by Jen Williams
Extract from the private records of Agent Chenlo
‘There’s another group arriving.’
Vintage took the eyeglass away, squinting into the distance. It was possible to see them now without the contraption; seven giant bats with riders, looking like black-and-white smudges on the blue summer sky. It had been three months since Noon’s little incident at the Winnowry, and still new fell-witches were arriving every few days or so. Another seven would take their witch population up to thirty-eight.
‘Helcate,’ said Helcate.
‘Indeed.’ Vintage reached up and absently patted the war-beast on the snout. Since the sun had warmed the Eboran forests into lively places once more, he had grown a great deal, and although he still clearly mourned Eri, there were signs that this fresh bonding with her was giving him new strength. ‘But this is interesting. So far we’ve mostly seen them arriving on foot over the mountains, or there was that group that came via the Barren Sea. But on bats? Perhaps this could be our mysterious Agent Chenlo, finally come to join all the women she has apparently badgered into our company.’ She grinned. ‘Noon will be so pleased.’
With that in mind, she left the summer gardens, Helcate trotting at her back, and made her way to the south-eastern portion of the palace. Here, Aldasair had thoughtfully housed all their errant fell-witches close to each other, with many of their rooms facing out across a set of ornamental ponds. At its heart was one of the palace’s odd sprawling rock gardens, a concept Vintage had not come across before. Rather than a place of lush grass and flowers, there was a neat lawn punctured with artful piles of white and grey stone, themselves dotted with hardy little plants which had fat, bulbous leaves and blossoms of all colours. It had become an unofficial meeting place for the women, many of whom still seemed reluctant to mix with the other peoples of Sarn. She smiled to see them, a mixture of young and old women, several sitting on the grass chatting, with a few perched on the rocks, drinking tea. She could see from the blank wonder on their faces that they were still getting used to being outside at all. One child, surely no more than fifteen, sat with her fingers buried deep in the grass, her face turned up to the sun.
‘Morning, Carola.’ Vintage crouched by the girl, taking a moment to enjoy how easy it was to do this now – her broken ankle, after many long weeks, had finally healed. ‘How are you today?’
The girl beamed up at her. Her face, so pale and drawn when she had arrived, was gradually getting some colour. Vintage thought she could even see a few freckles.
‘I am very well, Lady Vintage.’ The girl’s voice was hoarse still – too many years spent in near silence. ‘The sun is out, I can eat what I like.’ She patted the grass. ‘And the green of it all. It’s like being warm after years of being cold.’ She shrugged. ‘And it’s warm, of course. There’s a rumour, Lady Vintage, that the Jure’lia are dead now. That your warriors killed them all with their tricks.’
Vintage felt her smile die a little. ‘Now then, darling, we can’t know that.’
‘No one has seen them for months! They all vanished from the sky after you fought them off.’ The girl tore up some blades of grass and watched them fall through her fingers. ‘That’s what everyone is saying, everyone who comes over the Bloodless Mountains.’ Vintage looked away, back to the smooth organic shapes of the palace. The girl was right; every piece of gossip they heard claimed that the Behemoths had sailed off out of sight – that their trickery in Ebora had somehow frightened the worm people off. No one, despite all of Vintage’s questions, had been able to give her any idea of exactly where they had gone, and that was what worried her. This, she knew well from her own studies, was not unheard of. At the end of every Rain, when the war-beasts who had been born from Ygseril defeated the Jure’lia, the old enemy would disappear for a time. And ultimately, she and Bern had only been able to disrupt the memory crystal of a single Behemoth – could that have hurt the worm people so badly? Was that really enough to send them into hiding again? Somehow, she did not believe it.
‘Lady Vintage, do you know where Noon is? We thought maybe she’d come and see us today.’
Vintage smiled, returning her attention to the girl. When the fell-witches had started arriving, they had insisted on calling Noon by any number of titles, much to the young woman’s horror. Fell-Noon, Mistress Noon, Lady Noon, Sister Noon . . . the younger girls, at least, seemed to have come around to the idea that she needed no title, but it hadn’t lessened their admiration for the woman who had liberated them.
