by Jen Williams
‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘I know.’ Bern shrugged. ‘I wish I could show it to you more clearly. It might help, to know what she is up to. It might help just to share the sight with someone else.’ His voice grew low and quiet. ‘I think I am going mad, sometimes. Maybe it is all my imagination after all.’
‘It is not,’ said Aldasair, firmly.
‘Aldasair is right,’ said Tor. ‘And I know Vintage would say the same. These . . . visions. Are they like nightmares? Do they feel like dreams?’
‘I thought we just agreed they were not dreams,’ said Aldasair, a little testily.
‘I know, it’s just –’ Tor swallowed. The wine he’d been drinking was now a sour taste at the back of his throat. Briefly he wondered if the people camped out in the gardens could hear Bern’s screaming. He wondered what they thought of it. Perhaps they thought the Eborans were torturing someone. It was the sort of thing they were known for, at least in the more lurid stories. ‘If it’s like a dream, or a nightmare, there’s a chance I could dream-walk into it.’
‘Dream-walk?’ Bern had finished his water, so Aldasair poured him a fresh glass.
‘The Eboran art of dream-walking,’ said Al. ‘We can enter another person’s dreams, and even shape them. It’s how we’ve been exploring Micanal’s amber tablets. Hestillion was especially talented at it. Tormalin too.’
‘Not as talented as my sister, believe me,’ said Tor. ‘But I can certainly do it. If I can dream-walk into what you’re seeing, I could share it with you.’
‘Brother,’ Bern grasped Tormalin’s arm, ‘I would not inflict that on you.’
It was like being punched in the gut. For a second, Tor felt the full force of his connection to the war-beasts, and to their companions – the shared grief, the shared affection. For a terrible moment he felt his eyes sting, but he blinked it away. And to think I was so alone once.
‘But it could be helpful, Bern. Not just to your sanity, but to the wider war effort. We desperately need information, and remember, I know Hestillion better than anyone. I may be able to discern what she is up to. And through that, find out what state the Jure’lia are in. Or even where they are. I think it’s worth trying. And unlike you, I can remove myself at any time.’ He smiled wanly.
Aldasair looked less than convinced, but Bern nodded. ‘If we can drag something useful out of this bloody nightmare, then I suppose it is worth trying.’
‘Not now. Not until you’ve rested,’ said Aldasair firmly.
‘A glass of wine, then,’ said Bern. At Aldasair’s look, he shrugged. ‘Or a few, even. I reckon it’s the only way I’m getting back to sleep.’
Tor left them, walking back out into the darkened corridors with Bern’s screams still echoing in his head.
‘What happened? Is Bern all right?’
Startled, Tor turned to see Noon coming down the corridor towards him, her hair messy from her own bed. He felt a flush of horror that he had not heard her approach. Were his senses already becoming dull, or was he simply preoccupied?
‘More nightmares,’ he said. ‘This link to the Jure’lia, it’s killing him, I think. Or driving him insane.’
Noon frowned, looking back towards the door to his cousin’s suite. ‘You really think it can do that?’
‘If you had horrifying nightmares every time you slept, wouldn’t it drive you mad?’
Noon looked troubled. ‘I’ve touched it, the crystal in his hand. I can feel the life of the worm people through it, like . . . It’s like touching someone sweating their way through a fever. The Jure’lia are a sickness. If I can feel that just from touching the crystal . . .’
Tor sighed. ‘I’ve offered to dream-walk with him, to try and ease it, if I can. Once, before Ebora fell into ruin, dream-walking was often used as a way to heal people who suffered with maladies of the mind. I’ve never tried it, but there’s also the chance we could learn something useful about what the Jure’lia are up to.’
Noon nodded, but she was watching him too closely, and he sensed she hadn’t really taken in what he’d said.
‘What is it?’
‘You look knackered,’ she said. ‘Like you’re not sleeping either. Do you want to . . .?’ She held up her arm, the hand bent back so the wrist was exposed, and again Tor felt dizzy. The salty warmth of her blood in his mouth, the texture of her skin under his teeth, and then the rush that followed . . . it was all that he wanted, but when he thought of taking her hand, smiling as he had in the past and leading her back to his room, the thin red line on his arm crashed over all of it, obliterating every warm feeling, every desire. He forced a smile on his face.
