by Greg Bear
“Man-child! This way!” Spart grabbed his arm and pulled him after. “Kaeli is over for tonight. Adonna sends its hosts!”
The first burst of rain soaked Michael instantly. He followed the indistinct form of a Crane Woman across the fresh mud and bent, pummeled grass. Puddles were forming everywhere. The wind gusted and pushed him this way and that.
“Where are we going?” Michael asked. The figure didn’t answer, but kept running ahead, gesturing. He fell into a hole up to his knees in water, tried to balance and slid up to his thighs. Wiping his eyes, he splashed out of the hole and yelled, “Hey! Wait up!”
The figure paused for him. It gestured again as he clambered after. Running was difficult; the rain was so thick he had to keep his hand before his mouth to keep from breathing water. Still, the figure’s pace was relentless.
Sheet-lightning flared again, throwing the landscape into gray brilliance. Michael stopped. He heard something roaring very close—the river, he thought, yet the figure ahead gestured again: Follow. “Where are we?” he cried out. No answer came. He stepped forward tentatively and lost his footing. He yelled in surprise and his mouth instantly filled with rain. Choking, he skidded on scrambling feet and butt down a muddy bank, over an edge and into rain-filled space.
It took him a moment to realize he had passed from rain into flowing water. He kicked and thrashed about, trying to find the shore and grab hold of something, but currents wrapped around his feet and pulled him under. Pressed between thick powerful walls of water, he opened his eyes and felt the darkness of the night pass into blacker insensibility.
His lungs were about to burst when he was propelled from the water like a salmon clawed by a bear. He hit the mud facedown and turned his head just enough to take a breath, inhaling both air and mud tossed up by the weakening rain.
He rubbed his eyes clear. The lightning was continuous, silent and green. In the strobing glare he saw the rushing water a few feet away. Stretching from the water, trying to grasp his legs and retrieve him, were four transparent hands. He jack-knifed his legs and dug his fingers into the mud to pull himself farther up the bank.
One shoulder and an arm struck a cold, solid mass—a boulder, Michael thought. He wrapped his arms around it… and the boulder shifted. Looking up, blinking at the remaining drops of rain, he saw a man-shaped piece of night towering over him. Its outline changed and he felt steely, bone-chilling hands lift him from the bank. He tried to scream for help but a hard, cold palm clamped over his mouth, numbing his lips and jamming his tongue against his teeth.
His head was immediately wrapped in a thick cloak.
Then, feeling him roughly through the icy fabric, the shape hesitated. It pulled Michael’s head into the open and he stared into a face as black as the bottom of the sea, with two star like points for eyes. Harsh breath like a freezer’s charge of air prickled his nose.
“Antros! Wiros antros!”
With a cry of rage, the frigid shadow flung him aside. He rolled through space, rotating in a world of lightning and darkness, drops of water on his lips and mud in his eyes. The impact seemed to come after the mud, but everything was confused.
Michael lay on his back, certain that every bone in his body was broken. Far away, and growing fainter, the keening wavered with the wind until both were gone, and silence covered the wet, tormented land.
Chapter Eleven
Caught in a beam of sunlight, a drop of water hung from the tip of a blade of grass, more beautiful than any diamond. Round, filled with shimmering life, the drop grew until its freedom was assured. It fell in a quivering sphere and broke over his forehead, cool and gently insistent.
Michael saw a glowing mist, golden above and blue to either side, surrounding the new droplet on the grass blade. He blinked and the mist resolved into sun half-hidden by clouds. Tall green grass rose on all sides. For a moment, he felt no need to do anything but stare. Indeed, it seemed that all his life he had been only a pair of eyes.
But soon he remembered his hands and they twitched. There was some reason he was reluctant to remember his body, and when he moved his legs the reason became clear: pain. His torso, as he lifted his head and looked down on it, was surprisingly clean. Rain had rinsed the mud from his jacket. He tried to sit up, then gritted his teeth and fell back.