‘I haven’t seen her, my dear, but I’m sure she’ll pop her head around soon.’
The girl nodded seriously, her hair falling over her forehead and partially obscuring the crude Winnowry tattoo. Vintage left her on the grass, waved to a pair of older women cradling delicate teacups in their hands, and left the gardens with Helcate in tow. Together, they made their way to the central war-beast courtyard, where Tormalin, Noon, Vostok and Kirune were waiting to leave. Tor was still adjusting Kirune’s harness, his long black hair loose over his shoulders. The war-beast rumbled at Vintage’s approach, and Tor looked up.
‘All set?’
‘Please, you’re asking me if I’m prepared? How times have changed.’ She turned to Noon, brushing the younger woman’s arm. ‘They were asking after you again, my dear.’
Noon sighed, looking troubled. ‘Fire and blood.’
‘They seek a leader,’ said Vostok. The great white dragon had been fussing at the feathers on her wings, and still had one curling from the end of her snout. Noon reached up and plucked it off. ‘Which is what you are, bright weapon.’
‘Give over. That’s the last bloody thing I am. What am I supposed to do with them, anyway? We’ve given them rooms, food, clothes. What else do they want?’
‘A direction, a purpose?’ Vintage spread her arms wide, grinning at Noon’s discomfort. ‘Destiny? I saw more arriving as I left, by the way. They were flying in on bats, which is useful. I wonder—’
‘Shall we make a move before we’ve lost all the light?’ cut in Tor. He had climbed onto Kirune’s back and had strapped himself in, and was now tying his hair back in a loose tail. The big cat was silent, his amber eyes narrowed in the bright sunshine. ‘You can gossip on the way, if you like.’
‘Oh, fine.’
Vintage climbed up onto Helcate’s back and got herself comfortable in the harness, feeling, as she always did, a little shiver of wonder that she was riding a war-beast. Noon was seated on Vostok’s shoulders, and she had pulled a large map from one of the packs strapped there.
‘So we’re heading north-west . . .’
‘According to Micanal’s amber tablets, that’s where it should be,’ said Tor.
‘There’s a lot of Wild out there,’ said Noon, doubtfully. ‘If this map is to be believed.’
‘Even more by now, I expect,’ said Tor lightly. ‘But don’t worry, you will be with me. Come on, I will lead the way.’
Vintage waited for the two larger war-beasts to get up into the sky, then leaned down to talk into Helcate’s long, foxy ears. ‘Come on then, my darling. Let’s be having you.’
He leapt up, thick leathery wings unfurling, and in moments they were up in the sky, Vintage’s stomach left somewhere in the courtyard.
‘Sarn’s bastard bones, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.’
They rose up over the palace, Ebora unravelling before them like an impossible tapestry. Just ahead, the elegant forms of Vostok and Kirune made strange shapes against the blue sky until Vintage and Helcate drew level with them once more.
‘You will have to learn to take off at the same time as us,’ said Tor, when she was back within earshot. ‘It’s such a scruffy formation, having you swoop up behind us.’
‘Formations! You’re lucky I don’t fall straight off this thing.’ Vintage had hold of the leather strap on the front of Helcate’s harness, her grip so tight that her hands ached. ‘Besides, you both take up too much room. You might accidentally knock l
ittle Helcate from the sky.’
‘That would not happen,’ rumbled Kirune. ‘We are much too skilled.’
Vintage smiled to herself, a small blush of warmth touching her heart. Since their dangerous journey to the island of Origin together, Kirune and Vostok had grown closer, seeming to become allies of a sort. Given that both were vain, proud and easily offended, she viewed this as something of a miracle. When Kirune and the other war-beasts had been born from Ygseril, they had emerged without their vital ‘root-memories’, the collective memory that bound the war-beasts together into a formidable fighting force. This new bond between them, then, was especially precious. Unfortunately, this new closeness seemed to have come at a cost. Tor himself had been distant lately, morose even, his mind dwelling on the unfortunate revelations they had uncovered far across the sea. No Eboran as proud as Tormalin the Oathless wanted to discover that the history of his people was a kind of cosmic joke.