‘Thank you, but no. As you say, I should get some sleep. We all should.’
He turned and left her in the corridor, walking as fast as he could while still being polite. He was afraid that if he looked on her face for a moment longer he would give in.
Later, when everything was green fire and agonising questions, Tor would look back on the memory – of her eyes, dark and confused in the shadowy corridor, and how he had turned away – and curse himself.
Chapter Eight
Fell-Kreed
We had a runner.
When we arrived for the scheduled pick-up, the child’s family were silent and sick-looking, saying that they had kept the knowledge from the girl for as long as they could, but when she had worked it out, she had fled. Kesenstan is a wild, cold place, with the Targ mountains looming so close that it’s possible to feel that they will fall on you at any moment. The girl, whose name was Kreed, had taken a horse and headed into the foothills. She will know how to hide, they warned us. There will be monsters there too, they said. When I asked why she would flee to a place haunted by parasite spirits, they shook their heads and said ‘because you are worse monsters’. Agent Lin sneered at them, but I must admit I was heart-sore. Kreed would sooner risk having her body turned inside out than come with us.
We searched for a full two days, following her tracks into the Wild undergrowth. Several times at night we saw shimmering lights in the distance, and once heard a mournful wailing sound, more sad than frightening. Lin cursed the girl and cursed the Targ mountains for being unlucky. The bats, at least, seemed happy enough – Targ is their ancient home, not that any of them have ever seen it.
Eventually, we found the girl, half-starved and mostly frozen, hidden under the exposed roots of a fallen tree. She had fled her home so swiftly that she had not taken any food with her. Agent Lin, somewhat unnecessarily in my opinion, took so much life energy from Kreed that the girl did not regain consciousness until we were already some way across the plains.
Details about the life of Kreed of Kesenstan: her family were poor. How else can I say that? It sounds too raw. But they took the money we gave them gladly. She was a shepherd, with a small flock of her own to care for. The sheep (a type I have never seen, with cream-coloured wool) each had a blue-and-yellow circle dyed onto their coats, which is unique to Kreed.
Extract from the private records of Agent Chenlo
The next morning, Tor rose with the sun, washing and dressing himself swiftly and eating a quick breakfast of apples and pear jam. He left his rooms and walked quickly through the palace, deliberately not thinking too closely about where he was going, or what he intended to do. Gradually, the morning sun filled the window-lined corridors, revealing marble floors freshly washed, and he came to a quieter part of the palace, a corner that he had not visited since the fall of the Ninth Rain. I meant to, he told himself. It was always in the back of my mind to do so. It’s not like we haven’t been busy.
In one such corridor he met one of the healers. He was a young man from the plains, his arms bare and his black hair pulled neatly back from his face. He wore a brightly coloured horsehair tunic and simple leather trousers. At the sight of Tor his eyes widened slightly. There was a deep scar on the left side of his jaw, a twisted white line marring the smooth brown warmth of his skin.
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��My lord,’ he said, clearly taken unawares, ‘I wasn’t expecting to see anyone today.’
Of course you weren’t, thought Tor sourly. I’ve hardly been a regular visitor.
‘I don’t want to interrupt you. I just wondered if it would be possible to see Egron. If he’s well enough this morning.’
‘I was just going to check in on him. Come with me.’
Tor followed the healer, trying to ignore the flush of shame he felt at the cool way the plain’s man had assessed him. When Hestillion had asked the people of Sarn for assistance, they had answered, sending aid in the form of food, trade and healers. When everything had gone so disastrously wrong, many humans had, quite understandably, fled back to their own homes. But a few had stayed, opting to do what they could for the remaining Eborans still suffering from the crimson flux, and even tending to Ygseril, in the hope that the tree-god would waken from his slumber and give more of his magical sap. It was this sap that had once given the Eborans their unusually long lives, but when the tree-father seemed to die at the end of the Eighth Rain, that supply of sap had vanished. For a time, human blood had seemed to provide a solution, leading to the horrors of the Carrion Wars, but . . . Tor grasped at his aching arm, struck afresh by the particularly vicious irony that their bloodlust should ultimately lead to their doom. Vintage reported that the handful of surviving Eborans were still clinging on, made comfortable at least by the ministrations of the remaining humans. Tor had been glad, up until now, to take her word for it.