Limb by limb, he took inventory until he was sure nothing was broken. Pulling back his jacket and shirt, he found a mass of welts on his side. His arms felt bruised beneath the sleeves, too—especially under his armpits, where he had been hoisted by the shadow. His teeth felt as if they were on fire. He vaguely remembered being slapped from the river, and the hands rising from the water to pull him back… the shadow with eyes like stars.
He stood, legs wobbly and vision spinning. The river was down an embankment and about fifty yards away. He must have walked the distance; there was no sign in the unbent grass that the water had flowed so high as to carry him here. Or—the shadow had flung him clear.
Had he encountered another kind of Sidhe—an Umbral?
Shading his eyes against the cloudy glare, he looked from his elevated advantage across the plain. He stood on an island of grass in the yellow-green sea of mire. For as far as he could see there was nothing but the storm-soaked plain and the distant hills. No sign of Euterpe or Halftown; no sign of anyone.
It seemed he was the only living thing besides the grass. Black curls of flood water still wandered from the low hills to the river. The river itself had returned to its channel, once more slow and sluggish.
Michael sat. River-borne, he must have come from upstream, and that was where he would return when he was strong enough.
His back prickled as if somebody watched. He turned stiffly to look in the opposite direction. Less than a hundred yards beyond the grassy knoll, the Pact Lands came to an end. He had almost been washed onto the Blasted Plain.
The air beyond the border was thick and gray-orange. The river waters were a muddy gray-blue right up to the demarcation, then flowed turgid yellow-green and sickly purple, like PUS from a long-infected wound.
The Blasted Plain itself was an expanse of black, gray and brown boulders spread across glistening, powdery umber sand. Through the murky air, he could see tall curling spires of rock like broken strands of glue left over from a badly managed patch job. The place was more than the sum of its parts; it was more living than dead, but nothing alive was visible. It was malevolent, made of things long buried, hard emotions long suppressed, mistakes covered over.
Death, despair, foulness and horror.
Michael shuddered and the shudder turned into shivers of delayed shock. He descended the knoll as quickly as his unstable legs allowed and began his march over the grassland, upriver to Euterpe and Halftown—or so he hoped—and away from the desolation of a war he could hardly imagine.
After a few minutes, he began to draw on reserves he had built up during the past weeks of training. He walked for the hour or so remaining until dark, then slept fitfully under the open night sky, and resumed at dawn. He would not die. He would not starve.
He had survived; and in that simple fact, Michael found a dismaying, pleasurable pride.
Thick swaths of fog shouldered in over the plain, driven before the sun’s warmth. Michael followed the sandy river bank, crossed the shallow ox-bow where the river rippled and glittered over rocks and pebbles, and climbed another hill to get his bearings.
The roofs of Halftown were about two miles away. He broke into a run along a trail of hard, clayey sand.
In Halftown, things seemed to be carrying on as usual. There was rain and wind damage to several of the buildings, and Lirg’s market courtyard had nearly been flattened, but the Breeds went about their business as if the night before had been commonplace.
The hut of the Crane Women was unscathed. Nare wove reeds into thick sitting mats, squatting between two piles of animal bones, holding a long reed in her teeth and plaiting steadily. Coom was nowhere to be seen. Spart, he discovered, wa
s walking behind him as he approached the mound. Michael grinned at her over his shoulder.
“Worried about me?” he asked. Spart’s eyes widened and she bared her black gums.
“It wasn’t you they were after, nor any human,” she said.
“I got that impression,” Michael said. He stopped before his house and lifted one foot to scrape mud from his shoe. “What happened?”
“There was a raid on the Breeds,” Spart said. She walked toward the door of the hut with jaw working as if chewing cud. She hardly seemed glad to see him.
“I took care of myself,” he said.
“You were very, very lucky.” She turned at the doorway. “You escaped Umbrals and Riverines. They’re branches of the Sidhe who worship Adonna most fervently. Adonna needs Sidhe blood to do its work, but it cannot touch the pure Sidhe. So it comes for us. We’re adequate for its needs, and few care if a Breed is lost. You were lucky, man-child, not skilled.”
