by Neil Beynon
‘That must have been awful,’ said Anya, ‘to carry that secret all these years.’
‘It is a lie,’ said Vedic, turning from the Tream, ‘not a secret. Lies always beget horror.’
Akyar frowned at the woodsman. ‘It is a slight omission. No one doubted the boy was dead. The knowledge of where would have brought the whole nation to war.’
‘I did not say the lie was badly intended,’ conceded Vedic, his voice gentler. ‘Hogarth blamed Danu, yes?’
Akyar shook his head, stopped. ‘Well, kind of. He blamed her, cursed her with every fibre of his being, but it was himself he was angry with. He knew that he should have come home that night. He wears a small band of the doe’s hide on his wrist to remind him not to be so rash.’
‘And Pan?’ asked Vedic.
The Tream flushed a deep green that Anya found quite endearing. ‘Hogarth’s father used me to negotiate a more friendly set of terms with the gods, improving the treaty we had agreed. This meant I had to go back and forth to the lake regularly. Pan was the gods’ envoy. When Hogarth took over, he continued to use me for any negotiations or contact with the gods, and I … I was able to persuade them to let me use their archives to help build our knowledge as well.’
Vedic laughed. ‘Were you behind Pan’s theory about the desert?’
Akyar frowned. ‘It’s a sound theory.’
‘Feel free to let me in on the joke,’ said Anya, irritated.
‘Pan thinks we, humans, came from somewhere else,’ said Vedic. ‘You heard part of this when we were in the Cordoenenn. He wants to go to the heart of the desert and see what he can find.’
‘He actually went,’ said Akyar. ‘Or he was supposed to. That’s why I can’t understand what he was doing back in the forest.’
Anya flinched. Stag. Her mind’s voice spoke, but this time the words were her own and not her mother’s. ‘Why did you think it was a stag that had killed Utah?’
Akyar stopped. ‘Because of the shape and depth of the goring and the marks the creature had made in the ground around the body.’
‘Coincidence,’ said Vedic. ‘That was too long ago for it to have been Cernubus.’
Anya frowned. She didn’t believe in coincidences any more than Falkirk did.
‘Cernubus’s form was that of a giant stag,’ she explained. Akyar’s eyes widened at this.
‘Keep moving,’ said Vedic. ‘We’re almost at the lakes.’
Anya forced herself back to the matter at hand. They were deep in the hills now. Rising high above them and closer than they would have thought possible were the great jet-black cliffs. The winding nature of the road blocked the view ahead. Thus, it was a surprise to them when they traversed another rocky edifice and found themselves looking out over the steep rock to a valley stretched out below. In the strange light, the valley looked like there might be caves or windows cut into the far cliff face. The valley was not large, but two almost-overlapping lakes blocked their path, gleaming like glass in the ur-light. The shore of the closest was only a few yards away. They would have to traverse round at least one to reach the dark opening in the base of the cliffs that sat on the far side of the valley.
‘I have been here before,’ said Vedic, his voice raw and cracked with dust from the road. He stared at the lakes like a man watching an army marching towards him.
‘The Trivium is through there.’
‘Yes,’ said Anya. ‘Her fortress is in there somewhere. The building shouldn’t be that far, but there’s only one route in, according to legend. Let’s hope she isn’t expecting us.’
‘We have to expect an attack,’ said Akyar, his voice soft. ‘I think she probably knows exactly where we are.’
‘Agreed,’ said the woodsman.
‘It’ll be fine,’ said Anya, stepping towards the Tream’s back, her hand reaching out for him before she thought better of it. ‘We’ll work it out.’
Vedic laughed. ‘No, little one. We won’t. If she’s in there at the moment, then we’re dead already and just haven’t realised the truth yet.’
Anya flushed. You should kill him, came her mother’s voice. He has no respect.
‘If that is true, then we are beyond worry, and seeing as we are all still worried, I think we should get on with our plan,’ said Akyar, stepping between them. ‘I’m going to refill my waterskin. We’ve a long climb ahead of us.’
