Dark Heart (Husk)

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  ‘Pay the creatures no heed,’ Dryman said, as the brothers whispered amongst themselves. ‘We will press on.’

  ‘But we must pay them heed,’ said the oldest brother. ‘This is their land, and they do not allow strangers to traverse it save on the approved routes.’

  ‘Their land? I wandered here before their ancestors rose from the swamps. I am home; why should I give way to latecomers?’

  Duon had no idea what the brothers made of this speech, but it told him something. At the very least the man walking with them had lived here for a time, thousands of years ago. Perhaps these trees hid the birthplace of a god.

  They came to another innocuous stream, swollen by the persistent rain but otherwise indistinguishable from hundreds of others they had crossed. On the far side the ground rose, and here the trees seemed taller, darker and more tormented, as though the creepers and vines not only grew in competition with the forest giants but also sought to strangle them. His eyes were drawn up: the canopy seemed impossibly high, hundreds of feet above them, lost in the mist. And he could see movement up there. Small animals, monkeys perhaps, running to and fro along vines seemingly strung for the purpose.

  ‘Far enough,’ came a voice.

  The travellers halted. People had materialised on the stream’s far bank, spears and blades in their hands. There were six of them, all tall, brown-skinned and black-haired, their clothing scant but serviceable. Barefoot; an odd lack. How could they walk barefoot on ground littered with the detritus of the forest, Duon wondered. There were reptiles and insects here that would fasten on exposed skin, injecting poison, or would paralyse, secrete muscle-eating venom or even drink the blood of unwary travellers. Or so said the porters. The blood-drinkers, at least, were true: fat slug-like slimers that expanded as they drew blood from their host. Duon found himself constantly brushing them from his neck and hands. He could not imagine how the people on the far bank of the stream survived the forest in near-nakedness.

  He laughed at himself. He was making the mistake explorers always made: assuming the inhabitants of an area were more primitive than he simply because they were differently adapted to their environment.

  ‘You may go no further.’ No trace of an accent: pure Fisher Coast Bhrudwan, at least to Duon’s ears. ‘No discussion. You turn around now.’ The spears were raised.

  Duon had been in situations like this before, had even lost men, but had never faced them with the singular lack of fear he experienced now. This is not my concern, he told himself. He did not expect the mercenary to ask his advice.

  ‘Why do you bar our way?’ Dryman asked.

  His answer was an arrow from the trees. It hissed through the air and embedded itself in his chest with a thunk like an axe into wood.

  The man didn’t even blink, he simply smiled. A moment later he turned to the porters. ‘Do not move. I am not about to die. If you try to flee I will kill you.’

  ‘This is our land,’ the spokesman, the shortest among the six on the bank, said eventually. His voice retained most of its poise; an admirable effort, Duon thought.

  ‘I’m not disputing that,’ Dryman said quietly, and the fletching of the arrow moved as he talked. It had to be deep in his lung. ‘But we need to travel north. Why would you prevent us making our journey?’

  Two arrows this time. Perhaps from a distance it appeared that the first arrow had lodged in hidden armour, although the sound had clearly been stone point on flesh. The same sound—thwack, thwack—rang out clearly as the arrows took the mercenary in the stomach.

  No sound from beyond the stream, but two of the porters moaned in fear.

  ‘We will walk around your sacred heart if you wish it,’ Dryman offered. ‘We have no desire to learn your secrets or steal your land.’

  Twenty arrows at least. Most found their target, but a few flew past the mercenary into the jungle behind them, and one took a porter just above the knee. The boy shrieked, and his brothers cried out in consternation. They gathered around him, calling instructions to each other, and one of them threw off his pack and began rummaging through it. Duon was puzzled for a moment at their urgency, then the boy took a fit, his limbs spasming.

  Poison-tipped. Perhaps he ought to fear, after all.

  A sudden question: why was the mercenary concerned with immortality if he could survive such an assault? The man looked like a hedgehog, yet was clearly unaffected by a dozen and a half arrows.

