by Neil Beynon
‘Shit.’ She scrambled over to him, placed her cheek over his mouth and realised he wasn’t breathing.
Anya had no idea how Tream kept themselves alive. She gambled Tream bodies weren’t that different from her own kind, and tilted the creature’s head back so his airway was clear, and tried to find a heartbeat before starting to breathe for him. She had just pinched his nose when he vomited up lake water in big silver gouts. She tilted him onto his side so he could clear the water.
‘A narrow escape, Master Vizier,’ said Vedic, his own relief palpable. ‘I do believe she was about to kiss you.’
Akyar’s coughing turned to laughter. ‘It is I who have saved her, then,’ he replied, although he clutched her hand tightly. ‘My thanks, Lady Anya.’
‘You need not thank me,’ she said, a smile ghosting her lips. ‘I need company to put up with that gnarled bastard.’
‘I heard that,’ said Vedic.
‘You survived, then,’ she said, looking at the ugly welts all over the Tream’s body. The squid creature had been serious about trying some of his flesh out.
‘I am not overfond of water,’ said Akyar, ‘but it cannot hurt me, even a foul pool such as this. You’re hurt?’
Anya smiled. This was a defiant gesture that belied the weariness that she felt permeating her body. The swim had left her muscles burnt, but it was the blood leaking out of her scalp that was attracting attention as it seeped down her forehead, mingling with the water on her face. Anya tried to wipe away as much as she could. Blood was streaming down her face, and keeping it out of her mouth was proving an ordeal she wasn’t winning.
‘It’s just because they’re on the scalp. They’re not deep …’
The taste of copper in her mouth mingled with a different flavour that was utterly alien to her. The light drained from the room as if a demon were leaching all the colour. Anya felt the world lurch away …
There was no sense to the vision.
It was not knowledge Anya received but a torrent of images, of scenes flowing with a speed that she could never hope to follow and that washed away her sense of self in the thundering river of information. She could not have screamed or cried out or even acknowledged there was an entity known as Anya to be swept away. It crushed her; it melted her, turned her inside out and spread her being across the entirety of existence. Her brain was aflame, and her heart with it. It made no sense.
Forest, hot and humid, far away from anything she has seen in Golgotha or her own lands, and screeching with noise from a menagerie of animal life. A single sun burns liquid gold in an azure sky. Creatures, not Tream or man, covered in patchy hair, both like the monkeys found in the south but at the same time different, creatures lost in myth, which swing through the trees above and look out from the undergrowth on the forest surface. One of them lets out a surprisingly human cry of pain and drops to the ground. The creature’s confused eyes fix on Anya’s point of view.
The river sweeps her away again.
The desert, far to the north … the smell of smoke coming from over the horizon … footprints, hundreds … no thousands of footprints … streaming across the sand towards the craggy edge of a canyon … Lights flash across the sky despite the suns sweeping across the vista … The ground shifts uncomfortably below her feet as if broken.
The tide sweeps her away from the heat.
The tattooed couple writhe in the lamplight of a skinned hut … The woman is both unfamiliar and familiar as she moves on top of the Shaanti … The woman’s long hair covers the man’s face, hiding his features … She rolls him over so he’s atop her … Anya’s wounds, long healed, ache, and tears fall, leaving the bitter taste of salt on her tongue … There is no fear in this cabin, no violence and nothing of the darkness outside, yet Anya can feel bile in her throat … The sense that this has been ripped from her is overwhelming … She comes closest to understanding in that moment, but it is lost from her.
The tsunami of the torrent strikes once more.
The docks are bright with light from the sun, erasing the scene from her mind and crystallising into a small boat pulling in, a series of wooden boxes being unloaded with care. Men move to carry them down the jetty, where a woman checks them and, looking round for observers, waves them into a small building. This woman is swathed in robes that make her impossible to identify. There is a sense of panic throughout the city, and many of the people are fleeing. The sailors are keen to discharge their duty and be away. The woman seems sad, a downward turn of her shoulders, but she is not overly afraid.
The pain of the information churning through Anya is excruciating. It knots her up before it unravels her like rope fraying under tension.
Newborn gods stream from the lake at the heart of the forest … Tream look on, confused, weapons raised while the men they have been fighting fall to their knees, forgetting the deadlock with the Tream … Their deities are real and have revealed themselves in their hour of need … Truly, they are blessed.
The visions are a flood now.
A god standing on the edge of the forest, his hair wild as antlers, his body torn and bleeding as the pantheon stare at him with open hatred.
A burning city full of dead Delgasians, a stone temple where someone of impossible height moves out from the shadows.
A goddess – she could be Danu or the Morrigan – points to the Barrens, where human army clashes with human army.
A sole figure treading across the desert towards a small tree, his leather bag bouncing against his hip.
A crying man she should know waves a tattooed woman off as she heads eastward. Anya never sees her face.
The god with the wild hair defies his kin, and one of the gods, hidden by the others, raises her hand in power. The wild-haired god is hurled far away, his departure a streak of light that arcs across the sky.
