Dark Heart (Husk)

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  She turned her face to him and stopped him cold, as though she had struck him a blow to the stomach. He had never seen such intense agony on a human face: her mouth and eyes were so distended she seemed a caricature. Blood seeped from her mouth where she had bitten her tongue.

  This is no act.

  Her fear-filled eyes were not focused on him, but on something else, some private reality. He turned, despite himself, and saw movement in the distance. Something was happening…

  As the moon edged nervously above the farthest hills and began coating them in silvery light, the three assembled groups watched as the horizon…changed. The low clouds in the distance swirled and peeled away into some other place, vanishing like leaves in a whirlpool. Below the disappearing clouds the ground itself began to move, to shake, to swirl.

  ‘Like Nomansland!’ Captain Duon shouted.

  Having listened to his story, everyone there knew what he meant. But despite having seen the whirlwind, Noetos found he didn’t believe it. Whirlwinds and storms were natural phenomena given supernatural meaning by credulous humans. He could almost hear his father lecturing him. ‘That hillside you see, it is not really bubbling, son. It is not glowing orange with heat.’

  Then what am I seeing, Father?

  Atop a nearby hill stood a figure, his arms raised. Too far away to recognise, but Noetos thought he knew the man anyway. It couldn’t be him. The man died in Raceme. I saw the whirlwind come for him.

  With a crack and a rumble a distant hillside soared into the air, rocks, soil, trees and bushes—and an animal or two—falling away as it rose. It made Noetos nauseous to watch the natural order of things being subverted. One or two of those watching cried out; cries that echoed across the hills as the refugees closer to the lake—and to the hillside ripped out by the roots—beheld the scene.

  The figure atop the hill lowered his hands. This could not be his doing. I swear he has no magic, or why would he have let me take the stone?

  ‘This will be terrible.’

  It was the woman from the Falthan group. Bandy of Instruere.

  ‘Get everyone away from here,’ she said, tugging at Noetos’s sleeve. ‘Whatever tore the ground up will come searching for us.’

  ‘Stell—Bandy’s right,’ said the tall man. ‘You’re the leader of the refugees: command them to flee. We are being hunted.’

  The hillside vanished into the distant vortex…No, thought Noetos, not so distant now. They are right. It is coming for us.

  ‘It must be targeting someone among us,’ he said to them. ‘It might be a mistake to go down to the refugees.’

  But his words went unheeded: already his daughter and son were running down to the narrow gully leading to Lake Woe.

  He knew he shouldn’t, sensed he was making a mistake, but he simply couldn’t help himself. How could a father do otherwise? He reached into his belt, clasped the huanu stone and threw it to the ground, marking well where it landed. Then he concentrated on his children and hoped they would hear him.

  Arathé! Anomer! Come back!

  Something heard.

  Panic filled him as he realised what he’d done, what he had brought down upon them all. He snatched up the stone. ‘Split up!’ he cried as he ran amongst the three groups. ‘Run in different directions!’

  ‘No!’ Heredrew countermanded. ‘Combine whatever powers we have and resist what is coming!’

  ‘But my way we will lose only one or two at most,’ Noetos said. The chances are it will not be my children, please Alkuon…

  And now a roaring began, a thunderous sound coming from the vortex in the sky, a throat into another reality. As if some giant shouted words of defeat at them. A white spot emerged from the hole in the clouds; a white, glowing thing, trailing embers in a long tail, swinging around towards them. On the nearby hill the mysterious figure leaped up and down as though cheering it on.

  ‘No time to run,’ the mercenary observed in a voice that seemed wholly unconcerned with his imminent death. Indeed, he smiled at Noetos as he added, ‘Let’s see how strong these people really are.’

  Down it came: a fireball spearing towards them, thrown by a god. Some of the talented among them gathered around the tall man, but Anomer and Arathé were nowhere to be seen. Safe. The ground began to shake under his feet, sending ripples across the dirt and shaking the bushes.

  Noetos consigned himself to oblivion.