‘Well, I prefer to give Helcate his space.’ Vintage leaned forward and, in an act of steely self-will, unfastened her hand from the harness and gave the war-beast a scratch behind his ear. ‘We’re both still learning.’
They flew on. The sprawling stretch of the central Eboran city began to grow sparse, the golden threads of the broken roads trailing away into dirt tracks, the houses becoming smaller, more modest, until there were no buildings at all. Green forests lapped at these edges like an eager sea, rushing in to fill the gaps, until they flew over vast tracts of trees only broken up here and there by busy rivers and forgotten paths. Tor flew slightly ahead, leading them forward until late in the afternoon he gestured that they should land. He had chosen the banks of a wide lake, its waters a deep, lovely blue. Moving as one this time, they came to rest on its shoreline, which was made up of white sand and grey rocks. Vintage climbed down from Helcate’s back with slightly shaky legs.
‘Here, then? Close to here?’
‘On the far side of the lake,’ said Tor. ‘If everything Micanal collected was true, that’s where the sword should be.’
In the silence that followed, Vintage pulled one of the bags from Helcate’s back, and began looking for a suitable patch of sand.
‘Let’s eat, then, before we start the real search.’ She held up the bag. ‘Wine, bread, cheese – just the essentials.’
Soon, they were seated on the warm sand, cups of wine in each hand. Noon was unwrapping the cheese, wrinkling her nose at the stink of it, while Tor absently cut the bread into pieces with his belt knife. Abruptly, and for no reason she could think of, Vintage felt overcome with a bittersweet mixture of happiness and woe. She smiled at them both; Tor’s handsome face with its scars, his long fingers skilful as they wielded the blade, and Noon in her new Eboran clothes; even with her untidy hair and the bat-wing tattoo on her forehead, she was a very long way from the ragged creature they had found in the Shroom Flats. She held herself differently now, with a new confidence.
‘This is just like old times, isn’t it?’ said Vintage, even though it wasn’t. Tor looked up, one eyebrow raised.
‘I’m not sure. There’s not enough mud here, really, or any parasitic monsters made of light hanging around to turn us inside out.’
‘And,’ added Noon, taking a piece of bread from Tor, ‘no giant worm ships scuttling around, waiting to feed us to a giant maggot that it has shit out of its bum.’
‘What a delightful turn of phrase, my darling,’ said Vintage dryly. ‘I just mean that it’s such a pleasure to have your company again, out in the wilds of Sarn.’ She took a sip of her wine. ‘And we’re looking for a mysterious artefact.’
‘Yeah. What’s so special about this sword, anyway?’ Noon addressed the question to Vintage, but she in turn raised her cup to Tor, who shrugged.
‘Well, first of all, I don’t have a sword anymore, do I? Not one befitting an Eboran warrior, anyway.’ The Ninth Rain, the sword that had once belonged to Tormalin’s aunt, and then his father, had been lost during the battle over the Bloodless Mountains – dropped from his flailing hand as the Jure’lia queen dangled him in the sky. He had looked for it more than once, but ultimately had to concede that it would likely remain forever hidden by the snows and undergrowth of the foothills.
‘I don’t know if you’re aware of this,’ said Noon, pulling a serious face, ‘but there are such things as new swords. You could buy one. Or if you can’t find one fancy enough for a fancy Eboran warrior, you could have one made. It’s a radical idea, I know.’
Tor shook his head lightly, a genuine expression of annoyance flitting briefly over his face. ‘That’s not really my point. This sword, the one we’re out here looking for, is legendary. Now, my old sword had a name, given to it by my idiot father, and it certainly saw some extraordinary battles, but the Ursun Blade . . . the Ursun Blade saw at least four Rains, and was carried by two of our most celebrated warriors. If it still exists, it is something that should be back within the Eboran palace, near the roots of Ygseril.’
‘Or, at least, hanging on your belt?’ Noon stuffed a large piece of cheese into her mouth.
Tor shrugged and looked away. ‘If it still exists, it’s probably in pieces. Perhaps the hilt still survives . . . But I would like to try and find it, either way.’ He paused, looking down into his drink. ‘We went through so much to get to Origin and retrieve the amber tablets. Suffered a great deal of pain and humiliation. It would be a balm to my soul if something good came out of it. If we could retrieve something from our history that does still have meaning.’
