‘Motorbikes,’ Zinina said. ‘I can hear motorbikes.’
‘And running boots,’ Arrahaquen gasped. ‘How far off?’
‘Near. Come on. Run. If we can get to the stairs we’ll be safe. They’ll search the alleys first. They won’t look up.’
Arrahaquen struggled on, allowing Zinina to pull Graaff-lin. Nobody challenged them, though she thought she heard shouted commands nearby. The rain had ceased but the streets were wet, and more than once she slipped and fell.
At the steps they paused again. Arrahaquen looked upwards. Her legs felt so heavy. ‘Go on,’ she said, her voice hoarse. ‘I’ll follow. Go on. Get Graaff-lin up. Get the balloon ready.’
Zinina hesitated, looked to the sky, then pushed and shoved Graaff-lin up the steps. Arrahaquen sat on the lowest rung, exhausted, breathing in and out with a crackling wheeze. The grumble of motorbike engines rose and fell as riders sped along the adjacent street. She stood and began the climb. Ten flights above her, Zinina toiled. The minutes seemed endless. She was aware that Zinina’s boots were no longer clunking on the metal stairs. Voices. A thumping sound. Then she felt a breeze in her face and realised she was at the top.
‘Come on,’ Zinina called. ‘We’re off! Quick!’
The balloon was tethered by one cord. Arrahaquen tottered across the roof – she could not run – and fell into the basket. Melinquyl cut the cord.
They rose. But then they jerked to a halt.
‘We are caught,’ Melinquyl said, hanging over the edge of the basket and pulling at something. ‘The basket base is caught on the edge of the sign. Juo is angry that you didn’t bow.’
Arrahaquen saw Zinina stand up and assist. She heard the thunk of metal against metal.
‘Pull that,’ Zinina said.
‘Push that hook away,’ Melinquyl answered.
‘The sign!’ yelled Zinina.
Then they were free. The balloon leaped into the air. But some seconds later Arrahaquen heard a loud crash.
Zinina sat down. ‘Sign fell off the building. Reqoes, reqoes, they’ll hear it and see the balloon! Get your gun ready.’
Arrahaquen primed her rifle.
Melinquyl called out, ‘Two hang-gliders.’
Arrahaquen, despite her exhaustion, found it within herself to sit up and peer over the edge. Below lay the tumulus, outlined with glowing streets. But two hang-gliders were closing. She fired. From wingtip nozzles they fired back. Through the sky lines of red and orange flickered. Something exploded at her side. She shrank away. The balloon lurched and she smelled burning.
Melinquyl had been hit; the basket too. Then another shot hit. Melinquyl’s head was no longer on her shoulders. The basket lurched down to one side, its suspension cords cut. Arrahaquen looked up to see that only five cords now held the basket to the balloon.
‘Keep your nerve,’ Zinina said. ‘We’ve got to land now, and run.’
‘Can’t!’ Arrahaquen said. ‘We would be captured.’
‘No choice.’
‘Drop all ballast,’ Arrahaquen ordered.
‘No. We’ve got to land.’
Arrahaquen slumped back, but squirmed away, repelled, when she realised the soft cushion was not a cushion, nor Graaff-lin’s body, but Melinquyl’s corpse.
The balloon was losing altitude. They brushed tree-tops. Arrahaquen, the lower side of the basket now almost tipping her out, saw roofs, then windows. One cord broke with a musical ping.
With a crash they landed, and everybody was thrown out. The balloon fabric tore with a silken scream, then flopped all around. Zinina was on her feet, pulling at Graaff-lin. Arrahaquen struggled upright.
A garden lay around them, or rather the remains of a garden, for much of it was ivy and briar and nettle.
‘Mind them poison docks,’ Zinina warned.
Arrahaquen looked at the sky to see two more hang-gliders approaching. She searched the garden walls for a gate. ‘There!’ They charged towards it, Zinina ahead, swiping at vegetation with a knife, Arrahaquen supporting Graaff-lin as they tumbled out into an alley.
‘This is off Deciduo Street,’ Zinina said. ‘Follow me. We’ll have to hide, or the hang-gliders’ll spot us.’
Dawn was breaking and light rain fell from swirling clouds. The alley was flooded, like so many around the river, and soon they found themselves up to their knees in green water. Arrahaquen looked nervously at nearby bags of brown algae, floating like jellyfish. ‘Aren’t those things dangerous?’ she said. ‘There must be another way.’