The woodsman put his hand on the Tream’s shoulder before Akyar could dunk the skin in the water. He shook his head. ‘Bad water, trust me. The lake will take more than it gives.’
‘What?’ asked Akyar.
Anya noticed the woodsman’s other hand was trembling. He replied, ‘This is the pool of Lethe.’
Still Akyar looked confused. The woodsman sighed and answered the unspoken question. ‘This is where the dead come to forget, and for those that seek this path, beyond lies the Mnemosyne, the well from which truth can be taken. If you drink from the Lethe, you will lose all memory. You will cease to exist even though there will be breath in your lungs.’
‘And the other?’ asked the Tream.
‘No one can know everything,’ said Vedic, shaking his head. ‘This amounts to the same thing. Although you remain breathing for rather less time.’
Akyar shoved his nearly empty skin back in his pack. ‘Then I guess we’d best—’
‘What in Danu’s name is that?’ asked Anya. She pointed to the sky where the dark band of night that seemed to ring the whole of Golgotha had detached from the horizon and was moving closer towards them with cogent purpose. Sulphur wafted on the breeze, carried from the same direction. Akyar, the keenest eye, stepped forward.
‘Winged Kresh,’ he said. ‘The Morrigan knows we are here.’ As if in answer, they heard a faint cawing on the wind.
‘We need to get into that cave,’ said Anya, gesturing to the dark opening at the base of the cliffs. ‘Quickly.’
You are going to die because you are weak. Anya pushed her mother’s voice away. There was no time for any of her mother’s second-hand lessons delivered by bad memory. She needed to focus on what was at hand. Vedic’s behaviour was worrying her. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought he was on the edge of terror.
The three of them looked at the strip of rock that circled the lakes. The stone formed a narrow, crumbling wall that they would have to traverse. The path ahead looked treacherous and impassable, as if a sneeze would send the rock into the lakes. The cawing grew louder.
‘Best get on with it, then,’ said Vedic, his face pale as he took one look around at the horizon, as if searching for a lost horror. Anya shoved him. On the wind, they could hear the caw of birds drawing near. They had no time, and the path over and around the lakes was narrow and slow. They were in trouble.
The ledge across the first lake was less than a shoulder’s width apart. They couldn’t walk along it, and so they needed to shuffle out one by one. In order to make it easier, they split out the weight from the remaining packs so they were evenly distributed between the three of them, as Vedic had suggested.
They were making progress around the Lethe, but Vedic, who was up front, was beginning to slow as they drew closer to the second lake. Anya’s sympathy was starting to wane as the Kresh drew closer – the cawing was continuous now, and she was tired of the stale wind in Golgotha. She wanted the warm red of her own two suns.
The sound of the Kresh grew louder again; the birds’ wings could be heard now, moving en masse as a dreadful thump in the air, like a giant’s heart. There was no more time for contemplation. The crumbling, narrow wall of rock that arced around the Mnemosyne stretched out before them, barely deeper than a foot’s length, and in some places rather narrower. Far away, or so it seemed, they could see the dark mouth of the cave that would offer them a sanctuary of sorts, if they could only reach their new home.
The woodsman went first, followed by Akyar, and Anya shuffled out last. Vedic moved with the nimble grace that Anya had been so surprised by when she
first met him, but he was also gripping the ledge so tightly his knuckles turned white. His focus was never on the surface of the water or his feet. Instead, he concentrated on the rock in front of him as if his life depended on it.
Anya glanced down out of curiosity. Up close the pool was the colour of molten silver. There was no breeze, but there was a stirring in the water: the lake moved in gentle and differing shades of silver that met and parted with the ebb and flow. The occasional bubble burst, and once or twice Anya thought she saw faces in the tarnished silver of the meeting currents, shimmering images that didn’t always look entirely human: too much hair, or simian creases that were familiar but demonic.
Traversing the lake was hard work. On the road, the problem had been dust that clung to the throat and forced them to deplete further their meagre water reserves. Here, it was the sharpness of the red rock as they clambered across the edges of the lakes. Anya’s hands were raw by the time they were halfway round the Mnemosyne, and even Vedic had to tear strips from his pack to cover his hands.