  ‘He’s killed us all,’ Anomer panted as he tried to keep up with his surprisingly swift sister. ‘I heard him shout at us along our link.’ She really was running quickly. She’s using power, trying to draw attention away from Father and the others, he thought. Then: No, she would not put the refugees at risk. She must only be using her natural strength, yet she drew away from him.

  His foolish, thick-headed father had finally succeeded in killing them all. We ought to have left him to the Neherians, part of him thought. And no other part of his mind supplied a cogent argument to oppose it.

  Out onto the flat area his sister ran, and he followed a moment later. The fiery object grew rapidly closer—too rapidly, they would have only moments—but it seemed it was not travelling straight for them. Rather it would hit the basin they had just left…

  At the last moment Noetos raised his head. He would stare his death right in its flaming eye.

  The last image seared itself on his mind. Crimson, orange and golden flame bursting from a black ball of half-consumed rock, seemingly covering half the sky as it smashed into—

  Into some sort of shield thrown up by the magicians. The air thickened, and an enormous concussion rocked the basin. He fell to his knees, surprised he still had knees to fall to…

  ‘Nnnnnnoo!’ Arathé shrieked, and tried to fashion a hasty shield above her. Beside her Anomer did the same.

  Neither of them succeeded.

  The burning hillside crashed through their half-formed, flimsy defence, deflected slightly and crumped into the ground, shattering into a thousand fragments, each one raining fiery destruction on Lake Woe and those gathered around it. The largest pieces bounced towards the centre of the lake, but smaller rocks scythed through the fleeing refugees. Those who escaped losing limbs or being punched through by stones and pebbles were showered with molten dirt, which caught fire on their clothes or their flesh.

  Into the midst of this horror Arathé crawled, bleeding from her ears and nose. The air itself seemed to be on fire, and though she could feel the noise of the explosion reverberating around her, she could not hear it. Every breath scorched her lungs. She would not live. She did not deserve to.

  And now Noetos drank to the depths of the cup he had prepared for himself the day he vowed revenge for the death of his family. On shaking legs he walked across the place where the refugees had been—where they still were, butchered as they fled, holed, burned and twitching, some still alive, writhing, crying out for death or life, anything as long as it offered relief from the pain. As many grunts as screams. The magicians rushed to help, but for most there was little they could do.

  Yes, a part of him acknowledged that he himself had not hurled the fireball at the refugees. But he had alerted the gods, had drawn them by his selfish words. He knew his children would see it this way, even if the remaining Racemen did not.

  It seemed to him that evening, as he moved among the dead and dying, that he walked like a farmer through his autumn harvest.

  And when his son and his daughter came to confront him, the look on their faces made him wish he had died.

  COSMOGRAPHER

  CHAPTER 12

  THE TEA HOUSE

  THE YACOPPICA CLIFFS TEA HOUSE sat high above the restless sea. The windswept clifftop was not the ideal place to grow yacoppica, but the herb was hardy and the shelter belts had grown sufficiently thick that the plant spread rapidly and the tea house gained fame throughout the district. Mainly for the views, of course, but appreciation of the tea followed, as local supplies were supplemented by increasing imports. The house
had become one of the prime links in the famous Ikhnos Tea Chain, ensuring the fame and fortune of the proprietors.

  The Ikhnos Tea Chain was the social lifeblood of the northernmost Fisher Coast country. Considering themselves more civilised than their southern neighbours, the Ikhnal used alcohol sparingly, choosing instead to exploit the full potential of herbal and plant-based drinks. Tea was an essential part of cultured society, their host explained to Lenares. The cosmographer noted her three companions were not listening. They never listened. How could they tell whether something was going to be important if they didn’t listen?

  Lenares always listened. Their host beamed at her, pleased to have a receptive audience. Lenares smiled back. Learning new things was always a pleasure.