All is fire. All is water. Anya cannot breathe. She needs to start breathing again, or she will die. The knowledge is certain. Yet the information is starting to make sense: she thinks she knows what she is seeing, but she can’t quite join the picture together.
Men, woman and children streaming into the mountains to the south, buildings are carved from the rock even as more people cross the ocean to other lands.
The wild-haired god lifts a stone knife to his own chest and begins to carve in the runes from the tablet in front of him.
Tream fight the gods. Anu splits the forest and drives a spike deep into Golgotha as the trees she has destroyed smoke into the air. Anya can actually feel the echoes of their screams through the soil, and the truth destroys her even as it hovers on the edge of her grasp.
The hairy, leathery creature in the forest screams as a being emerges from between its legs. The baby is dark, like the creature, but has far less hair and cries almost the moment she emerges into the light.
Breathe.
The wild-haired god stands atop a stone creature that moans in pain as he rips its head from its shoulders, and the men surrounding him drop to their knees in supplication.
The land is broken, fused with rock. All around, smoke stains a nightmare landscape of stone and twisted metal. The air is hot with gas.
Breathe.
Anya can barely make out anything save a city on the coast, burning with fire, and ships that remind her of the other dreams.
The thought dissolves.
Breathe.
And all is light.
There is her mother. She stands in the light. She is not human here but made of glass, as if she stepped from the stained window of her town hall, where she was venerated as a hero of the clan. Anya can see the sword that everyone remembers in her left hand, even as she, the daughter no one knows about, looks on. Her mother is speaking, but Anya cannot hear her. The voice sounds different from the one in her head, and the words are all coming out in nonsense. Her mother reaches out for her with the hand that is empty. She thinks she can make sense of two words that are repeated at intervals: ‘No fear.’
Breathe.
<
br /> Anya’s lungs fill. Colours bleed into vision as the air, cool and fresh, streams back into her. The light fades to the darkness of the cave.
‘Breathe.’
Someone she knew was speaking. The voice wasn’t her mother’s. The slow sinking of the images in Anya’s head into the duller tones of half-recalled paintings obscured the name of the speaker. It was a bittersweet victory when the woodsman’s name slipped into her mind, along with the memories of the attack on the village and his failure to help by the lake. She lay still a moment longer, enjoying the silence. One of them had bandaged her head; she could smell wysgi on the garment, and she was grateful for it. She didn’t relish the thought of infection, and she doubted the dirt here had the healing properties of the forest.
Outside, the Kresh beat themselves across the rocks, searching for an opening.
‘She might die yet,’ said Vedic. She guessed the woodsman was rubbing his arm. The limb must have been very painful given how close to death she had come.
‘Do something!’ insisted Akyar.
‘I can’t,’ snapped back Vedic. ‘I did warn her.’
Akyar’s blade sounded like a serpent hissing as he drew it. Anya pushed herself to her elbows.
‘He’s not being a bastard,’ she said, nodding at Vedic and enjoying their surprise. ‘There wasn’t anything he could do.’
Vedic let out a long breath and sat down. His cursed arm stretched a little less awkwardly across his lap. Anya noticed the scar on his arm looked angry. She gently pushed the Tream, who was trying to help her, away.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Anya of Vedic.
Akyar winced. ‘Don’t worry about Vedic. He’s just worried about himself.’
‘No,’ said Anya, her eyes still on Vedic. She was trying to cling to the images she had seen and failing: they were receding like fine mist on a sunny winter’s morning. ‘There is more than the fear of the pain that the curse gives him when I am in danger. I don’t think his worry for Danu is behind this feeling either. The woodsman has been terrified since we fell through the fissure into Golgotha.’
Vedic leant back on his stone, against the far wall of the cave, his eyes closed in meditation and his sword resting on his lap. He didn’t answer but continued to focus on his breathing. There was no shaking of his hands or nervous movements of his legs, and he gave the appearance of being elsewhere. Anya knew this was a lie. He could hear her. She got to her feet and walked towards him.
‘What happened with the Morrigan?’ asked Anya. ‘You felt fear, real fear, down here, perhaps for the first time … That’s the secret … is it not?’
Vedic opened his eyes. ‘You saw things in the water, did you? Why don’t you tell me?’
Akyar looked from Vedic to Anya and back again.
‘You saw strange visions with the semblance of sense but that you could not stitch together,’ said Vedic, turning to look at her. ‘You have drunk of the pool of Mnemosyne, albeit by accident. The water will have given you knowledge – in time, you may understand.’
Anya blinked, distracted by the implication that all she had seen was real. ‘What if I had swallowed more?’
‘You’d be dead. The human brain is only designed to take so much reality. The knowledge burns your mind out. Frankly, in its undiluted form, I’m surprised you could take any at all. It is … potent.’
Anya batted aside the distraction of her other visions. ‘This happened to you, didn’t it? The first time you came here, you were already a forestal, and she diluted the water for you, but you drank of the lake. That’s why you won’t go near the water?’
Vedic blinked.
‘I think you may be right,’ said Akyar, watching the woodsman. ‘I wonder if you saw a vision that we should know.’