The cries of the Kresh were all-encompassing now, like the rush of blood in their ears when they occasionally slipped on the path. Vedic cursed in a language Anya didn’t understand.
‘Keep moving,’ hissed Anya.
Only Akyar was silent, his face a dust-covered gargoyle as he tried to keep pace with Vedic. They gradually, inch by inch, made their way with quiet determination towards the Trivium and what they all thought would be a reckoning. As with the coming of the river Kresh, their avian cousins arrived in a downpour of black rain, icy and cold, which struck them like needles, prying at their fingers and turning the dust to slick, treacherous mire.
‘We have to go faster!’ yelled Anya.
‘We’ll die if we do,’ shouted back Vedic, his beard matted with ash-laden rain.
Anya didn’t answer back. She was too busy keeping her grip in the downpour, and she could see Akyar struggling with the same. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him shake his head, as if to clear it. The Kresh were almost on them now. She could see them sweeping down in waves. The cave was still an agonising distance away. They weren’t going to make it.
Anya nearly collided with the Tream. He had stopped. He was looking down at the lake as if mesmerised.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘There are people in the water!’ yelled Akyar.
Anya felt her heart quicken. She wouldn’t have thought this possible, given how frightened she was. She put her head close to Akyar’s left ear.
‘No, there aren’t,’ she said. ‘But we will be if we don’t move!’
Akyar looked confused. He hesitated. Anya thought she was going to have to actually shout again, but a moment later he resumed his movement. In the distance, Vedic had already built up a lead. He doesn’t even know we’re having a problem.
Anya glanced back to Akyar and frowned as she saw him move his right hand to a hold that looked like a muddy face. Akyar was looking not at where he put his hand but at the water. For Anya, however, she saw the wet mud slide away with Akyar’s hand to reveal the skull sat behind. Akyar swung out with one arm, a gasp of panic escaping his lips. Time seemed to slow. She saw him swing back and try to grab the skull, but the thing had been loosened by the rain, and the bone just came away in his hand, spinning to the water below. The Tream hung precariously from one hand.
The Kresh attacked.
One of their number struck Akyar’s hand. Its sharp yellow beak – hooked and razor-edged – hacked at his still-clinging digits, sending him windmilling into the Mnemosyne. The resulting splash sent vapour over Anya and Vedic, drenching them and leaving them staring at the shock wave dissipating across the pool. The Kresh circled for another wave of attacks. They waited for him to come to the surface. He did not.
‘He’s gone! We have to go on!’ shouted Vedic, gesturing to the cave. Anya couldn’t believe he was going to leave the Tream.
‘We have to help him!’
‘It’s too late,’ replied Vedic. ‘Nothing can survive the lake.’
The Kresh struck again. All they could do was cling on while they tried to claw and peck at them until they rose once more to dive on them again.
Anya stared hard at the woodsman. He was bleeding from his head again. ‘First my clan, then Pan – I’m not leaving anyone else behind. We have to help him.’
Vedic shook his head, his mind made up.
Damn him to the Morrigan, thought Anya. She dropped her pack on the ledge and dived into the water before he could get to her. She thought she heard him cry out in pain. She knifed under the waters of the lake and kicked for the bottom, where the light fell away, seemingly as reluctant to follow as Vedic.
The water was cold. Anya was a good swimmer, having been taught by her grandfather as a young child. He had only learned how to swim as an adult, when the thain had realised her warriors’ lack of this skill would prevent them raiding the Kurah as they moved across the rivers near the border. Like the thain, her grandfather didn’t want Anya to need the skill but wanted her to have the ability, and so they’d spent many hours practising down by the river. These were amongst her last memories of him truly sober and truly relaxed.
When she was a little older, it became her turn to teach Fin how to swim. The boy had been more at home in the water than on the battlefield. He was a gentle child; she wasn’t sure Falkirk had ever realised. She pushed thoughts of her ghosts from her mind. There was no time.
