So I locked my agitation inside my knotted fingers, because there was still Max, and that meant there was nothing I could do except tell them the stone-cold facts, and hope the people I’d always called my family didn’t end up hating me.
‘Talia … Commander General Augustus Aquila … Unus of Isca Prolet, I ask you to relate your journey and experiences with us now, omitting no … difficult details, so that we might arrive at the best course of action for Arafel.
‘The Ring platform is yours.’
My chest tightened, and I climbed the wide stone steps, feeling as though my legs had grown as dense and heavy as the rock surrounding us. I’d never felt more alone in the world, and yet there was nowhere to hide either. I’d been dreading this moment, finally facing Art, Max’s family … and Mum. Although she’d stopped asking after Eli, I was all too aware that didn’t mean the truth had reached through the mist separating her from the rest of Arafel. If anything, I was probably about to push her further away.
I turned slowly and surveyed the waiting crowd, recalling the last time I’d stood here – appealing for help to rescue the Prolet insurgents. I’d chosen my own path anyway, and could already see the doubt in their eyes.
Why were they even listening to me? I’d acted rashly, spent innocent lives, and exposed Arafel to danger.
The air was sombre and suspicious, I closed my eyes and Pan’s pale face loomed out of nowhere. It was the moment before he stepped into the writhing mass of basilisk, a moment filled with both fear and courage. Human attributes blazing in a creature of Pantheon.
He’d sacrificed his life so Max and I stood a chance of finding and protecting Lake. From Cassius, from the world and from herself. And now Max was gone, which meant the responsibility was mine alone.
It was time.
It was nearly an hour later when we finally finished relating our story. Mum had shelled peas consistently throughout, and the cavern was eerily quiet.
‘We tried everything.’ My voice sounded brittle in the echoing space. ‘We took them to the Oceanids, hoping they would do what they did for myself and the Commander General … hoping they would bring them back … somehow?’
My voice was growing thinner, an invisible fist closing around my throat.
Could they tell I was just about the worst human being alive? That I was the type of girl likely to give in to her darkest desire, even when her best friend was missing and her brother not quite cold in his watery grave?
‘They didn’t,’ August finished for me, ‘or more likely, they couldn’t – not in the time we needed them to.’
His words met with ominous silence, before the uproar began. I was conscious of time slowing, of the mood turning as faces I loved twisted beyond recognition. Until now there had been whispers and conjecture, still laced with hope, but now their worst suspicions had been confirmed there was only pain. And honest-to-God fury.
‘These … Oceanids of which you speak … dare we hope they may yet return Eli and Aelia?’ Art’s face was grave, his eyes straining with grief.
A poignant silence hung on the air before August shook his head. ‘From experience, and what I understand of how the Oceanids work – their therapies either work swiftly, or not at all. So … tempting though the thought is, it is better not to nurse unrealistic hope.’
‘Then I think we have our answer!’ Bereg roared from the back of the crowd, his affable face over-red and raw.
Loud voices bayed their support, their faces leering as unbridled fury pierced my skin like barbs. And for a fleeting moment, I could almost believe I was back beneath the flashing screens and bloodthirsty crowds of Ludi. But how could I blame them? I’d breached village protocol by taking off with Eli and Max in the first place, and I’d breached it again by bringing back two Insiders, instead of two much-loved sons. And August’s defection and Unus’s efficiency with whatever he turned his hand to were no recompense for the biggest danger I’d carried right into the heart of our home. I was a Trojan horse of the worst kind.
‘There are others!’ August’s authoritative tone rose above the din, quieting it momentarily.
‘There are other Outsiders – communities like you – in isolated locations across Europa. The fate that befell Eli, Max and my own beloved blood sister, Aelia, was beyond our control. You must believe what Talia is saying – we did everything we could to save them.’
I stared at the floor, acutely aware he was still doing it. Protecting me by trying to turn the tide, saving me when I least deserved saving. Didn’t he get it yet? There was no reprieve from this. I deserved it all. How could there be any light when the blood flowing through my veins was dark, like Cassius’s?
Black to black, dust to dust.
‘Believe me, I understand …’ his voice faltered momentarily ‘… how you are feeling right now. But there is a darker day than this yet to come.
‘Max, Eli, Aelia … they are just the beginning. Cassius is coming for Arafel; he is coming for each and every one of you. And the reason I know this is because I was a Commander General of Isca Pantheon’s Equite forces, and a senior member of the scientific team for too long. Cassius will not rest until every last Outsider has been eliminated.’
A muted gasp swept across the belligerent crowd.
‘You want revenge on your sons’ deaths, but you would do better to save your energy for those who are still alive. If you march on Pantheon as you are, you will join Max and Eli before the sun goes down. To stand even the remotest chance of bringing Cassius’s Civitas down once and for all, you need strength, speed and numbers. In truth, you need every last Outsider on this earth standing beside you.
‘And I know where they are.’
For a second it was quiet enough to hear the faint call of a lemur outside. And then fresh pandemonium broke.
‘He must be lying … It can’t be true! Where are these other Outsiders? We would know of them. Do they look like him? It’s obviously a lie! How could an Insider know this? We would have known before now!’
