She had appeared and disappeared three times over the course of their journey that day, begging Tymon to hurry whenever she returned. Her body, she had told him, was weakening. Without it, the strength to perform a Sending waned and ultimate recovery slipped out of reach. He needed no other encouragement to press on, and only regretted his own infirmity, the frailty of his flesh compared with his intentions and desires. Now that he had stopped walking, he found that he was shaking with exhaustion. Once more, he did not have the stamina to launch a Grafter’s trance, as Noni had asked him to do at the close of each day. He had no strength left to assure the Focals of his wellbeing. He pleaded with his love to be patient, if only for Zero’s sake, and insisted when they ate the evening meal that the young lad take much of his own share, claiming to be too tired to digest it. After they had finished eating, he stretched himself out beside Zero to sleep on the floor of the Tree-tunnel, grimacing with pain.
‘I think I can help you,’ Samiha said, bending over him with a concerned expression, as he attempted to find a comfortable position. ‘Sometimes I forget, nowadays. I forget what it means to be in a body, tired and hurt. But I can help you. The Sending is a permeable state. I can give you a little of my own energy: what use is it if I go on living and you expire here?’
Zero had already fallen sound asleep, curled up under his blanket on the hard, smooth floor of the passage as Samiha crouched beside Tymon.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he murmured to her. ‘You have barely enough to keep going yourself. A night of rest will do me just fine. Or whatever passes for a night. I doubt we’ll know what time it is when we wake up.’
‘I’m not being silly,’ she said. ‘We’re both in trouble if you don’t stay strong. This is worth a try, even if I have to cut down on the amount of Sendings I do. You’re more hurt than you pretend to be.’
‘I don’t feel it when you’re around,’ he answered, smiling up at her. And it was true: he was willing to bear all the aches and pains in the world for the sight of her.
‘That’s not good enough. I can see you’re in a bad way, whatever you feel.’ She bent close to him, entreating, her hair hanging down in a softly glowing curtain. ‘Our connection is strong. Usually a Grafter can’t touch a Sending, but you did. Let me help you, Tymon. I can take it.’
He hesitated. He did not wish to deprive her of anything, especially when she told him that she was already weak, running out of strength to perform the Sendings. But his pulse quickened as he thought of their one brief touch. What harm would it do? Even the shadow of intimacy was better than none at all. She seemed confident she could keep back enough vitality while helping him: he decided to trust her judgment. Besides, he could not refuse her anything when she begged him like this, so close, so glowing.
‘How do we do it?’ he asked cautiously.
‘It works by proximity,’ she said. ‘Touch me, like before.’
He held up his hand, palm-outwards, and she laid her own against his. The slight, tingling sensation as their fingers met and twined was exhilarating.
‘My little night-wife,’ he said softly.
‘I will be,’ she promised. ‘We’ve never had enough time together. It isn’t fair. If we get out of this, Tymon, it’ll just be you and me. No more epic quests. Just ordinary human life, and love. We deserve it.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Now. You have to want it. I’m ready. Reach through the connection, and pull the energy into you.’
When he, too, closed his eyes, he was able to sense the tug and stretch of a faint Grafter’s connection between them, even as he did with Jedda. On this occasion, it did not appear to him as a shining cord, but filled every part of his body with a dim, tingling wash of sensation. As he concentrated, pulling more of the energy through the link as he had been told to do, the tingle became a rush of pleasure, overwhelmingly intense. It was nothing like the flow of the Sap he had felt in the Tree of Being; this sensation was harder, coarser, fascinating. It reminded him fleetingly of the Doctor’s chair.
His eyes flew open in surprise. ‘What’s this?’ He searched Samiha’s face, troubled. He resisted the urge to drink more and greedily of that heady brew, wary of the effect it would have on her. Was she playing the martyr again for him?
‘Don’t stop,’ she whispered. She bent down and kissed him, a stab of light on his lips. ‘This is my love. Don’t refuse it.’