The healer opened the door to a suite and stepped inside, pulling back curtains and letting light into a spacious room filled with musical instruments. Tor stood for a moment, slightly taken aback by the sight. He remembered that Egron had been obsessed with music, that he had collected instruments all across Sarn and attempted to master them all, but for some reason Tor had assumed that, with the illness, all of this would have faded away. Beyond the room crammed with instruments was another, and it was here that Egron lay, in the centre of an enormous bed.
‘Good morning, Egron,’ the healer called out. ‘You have a visitor.’
The prone Eboran did not reply. The human went into the chamber and bent over the figure, softly talking. He took some things from a side cabinet, small bottles and a long spoon, and for a while Tor looked away. Eventually, the healer came out, wiping his hands on a cloth.
‘Go and see him,’ he said quietly. ‘He’s awake now.’ And he left the suite.
It was very quiet in this part of the palace, so far from the human habitations and the section given over to the fell-witches, but it was just about possible to hear, somewhere down the corridor, someone coughing their lungs to pieces.
‘Tormalin the Oathless?’ Egron’s voice was surprisingly firm. ‘What are you hovering about out there for?’
Feeling even more awkward, Tor entered the bedchamber and forced a smile on his face.
‘How are you, Egron? It’s been . . . a while.’
The Eboran in the bed turned his head to one side, laughing softly. It was clear from the thin sheets that covered him that his body was emaciated, and his skin had taken on the chalky white pallor of the flux. Much of his hair was gone, leaving a waxy-looking scalp threaded here and there with strands of yellowish hair, and there were bright red lesions on the arm that lay above the bed covers: the vital black blood of Eborans turned red and vivid with disease. Yet his eyes were bright, and he watched Tor with obvious interest as he approached the bed.
‘I’m still here, which is something. I like that healer, he has a kind face. His name is Cloudwall, did you know that? The plains people have such interesting names. Musical names, I think.’ Egron stopped and swallowed, and Tor clearly heard the click his throat made as he did so. ‘Can you believe our fathers and mothers killed so many of them, Tormalin? Such a senseless thing.’
‘It was a time of madness,’ said Tor. He and Egron were of an age, both too young to have been involved in the Carrion Wars, yet both old enough to carry some dark memories. They were not related, had not been friends; had barely even known each other. Just familiar with each other’s faces, really – which was inevitable when everyone around you was dying at a terrifying rate. He remembered that Egron had been handsome, and had loved music. That as a child Hestillion had harboured a crush on him briefly, which eventually had been replaced with some other fancy of hers. He remembered that Egron had caught the crimson flux just before Tor decided to leave Ebora, and consequently had been one more face he had been glad to consign to forgetfulness.
‘A time of madness, heh. Well, so is this, I suppose,’ said Egron, and to Tor’s surprise he sat up in bed, reaching for a glass of water next to him. When he had taken a few sips, he plucked fussily at his nightshirt. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’
‘I wanted to talk to you. About . . .’ Tor went to the chair beside the bed and sat, trying to think what to say. How to get to where he needed to be. ‘About the flux.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You know we have so many new healers in Ebora now, humans who are eager to help us. I’ve offered to gather information about the flux, to help them. The more we know, the more –’ He waved a hand, vaguely.
‘And you’ve offered to do that in the midst of fighting the worm people? Of bonding to a war-beast?’ Egron’s crimson eyes grew bright, as if he were laughing at him. ‘How generous of you.’
‘Tell me about the beginning of it.’ Tor folded his hands in his lap. ‘Tell me about how it starts.’
Egron sank back into the pillows. His head looked like something whittled from old, diseased wood. ‘My fingers,’ he said. ‘They started to go numb. I was not as strong as I once was. I could not lift my plains drum, one day. Odd, little things like that. I felt weak, so I sought out more blood, to make me feel better.’ He grinned. ‘Idiot that I was. Then, a burning pain in my chest, and then my arms. Is any of this sounding familiar yet?’