Vintage glanced at Noon, and saw her looking at Tor with concern, which she quickly tried to hide with more bites of cheese.
‘Besides which,’ he continued, ‘I am certain we’re not safe from the Jure’lia yet, and legendary swords are in short supply. We need all the help we can get.’
‘Well,’ Vintage said brightly. She pulled a notebook from her jacket pocket. ‘According to our notes, Tor, the final recorded resting place of the Ursun Blade is a short walk from here. Exactly the sort of short walk required after a lunch of cheese and wine. Isn’t that marvellous?’
He smiled wanly at her and drained his cup.
Leaving the war-beasts to sun themselves by the side of the lake, Tor, Vintage and Noon ventured into the thick forest on the far side of the shore. This was Ebora in high summer, and the trees and plants were lush and humming with life. Tor made himself listen to it, breathe it in and smell it; he let himself taste it on his tongue. It was as beautiful as it had ever been when he was a child, and it was important to remember that there was more to his home than its history. Birds called to each other from all around, delicate sounds like liquid music, and other, harsher noises that brought to mind the calls of carrion birds.
It had not been easy to find this place. The information stored within the amber record, as crafted by the celebrated Eboran artist Micanal the Clearsighted, was enormous and complex, and much to Vintage’s annoyance, largely poorly organised. Night after night Tor had dream-walked into the record, reporting back to Vintage what he found there, and, painstakingly, she had made notes of it all, linking everything up as best she could. Again and again Tor witnessed dream-crafted visions of war-beasts and warriors that were long dead, created anew by the artistry of Micanal, and watched a piecemeal history come together that felt empty to him. Hollow. How could it mean anything when he knew the truth? That Ygseril the tree-father was nothing but a random alien experiment, a diverting curiosity for a race of people that did not even know Sarn, and certainly did not care for it. The Aborans, as they had called themselves, had left similar marks on countless worlds, and Ebora was something of a disappointment to them. But Vintage, clever Vintage, had spotted several clues and references to a legendary sword in amongst the hollow histories. Could it be possible that the Ursun Sword was not lost or destroyed at all, but simply forgotten, resting in its own distant tomb?
‘Tell me about this thing, then,’ said Noon into the busy forest silence. ‘Who wielded it? What a
mazing feats, which monsters decapitated, blah blah.’
Tor glanced at Vintage, but she was looking at him, her eyes oddly watchful. He sighed, and went back to watching where he was placing his boots. There was no path here, and every step risked a broken ankle.
‘The Ursun Sword. A winnow-forged blade. It was made by one of our master blacksmiths, a woman called Pelinor the Unwavering, at around the time of the Third Rain, and given to Araiba, a great warrior of the time.’
‘Winnow-forged.’ Noon frowned. ‘I don’t suppose history records the name of the fell-witch who provided the flames?’
‘It doesn’t, no.’ Tor glanced at Noon, then continued. ‘Araiba’s war-beast was a bear, and the pommel of the Ursun Sword was shaped like a bear claw clutching a huge, red ruby – like a bloody heart.’ Tor grinned, suddenly taken with the ludicrousness of such a weapon. ‘It’s outrageous, really. By all reports, Araiba was a bit of a show-off, incredibly vain, you know the sort.’
Noon coughed into her hand. ‘I suppose I can imagine it, if I try really hard.’
Tor ignored this.
‘For all his nonsense, he was a great warrior, who covered himself in glory during the Third Rain. He died, eventually, in a duel, which is an especially ridiculous way to go, if you ask me, and his squire Lanamond inherited the sword. If Araiba was a respected warrior, Lanamond was beloved. She grew to be a true leader of Eborans, both a general and a queen, in a sense.’
‘I thought Eborans didn’t have kings and queens?’ asked Noon.
Tor waved a hand dismissively. ‘Our history has always been complicated. There have been emperors, war lords, even a roots-heart, who was a person elected to lead us, but we’ve never quite settled on one thing for very long . . . and eventually, of course, the crimson flux made all of that obsolete anyway.’