He could not resist for long, in any case. The link to her, once opened, almost engulfed him in its embrace. It was like the physical desire between a man and a woman, but also the unconditional love of a parent. It was all the different kinds of comfort and approval he had yearned for in his life, and had never been given. The mother he had not known, the wife who had been ripped away from him too soon — all these he found again, cradled in one complete sensation. Compared to the relentless punishment of the past few weeks, it was bliss. After a moment of confusion, he allowed the flow from Samiha to fill him to the brim. There was no harm, he thought. He would do the same for her in a heartbeat.
‘This was how it was, in the beginning,’ said the vision, though he no longer heard her, his eyelids drifting shut in ecstasy. The bending figure caressed his forehead with her pale fingers, musing aloud. ‘Pure love. We gave you everything, and yet you walked away from us. You chose to live alone, in hardship and in pain. How strange.’
The Syon’s spirits, Zero thought to himself, trudging behind Tymon two days later, were exacting creatures, requiring great personal sacrifice in exchange for their wisdom. They took as much as they gave, that was clear enough. Zero did not believe for one minute that Samiha, the Nurian queen, was still alive, for Tymon’s spirit guide behaved exactly like a hungry ghost.
Tymon had not been himself since they set out again, on what Zero guessed was the morning of the day before. After picking at his crumbs of breakfast, the Syon had hardly spoken a word as they walked, refusing lunch when they stopped to rest several hours later. By that time, the passage had indeed turned vertical, becoming a plunging well of darkness almost fifty feet across. But as Tymon had predicted — as the Kion apparently had told him — it was passable. A perfect, ten-foot wide ramp spiralled down into the hole, a corkscrew ledge cut into the sides of the well. Zero would have assumed the construction was manmade, had it not been so smooth, lacking any evidence of tool work. The edges were cut into the wood-grain with impossible precision, the gradient absolutely even. No hammer or chisel he knew of could have achieved that feat of engineering; he assumed, therefore, that they were walking down a spirit road.
The supernatural existed with complete ease alongside the physical for Zero. Why should spirits not have their own roads, houses and cities in the secret core of the Tree, as humans did? It seemed natural to him that a spirit guide would take them down a spirit road. But the toll required for passage through these sacred sites was heavy on the living. Tymon had descended into the well like a sleepwalker, in a waking dream. It was clear to Zero that his friend had bartered up a corner of his sanity in order to complete their journey, receiving in exchange a febrile power of endurance. They had stopped their day’s march only when Zero was staggering with weariness, and they had used up their quota of twelve torches. Tymon, for his part, seemed ready to walk on completely blind, and consented only grudgingly to a halt. That night, or what they guessed was night in the dark eternity of the Tree, Zero had convinced his friend to eat some of the Freeholders’ food, and the Syon had behaved more like his usual self for a little while. They had camped on the ramp in absolute gloom, saving their light for the journey ahead.
But the spirit would not leave Tymon alone. Zero could see that it gave him no rest; even at night, it demanded its ransom. The Marak boy had gathered from many and garbled sources that certain ghosts were hungry for only one thing, and that was to live again. Their current guide was no exception. The shade evidently wished to eat, sleep and love as humans did, and the more it sought those satisfactions, the less Tymon was accorded their benefits. As far as Zero
was aware, his friend did not sleep a wink the first night on the ramp, ridden by the ghost to distraction. Whenever the Marak lad awoke it was to hear Tymon twisting about from side to side, mumbling to himself or crying aloud in pain or pleasure, it was difficult to tell. Once, the young Argosian jumped to his feet and paced up and down the road for several yards in complete darkness, returning only to begin the restless circuit again. When Zero arose after an insufficient night’s sleep, and lit his torch on what he guessed was the following morning, he found Tymon already awake and crouched before him, wild-haired and grinning, his eyes ringed with shadow.
‘What are the children of Love?’ he said in a hoarse whisper to Zero, before scrambling to his feet with a dry, croaking laugh. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on.’