Tor sat very still.
‘It took a while for the cough to come,’ said Egron. His voice was mild, as though he were talking about the weather, or his beloved instruments. ‘I was surprised by that. There was pain, and weakness, a slow draining away of ability and strength and life. Then the marks.’ He lifted up his arm with the ragged red tears, as if Tor could have failed to notice them. ‘There’s no avoiding it then, of course. You can’t keep on lying to yourself when your blood turns red.’
‘But you look brighter,’ said Tor. ‘You are speaking easily with me now, and you have had the flux for how long?’
‘Many years,’ said Egron, nodding. ‘Many, many years. Cloudwall has these mixtures and pastes that ease the pain, and a drink that coats my throat, to ease the coughing. It’s quite something. Did you know, he told me that the medicines he gives me would kill a human in such dosages?’ Egron seemed impressed with this fact. ‘But it’s all a bandage over a wound that won’t heal, Tormalin the Oathless. It’s the painted face of a corpse.’
‘You are still alive,’ said Tor.
Egron nodded, but he was looking away, as if he hadn’t really heard.
‘It kills quick, or it kills slow, but it always kills. This is the end of us. I didn’t used to think that. I thought there was hope, and that somehow, if enough of us hung on, Ygseril would heal us somehow. Well, he’s back, and he hasn’t. And it comes for all of us eventually, doesn’t it?’
He looked directly at Tor, and Tor felt a dim bloom of pain at his elbows and wrists. It’s your imagination, he told himself, but the pain did not fade.
‘Pass me that set of pipes,’ said Egron, nodding at a low table by Tor’s seat. ‘It’s all I can manage to hold now. I got them from Reidn, two hundred years ago. By rights they should have fallen apart, but I think much of what the humans built will be here long after Ebora has collapsed into dust.’
Tor passed the pipes over. They were light, made of hollow wooden tubes laced together, and were decorated only with a few daubs of pink and yellow paint.
Egron pressed them to his lips,
and a few soft notes of music filled the room. Much to his own horror, Tor felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up; he knew this tune, had heard it over and over as a child, but hadn’t heard it since. Hadn’t his mother and Hestillion sung it together, some little song about the different flowering seasons?
Egron dropped the pipes, seized suddenly with a racking cough. All the remaining colour drained from his face, and the cords in his neck stood out with exertion. He rocked back and forth, wheezing desperately to get some air back into his lungs before he suffocated. The pipes dropped to the floor with a little clatter.
‘Egron!’ Tor stood, uncertain what to do. The lesions on the man’s arms were opening up and weeping, as though they did the breathing for him now, and his eyes bulged from his head. Black blood, thin and diluted with diseased red fluid, began to leak from the edges of his yawning mouth.
‘Shit.’
Where once there had been an ill man in his sickbed, talking quietly of the past and of music, there was a creature composed entirely of pain, of desperation and suffering. Tor backed towards the door, only realising that he had been calling for Cloudwall when the young human appeared in the chamber. He went immediately to Egron’s side, easing the Eboran back onto his pillows with strong, capable arms, and Tor left them there, with the sound of Egron’s music and his coughing still ringing in his head, like one terrible symphony.
‘I’ve never been to Jarlsbad.’
At her words, Helcate lifted his snout and pushed it into Noon’s hand, demanding that she scratch behind his ears. She obliged, smiling faintly. They had all struggled since the death of Eri, Helcate most of all, but the littlest war-beast grew a little brighter every day.
‘Oh, it’s wonderful.’ Vintage was at Helcate’s side, busily strapping bags onto his harness. They had to travel light, something that Vintage was used to, after all her years of exploring Sarn. ‘Wonderfully varied. Strictly speaking, you see, it’s a collection of minor kingdoms, with their own royal families, all under the wider rulership of the High Jarl. It makes for a unique collection of cultures. Lots of minor differences, with a larger, underpinning thread of similarity. I’ve travelled through the region a number of times, and I always see something new.’ She frowned slightly, as though remembering something that troubled her, then yanked another strap into place. ‘I may be experiencing a very different sort of welcome this time.’