With graceful sweeps of her arms, Anya pulled herself deeper into the murk, looking for Akyar. She could barely see the creature ahead, a dark shadow, shifting in the bottom of the lake. The motion was faint at first, but as she drew closer, the violent movement became clearer. She drew her dagger without thinking. As it emerged from the darkness, the skin of the creature luminescent, Anya could see Akyar fighting for his life. He was clamped within the thing’s tentacles, being rolled over and over. This was all happening so fast.
Anya could feel her lungs starting to burn. There was no obvious shape to the creature, and so it was impossible to see where to strike. When the thing touched her leg, she nearly lost what was left of her air. She spun away, her knife blade whipping round, cutting the tentacle into the water. She grabbed at the detached piece. The tentacle looked like glowing seaweed, but instead of floating like a passive plant, the thing flipped and twisted in her hand, a lone sucker puckering towards her.
You’re afraid. The voice of her mother didn’t sound mocking, just disappointed, only now the tone was starting to merge into a version of Vedic’s voice. She felt her anger rising. She cast the piece aside. Brandishing her blade, she dived into the churn of Akyar’s fight with the weed. Her chest scorched with a molten heat that made her trunk feel as if it was slowly being crushed, and her limbs felt like the suspended silver had solidified around them and was dragging her further down. She knew she didn’t have long before she had to surface or drown. Sweeping in below Akyar’s struggle, she sliced her knife through the base of the tendrils before twisting round Akyar’s body.
Anya grabbed the first thing she found, his hair, and swam for the surface with desperate kicks. Anya felt as if they were clawing at the edge of a great void and Akyar, hands now locked on her wrist, was a dead weight that threatened to pull her into the darkness below. The temptation to kick him free was like a coiled snake in her belly: trapped and frightened, it twisted and spun, eager to strike and only barely within her control.
She pulled towards the air as the dim light of the world above seemed to pull ever further away from her. She noted blotches of light exploding in her eyes as individual streams of silver described a dance around her. She was drowning. She knew this as an abstract fact but was unworried. The knowledge felt strangely elating: a cessation of worry and an absolution of blame. She saw her death and wanted to embrace it. Akyar’s hand shifted in hers, the loosening of the grip bringing her back to herself and reminding her of other hands reaching for her from the dark shadows cast by fireligh
t.
Anya burst from the surface, dragging air into her lungs in great heaves until she had enough presence of mind left to pull Akyar onto his back so he could draw breath. He wasn’t moving. Pain flared in her skull as she was struck on the back of her head, drawing blood and forcing her to swim away. She looped Akyar under one arm and began swimming for the side.
‘This way!’ yelled Vedic.
Anya corrected her course in the direction of the woodsman, who had dragged himself to the side of the lake nearest the cave to the Trivium. He stood like a demon that had crawled from the earth, soaked in mud and dust, bleeding from a number of wounds and holding her pack as protection against more. His other hand was outstretched for them. Why isn’t he in the cave yet?
Anya pushed the Tream on ahead of her as she neared the bank. He was too heavy for her to lift up, and so the woodsman had to grab him by his cloak and hoist him up. Still the Tream did not move. Anya found herself dive-bombed by the Kresh again, but this time she managed to draw her knife and bury the blade in one of the creatures’ chest a couple of times before the bird fell into the water, cawing. That’s my girl, she heard her mother’s voice say, and hated her for it. Whether she was angry at her mother or herself, she could no longer tell. She grabbed Vedic’s arm and allowed herself to be pulled up.
The Kresh shrieked in outrage.
‘The cave,’ hissed Vedic, throwing the Tream over his shoulders and rising.
Anya nodded, fishing her pack up from where the woodsman had discarded it and raising the bag now as her own shield. ‘Do it!’
They ran. The packs helped to shield them, but really, it was swinging their swords like bats that cut their path to the cave. Inside, the woodsman dumped the Tream like a sack of potatoes and hacked the Kresh inside to pieces. Anya was already throwing rocks into the mouth of the cave to deter the others.
‘Good thinking,’ said Vedic, throwing his shoulder to a nearby boulder and shoving it straight across the entrance. Anya got the idea and started filling in the gaps even as Vedic chucked more boulders on. She looked round for Akyar and saw him still prostrate on the floor of the cave.