‘Reqoes,’ Zinina swore, kicking with futile rage at the water. ‘The hang-gliders’ll see us. We’ve got to hole up.’
‘What about that tree?’ Arrahaquen said, pointing to a large oak up ahead, at the end of the alley.
They forged on through the flood, balancing with arms outstretched along a side wall when the waters threatened to reach their waists, until the branches of the oak sheltered them.
‘We should make for the Spired Inn,’ Zinina said. ‘We’ll be safe there.’
‘Agreed,’ Arrahaquen replied.
‘No!’
It was Graaff-lin who had shouted. Arrahaquen rose to her feet. ‘Graaff-lin,’ she said in unison with Zinina. ‘Are you all right?’
‘We will not make for the Spired Inn,’ Graaff-lin stated in a firm, hard voice. She seemed to have recovered her poise, though her face was still blanched, and her limbs trembled. ‘We will make with all haste for the Temple of the Dodspaat. It must be done.’
‘Hoy, Graaff-lin,’ Zinina began, ‘that’s a little danger–’
‘I will go alone if need be. The Citadel and my temple are guilty of heresy.’
Heresy? Arrahaquen thought. Graaff-lin had seen that her temple was a front, but she did not seem to realise that the Dead Spirits were no more than pyuter network entities – noophytes – pyuter hearts. There was no heresy. How could there be, when there were no gods?
Better keep quiet, Arrahaquen thought, for the moment. There was no telling what was going through Graaff-lin’s head. ‘We’ll come with you in case of trouble,’ she said.
Zinina looked at her in amazement. ‘You serious? If Katoh-lin’s in the Red Brigade she’ll have us killed instantly.’
‘It’s safe,’ Arrahaquen insisted. ‘We’ll accompany Graaff-lin to the temple, and she’ll hide us somewhere. It’s only just dawn. People won’t be that active yet.’
Zinina shook her head, but did not debate the point further. Graaff-lin led them back into the flood, making uphill for Min Street and then Pine Street, which led directly to the front of the Dodspaat temple. Far from being empty, its great steps were crowded with priestesses and ordinary Krayans, while at the main doors a score of heavily armed temple guards stood, barring all from entry.
‘What is happening?’ Graaff-lin asked a passer-by.
‘Reckon there’s something bad going on,’ came the reply. ‘I tried to go worship, but they won’t let me. Damn insolence.’
‘We better leave,’ Zinina said.
‘I know a back door,’ Graaff-lin replied. They followed her around the side of the temple until she stopped and nudged a shut door with her shoulder. She paused, then gave it a harder shove. It opened. ‘I’m running the moment there’s trouble,’ Zinina warned, priming her revolver.
Inside, Arrahaquen walked by Graaff-lin’s side, Zinina following, as they strode through marble corridors. Graaff-lin, seeing the white clad figure of a priestess, called out, ‘Tylla! What is going on?’
A tall, rather noble-looking priestess approached them, dressed in a white cloak and black boots. Her scalp was tattooed with daffodil designs. ‘Graaff-lin. How did you get in?’
‘What is going on? Where is the High Priestess?’
‘I’m not sure exactly what’s happening,’ Tylla replied. ‘Only a few priestesses are being let in. But do you mean Katoh-lin or Mysrioque?’
‘Why, Katoh-lin of course. What are you talking about?’
‘Katoh-lin is no long
er High Priestess. She has just been replaced. Two minutes ago, to be precise.’
‘But where is she?’
‘She has escaped. She is wanted.’ And with that, Tylla departed.
‘What do we do?’ Zinina hissed at Graaff-lin, who seemed to be slipping back into shock.
‘I do not know,’ Graaff-lin replied. ‘But this Mysrioque I know well. She is a Citadel woman, a scion of the Portreeve as many have said. Perhaps we have triggered an overthrow. This will not be kept secret for long. We had better hurry.’
‘Hurry?’ Zinina said, astonished. ‘Where?’
‘We must find Katoh-lin immediately,’ Graaff-lin said. ‘Something terrible has happened. Maybe the Portreeve is about to do something awful to the Dodspaat.’
They returned to the rear of the temple. Arrahaquen tried to think of a plan, to divert Graaff-lin from her crazed path. Breathing deeply, she closed her eyes and tried to think. But instead of plans she saw images. With an immediacy that brought her smells and sounds as well as far sight, she saw a figure hobbling along the street behind them.