  ‘We will make our way along the stream, keeping to this side,’ said Dryman. ‘If you wish to waste any more arrows, make sure you hit me. Otherwise you’ll lose them in the forest.’

  No arrows this time, at least. The mercenary stepped forward, one foot in the stream, then turned and addressed the porters.

  ‘Leave him. He’s already dead, though it will take some time for his body to stop twitching. You know about the foresters’ use of poison, but you clearly do not know enough. Andali poison has no antidote. Line up behind me and say nothing.’

  ‘If you stray we will kill your servants,’ said the tribe’s spokesman.

  ‘I understand.’

  Which was more than could be said for the porters.

  ‘We’re not leaving our brother,’ the oldest said in a thick voice. ‘We will return home with his body.’

  ‘You will not,’ said Dryman heavily. ‘This is what will happen if you do not do as I say. As soon as I leave this place without you, you will die under their arrows. And even if they stay their hand, you will die from any serious attempt to carry your brother back through the forest. Andali is fatal in minute quantities. In fact, I suspect at least one of you will perish as a result of the ministration you’ve already offered your dead brother.’

  The remaining brothers cowered away from Dryman, as afraid of the pin-cushioned figure as of the bowmen hidden on the far side of the stream. One of them began to cough, and put a shaking hand to his mouth.

  ‘I’m not a heartless man,’ Dryman continued, in the face of all the evidence. ‘Take a few moments to assess your options. But don’t touch your brother.’

  As they walked, the stream grew before their eyes, swollen by rain that had increased markedly in intensity in the hours since they had begun their guided trek. They were being led by the inhabitants of the forest, it seemed. Though Torve had heard the conversation between his master and the spokesman for the natives, he had not understood it: the language used was one he had never heard. Dryman had seemed to acquiesce to something. Surprising they would make a request of him, given the fearful veneration they now displayed towards him.

  Torve was soaked through to his skin, but that did not account for his constant shivering. That was due entirely to the appearance of the man directly in front of him.

  ‘I’m not immortal, Torve,’ the Emperor-god had said. ‘The Son has blessed me with unnatural power, that is true, and it grows within me every day. But I can still be slain, and I will eventually die of old age, if nothing else. You must believe your old friend the Emperor exists, and cares for you still.’

  Torve had not replied. It was not the Emperor talking. The weight pressed down on all of them—the surviving porters could feel it—and the man’s voice had taken on the deep timbre of the Son. There was nothing left of his so-called friend in that arrow-pierced shell. Torve put his head down and concentrated on not stumbling in this world of insanity.

  The travellers were escorted across the stream, which, under the influence of the rain, had become a deep, muddy brown torrent stretching a full hundred paces from bank to bank. The three remaining porters stumbled over rocks, then waded into the deeper water, each grasping a rope strung there to aid the crossing. Duon winced at their blank expressions. They were just the latest to wear what he had come to consider the ‘mercenary face’: the look of shock and loss one experienced after having been in the man’s presence for any length of time.

  As he grappled with the rope, knowing the swift stream would take him if he lost his grip, something buzzed in
his head:…aai ninn see hou. Uee whirr aah see…followed by silence. Not the usual voice. It had sounded like the tongueless language Arathé used, but he’d not heard enough to be sure.

  A genuine path wound up the bank on the far side of the stream. The forest people’s spokesman invited the mercenary to walk with them, and Duon heard one of the porters breathe a relieved sigh as the man moved well ahead of them. Yes, son, we’re all frightened of him.

  They walked for perhaps half an hour, in what direction Duon couldn’t tell. His well-trained spatial senses were of no use here: the rain hid any evidence of sunlight, and the path had twists and turns enough to defeat him. Running now would ensure either a swift—though not swift enough—death at arrow-point, or a slower death lost in the forest. Of course, he would not be permitted to run.

  No such stricture bound the porters, though they must have made the same assessment as he. There seemed no other reason for them to keep shuffling in the mercenary’s wake.