Michael looked between the two Crane Women, his face reddening. “I survived,” he said. “God dammit, I survived! I’m not just some piece of garbage everybody kicks around! I have my rights and I… I—” But he was speechless. Spart shrugged and entered the hut. Nare cocked a glance at him, smiling around the reed in her teeth. She removed the reed and spat into the dirt.
“You survived, boy,” she said. “But you did not help anybody else. Three Breeds were taken last night, including Lirg of the line of Wis.”
“What will happen to them?”
“Adonna has its uses for them. We said that, boy. You don’t listen.”
Michael suddenly felt exhausted and discouraged. He had never lived in a place so cruel and unpredictable. The thought of continuing to struggle seemed to pull wool around his brain. He sat before his hut and held his chin in his hands. “What about Eleuth?” he asked a few moments later.
“She was not taken,” Nare said. “She is only one-quarter Sidhe. Her uses would be limited.”
“Do they always attack on a night of Kaeli?”
“Not always. Often enough.”
“So why so you still hold them out in the open?”
“We are still of the Sidhe,” Nare said. “We must keep the customs, even when it is dangerous.”
Michael pondered that for a time, and decided it didn’t really make sense. But he didn’t want to pursue that line of questioning. “I’m going to run now,” he said. Nare didn’t react. He wanted to get into Euterpe and talk with Savarin, find out what happened to the humans. At least with Savarin, he could ask questions and not be ridiculed.
He started off at a gentle lope, hoping to ease the exhaustion and funk from his body. As he approached Halftown again, he slowed. Glancing behind to see if he was watched, he took the path leading through the village.
Eleuth swept debris from the courtyard as Michael approached. She glanced at him without slowing her broom.
“I heard,” Michael said. “I’m sorry.”
“He serves the god now,” Eleuth said. Sad, her voice was even more beautiful.
“Are you going to work the market alone?”
“I’ll try.”
He opened his mouth, but decided he really had nothing to say. He bent down to pick up a piece of timber.
“Put it in the pile,” she said, gesturing with the broom end to a neat stack of ruined boards.
“If I can help…”
She regarded him with a calm, still expression, though her cheeks were wet. He had never seen a Sidhe or a Breed cry before. He filed the information away; perhaps it was because she was three-quarters human.
“I mean, anything I can do,” he said awkwardly.
She shook her head and continued sweeping. As he turned to walk away, she said, “Michael.”
“Yes?”
“I will take my rest later this day. May we visit then? I’ll be better.”
“Sure. I’ll be back by my place at—”
“No. Away from the Crane Women.”
That suited him. “I’ll meet you here.”
Though every muscle ached, it was the sort of pain he felt might be driven away by exercise. Once outside Halftown and on the road, he picked up his jogging pace, slowly increasing speed as ache gave way to exertion.
Twice now his life had been threatened. Such things seemed to be expected in the Realm. The Crane Women, each time, had treated his horrible experiences as just another minor hurdle. Michael couldn’t accept that.
He wasn’t sure he could trust the Crane Women to help him to his goal; he knew he couldn’t trust Lamia. Even the humans had little altruistic interest in his fate; Savarin probably cared for Michael only so long as he gathered information. Only Eleuth accepted him for what he was, and desired his company. He ran even faster.
Whatever else he thought about them, one thing was obvious: the Crane Women were doing him no harm by training him. He felt better, stronger; on Earth, he might have been laid up for a week after nearly drowning and being roughed up.
Euterpe had come through the storm with little damage. Some of the walls were water-stained, and one or two had been shored up after the dissolution of a few bricks, but little more. Obviously, what Nare had said was true: the Umbrals and Riverines sought Breeds, not men.
Michael made his way through the streets, walking quickly to avoid curious onlookers. Even so, he was heckled a few times. He hunched his shoulders and felt the helpless anger build.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts and crossed a narrow, cheerless triangle adjacent to a large, low one-story ochre brick building.
