’ve had enough of your pussyfooting around, you damned ugly freak. If you don’t have the stomach to be a man, go wait outside.’
Jedda could not help noticing, even as she struggled grimly against her assailant, that there was something odd about Wick’s face peering down at them in the gloom of the air-chariot. It looked blackened and twisted, lacking its usual smug smoothness. His expression seemed real to her for the first time since he had rescued her from the birds’ attack — no longer perfect, but resentful, wounded, human. He drew himself up at Gowron’s last words, his hand creeping to his throat in a gesture Jedda recognised.
‘Ugly freak, am I?’ he snapped. ‘Fine. You asked for it. Get off her.’
The last words were a sorcerer’s command, reinforced by the use of Wick’s own pendant. Somehow, Wick’s power was greater than Gowron’s, in this instance; perhaps by dint of using the orah first, he had temporarily achieved the upper hand over his companion. Gowron loosed his gasp on Jedda’s wrists and stood up, compelled.
‘You fool,’ the older acolyte cried, incensed. ‘We don’t use the Power on one of our own. Do you think the master is going to stand for this? He Sees us: don’t think he doesn’t know what you do.’
‘Then he also Sees you taking away what’s mine,’ said Wick. ‘It’s up to me to decide what happens to the girl. You have your perks on this job: I have mine.’
The two acolytes glared at each other, fuming, as Jedda scrambled up and backed away, moving as far from Gowron as she could in the cramped cabin. Let them argue over her, she thought fiercely. Let them tear each other to shreds, and she would finally be free.
But Gowron evidently did not wish to let the standoff degenerate into a fight. ‘I’m not going to forget this,’ he told Wick, mastering his anger. ‘Later, after the real job is finished, you’ll pay for what you’ve done tonight. You’ll wish you’d never been born.’
With that he strode to the hatch, bursting out of the air-chariot and into the glistening, wet darkness. The rain had stopped, Jedda realised, shuddering in her corner. The half-healed gashes on her wrists smarted where Gowron had gripped her.
‘Thank you,’ she said to Wick.
But the youth had already hurried away, and was scrabbling among his blankets on the floor by the controls, searching for something. When he turned back, the moment of truth was gone. His expression was flawless again, unmarked by suffering and distinctly less appealing.
‘That’s fine,’ he smiled. ‘He won’t be happy about this, though. Best you stay close to me from now on.’
She acquiesced, dragging her blankets over to his side of the cockpit. He did not seem interested in further intimacies, however, wrapping himself up in his cocoon once more and huddling next to the wall.
It was sunrise when Gowron returned to the air-chariot after spending the night outside, slamming through the hatch to awaken his fellow travellers. He did not say a word to the young people, but surveyed them both for a long, disdainful moment before moving to the small engine hatch in the floor, to light the machine’s furnace. Jedda watched him cautiously over the edge of her blanket, but Gowron did not meet her eye again, his back resolutely turned as he carried out his tasks. He had the air-chariot up in the air before they served breakfast, and refused all food when it was offered to him.
The lapsed priest drank regularly from his gourd that day as he manned the controls of the machine. The kush did not affect his ability to steer, but the others remarked their increased speed as they hurtled over the furlongs of wild canopy before the Gap. When Wick tried to remonstrate with him, Gowron growled out such a string of oaths, almost barking like an animal in his rage, that the younger acolyte backed away and left him to his own devices. Wick in any case was clearly battling nausea again, and sat in wordless misery next to Jedda on the bench. By late morning they had reached the Gap, that vast horizon of emptiness where the wriggling green line of the canopy’s Fringes met cloud. The Storm seemed pale and placid in the winter sunlight, but its vastness was oppressive. Gowron brought the air-chariot around to the south, checking the map for their position and all the time maintaining the same glowering silence. His companions were left to guess when he would take the fateful plunge below.
It was not long before he angled the nose of the machine downwards. Jedda watched through one of the air-chariot’s round windows as the rolling cloud-carpet drew closer. It seemed impossible that they should not come up against a hidden barrier, a low branch or jutting portion of the trunk, concealed by that treacherous layer of mist. She found herself edging closer to Wick, seeking out any shred of human comfort in the face of the immensity. But the clouds, when they entered them, were oddly tranquil.
To pierce the Storm was to descend first and foremost into a dreamlike topography. The upper layers were filled with floating strands, fingers of trailing fog. About the air-chariot lay hummocks and dells, rifts and columns of twisting white and grey, solid-seeming from without but vanishing like smoke upon contact. For a brief spell, they flew through a forest of tendrils, in and out and in again, and it seemed that the clouds were tame, no different from empty air.
Then blankness took them, and they flew blind into the heart of the Storm.