‘Run,’ she said, splashing through puddles and climbing the iron steps that led up to Broom Street. ‘Quick.’
‘Have you gone mad too?’ Zinina said.
Graaff-lin was chasing after Arrahaquen. ‘Come along,’ she called down to Zinina.
Arrahaquen half jogged, half walked along twisted Broom Street, dodging urine slicks and piles of bubbling algae, kicking a dog that tried to bite her boots, wiping the sweat and drizzle from her eyes and pulling out her needle gun, until, as the trio approached Marjoram Street, she saw the figure from her mental image. It was an elderly woman, heavily cloaked, a walking stick in one hand.
‘Katoh-lin,’ gasped Graaff-lin, pointing.
They hurried on. Katoh-lin heard their clattering boots, turned, then tried to hurry on, but soon she was caught. Graaff-lin attempted to pull her round by the shoulder, but the frail woman collapsed into the gutter.
‘You have betrayed us all!’ Graaff-lin yelled in her face.
Katoh-lin, also exhausted, tried to speak. ‘No... no... I haven’t... mmm, mmm, it was for Kray!'
‘For Kray?’ Arrahaquen interrupted. ‘What have you done?’
‘For Kray...’ came the response.
Graaff-lin said, ‘I know everything, Katoh-lin. I know about your manipulation and plots. I know you’re a member of the Red Brigade.’
Katoh-lin tried to rise to her feet, but couldn’t. ‘Fools! Kraandeere, kraandeere! They’ll, mmm, find me. We’re all in peril, we might be being followed. Graaff-lin, don’t go to the temple else they’ll kill you. They know about your probings.’
Arrahaquen said, ‘We’ve just come from there. What’s going on?’
‘Graaff-lin, I’m sorry. I used you, mmm, to defect.’
‘Defect?’ they replied.
‘You fools! There’s but one way to leave the Red Brigade once you’re in, and that’s by dying. Mmm, I know too much about the plan. I was going to warn Kray. So I, mmm, had to defect. Save me! Pick me up and, mmm, mmm, mmm, carry me.’
‘You used me?’ Graaff-lin repeated.
‘Mmm, don’t stand here gossiping, underling, pick me up!’
Graaff-lin retorted, ‘Not until you explain.’
‘Save me! Save us all! Graaff-lin, I had to use somebody. I needed a decoy so that, mmm, my own activities would go unnoticed. I set you up. I made the Red Brigade think you wanted to, mmm, murder me for power. The Red Brigade thinks you might know noophytes lore. And the passes, they were made by me for my escape. I couldn’t leave the Citadel confines except disguised as a commoner, so I needed to forge passes. You tested them.’
‘Do you mean the Portreeve’s plan?’ Zinina interrupted, taking hold of Katoh-lin by her cloak and shaking her. Arrahaquen tried to stop her, but Zinina pushed her away, and continued to bounce the priestess’s body against the street. Together, Arrahaquen and Graaff-lin managed to drag Zinina away from Katoh-lin’s spluttering body. Zinina glared at them, teeth bared, fists clenched.
‘The plan,’ Katoh-lin choked. She lay on her back, coughing, until she managed, ‘The plan, mmm, mmm, yes, a bridge–’
Something green fell from above. It hit Katoh-lin on the face. Arrahaquen jumped backwards, knocking Graaff-lin into a wall as she did so. She glanced up and saw a figure on the roof above for the briefest moment.
Katoh-lin writhed under what Arrahaquen knew to be an algae cushion from the Citadel dungeons. While it shuddered and twisted, apparently getting smaller, Katoh-lin’s neck grew. Her arms flailed, beating the ground. Blood seeped out from under the thing. Unable to look away, Arrahaquen saw Katoh-lin’s throat burst open, spraying blood across the street, and saw too a glutinous mass of green and red wriggling deeper into her chest, like a bloated worm. She turned away, but Zinina and Graaff-lin just stared, horror plain on their faces.
Tugging at the arms of both women, Arrahaquen pulled them away.
~
Kray moved through the season of spring. Throughout the northerly quarters, the Archaic and the Green, plants, bushes and trees grew with profuse energy, bringing houses down with their roots and branches, decimating streets, poisoning people. Fungi appeared in many places, blocking whole streets with their smooth, spore-ridden fruiting bodies. Refugees began moving south. Entire districts of the north became impassable even to defenders.
