Dark Heart (Husk)

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  His flickering torch revealed the strangest scene. A woman lay on the ground, elbow, hip and foot touching the earth, body facing what was obviously the shell of a burned building. Not a house, surely; the ruin was far too large for that. But there was something strange about the woman. She seemed to be lying unnaturally, her body held rigid, with far less of it in contact with the ground than looked normal.

  The Emperor approached. A small shelter had been built to one side of her, as though protecting her from the weather. The woman could see them as they moved in front of her: her eyes were open, and they moved backwards and forwards between her two visitors. Not a statue, then. But her face was curiously immobile, and she made no reaction to their nearness. The remnants of a meal lay in front of her: mashed food of the sort fed to babies, and a half-full pitcher of water.

  Something was very wrong.

  ‘This must be the Daughter’s work,’ his master said. ‘Look, Torve; she has been anchored here by someone of subtle power.’ He touched her skin; the woman did not flinch. ‘See, she cannot move.’

  So saying, he drew his knife.

  The woman’s eyes darted left and right in the familiar panic-stricken dance of those about to die.

  ‘I’m going to carve a piece out of you,’ the man said conversationally.

  Her eyes widened, circled with fear. But the man did not make good his threat. Instead, he bent down and angled his head until he could see what she saw.

  ‘She’s been placed here so she cannot avoid the sight of this ruin,’ his master said, musing. ‘Something happened here that she was responsible for, I think, and her punishment is to lie in this place and contemplate what she has done. Someone she valued has perished here as a result of her actions. I am right, Torve,’ he added, looking into her eyes and reading assent there. ‘A cruel punishment: she’s already half insane.’

  He licked his lips. ‘Perfect for our purposes. I wonder if I can make her talk?’

  He soon found out he could make her scream. As soon as he cut into her she cried out, and he took a step backwards.

  ‘The woman is a magician,’ he told Torve. ‘I felt it through the knife. And magician though she is, she’s bound by a spell I have never seen.’

  ‘Something the Emperor has never seen, or something new even to the Son?’

  ‘Both, Torve. Don’t you understand? I am both.’

  Curiosity consumed the man. He would walk her to the gates of death in good time, but first he sought to discover what had happened to her, and who had done it. She held back as much as she could, showing a bravery Torve had never before seen, but her immobility made her so uniquely vulnerable something had to give eventually.

  ‘Martje!’ she screamed. ‘My name is Martje!’

  ‘Good,’ his master crooned. He turned to Torve. ‘There is no spell known in the world or beyond it that can force a person to tell what they wish to keep secret. Persuasion and threat are our only weapons, and neither are magical. But I do have a simple incantation to ensure that what is said is the truth.’

  He bent over and whispered something in the woman’s ear, then sat back and watched her for a moment.

  ‘Who paralysed you?’ he asked.

  ‘I paralysed myself.’

  ‘See? Cooperation is the easiest way forward. Every truth you tell wins a reward. Your first reward is a change of researcher.’ He handed his bloodied knife to Torve.

  ‘Why did you paralyse yourself?’ Torve asked her.

  ‘I sought to cast a spell on my guests. One of them had harmed my son and heir.’

  ‘What spell?’

  ‘The Rite of Entrapment.’

  The Emperor hissed. ‘Powerful magic. But the spell that binds you now is not the Rite of Entrapment. Where are the others involved in the incantation? The woman, the magician and the victim?’

  Torve knew nothing about such rites; nor, he was sure, did his Emperor. This was entirely from the Son.

  ‘The victim broke the spell,’ the woman said. ‘He set the others free but re-bound me, I do not know how.’

  ‘And who is this powerful victim foolish enough to be snared, yet strong enough to escape?’

  The woman refused to answer.

  His master scowled. ‘I see. More afraid of him than of us.’

  He sought and held Torve’s gaze. ‘I want there to be no misunderstanding, my friend. You are to press this woman hard, using every technique I have taught you, in the attempt to discover who this man was. If there is someone this powerful loose in this part of the world, I want to know all about him.’

  Torve considered his master’s careful phrasing of the command, and wondered whether the man had read his mind, whether he had sensed his servant’s earlier attempts at disobedience. He felt the familiar surge of energy associated with an effort to turn the command aside. Even an attempt to evade such a direct command, to prevaricate, proved futile.

  You might have my body, Torve thought as he set to work, but you do not have my will. But even as he said it he despised himself anew.

  To confound the situation still further, the woman provided real proof of one of Torve’s own theories. ‘Death does not arrive so much as life leaves,’ he’d claimed years ago. His master had rejected the idea. He’d believed—wanted, Torve thought—death to be a tangible thing, a presence that could be fought or denied. But the cryptic words uttered by the paralysed magician in the moments before her death suggested an even more fundamental truth.

  ‘What do you see?’ Torve asked.

  ‘A membrane,’ she whispered. She knew what awaited her, but all resistance to the will of her tormentor had long been excised. She was almost cooperative, very nearly curious, so skilled had Torve and his master become. ‘A thin wall.’

  ‘What is beyond it?’

  She did not answer for perhaps three breaths, then said: ‘I do not know.’