  The five of them—four from the glorious Empire of Elamaq, one from the small and self-important country of Ikhnos—waited at one of the entrances to the Yacoppica Cliffs Tea House, standing among unremarkable waist-high broad-leaved bushes. Their host, a middle-aged woman with a wide face, large bosom and friendly smile, spent a lot of time talking about these bushes. Their roots, she told them, would be dug up, scrubbed and boiled. After a time the water would be drawn off and other flavouring ingredients added, according to the guest’s humour. Lenares had not heard of the ingredients the woman listed: ginger, damiana and nutmeg for stimulation, kava for congeniality, chamomile for relaxation, and aniseed, peppermint, fennel, cloves and cinnamon for taste. She rolled the words around on her tongue, enjoying the sound they made. The discarded root would be pounded into powder, making a sweet delicacy that could be chewed or made into tea, and was exported from Ikhnos to many Bhrudwan countries. A favourite of the Undying Man, their host said proudly.

  She asked them to remove their footwear, invited them through the guest entrance, and escorted them across the pale wooden floor to the open-walled section of the tea house. ‘You will be wanting to appreciate the view, as all our visitors do,’ she told them. ‘There’s a brisk breeze today, but we think the sight of the sea is worth the slight inconvenience. At any time, of course, we can move you to a screened booth, where you can enjoy your tea in privacy.’

  ‘I’m surprised the locals don’t take all the best spaces,’ Captain Duon said.

  ‘Oh, but they do,’ their host said sweetly. ‘For the Ikhnal, tea is a serious matter. They prefer to sit in the booths without the distraction of the sea view. You will come to appreciate this during your journey through Ikhnos, though not many tea houses have such beautiful distractions. Apart from Boiling Waters Tea House up near the Patina Padouk border, of course. I haven’t been there myself, but I’m given to understand it is the first among the great houses of the chain. I’ll go there one day.

  ‘Take a seat, please.’ She pointed them to oddly shaped wooden seats arranged around a low table. ‘You kneel on the padded cross-piece—there, that’s right—and sit on this part.’

  Lenares did as she was directed and, to her surprise, the arrangement worked well, taking the tension out of her back, which had been stiffening after weeks of walking.

  ‘Now I will bring the yacoppica root and steep it in water.’

  The woman bent down and adjusted a metal grille under the table: immediately heat came roaring out of the contraption, warming their legs. A young girl, responding to some signal Lenares missed, came bearing a small stone cauldron and placed it in an inset in the table, directly above the heat source. After a few minutes the water began to steam.

  Their host withdrew a fibrous root from her tunic and placed it in the water. ‘I will leave you for perhaps half an hour,’ she told them, ‘and then I will return with special ingredients I have selected based on what I have seen of you.’

  ‘Do you see numbers?’ Lenares asked, wondering how the woman could be so confident as to select ingredients for them based on a few minutes’ acquaintance.

  ‘Numbers? What do you mean, madam?’

  ‘I am wondering…no, never mind. You just guess.’

  The woman’s eyebrows rose, but she appeared in no other way offended. ‘It’s somewhat more than guesswork, madam. We train diligently for this, you know. From girls.’

  ‘Like cosmographers,’ Lenares said, deciding to nod to a fellow professional.

  The woman made off to organise her ingredients, and Dryman scowled menacingly at Lenares. ‘I told you there was to be no unnecessary talk,’ he said. ‘I want our passage through these lands unremarked. And yet you start jabbering to everyone you meet.’

  Lenares looked him up and down. ‘Your talk is unnecessary,’ she countered. ‘I talk when I need to. I don’t waste words, and I won’t waste them with you. Now be quiet and let each of us get on with serving the Emperor as best we can.’

  The mercenary’s face darkened at this, but she continued staring into his unpleasant features. ‘You’re not in charge of me,’ she said to him. ‘And you don’t frighten me either. Cosmographers report directly to the Emperor. You’re not in charge of the captain either. You’re just a bully, the same as the Emperor. I don’t like you.’

  Torve leaned towards her. ‘Lenares, please, there are things you don’t understand—’

  ‘I don’t understand why Captain Duon is not the leader of this expedition. I don’t understand what this man is doing here, and why he has frightened you into doing what he wants. Can anyone explain that?’