The first bump of turbulence came as a surprise to Jedda. The air-pocket hit the craft like a series of thudding knocks, as if a giant were rapping on the hull in an effort to get in. She grabbed Wick’s hand and, to her private shame, held on. The young acolyte did not prove much of a comfort in this instance, however. He seemed worse off than she was, leaning against the wall of the air-chariot; his face even in its smoothness was distinctly ill and green. Gowron stood hunched over the air-chariot’s gear sticks, intent on maintaining their course. He had thankfully ceased taking swigs from his kush gourd.
The second pocket of turbulence sent both young passengers sprawling onto the floor. This time, the juddering did not cease. It continued as they scrambled up as best they could, hanging on to the bench. The air-chariot pitched and swayed. The provision packs loaded onto the air-chariot slid across the floor in jumps and starts, for nothing had been secured. After a moment, Wick doubled over and vomited under the bench. A twinge of nausea visited Jedda, too, but her sickness receded when she kept her face close to the rushing col
d of the window. She fixed her gaze on the tapered nose of the craft, hurtling through patches of light and dark cloud.
Against all reason, she felt a wild stirring of joy. This was a good way to go, she thought. She preferred to die like this, at breakneck speed, with the wind in her hair, rather than be pecked to death by the Envoy’s curses or suffocated under Gowron. If the Storm took her that day, she would be content. Words welled up inside her in response to her exultation, and she found herself whispering them aloud, to the wind.
I do not stumble at the door. Death is but a portal.
The seed cracks as it gives birth: who mourns the shell?
She had thought they were more of Samiha’s poetry, that she was repeating a fragment of the Kion’s testament to comfort herself, as she had many times before. But although some verses in the Kion’s testament had the same joyfully defiant tone, she knew even as she spoke that this one was different. It was new. She shut her mouth with a snap, and gripped the edge of the air-chariot’s bench in confusion. The words that had tumbled from her lips had not been her own, arriving without premeditation, as if dictated by an outside source.
There had been, for a brief moment, another person in her head, chanting.
12
Tymon had feared at first, trudging back down the gloomy mine-tunnel with Zero, that he would not find Samiha waiting for him, that the apparition would not guide him, and that they would be obliged to return to the sunlit world within a few days when their food stocks ran low. He could not in all conscience pursue a dream forever, not with the Marak boy following faithfully on his heels. Besides, he was still aware of the other responsibilities calling him — Noni’s pleas for his return to the Freehold, and the Oracle’s trust. But the vision of Samiha reappeared sooner than expected. After only a short march into the tunnels on that first day, the far-off figure was walking before him once more, a reassuring glimmer in the darkness. His heart leapt towards it, and he felt he was on the right path at last.
‘Samiha!’ he called hoarsely, hurrying forward with such eagerness that he quit the shaky circle of light emanating from Zero’s torch. His companion cried out for him to wait, but he did not listen. ‘Samiha!’ he called again, stumbling after the vision.
But it did not pay him any heed, dwindling in the distance. After a while it winked out completely, and he was left in darkness, panting and clutching the wall, until Zero caught up with him again.
‘Wait for the light, Syon,’ his friend chided him in exasperation.
‘She’s here, Zero,’ said Tymon. Despite losing the apparition, he felt filled with bright, febrile joy. ‘I Saw her. The Kion. We’re on the right track.’
‘You saw your spirits?’
‘Not exactly. Samiha’s not dead — this is no ghost. It’s what we Grafters call a Sending.’
‘Sending.’ Zero tried the word out, full of doubt. ‘Anyway, don’t leave the light, Syon. It’s dangerous.’
Zero’s incomprehension did nothing to dampen Tymon’s enthusiasm. A feverish faith had been kindled in his heart; he pressed on, begging the other lad to walk faster, burning for a further glimpse of Samiha, for he felt that they had only to follow the direction the vision had taken for it to return. His devotion was rewarded perhaps two hours later, just as they reached the point where their side-passage intersected with the main route down into the mine. They had barely stepped out of the by-way before Tymon caught sight of the white figure once more, standing some distance down the tunnel. He hastened towards it, trembling with joy and calling out Samiha’s name.
The vision hesitated before turning away. It seemed to Tymon now that his love did not See him properly, after all, but sensed him as a blind person would. Her face wore a listening expression as if she heard, rather than saw, him stumbling after her in the gloom. Again, she walked on and he hurried after, transported by the bliss he had felt on first finding her, unaware of the bandages he wore or the pull and strain of his sore muscles. Again, the vision winked out, but it was much closer this time when it disappeared. Before fading away, the figure turned once more and listened for the sound of footsteps behind, peering into the darkness.
Zero could not prevail on his companion to stop for lunch, and they continued on into the heart of the mine with Tymon always walking a few eager paces ahead. When Samiha appeared once more in the far reaches of the tunnel, she was standing still and facing him, her head cocked in the listening attitude. On this occasion, when he cried out her name, she looked up immediately, sensing him; her lips moved, as if speaking his name. He hesitated no longer but sprang forward, running full tilt into the dark with Zero’s warning shout in his ears. To his joy, his vision did not turn away but waited for him, the shimmering figure casting a pale light on the walls of the tunnel. As he drew closer, Samiha appeared to focus on him, seeing him properly. She laughed and held out her arms, and he stumbled along the last few feet of the tunnel to stand before her. For a moment, he could not speak, gazing wonderingly into her face.