  ‘I will take you there and bring you back,’ Torve said, his stomach churning at the terrifying things he was forced to do. He took a deep breath and stopped her heart for the first time.

  Only the many years of experience they had spent together enabled the two researchers to keep their subject alive. Torve pushed air into her lungs, blowing directly down her throat, while his master pumped her chest. It was far more difficult than usual, due at least in part to the magic fixing her in place, but eventually they brought her back.

  They had done this many times before, but had never received anything but the vaguest of reports from those they retrieved from death. This time, however, the woman returned to them with a clear answer.

  ‘I saw a void,’ she said, her eyes wide. ‘And in the void were bright lights, a myriad of bright lights. Each one…’ She paused for breath.

  ‘Yes?’ the Emperor said eagerly.

  ‘Each one is a soul. I will be a star. Let me go there. Please.’

  ‘There is something lacking in her explanation,’ said the Emperor, though his hands shook with excitement. He spoke again, in another voice: ‘I have been in the void, I have seen the stars, but I have never been able to reach them. The stars have immense power. I will return there now and observe. Take her through again.’

  And, in that moment, Torve seized his chance.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  CHAPTER 21

  PATINA PADOUK

  THE STORM BROKE DURING their second week in the jungle. It had been building for days. The humidity grew dire, an enervating dampness in the air that set them sweating and chafing. Layer upon layer of clouds built on the eastern horizon, always closer, always darker, whenever the endless treescape relented enough to give the Amaqi travellers a glimpse of the wider world. The forest itself seemed in no need of a dousing, such was its verdancy. Jungle giants of grey and green, their broad trunks swathed in vines and creepers, let little light into the understoreys below their vast canopies, but myriad plants grew there nonetheless, many directly from the trees themselves, adopting gaudy colours to attract inquisitive inse
cts to their pollen and seeds—and sometimes their mouth-like traps. On the forest floor brightly coloured fungi, in every shape imaginable, competed with ferns and young trees for the remaining space. An environment more unlike that in which he had grown up was hard for Duon to imagine.

  And now the rains had arrived, making the journey north surreal, almost dream-like. Though the forest was dense to the point of being impenetrable, the rain still found a way through, casting a grey haze over everything more than a few paces away. The travellers’ view of more distant vistas was completely obscured, which made route-finding extraordinarily difficult.

  Or it would have, had they been travelling as three ordinary men and their hired porters.

  Duon had no doubt that the mercenary—he persisted in granting him that epithet despite recent revelations—could find his way through the forest in absolute darkness. Since the destruction of Foulwater even a fool would have known Dryman was not what he seemed, and Duon was no fool. He’d suspected the man as soon as he’d first seen him, since he’d first heard his glib explanations. But now he had learned the mercenary was no ordinary man. Duon knew he wasn’t even anything as simple as a magician. No, he journeyed with a mad, blood-lusty god-Emperor and his servant.

  The words spoken between master and servant had confirmed beyond doubt that Dryman was the Emperor of Elamaq. Though Torve had spoken of his master in the third person, it seemed clear that he was speaking of Dryman, the Emperor—or, at least, the Emperor’s body, possessed by the Son.

  Duon had been shocked beyond belief at what he’d learned. No wonder the mercenary could speak with confidence of the Emperor’s will; no wonder he could command the Omeran’s obedience. The magic was explained by the presence of the Son, a second great shock; and the third was the confirmation of his two companions’ nocturnal activities. ‘Research’ into immortality, involving torturing innocents to death. The burden of shame that fell on him at this knowledge was impossible to bear. He felt broken inside. That the truth could have been kept from him for so long! That the Emperor had deliberately engineered the deaths of his own subjects! That he had given himself to the dark heart of a god intent on breaking the world! Together with that god, he and his servant were taking lives in the most gruesome manner imaginable. It could not be borne. It could not continue.

  But it did continue, despite his resolution—and despite his attempts to break free. After the night of revelation, as Duon thought of it, Dryman had led them to the coast and the port of Sayonae. After a protracted and futile attempt to hire porters for the long journey north through the jungle, Duon had tried to convince the man to take ship, but he refused even to consider it. Duon then tried to find a ship that might take him alone. However, none would risk the autumn mausum, the time of unpredictable sea storms.

  The voice cornered him. I wish you to remain with this man, it said. Should you attempt to leave, I will compel you to return. After this there had seemed no point in considering flight.

  A group of six men, who turned out to be brothers, approached Dryman just north of the city and offered themselves as porters. ‘We could not approach you in the city,’ they said, ‘for we are not well liked there. But we know the jungle well, and can guide you through the skirts of the deep forest.’ Dryman accepted their offer without question.

  One of the brothers had died on their second night in the jungle, torn apart by a wild animal; except, of course, he hadn’t been killed by an animal, unless that name could be applied to the…the thing that now led them through the rain. As much as anything, it appeared, Dryman saw the porters as a ready source for his research.