‘Silence!’ This time it was Art’s command filling the space, and every pair of eyes levelled with the elderly man charged with making sense of it all.
‘If all of this is indeed true …’ he exhaled raggedly ‘… it is both a dark and wondrous day. We have lived with dreams of finding other communities like our own, but … how do we know they will be friendly or even receptive to helping Arafel?’
‘You don’t,’ August returned baldly. ‘We don’t … at least not yet. But I can tell you they are more like this community than they are different.’
His tone grew gentler as the Ring hushed with new respect. ‘I’ve no idea how many individual communities there may be scattered across Europa. But my own Pantheon mission encountered one that had adapted to a similar climate, and where there is one there must be others. It’s vital to remember that while their Outsider DNA may be as original as any of yours, their culture will likely be very different … We would all need to tread cautiously.
‘Any community that stands beside Arafel will be unpredictable and a risk, until we know otherwise.’
I scanned the faces in the crowd, which had morphed from hostility into something quieter, a grim unified determination. It was a real turnaround, and I knew if it wasn’t for his intervention we would be facing a very different scene now.
My eyes flickered back to meet his. The lanterns were casting shadows across his tapered cheekbones, his dark eyes were hollowed, and the tiny muscle beside his mouth was twitching as though he wanted to say so much more. And yet, even though he’d saved me from clear ostracization, and provided my people with the most fragile of new hopes, I still couldn’t feel anything.
I swallowed, trying to recall my father’s face. I could just see a hint of his smile, and his hunched back as he pored over the old-world maps in his treehouse study, ringing all the valleys in dark red. He would have been euphoric to know his belief and years of work weren’t in vain.
August pulled his g
aze away abruptly.
‘You need to gather a legatio, a deposition to locate new communities quickly and appeal for their help. There is no time to waste. I am willing and able to lead this legatio – in Arafel’s name.’
There was a murmur across the crowd as Art nodded, visibly relieved. August already knew where to locate at least one other community, and that whoever travelled as embassy had the huge challenge of rallying them to our cause. He had a natural authority and had just demonstrated his powers of persuasion. There was no doubt he made the perfect choice.
An Insider rallying feral communities to an Outsider army.
It was a bittersweet outcome, and though it was clearly fraught with danger, there was no way back. I’d hurt them all, my own family included, and while August had provided some hope, it was merely a glimmer of light amid the gathering storm clouds.
A war was coming, and my peace-loving people had eyes the colour of revenge.
What, in the name of Arafel, had I started?
Chapter 3
The scar on his face glistened in the sun, while his eyes belied his words. Leaving words.
‘You know I have to do this. It gives the legatio a chance. I know where to go. I can lead them – it’s what I’m good at … Tal?’
Hopelessness, then worse, hurt fleeted across his face as I gave him nothing back. But how could I when emotion was the cause of so much.
‘Feral means free, remember?’ he whispered. ‘That’s worth something even if you let go … of everything else.’
I stared at the spring grass surrounding my leather-soled feet. It looked so fragile and swollen with monsoon rain. There were no dark veins or dust-choked roots. It had no idea of the shadows creeping closer every day. Unlike Augustus Aquila, standing less than a metre away, in my forest home, trying to save any part of us that was still salvageable.
Why didn’t he understand? How could he stand there, alive, thinking of us when we’d watched so many others sink to the icy depths of the glass river … the icy depths.
‘For all Oceanid revivals there has to be a payment of sorts: either a trade of treasure or promise of recompense …’
August’s words never felt more poignant.
Was that it? Had August and I paid the ultimate price? Could our revival have cost us … us?
I swallowed, trying to force thoughts past the rush of blood in my ears. Why would the Oceanids demand such a payment? Yet it would explain so much.
‘The Oceanids are loyal to no one but themselves.’
That they helped us was indisputable, but to what purpose?
Thoughts tumbled through my head, confused and overlapping. I gritted my teeth. It had to be a purpose bigger than us altogether. Was it to make us strong enough to finish what we’d started? To lead the war?
‘It was real for me, Talia.’
And it seemed as though the branches around us leaned in to catch his whisper, and cocoon it within their scrolled leaves.
We both knew the dangers of the legatio meant his return was against all the odds. Leaving nothing. An enormous silence, when so much had preceded it. Which was why no more words made it into the dead air between us.
After all, what was there left to say if we’d already traded it all?
Chapter 4
Two months later
I tensed, Harlo’s slingshot taut and short in my hands. The catapult was larger than my old one, and made of a hard wood I didn’t recognize. Harlo called it camphor when he relinquished it, but a borrowed slingshot made of foreign wood was only the beginning. Arafel had been slowly changing since the new Outsiders started arriving.
Ida’s soft whistle perforated the humid air. I peered through the thick foliage and spied her blue-inked skin gleaming through the giant yuccas a little way off. Lifting my hands, I hooted twice by way of response. Birdcalls were a useful method of communication when the Elders weren’t around to disapprove. They were simple and uncomplicated, which suited us both.
I retrained the slingshot, as a warm breeze rustled the foliage cocooning me. Ida was a Komodo, one of the first Outsiders to arrive, and a formidable huntress, even among her people. I caught the rise of her hand, just enough to say she’d heard, and nodded once. It was always enough.