  A wall of darkness emerged from the gloom. Some sort of meteorological effect? Another manifestation of the hole in the world? It said everything about his mental state that he suspected a magical before a natural cause. The wall gained solidity as they drew closer, finally resolving into a cliff stretching up out of sight.

  By invitation of the forest people, they camped that night at the base of the cliff, their chosen site partially sheltered from the rain. It was only when a bonfire was lit that the rest of the people came out from the trees, at least fifty of them, half with bows and what were likely poisoned arrows in quivers on their backs. Each of them walked up to where the mercenary sat, peered at the arrows lodged in his torso, and then returned to the other side of the fire and found somewhere to sit. The whole process took nearly an hour. Dryman said nothing during this time, impassively accepting their scrutiny.

  Eventually the spokesman came forward and nodded to the mercenary. ‘My people are satisfied,’ he said. ‘We will take you further in, as you request, but you are not to remain there to dwell. We are our own masters.’

  Dryman laughed, drawing every eye. ‘You’ve chosen to do as I request? Ah, you always were a stubborn people. Request? Choice?’ He laughed again. ‘Of course I will not dwell here. I imagine the jungle has destroyed every trace of my former home.’

  ‘It is as you suppose,’ the man said carefully. His speech remained cultured, smooth, his manners as one treating with a dangerous beast. Wise man, Duon thought.

  ‘Last time my home was not at the top of a cliff,’ said Dryman.

  ‘The land has changed. Warriors regularly approach the site, seeking to test their courage, but none have profaned it. The stories tell of many earthquakes, of the rumbling of the ground, of the creeping movement of the earth over the generations. Nothing remains the same, Keppia.’

  The mercenary raised his gaze to the spokesman, who did not flinch. ‘Some things do,’ he said softly. ‘My name, for instance. No one else in the world remembers that name.

  ‘We will arise at dawn,’ he continued. ‘We will travel whether it rains or not.’

  ‘The mausum will afflict us for weeks yet. Do you not remember the late summer winds from the sea?’

  ‘I remember many things, and, as you say, things I remember may have changed. The forest once received rain all year.’

  ‘Not now, Keppia. The mausum pushes west from the warm sea across the cooling autumn land, and our forest prospers.’

  ‘Yet the fishermen and the farmers eat at it from the south, and I have no doubt those living north of Patina Padouk gnaw the forest edge also.’

  The spokesman spat. ‘You speak true. We cannot hold them back. I lived in their lands a long time, and returned to tell my brothers why their trees are being taken.’

  The mercenary smiled. ‘Did they understand?’

  ‘No. And two of them, entranced by my story of cities and powdered women, left the forest. I will not go back there.’

  ‘No, you will not.’ The comment sounded more like a prediction than an observation.

  ‘My warriors wonder if they might retrieve their arrows,’ the spokesman offered.

  ‘Oh? So they can mount them above their hearths as a boast to their grandchildren? Tell your warriors to wait. I will wear them as a reminder to you of my forbearance. Inform them I will return their arrows on the day I leave your lands. May that day be soon.’

  ‘May that day be soon,’ the spokesman echoed, in what sounded like a ritual.

  The forest people contented themselves with their own company, remaining on the far side of the fire, directly under the cliff. The three porters took themselves off, faces raw with weeping, no doubt to observe some sad memorial for their lost brothers. The mercenary sat perfectly still: in the time it took for sleep to settle on Duon, two arrows worked their way out of the man’s chest and clattered to the ground. The last sounds Duon heard were those of the forest, the chittering, cawing night animals and the patter of the unrelenting rain.

  He awoke twice during the night. The first was a brief, half-conscious stirring at the sound of a voice in his mind:…Don’t touch them. They’ll kill you without even piercing the skin. I told you coming this way was foolish; far better if we had taken ship…The voice of the Falthan priest faded away to nothing, merging with his own anxious, unfathomable dreams.

  The second was to see Torve rise at the bidding of a dark figure. So the mercenary would carry on his so-called research even among people who seemed to treat him as a god. The idea was shocking even in light of the man’s behaviour.