He waited neither for the torch nor his breakfast, but began reeling away down the ramp. Just as Zero was about to stumble after him, however, he caught sight of something small and reflective on the ramp, a shard gleaming in the torchlight. He bent down and picked up the hardwood pendant Tymon had always worn about his neck, its bright inlay shining like starlight. The cord had been untied, rather than broken, the pendant simply dropped on the ramp. Zero wondered at his companion’s abandonment of something he had formerly considered so precious. He stuffed the pendant into his tunic pocket, ready to give back later, and hurried after the disappearing figure of his friend.
He watched Tymon with increasing concern during the course of that day, noting in dismay that the Syon would take neither rest nor food, only walking on with relentless determination. The spirit-energy given by the hungry ghost may have been boundless, but a body was a body, with its own requirements and rules, to be ignored at one’s peril. Zero hoped their journey would not continue much longer, for Tymon’s sake. His own moral compass may have been idiosyncratic, lacking a coherent interior logic, but he was sure of one thing. Good and evil were purely human concerns. Ghosts had no use for such ideas, and this one seemed bent on riding Tymon until he broke.
13
The forms of Oren, Ara and Mata were grey and bowed in the morning mist, seated in the little clearing among the twig-thickets near Farhang, where they had once performed a Reading with Tymon. Only their eyes glinted over folds of the long wraps used by the northerners, covering them from head to foot. Noni was missing, away on her trip across the Gap, but the young Focals unconsciously left a space for her in the circle, an opening on Mata’s right side. Their breath whitened the chill air as they spoke in low voices, in Nurian.
‘What did you see this time?’ asked Oren. ‘The attack again?’
‘The attack,’ the twins confirmed, in unison.
‘Was this vision like the others?’ pressed Oren. ‘Did the ships arrive under a black cloud?’
‘The cloud that darkens, but gives no rain,’ said Ara, as Mata nodded. ‘But it was worse this time. The whole canopy was shrouded. There was only one spot of light, over Marak.’
‘The power of the Envoy,’ muttered Oren. ‘Though I don’t know why it wouldn’t touch Marak, too. Well, the fleet won’t be long in arriving, I suppose.’
‘Mid-morning, three days from now,’ said Mata without hesitation.
‘And what about you?’ Ara asked Oren.
‘The usual. Fire, destruction and the end of things,’ replied the other Grafter, as if such news were negligible. ‘It’s what I don’t See that disturbs me. I can’t feel Tymon any more. He’s clouded. This time I was wandering through a burning city in search of him. I thought he might be buried under a pile of ash, and dug into it with my bare hands, but couldn’t find him.’
‘The visions aren’t so different then,’ said Ara with a grimace.
‘Well,’ continued Oren after a moment, standing up and stamping his feet on the frosty floor of the clearing, ‘I suppose we’d better go tell the judges about the fleet.’
‘Not that it’ll do any good,’ sighed Mata, as he and his brother arose in their turn.
‘Or save us,’ added Ara mournfully.
‘Nonsense,’ said Oren, with an attempt at cheerfulness. ‘We can always prepare. A fleet is a fleet, and the judges can deal with that. As to the rest, being upset about it isn’t going to help.’ But his expression was grim as he followed the other two through the misty stands of twigs, towards the village dining hall.
The communal hall was already bustling with Freeholders from both Farhang and Sheb, gathered in the main room to take their breakfast. The young Grafters approached Gardan, Aythan and three other judges seated in a loose group on the floor. The Freehold leaders were accompanied by a newcomer: a lean, weathered Nurian who, judging from his generally dusty and travel-worn state, had only just arrived in Farhang, though the hour was early. Everyone stopped talking as the Grafters approached, and turned expectantly, if a little warily, towards them.
‘Respected syors,’ said Oren, bowing deeply and speaking in Argosian out of deference to the northerners, ‘we come to you this morning with troubling news.’
‘Welcome, Oren,’ answered Gardan. ‘Sit down, please, all of you. I’d like to introduce you to Halas Melat, from Marak.’
She indicated the newcomer, who inclined his head in polite greeting, gazing with a curious intensity at the Grafters. Oren gave the stranger an answering nod before turning back to the judges. Although Ara and Mata had seated themselves at Gardan’s request, he remained standing in urgent supplication.