There was no answer to this, but the woodsman looked tired and old in the faded light of the cave. He closed his eyes and returned to his breathing.
Anya kicked his feet. ‘Well, can we expect any help from you in here? Because at the moment, it seems to turn on the head of a coin.’
Vedic’s hand dropped to his sword.
‘Anya, let him alone,’ said Akyar. ‘Whatever it is that’s gnawing him, he doesn’t want to share.’
‘My death.’
Anya found herself staring at the woodsman, the hairs on her arms standing on end and a similar expression of fascination and revulsion on her Tream companion’s face.
‘I saw my death,’ said the woodsman, refusing to look at either of them. ‘The Morrigan brought me here to show me her realm.’
‘Why?’ Anya couldn’t help herself.
Vedic looked at her. ‘She wanted me to serve her, not Danu … thought I was better suited to the land of the dead, and she showed me what was waiting if I did not.’
‘What did you see?’ asked Akyar. ‘Exactly.’
‘It made no sense. Like for Anya, the vision was overwhelming. I saw many things.’
‘You clearly remember the dying part,’ said Anya, folding her arms.
‘I do,’ replied Vedic, closing his eyes again. ‘I’m in a burning wasteland. I think the fire is close, but I can’t be sure. I am surrounded by the bloodied ghosts of the enemy, waiting to take me when I fall …’ Vedic bowed his head. ‘It doesn’t matter. The vision was a lie, a twisting of the lake’s power. We are safe in the caves and still breathing.’
‘You thought the wasteland was Golgotha,’ said Akyar, his voice tinged with pity.
‘Don’t you?’ asked Vedic. ‘The dead are all around us here.’
Anya nodded. She had him now. ‘Perhaps. We need to find the boy. Can we count on your help? The Morrigan wants to get under your skin – she succeeded. Now it’s time for revenge.’
Vedic opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘Yes.’
There was a howl from deep inside the tunnels and caves behind them. The cry was deafeningly loud and went on for what felt like an eternity. The howl contained so much anguish and longing, though it was clearly animal, that even in their fright, they felt for whatever had made the noise. Vedic stood and looked at the other two.
‘Well, are you coming?’
Chapter Twenty-One
They rode in silence.
Jeb had not spoken to his sister in so long that he suspected he had forgotten how to, and the forest in the distance was something to focus on, a hypnotic smudge on the horizon that grew darker as they drew closer. He shifted in his saddle, which was becoming increasingly uncomfortable as the journey went on and a distraction from imagining what was going on in Vikrain.
‘Are you all right?’
Jeb looked across at his sister.
Sevlen barely seemed there. Her shadow’s attire was a seamless sea of black that, in the moonless night, faded and merged her form into that of the horse. If he had not known she was there, it would have been easy for his old eyes to skip over her entirely. She sat more upright than him. She was a lot younger, the offspring of his father’s second wife, and more like a daughter to him than a sister because of the age difference.
‘I will survive,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘No doubt.’
‘Why are you here?’
Sevlen did not answer. They rode on in silence. Jeb found himself thinking about the moment when his father had brought baby Sevlen round to the barracks to show her off. He had been a young man already and living with the rest of the warriors at the palace, around a year from being asked to tutor the young thain-to-be. She had been the strangest baby. She did not cry. Not once. She looked up at him with those big brown eyes that seemed to see everything, and it was as if she had known him forever: an old soul. She was probably looking at him like that now, not that he could see her eyes.
‘How can you ask that?’
He shifted. ‘We have not spoken for ten years or more.’
‘Twenty.’
He shrugged. ‘What is a decade at our age? You make my point for me: what is it to you if I never come back from here?’
&n
bsp; ‘There are no chances to play again in this life,’ said Sevlen, the shadow. ‘I have travelled far and wide for our mistress and seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Humans have a capacity for harm and self-delusion that is unparalleled in the world, and amongst the worst is the belief there is still time. Even I, who have seen all our sins and used them to my advantage, nearly forgot. You are my brother. I would make amends.’
Jeb flushed. ‘You cannot change what you did.’
‘Could you change the course of your heart?’
He thought of his wife, Sola, who had been dead for thirty years. They had met when he came back from the first skirmish with the Kurah, back when the previous thain had been nearing the end of her reign, and Sola had dismissed him as another knucklehead. It took him three years to persuade her he wasn’t another soldier in search of glory, trying to live up to the witch-warrior or determined to die trying. He missed her so much. In the night, he would still wake and roll to her empty side of the bed, struggling to regain the scent of her, long gone from the house, and would occasionally smoke her old pipe just to fill the building with the tobacco smoke she favoured.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I suppose not.’
She grunted. ‘You think everything is so black and white, man and woman—’
‘That wasn’t why,’ he said, exasperated that the old argument was starting again. ‘My objection had nothing to do with who you or she fell for,’ he said. ‘She was … she is my oldest friend. This was about the Shaanti clans. There was still time for her to have another heir, and we needed one because, whatever she says, we are not ready for the council. Human nature is too fickle.’