There were no signs announcing the fact, but Michael supposed this was the dreaded Yard. He circled the building, found Savarin’s school on the opposite side, a square, low-roofed structure with a clumsy steeple rising over one corner. As he climbed the brick steps, he heard a high-pitched warbling wail from the depths of the Yard and the muffled slam of a heavy door.
Savarin stood near a wicker lectern in the empty single classroom, leafing through a small pile of gray paper. The teacher looked up as Michael entered, his eyes widening at the bruises on his face and the state of the boy’s clothing: muddy grass-stained pants, torn shirt and jacket. “You look more like a savage every day,” Savarin said. “Was I right about last night—more than a storm?”
“A—what did you call it?—a raid.”
Savarin nodded, circling Michael and touching his jacket solicitously. “Grazza, similar to the Arabic grazzu, you know. My God. I knew Halftown was hit—”
“Right in the middle of Kaeli,” Michael said. “They took three Breeds, including the market manager. How often do these raids happen?”
“Often enough to make me suspect Alyons cares little for the Breeds, and that the Pact does not fully apply to them. Yet they follow Sidhe customs—”
“He doesn’t give a damn for them,” Michael said, surprised by his anger. “I’d like to kill that sonofabitch.”
Savarin looked Michael over solemnly for a moment. “I hope your memory of the events was not affected.”
“I remember well enough,” Michael said. “The Crane Women even let me understand Cascar for a while.”
Savarin’s face betrayed almost comic envy. “Then tell,” he said. “Do tell all.”
For an hour and a half, Michael reconstructed the Kaeli and the events after. Savarin grabbed his sheaf of gray papers and scribbled notes frantically with a sharp stick of hardened charcoal. “Marvelous,” he said several times throughout. “Names I’ve never heard before, connections made! Marvelous!”
When Michael finished, Savarin said, “I suspect Adonna would have done with us all, Breed and human. But it acts very slowly. A god’s time must be different from ours. In its moment of hesitation, we might fit our entire history in the Realm…”
“What happens to the Breeds they took?”
“I’ve heard the Umbrals and Riverines share them in their temples. Work magic with them. I know little beyond that. Perhaps some are taken to the Irall.”
“What’s the Irall?”
“Adonna’s greatest temple, ruled by the Faer but accessible to all Sidhe. How many did you say were taken?”
“Three.”
“Then it might not be an even split. Perhaps the raiders had a tiff of their own, dividing the captives.”
Michael didn’t like the word, divide. It sounded entirely too accurate.
“As for Kaeli songs, I’ve heard some outlines before but never so many details. You help me assemble many separate elements. A shame Lirg didn’t have time to tell more about Elme. I suspect some very important history is connected with her.” He put his notes on the lectern and sat beside Michael on the classroom’s front bench. “Questions are going around town. Why are you here, and why are you with the Crane Women and not your own kind? The townspeople resent you because they fear Alyon’s displeasure. Our position is precarious, and you introduce an element of uncertainty.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Michael asked.
“Perhaps.” Savarin smiled, then frowned as he inspected Michael’s bruises. “You should be resting, not up and about.”
“I’m fine. Tell me more about the Crane Women.” Come on, teacher, he thought. Teach. “Why are they so old… and how old are they?”
“I’m not positive,” Savarin said, “but I believe they date back to the time of Queen Elme herself. For all I’ve heard, they’re Elme’s daughters, but that hasn’t been substantiated, and of course they’ll never tell. Sometimes the Sidhe send their priest initiates, or their most promising young warriors, across the Blasted Plain to the Crane Women for training.”
“Well, I’m no warrior and certainly no Sidhe. The Crane Women make me feel stupid. If the Sidhe hate humans and Breeds so much, why is Alyons supposed to be protecting us? Does he protect anybody, really?”
“Yes,” Savarin said, scratching his nose between two fingers. “Somewhat. Things here would be much worse without him, much as I have a difficult time saying it. But he hates us. He makes sure we stay put, and between whatever protecting he does, he harasses. Makes life miserable.”