The green wave could not be stopped. Its onset was marked, like botanic leprosy, with grass between the cobbles, ivy in the rafters; later followed fungal cellars, rotting beams and algae-smothered plaster, and bad air laden with suffocating pollen. Warm rain created ponds that once were squares, created microbe-rich rivers of decaying matter that flowed ever browner into the southern quarters.
A psychedelic patchwork of flowers and insects began to mask the dull hues of stone and wood. In teeming thickets, ambulatory pumpkins waited to pounce on the unwary, the drunk and the suicidal. Smothered communities fought over water and food hoards, until they were vanquished by impenetrable verdure.
The Citadel – even if it could – did little to quell the riots, as if the Portreeve and her minions had hardly noticed any change. But now every night the sound of automatic gunfire and booming detonations could be heard across Kray. The city was disintegrating.
CHAPTER 11
On Beltayn Eve, Haquyn, acolyte of the Goddess, chaperoned children around southern Kray, helping them in their task of decorating twigs and branches earlier snapped off by defending groups. The younger children – at least, those who did not spend time teasing their elder siblings – made crossed hoops of bedecked cane, straw dolls and garlands for decoration.
Meanwhile thousands of young friends met at inns serving free ale throughout the night. From safe roofs and from the open windows of high towers came the sounds of horns and drums, klaxons and conches, and reed pipes three yards long, accompanying the festivities.
But in the Green and the Archaic Quarters, in the passable districts of the Andromeda Quarter – even down as far as the Temple of Felis – and in those parts of the Carmine Quarter smothered by plants overflowing from the Gardens, there was silence. Silence, except for the swishing of trees and the pattering of rain. North Kray heard no music. This year, Beltayn was confined.
At sunrise Arrahaquen returned to the Carmine Quarter with her charges, everyone singing, then let them go in order to begin the house decoration; well-liked people would be favoured with flowers and leaves around their windows and doors, while the unpopular had nettles and creepers thrust upon them. Gifts could then be requested from Kray’s older residents. Arrahaquen looked upon all this with the eye of one who had lived most of her life in the bland buildings of the Citadel.
Collecting Zinina from the house, Arrahaquen led the way to a dew pool. It was the custom for women to bathe their faces with dew to ensure what in Kray was the ultimate beauty – a clear complexion.
An hour after dawn, they walked south. A light mist o
f yellow drizzle fell from bright clouds, filling the air. Already, feats of strength, singing and dancing, pyuter graphics and archery were being exhibited in the streets. Food and drink was to hand in every road – free from the Food and the Water Stations. Arrahaquen gazed east towards the Citadel. Somewhere atop its summit the Portreeve would be sitting at breakfast, apart, with a sour face.
Mystical figures appeared as the dances became more boisterous. The Leaf Man, a woman jigging in a bulky costume, danced along the street, flowers and coloured ribbons decorating her face. Elsewhere stalked the Moll and the Fool, the latter, dressed all in white and attended by girls in white jumpsuits, attacking those already drunk with a bladder affixed to a hazelstick. Arrahaquen, not quite able to join in with the jollity, feigned insolence and was rewarded with a clout on the head. Zinina laughed at her, but Arrahaquen’s face remained glum.
They walked on. The drizzle stopped, though the sky remained overcast. Music swelled from windows and from street bands led by aamlon conductors with leaves in their cuffs. Noon passed by. The two women walked to the garland-strewn Market Square, where this year’s Kray Queen was to be crowned. It would be a momentous occasion for many since it was widely believed that today marked the city’s final Beltayn. Girls wreathed in flowers danced around poles, the slabs below their feet a ring of colour where their adornments had fallen away. Others sat on leafy posts that they had made, comparing size and quality with those of others. From behind a vacated post Arrahaquen watched the tall, blonde and rather mysterious priestess Tashyndy crowned. She had nominated herself Kray Queen on Vert Day.
Taziqi, the High Priestess of the Goddess, had departed the temple to see her spiritual student crowned. People avoided her. Dressed in a sheath of lime and emerald silk, emeralds on her fingers and toes, she wore a three-faced mask, to the left a maiden, central a woman, to the right an old woman. When she spoke in encouragement, silence fell.
Arrahaquen studied Taziqi in fascination. Brought up to believe that any High Priestess of the Goddess was an enemy of the Portreeve, she now looked upon Taziqi with awe and confusion. What secrets did she possess? What were her plans for this final year? Well, any plans remained just as secret as those of the Portreeve, for the Temple of the Goddess had ventured no method of saving the human race.
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