She looked like the girl he had left behind in Sheb. No longer the battered stranger he had glimpsed at the trial and execution, she was the woman he called his merry night-wife on the Freehold, long-haired and beautiful. The shimmering trance-form reflected a cherished, older reality. Her smile was like rain on his parched soul.
‘Well done, my love,’ she said to him. ‘I was hoping I’d find you here.’
‘You’re alive!’ He blurted out the obvious, his heart racing. ‘I knew it, even at Hayman’s Point!’
‘Hayman’s Point?’ she echoed, as if she did not recognise the name. Even her slight frown was achingly familiar to him, nostalgic. ‘Maybe. I’ve been trying to reach you for a while. I’m in a strange state, Tymon. I couldn’t See you before now, but I knew you were there.’
‘Tell me everything,’ he begged. ‘Where are you? What happened at the execution?’
‘I’m not sure, I’m afraid.’ She shook her head. ‘I fell a long way, through empty clouds — and then, nothing. It was like someone had switched off a light in my mind. I don’t know where I am, exactly: I just know I’m not dead. I think my body must have been caught and imprisoned somehow. I was forced into a Grafter’s trance, anyway, though I can’t fully control it. This has to be part of the Envoy’s plan. He has weakened me terribly. I sensed you were down here, in the mine. I think it’s not far from where I’m being held.’
Tymon gazed longingly at the pale, flickering form hovering before him. The vision reaffirmed all his instincts. It seemed so ethereal and at the same time so familiar, so utterly real. This reunion was of course exhilarating, but also deeply comforting in a way he had not expected. Samiha was no otherworldly Being, despite her ephemeral form. She seemed to have no obvious powers belonging to one of the Born. The two of them spoke as they had spoken many times before, as if they had left Sheb only yesterday. His long-lost love was there in spirit, if not in body, and she needed him.
‘I’m sure you’ve been imprisoned inside the Tree,’ he gladly agreed. ‘I say we explore the tunnels, until you feel we’re getting close to your body. You should be able to sense that by how easy it is to do a Sending, right?’
She nodded as Zero jogged up to them, breathless. The Marak boy had been left far behind in Tymon’s initial headlong sprint, and had only now managed to catch up with his friend, his torch held aloft and his childish face puckered in distress.
‘I told you, it’s dangerous to leave the light, Syon!’ he protested, his voice full of hurt and concern.
‘Who’s this?’ asked Samiha.
‘This is Zero,’ answered Tymon. ‘He’s helping me. The Kion is here,’ he added for the benefit of the puzzled youth, who stared in consternation as Tymon spoke to a patch of empty air. ‘Right now, beside us. You can’t see her, but she’s here.’
He indicated the area where the softly glowing image of Samiha stood, gazing intently at Zero. ‘The spirit?’ asked the Nurian boy again, querulous, peering at a point slightly t
o the left of Samiha’s ear. ‘The dead have come to guide you?’
‘No, I told you — she isn’t dead. A Sending is just a way of journeying without a body.’
‘I don’t understand,’ muttered Zero.
‘Is he simple?’ remarked Samiha with an edge of impatience.
Tymon winced at her use of the word. It was unlike her to be so blunt; the Kion knew the difference between lack of education and lack of brains in her compatriots. He put her reaction down to the stress of her state, and patted Zero’s shoulder comfortingly.
‘It’s alright,’ he told the boy. ‘Just call it a spirit and don’t worry. We’ve found her, that’s what counts.’
‘And we should get going, if we want to find my body,’ put in the flickering form of Samiha. ‘It’s hard for me to maintain this state.’
Zero was still frowning as they turned and continued down the passage. ‘I don’t understand why she’s not dead,’ he qualified unhappily. But Tymon was too absorbed in his vision of Samiha to respond.
‘How did you know the right way out of the mine, when I was here with the mineworkers?’ he asked her. ‘You saved us — we wouldn’t have made it without you.’
She shrugged in embarrassment. ‘I can’t explain it, really. It’s odd, being outside my body. I know certain things about you, things I wouldn’t be able to know if we were just together physically. I understood you were in the mine with your friends, and I knew how to help you. But I couldn’t See you properly. Now I can. I think it’s because … because of love.’ She smiled shyly at him. ‘Your love is like a light for me in the darkness. It calls me and holds me together. I sometimes wonder if you didn’t keep me alive.’
The pleasure of hearing her say it rippled through him. ‘Maybe you’re still alive because you’re a Born,’ he suggested, lowering his voice to be out of earshot of Zero, trudging patiently in the rear. ‘You’re different from us. More powerful. You can’t really die, can you?’
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