  Lenares began to nibble at a strand of her hair. The numbers were maddeningly incomplete where this strange man was concerned, she thought. It might be because the holes in the world had burned away some of the threads and nodes she needed to make sense of what she was experiencing, or perhaps it had to do with the unknown reason why nothing would add up in Dryman’s presence. She waited for his answer, waited to test its truth.

  ‘There is a simple reason why I command,’ Dryman said, as a faint smile played across his face. ‘Because for the last three months you have followed me. If Duon were a true leader we would be on our way back to Talamaq, about to be executed for our cowardice and disobedience.’

  Some of Lenares’ scorn must have shown on her face, for he continued: ‘Yes, it is a facetious reason, I admit. The real reason, cosmographer, is that should Captain Duon return home without the many thousands of men he started out with, he will face much worse than death. He and his family will be disgraced, and his Alliance will fall. History will rank him alongside Caniole of Farbar, the man who lost the Emperor’s golden fleet. There is only one way for our hero to redeem himself, and that is to bring something home of such worth the Emperor will overlook the triviality of thirty thousand deaths. Captain Duon has allied himself to me, as I have persuaded him I know of something with such value and will need his help in recovering it.’

  He leaned back as far as the kneeling stool would allow and folded his arms. ‘An accurate summary, Captain?’

  ‘Gods help me,’ Duon concurred sourly. ‘To serve the Emperor, I follow a mercenary.’

  The water in the cauldron began to boil, reminding Lenares of the stories she had been told when very young: witches in the mountains brewing spells to entrap the wayward. She remembered the stories in detail, every line, every word. Herb in the pot, herb in the pot, find out whether she’s been good or not…

  Who had told her the stories? She couldn’t remember that.

  More and more, especially in the three weeks since the fireball star had landed amongst them, she found herself retreating into memories of those early times. So many nodes burned out on that day of earthquake and fire, the dark intelligence behind the hole in the world must have been laughing. The gruesome manner of the refugees’ deaths had neither impressed nor frightened Lenares. Dead was dead. But she had been so angry at having been outwitted again. It was her world being messed with, not that of the hole’s creator. She had a tie to him, and so should have had plenty of warning. Which made her think the hillside torn up and thrown at them had been a spur-of-the-moment choice.

  Spur of the moment it may have been, but it
had achieved its purpose, sowing confusion into the three groups who might have worked together against the god. It was no coincidence, Lenares thought, that the fireball had come just as she readied herself to tell them all she knew and guessed. The dreadful arguments following the terrible events of the evening had broken the fragile alliance before it even had a chance to form, and the three groups left Lake Woe separately amid acrimony. Lenares’ words had been left unsaid. Just as the god behind the hole would have wanted it.

  And there was another reason she spent much of her time in memory-land. Torve.

  Her beloved Torve, genuine but false, open but keeper of secrets. Victim of a hidden compulsion, if her guess was accurate. Well, more than a guess. Something kept his mouth closed when he desperately wanted to open it. Worse, the compulsion seemed now to extend to personal matters.

  He made her feel so good, and so bad. Every time he opened his mouth she hoped it would be to talk to her, to tell her private, special things. Every time he looked at her she searched for the numbers that told her, far more eloquently than his words or glances could, that he loved her. But he had not said anything beyond the normal functional things one travelling companion would say to another. She often found herself looking at him, watching the way his calf muscles moved as he walked, wishing she could run her hands over his broad shoulders or kiss those dark lips. And other things. The weight of him, the feel of him, his urgency, his catching breath. His beautiful numbers and their intriguing patterns. Oh, she was glad none of her companions could read her mind. How Rouza and Palain would have ridiculed her had they known! Of course, they were dead now, killed in the ambush in the Valley of the Damned.

  It seemed that the hole in the world wanted to kill everybody. Perhaps the Son could not re-enter the world until sufficient nodes had been removed. Surely someone, somewhere, knew how he might be stopped.