  A light touch woke Torve from a shallow sleep. He had been expecting it, of course. New people, same experiments. As he opened his eyes he wondered whether his master would try to replicate his success with the woman near Sayonae.

  ‘Torve? Shh, don’t say anything.’

  He froze. ‘Lenares?’

  She put a hand to his lips. ‘Please, please, be quiet. Get up and follow me.’

  He rose, trying to convince himself this was a dream, but he knew he was awake. He wanted Lenares alive, of course he did, more than anything, but he could not bear any more disintegration of the order of things. The world had become an unfamiliar place, where torrents of water fell from the sky, emperors went about in disguise, Omerans slew people with the Defiance, and people came back from the dead. So his mind tried to reject it. But she was no dream. He put his hand on her bare, cool forearm and allowed her to guide him away from the camp.

  ‘Lenares? How can it be you? You are dead, drowned, lost.’

  ‘No, Torve. The Daughter rescued me. Now please, do what I tell you. Don’t you say anything more. The Daughter says this is the tricky bit. We have to avoid the Patouk sentries. Hold your breath and put your feet in the same places I do.’

  A hundred paces from the campfire the forest was completely black. He wondered how she would find her way, but she seemed to step with confidence through the foliage.

  They came to a path and began to ascend. After a few minutes of this they both began to breathe heavily, and Lenares tugged his arm, indicating he should stop.

  ‘I am alive,’ she whispered in his ear, rather unnecessarily, he thought. Her warm breath made him tingle.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I told you, the Daughter saved me. I was swept away but the Daughter kept me from falling. She wanted my body to live in, but I knew she would steal it from me, so I tricked her. Then I caught her in my trap, and now she has to do what I tell her to.’

  ‘Lenares, I still think I’m going to wake up and realise you are dead, and discover I was dreaming this.’ He took her upper arms in his hands. Her eyes glowed, perhaps giving off their own illumination or capturing the faintest of forest lights, but he could see nothing of her features. ‘I don’t want to wake up.’

  ‘If I was a dream, would I do this?’ she said, and kissed him.

  ‘Yes,’ Torve said, after a moment. ‘That is exactly what you would do.’

  ‘The Daughter wants us to go
on. She says we need to be at the house before dawn.’

  ‘The house? Where are we going?’

  ‘To the House of the Gods. The Daughter says there is an entrance nearby.’

  ‘Can you trust her?’

  ‘No. But I must go. I must sit on the seat and look into the bronze map. We could live there, Torve! Just you and I!’

  ‘You would let the world be ripped apart?’

  ‘Well, no. We still have to defeat the gods. But that will be easy now I have one of them under my control. It won’t be long, Torve, until we can live together.’

  The deep longing in her voice stirred his own desire, and he found himself weeping as they resumed their climb. She told him her story, and he praised her cleverness, the more so because he very nearly understood what she’d done with her numbers. His responses to her detailing of the capture pleased her immensely; it seemed no one else had followed the numerate description of her feat.

  ‘Lenares, defeating the Son will not be as easy as you seem to think,’ he said when her story ended. ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘The Daughter seems to think he is nearby, but can’t pinpoint him exactly. Captain Duon is in your camp, and so two of the three who hear voices in their heads are close together: the priest is with the Falthans, who are nearby. They brought me here.’

  He wanted to hear how she had joined the Falthans, and also how the Falthans had made it past the boundary of the forest people’s lands, but more immediate questions raised themselves. ‘We must hope the Bhrudwans are far away, then, or we will bring the gods down on us.’

  ‘But they are already here,’ Lenares said reasonably.

  ‘Yes, they are. The Son is in our camp. Lenares, he is in Dryman, the man we travelled north with. You know you could never read him.’

  ‘He had some way of keeping himself hidden from me?’

  ‘It’s even more complicated. Dryman is the Emperor.’

  He’d said it without thinking, and marvelled that he’d been able to disobey a command. But a moment’s thought found the reason: his master had already given the truth away. He’d been commanded to keep all his master’s secrets, but his identity was no longer a secret, so he had not been disobedient.