  Duon’s true sympathies lay with the Omeran. The night of revelation had seen a most dreadful fight between Torve and the Emperor. Duon had not caught the gist of it, but he believed Torve had tried to defy his master, perhaps when his master had taken the guise of the Son, but the disobedience had been unsuccessful. Duon had always believed that it was simply physically impossible for Omerans to disobey their masters, but it appeared the truth was more complicated. It must be; what else would explain how Torve was able to mount an attack? He attacked his master in the same way he’d gone for those poor villagers, but hadn’t landed a single blow. It almost seemed as though the mercenary had ordered the Omeran to attack him—surely a difficult concept for one brought up to do his master no harm. The mercenary had given his servant a fearful beating, necessitating a two-day delay beside a stream at the border of the great forest to allow the Omeran to recover.

  ‘We’ll camp here,’ said the oldest of the brothers, breaking in on Duon’s thoughts. ‘As good a place as any, in this rain.’

  He had found a dead banyan tree, the trunk gone and only the roots remaining, shaped like a cage. It would keep away any animals foolish enough to be out in this weather, and, when the oiled tarpaulin was draped over it, would offer at least partial shelter from the curséd rain.

  Two nights and a day of rain, and already all previous hardships had faded into dim memories. How could the Had Hills or even Nomansland have been as bad as this constant heat, this incessant chafing, and the smack smack smack of drops gathered by branches far above and flung at them?

  The sinister voice in his head had largely been absent in the last fortnight; surprising given what Duon had witnessed. Perhaps the magician knew it already, or maybe he had other matters to attend to. Duon wondered what had happened to the other two who could hear the man’s voice: that quietly spoken girl with the haunted eyes and the bookish Falthan priest. If what kept the voice away from Duon was a preoccupation with their affairs, they must indeed be suffering. Perhaps they suffered for the same reason he did.

  Did each group travel with a god? Was it as simple as that?

  He tossed the question around in his mind as the porters prepared the meal. Was there a simple symmetry about the three groups—Falthan, Bhrudwan, Amaqi—that no one seemed to have noticed? Had the Father, long believed to have passed out of time after his banishment by his children, returned, now to journey with the Falthans? And did the Daughter accompany the Bhrudwans? Three groups, three magician-afflicted messengers, three gods.

  Not for the first time, not for the last, he wished the cosmographer were here. She would know.

  Torve stirred in his sleep, then rose to reluctant wakefulness. No doubt, he reflected with deep bitterness, he slept poorly because he was accustomed to being woken during the night. The Emperor-god had shaken him awake but once on this latest leg of their journey, believing he could risk killing one of the porters, but he’d not chanced a second. Torve had no doubt that as soon as they discovered another town, village or even isolated family, he would be called to witness—no, to take part in—more deaths. A brief respite, then, in the endless killing, but he couldn’t sleep through the night.

  His bruises had almost faded to match his dark skin, though he was some way from a full recovery. The deepest bruising, though, could not be seen. His master had known, he had known, what Torve had been planning; had been clever enough to goad him into an act of disobedience. Torve had defied the god, hoping it would be easier than defying the Emperor. But as soon as he had said the word he’d realised it simply didn’t work that way: the one he defied was not the one who commanded him. The god could not compel him with the force of his breeding, but the god didn’t need to. He had other ways of ensuring obedience. So Torve’s cry of ‘no’ had been punished as if it had been disobedience, and he’d submitted, as he had to, to the beating in the knowledge his Defiance had not benefited him.

  And as for his Defiance, he would never use it again. He’d made the resolution even as the blows crashed down upon him, and that, at least, was something he had control over.

  He could not flee. The Emperor had instructed him to remain by his side. Even if the Son were to explicitly countermand this, it would not have the force necessary. He must remain with his master.

  Was there any hope? He could see none. He had nothing but memories. His eyes filled
with tears whenever he recalled those days of discovery with Lenares in the House of the Gods, and he wished with his whole heart he could go back to that place, with her, even for one day.

  ‘Up, explorer. A wet day awaits. Onward to the heart of the jungle!’

  Duon hated the man’s false cheeriness. Everything about him was false. He would almost have preferred the man to reveal himself and control the expedition by force rather than subterfuge. He could not decide whether it was worse to have been gulled unknowingly, or to play along with it now.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, and stowed his damp bedroll in his pack.

  Speech seldom passed between the men as they made their way through the forest. Even the porters said little, which was unusual. Duon had a fair degree of experience with such men, and they generally kept themselves and their clients amused with stories, songs and chatter. This group, however, despite being brothers, walked with their heads down, hoods up and mouths closed. Perhaps it was the weather; but Duon could not remember much, if any, conversation around the campfires or on the trail even before the rains had come.

  To his surprise, someone broke the silence.

  ‘There, off to the left, on the far side of the stream.’

  The words came from behind him, where the younger brothers walked. An answering grunt floated back from ahead. Duon turned his head, but could see nothing.

  ‘Again.’

  This time he caught a flash of movement. Some animal. He found himself unconcerned. What animal had the faintest chance of harming them when they journeyed with a god?

  There were no more announcements of sightings that morning, but gradually Duon realised they were being tracked—even herded—by people carrying spears and dressed in rags.

  He had been to Andratan, but had travelled much of the way by ship. This forest and its inhabitants were new to him. But not to the porters, who began to talk in worried whispers.