‘I regret, this report is of great importance,’ he began. ‘It cannot wait —’
‘You wish to tell us that an Argosian fleet will attack within the next couple of days,’ interrupted Aythan, in his rumbling baritone.
‘We’ve just heard the news,’ continued Gardan, as Oren stared in surprise, then slowly sank down on the floor next to his friends, ‘from Halas, who walked day and night from Marak city to bring us the Argosian edict.’
She retrieved an impressive-looking green velvet bag from the folds of her cloak and handed it to Oren. It was a seminary post-bag of the finest variety, reserved for Council missives. The young Grafter unknotted the drawstring with trembling fingers and drew out the document within, paying no heed to the ornate lettering but focusing instead on the ancient Seal of the Prophets affixed to the bottom. The Argosians had not dared use that mark for centuries.
‘Ah,’ he said unhappily. ‘I see that Fallow has declared a crusade.’
‘The letter is dated almost four weeks ago,’ said Gardan, plucking back the paper with its florid signature and folding it away in the soft green bag again. ‘It was supposed to be sent out to the northern Freeholds more than a week ago but, oddly enough, no trader could be found travelling in these parts this time of year. Halas was the only one able to bring it — which means the Argosians are right on his heels.’
The grey-garbed man nodded again in corroboration of this. ‘I came as quick as I could,’ he remarked, in the harsh accent of a Marak dweller. ‘Twenty ships docked before I left, about half the fleet if I guess right. The others were due in the next few days. It took me a week to get here, though I rode on a farmer’s barge and shortened the trip. They’ll be right behind.’
‘Arriving in three days,’ put in Mata glumly. ‘In the morning.’
Gardan glanced up at this. ‘That’s helpful to know,’ she said with relief, as several of the judges whispered excitedly to each other in response to the revelation. ‘We feared it might be sooner. Thank you, friends. This means we have more time for the evacuation of our families. As you know, the United Freeholds have been preparing for just such an attack. We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.’
‘Begging your pardon, syors, but preparation does little good,’ blurted Oren. ‘This is only first attack. There will be many more: even if we survive this one, we are doomed. All Freeholds are doomed.’
His comment provoked another flurry of whispers. Some of the judges openly rolled their eyes, while Gardan stifled a sigh.
‘Oren,’ she said, ‘we understand your de
sire to warn us. We appreciate any information you can give us, like the time of attack. That’s a great help.’ She took hold of his arm with a strained smile and a swift glance at the people scattered about the meal hall, and pulled him closer before continuing. ‘But these Grafters’ prophecies of doom and gloom — it just kills morale, old friend,’ she hissed in his ear. ‘We’d much rather you didn’t announce such things in public.’
‘All the same, syora, it is true,’ replied Oren, lowering his voice in response. ‘We will not win final war with Argosians, not in End Times.’
‘What do you suggest?’ she murmured to him in the Sheb dialect, as the other judges continued to talk among themselves, ignoring the Grafters now. ‘That we surrender? It’s fight or die, Oren. The Saint has been quite clear about that. He accuses us of conspiring with Lantrians against the Holy Seat, though everyone knows that was Caro’s game, may the Sap leave him dry. Fallow has officially declared the Freeholds heretic nations to be cleansed by fire and the sword. We have no rights; we have no recourse. Everything we ever negotiated or signed means nothing. There are no civilised options open to us any more. Do you understand?’
The Speaker’s voice had become a harsh whisper, belying her usual calm, her gaze full of bright intensity. Oren opened his mouth to answer, then thought better of it. He knew she hated what she was saying, but was driven to such measures out of desperation.
‘Yes,’ said Gardan. ‘Kill or be killed. If you have an objection to that, you’re welcome to return to Marak. I’m sure we’re all doomed. This is probably the end. Just don’t, for the love of the Sap, start dispiriting these poor people with advance notice of the fact. I suggest you and your friends evacuate with the non-combatants tomorrow, and do the best you can to protect them. That would be useful to us.’
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