The arrival of her tribe had stopped everyone in their tracks. Flanked by lizards the size of small ponies, and with midnight bodies and long plaited hair, they looked more like gods and goddesses than flesh-and-blood Outsiders. They were also a people of very few words, and though it was the same Outsider community August had described before leaving, their actual appearance had turned our quiet village into a place I no longer recognized.
August. I exhaled slowly, forcing his image from my mind. It was how I’d survived, volunteering for every possible shift and spending all my days in the outer forest, away from everyone. Denying it all.
I tucked the slingshot into my leather rations belt and climbed higher.
The Komodo tribe were some four hundred in number, and brought whole families of naked, inked children with them. Within a single day the outside forest had looked and felt like an entirely new world. They set up ad hoc camps, cut down mature trees for shelter and baited large food for their unusual guard – the dragons, who were also the tribe’s symbolic alter ego.
The Komodo dragon lizards tested everyone. The huge, lumbering reptiles were constantly hungry and aggressive, particularly to children, so Art insisted they were herded into pens in the outside forest. It had sparked the first real confrontation. The tribe were unwilling to be parted from their reptilian family, and unable to return to their Europa home without stockpiling provisions from Arafel’s forest.
Art called an emergency Ring, and counter-proposed bringing the newcomers into Arafel, where food and shelter could be shared and a war strategy agreed. The lizards would remain in pens, while the tribe would have the protection of the North Mountains instead.
There was a long, heated meeting but the motion was eventually passed, and there was no doubt it was a good compromise. The tribe moved into the village, while the lizards stayed in the outside forest, and if they mourned their separation, the pens were built sufficiently close to the river stepping stones to ensure any lovelorn tribe member didn’t have far to go.
The simple truth was, we were all acutely aware that the Komodos’ arrival was a powerful show of solidarity and support – and that harmonious living was essential if we were to stand any chance against Cassius.
Yet the new integrated living brought sharper edges to Arafel none of us could ignore. While the tribespeople were an undeniable asset to our hunter army, their physique an easy match for any Pantheonite gladiator, it was less clear whether the outside forest could keep up with their significant drain on resources. It wasn’t helped by the fact the tribe were focused ground hunters, and preferred to work alone when it came to securing a kill, which was too often outside our regular village shifts.
Another muted whistle reached through the undergrowth, the warning call of a green turaco. I scanned the bushes, but couldn’t see Ida. It didn’t matter; the call was her warning to keep my distance, that she had a scent or a lead. Today, I was content to oblige. I scurried up a few more branches and lodged myself in a fork.
Everyone knew the new rate of consumption was unsustainable. Our stockpile of grain and pulses had depleted at a frightening rate, even though the Komodo tribe’s diet was predominantly carnivorous. Their survival philosophy was different to ours too. While we tried to strike a balance with nature, their approach was territorial. Food was there for the taking, until it wasn’t. Then they moved on. Art and the Council remonstrated, pointing out that their approach wouldn’t work within a fixed community like Arafel, but there were still too many unofficial dawn raids to number.
At times, the differences seemed bigger than the similarities. While my people had long, sculpted limbs, adapted for swift passage through our forest trees, the Komodos had developed a muscular physiology that al
most matched that of their dragon friends. The tribe had also travelled their lands nomadically for more than two hundred years, while Arafel had been our home since Thomas’s discovery. The Komodo considered hunting to be a right, while Arafel people considered it the blessing of a healthy forest.
And yet, there was one binding commonality that put us all squarely on the same dirt ground. The Lifedomes of Isca Pantheon. Their ancestors had also passed down myths about the Great War, how the Lifedomes were supposed to be a refuge before the trapped population realized they couldn’t leave. It explained their swift arrival, their unquestioning solidarity and was the first sign the legatio might actually succeed.
I reached out to pick a few rare bunches of ripe blueberries and add them to my foraged roots and oranges. I’d only discovered two other blueberry bushes in the outer forest before and they’d quickly disappeared. Max would be impressed with this particular crop, especially now the outside forest was supporting so many more.
I popped one into my mouth, before dropping the rest into my bag. While the Komodos were the first to arrive, they weren’t the last. Less than three weeks after their arrival, two more Outsider communities arrived. First there was a pale-skinned, northern hemisphere tribe calling themselves Lynx – they didn’t say why but I had a feeling their green eyes and shy, nocturnal habits had something to do with it – and they were swiftly followed by a large party of peace-loving Eurasians. While the Lynx had built a life hunting fattened seals and ice-diving for fish, the Eurasians were much more like us – forest dwellers with farming and pottery skills. And it seemed each new arrival built new pillars of hope, yet August was never with them.
Another turaco warning call whistled through the leaves, followed by the swift and soft impact of an arrow about ten metres away. Seconds later, Ida’s athletic form crept through the clearing below. I watched as she retrieved her arrow from a twisted baobab root and swiftly cleaned it, before melting back into the trees. Hunting was often like this now. The forest animals seemed to understand they were under greater threat, and that the old balance was shifting.
Storm of Ash Page 2