ARC: Sunstone

by Freya Robertson

  As usual, for a few moments, nothing happened. The earth felt soft around his fingers, sticky from mulch and plant decay. The chirrup of cicadas sounded loud in his ears. The smell of rich loam filled his nostrils, and he closed his eyes, imagining he was reaching down into the ground, plunging his hands deep, deep into the earth, searching for the channels he knew ran from the Arbor to all corners of the world.

  The connection, when it came, took his breath away, sharp and almost painful, as if he had plunged his hand into an icy stream or grabbed hold of a hot iron bar. He gasped, the energy washing over him, and he had to struggle to concentrate, the winds whipping at his consciousness. He was still under the influence of whatever drug Catena had given him, he thought, and if he wasn’t careful his mind would be torn to shreds. But he didn’t have the time to wait.

  He focussed on Catena, imagining her long dark hair, braided and looped over her ears, her bright green eyes with the habitual frown between them, her firm mouth, set in its usual stubborn line. Almost immediately he found her, a few miles to the south-west, as he’d thought, in the heart of the jungle. He concentrated, tried to reach out to her. Her energy was still, like a stagnant pond. She wasn’t moving. Dead? His heart gave a strange thump. Her form gave a shallow pulse like a small ripple in the pond. No, not dead then. But not good. Not healthy.

  He turned his attention to the Prince, imagining his face, his dark hair, and those strange, unsettling gold eyes. This time he could not make a connection. He stretched out his feelings into the energy channels like reaching out with a stick to grab something in a river, and for a brief moment he thought he felt a flicker of a presence far to the west, but then it vanished. Instinct told him the Prince wasn’t dead either. But something had come between him and the Arbor’s reach, cutting him off from contact.

  Cursing again with a vast and colourful array of swear words, this time he switched direction and reached out to Heartwood. As he reached the boundaries of the city, he felt the usual dislocation, the movement beneath the earth of the channel junctions like cogs moving into place, the opening up of one time to another, three sides to the pyramid.

  At the centre, he found the man he knew only as Cinereo. He knew Cinereo was a member of the Nox Aves, but he did not know his identity, which was kept secret because of the ever-present Incendi threat.

  “Demitto,” Cinereo announced, appearing before him as a figure in a hooded grey cloak, criss-crossed with leather straps.

  “My lord.” Demitto bowed his head.

  “You have news?”

  “I do, but not of the good kind, I am afraid. I have lost Tahir and Catena. I can feel the latter through the network, but the Prince’s presence is absent.”

  Cinereo said nothing, but Demitto was sure he could feel his frustration flooding through the energy channels.

  “You must find them,” the grey-cloaked figure insisted. “Time is not written in stone, emissary. Although the tablet may remain, its inscription has yet to be carved.”

  “I understand.” Demitto’s head throbbed. He cursed himself silently for being foolish enough to let Catena drug him. Why had he not anticipated such an event?

  “Do not berate yourself overmuch,” Cinereo said, his voice holding amusement and some gentleness.

  “I should have anticipated something like this,” Demitto said bitterly. “I was wary of telling them too much because I thought it might scare them–”

  “And it is always nice to be the one in the know,” Cinereo said, still sounding amused.

  Demitto said nothing. It was true – he had enjoyed the knowledge he possessed, had coveted it, finding comfort and pride in knowing the Nox Aves had entrusted him to carry out their precious task. And now he had failed them. That was where pride got you.

  “You have not failed,” Cinereo said as if reading his thoughts. “This is not the end, just a… setback.”

  “I am sorry, nevertheless.”

  The grey-cloaked figure gestured with his hand as if in dismissal. “Find the woman,” he said. “Then contact me again. I will help you locate the boy.” The cloaked figure shimmered. “I must go now. Farewell, emissary.”

  “And you.” Demitto lifted the pendant free of the earth. The connection broke, the figure disappeared, and the deep humming in his ears stopped. He sat back, drenched in sweat, not realising until then how much heat had been flowing through him. The Incendi searched for him, knew he used the channels to contact the Nox Aves, but with the shield of fire that the Night Birds had created around his pendant, the fire elementals had not yet been able to hunt him down.

  He retrieved his belongings from the horse, gave its rump a whack and watched it head back towards the city. Then, passing the handle of the bag over his head and resting it across his back, he set off into the bush.

  It closed around him quickly like a green fog, cloying and suffocating with its heat and humidity. Demitto hated the bush. He longed for the wide open countryside: the breeze that played across the high hills, the fields of golden wheat that rippled, the wide rivers and narrow streams that chattered over rocks to the sea. This knotted and tangled jungle was a nightmare from which he thought he would never wake. Vines wrapped themselves lovingly around his neck, choking him, while lush flowers and leaves tempted interest, belying their poisonous, deadly nature. He didn’t mind forests, with squirrels and foxes and badgers, cuckoos and owls, caterpillars and worms, but here the insects bit and burrowed into the skin, the shrill birds flaunted colour that seemed unnatural amongst the dull green of the bush, and the animals consisted of varying species of climbing furred creatures and insidious snakes that he secretly feared.

  Still, this time in the jungle he had a purpose, and he focussed on Catena, stopping every now and again to plunge the pendant into the ground to search for her presence. In the end, he found her easily, only a couple of miles from the spot he had entered the bush.

  Atavus lay next to her, but stood and shook himself as Demitto walked up. He had blood on his fur, but his tail wagged furiously, and his leaping about showed he wasn’t too badly hurt.

  Demitto gave him a quick hug and kissed his head, then fell to his knees beside Catena, alarmed at the sight of the arrow shaft in her chest, the paleness of her face.

  “Catena,” he murmured, lifting his bag to the ground and retrieving his water bag. He dribbled some of the water into her mouth and tapped her cheek lightly. “Catena?”

  She stirred and opened her eyes. To his relief they didn’t look feverish.

  “Demitto?” she mumbled. She turned her head and looked around. “Where is the Prince?”

  “Gone,” he said.

  She stared at him, and to his surprise, tears filled her green eyes like a river filling a rock pool. “I am sorry,” she whispered. “He was frightened – he is just a child. I did not think he deserved to die.”

  “That is not your decision to make,” he said, more irritably than he had meant. He stroked her hair as a tear spilled down the side of her face. “But do not worry about that now. We will find him again. But first we have to get this arrow out of you.”

  He took a roll of cloth from his bag, a bottle of whiskey and a jar of ointment. Straddling Catena’s limp form, he took his knife and ripped away her tunic to expose the wound.

  “By the Arbor,” she swore as he tore almost to her waist, and she tried to cover herself weakly. “That was my best tunic. And do you really need to expose my entire chest?”

  He pushed her hand away, needing to view the wound and with no patience for modesty at that moment. Atavus came forward for a look, sniffing at the wound.

  The arrow was embedded several inches above her right breast, deep in her shoulder. Demitto braced his left hand on her arm, knelt all his weight on the rest of her so she could not move. “On the count of three,” he instructed. She nodded, a sheen of sweat on her forehead.

  “One,” he said. “Two.” And pulled.

  The shaft slid out, and to his relief it was n
ot barbed or it would have brought half her shoulder with it. She screamed and then sobbed, making Atavus nuzzle her ear, but Demitto ignored her pain for a moment, pouring water onto the wound to clean it, then finishing with some of the whiskey, sighing at the thought of wasting the drink. He smoothed a fingerful of ointment from the jar onto the pad of cloth and placed that over the wound, then bound it to her shoulder, winding the bandages around her arm and chest and knotting it securely.

  The last thing he did was to place his hand over the wound and push the pendant back into the earth. For a few minutes he channelled the Arbor’s energy into her shoulder, aware of her watching him, and knowing she must be able to feel the heat that flooded between them. He finished by placing his hand briefly on Atavus, hoping that the heat would heal the wound the animal had obviously suffered to his ribs, probably from a firm kick.

  He pulled her to a sitting position. She turned and spat a mouthful of blood and spittle onto the grass, then grabbed his whiskey bottle and took a large swallow, ignoring his raised eyebrow. Finally she gestured to her bag and said hoarsely, “Please find me another tunic so I do not have to ride on with my breasts out for the world to see.”

  Smiling wryly, he fetched her tunic and helped her take the old one off and replace it with the new.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, pleased to see some colour back in her face.

  She rolled her shoulder, winced and gave him a curious look. “It is sore, but not as bad as it should be. What did you do to me?”

  “Made you better.” He did not elaborate and got to his feet, took her other hand and helped her up. “We should be going.” He hefted her bag onto his back along with his own.

  “Where?” she asked, puzzled. “I do not know where the Prince is. They carried him off, and I could not even tell you which direction.”

  “We will head west,” he said. “Towards the mountains. Something tells me the timelines are converging there.”

  “The timelines?”

  “Yes,” he said, turning and walking off into the undergrowth, Atavus at his side. “We are going to rescue Tahir. And then we are going to save the world.”

  III

  Comminor sat behind his desk, which was covered in sheets of paper ingrained with his small, neat handwriting. He had a steward who kept the tally of resources in the Embers. This included the number of sacks of moss oats in the storage rooms and how many rolls of goats’ cheese remained wrapped in leaves, a count of the men and women in the city and how many in each age group, how many goats there were and when kids were born, any incidences of disease, and careful observation of relationships which might lead to the occurrence of a child.

  He leaned back and ran a hand through his hair as he read that three more women had become pregnant. The day before, he had been walking through the Secundus District when a woman had thrown herself at his feet, begging him to let her keep her baby. He had commanded the Select with him to remove her and take her to the palace apothecary, but that one had weighed heavy on his mind overnight.

  More babies meant more strain on their resources. It would have been easier to regulate the birth rate by separating the men and women completely, and only allowing relationships on a controlled basis. He had considered it on more than one occasion, rejecting it each time for several reasons; the difficulty of implementing segregation on a population that would obviously resent and rebel against such a decision, the difficulty of maintaining it even if they were to achieve it, and the effect on morale should they be able to achieve it and maintain it, which he sincerely doubted.

  Morale was an issue that weighed heavily on his mind. Standing at the long window in his foyer, looking down at the Great Lake and the busyness of daily life, he sometimes thought he could feel the depression his people exhibited at times like a tangible thing, like a fog that descended on them, enveloping them and causing their spirits to sink, their enthusiasm to wane. It happened after festivals, market days and other important events, and also at other times of the year, when there seemed little for the people to look forward to. Taking away his people’s mates, refusing them sexual relationships, closing down the whorehouses, effectively turning the place into a prison – that would not go down well. He understood the need for companionship, for sexual release – that was perfectly natural, and the only way the Embers had survived for so long was by maintaining their humanity, by ensuring they continued the way of life that they had known before they were cut off from the world.

  Bored with statistics and records, he pushed the papers aside, stood and went to the entrance to his chambers. Most of the time he kept the embroidered curtain pulled back, but now he let it drop, signifying that he did not want to be disturbed.

  He walked across the room to the cabinet that stood in the corner. Innocuous and plain, it did not draw a second glance from anyone who came into the room, which was how he liked it. He took the key from around his neck and unlocked it, opened the doors and withdrew one of the large books that lay within. Carefully, he carried it over to his desk.

  He sat and looked at the cover. It was made of the skin of some animal unknown in the Embers, and although the ink on the front had cracked and peeled slightly, he could still make out the words.

  The Nox Aves Quercetum II.

  Carefully, he lifted the cover and began turning the pages.

  He spent a while looking through the book, more out of a need to remind and reassure himself of his purpose than out of a wish to read the text. He knew most of it off by heart anyway, could recite long passages due to the fact that he had read the book numerous times from cover to cover.

  It contained the accounts of members of the group who called themselves the Nox Aves from their creation many thousands of years ago up to its latest and only member – himself. Here lay the history of Anguis in two volumes, including the writings of Oculus, the invasion of the Darkwater Lords at the beginning of the Second Era, the rise of the Incendi, and the event that had led to the creation of the Embers itself.

  He smoothed his fingers over the crackled parchment. Touching the book always filled him with a sense of awe, of reassurance. He had accepted the role of Chief Select from his predecessor knowing that he had the combination of personal characteristics that the role required: vision, empathy and the necessary ability to be cruel, because no leader can rule purely out of the goodness of his heart. And in such a place as the Embers, governance would always demand hard decisions for the general good of the people.

  Still, he had doubted over the years, especially lately. The dreams had been coming thick and strong, vivid and real, and it made it even harder for him to continue to hold onto his control, not to doubt himself. Not being able to share his knowledge had been hard. Reading the words of those who had come before him comforted him, made him feel less lonely. There were reasons, he told himself, for his harsh decisions, and if everyone knew what he knew, they would not question him.

  He turned the page and came across the passage written by his predecessor about the presence of bards within their society. Though he knew the words, he read them again, tracing the ink with his fingers as his eyes followed the words.

  There are families in the Embers who seem to carry within their blood a memory of the old days, Comminor read. These men and women keep alive the world on the Surface, and pass on to their successors the dreams of the green and blue, the birds in the sky and the creatures of the earth. They keep their gifts secret, their abilities buried within themselves. They are special and extraordinary, and they are to be hunted down and destroyed at all costs.

  Comminor’s finger paused, then retraced the last sentence again.

  His predecessor had not known that Comminor himself was a bard, and Comminor had not disclosed it, mainly because he had not even been aware of it himself until he read the Nox Aves book. His high birth and confident personality had let him rise quickly amongst the ranks until the previous Chief Select had noticed him, and he had been careful to keep his dr
eams to himself.

  But it was only once he read the Quercetum that he realised what he had been dreaming about. And by then it was too late for him to take the path of anything but Chief Select, bent on destroying those with whom he would otherwise have been seeking to collude with. There was no point in seeking them out now. He had read the book. He knew the truth. And he knew there was no other way to keep the people in the Embers alive than to kill those who dreamed of another world.

  The bell outside the door rang, and he called out, “One moment,” before closing the book and replacing it in the cabinet. He locked the door, hung the key around his neck, and only then walked across to the curtain and pulled it back.

  His eyebrows rose to see four Select standing there, as well as his two guards. They were breathing heavily, although whether from exertion or emotion he was not sure, because although their chests heaved, their eyes flickered with fear.

  “What is it?” he demanded.

  Viel, one of his most loyal followers and the leader of the small hand-picked group closest to him that he called the Umbra, leaned towards him and murmured in his ear, “It is about the Veris.”

  Comminor’s eyes narrowed. “Come in.”

  He turned and walked back into the foyer, and the members of the Umbra followed. One of them shut the door, and they all turned to face him.

  “So?”

  Josse, a young Select with wild dark hair that refused to be tamed, spoke up. “Sir, I managed to get close enough to overhear a conversation that Nele the apothecary had with another member of the Veris. And they were discussing plans to leave the Embers – tonight.”

  Comminor stared at him. “Who was the other member?”

  Viel hesitated. “You are not going to like it.”

  Comminor just glared at him.

  “Turstan,” Viel said.