Smiler's Fair: Book I of The Hollow Gods

by Rebecca Levene

  The motion of Rii’s flight became gentler, a bobbing up and down as if there were waves in the air to match those he could see crawling far beneath him on the sea. Looking down made him feel most peculiar, but he couldn’t stop himself. When he looked back at the shoreline he spotted three black dots that he realised must be Radek and his horses. Further out there were the blue splotches of lakes and a scattered patchwork of cultivated land. It was beautiful.

  It was beautiful, but he was leaving it behind. He turned his eyes away from it and watched the endless sea ahead as Rii took him north, wherever north might turn out to be.

  Sunset at sea was spectacular. The perfect sphere of the sun sank through the blue of the sky to plunge into the deeper blue of the ocean. Eric expected to hear it sizzle as it struck, but apart from the hush-hush-hush of Rii’s wings and the occasional lonely cry of a seabird, they flew in silence. He watched the red disk become a semicircle and then just a sliver, and still they didn’t stop. Rii flew on through the darkness, guiding herself by the stars perhaps. He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the exhaustion that follows intense fear and the rocking motion of the flight lulled him into sleep.

  He woke to the feeling of his guts being pushed up towards his throat and bit back another scream as the wind scoured his face and he realised they must be descending. The landing rattled his bones and he sat and shivered after all motion had ceased.

  ‘Dismount,’ Rii said. ‘I cannot sleep with thee upon me.’

  He fumbled to undo the knotted ropes until both he and his saddlebags were free. He threw them down and then slid after, groaning as cramped muscles stretched. The moment his feet touched the ground, he was knocked to his knees by a blast of air as Rii’s wings drove her upwards.

  ‘Don’t leave me here!’ he shouted, but she’d already disappeared into the blackness of the night. He waited a moment longer to see if she’d return and then sighed and felt around him for kindling for a fire. The ground was rocky, though, and he found no wood, nor even grass, just a slimy sort of leaf blanketing the stone. After a while he gave up and lay down, pulling his furs round him. He was bone weary and if there was danger here, there was nothing he could do about it. He turned on his side and was asleep almost the moment he shut his eyes.

  When he woke it was light and he was very cold. The furs had come unwrapped in the night and a heavy dew had settled over him. He did his best to brush it off, then pulled his heaviest coat from his pack and slipped it on.

  It was lucky he hadn’t tried to go exploring last night. Rii had stopped on an island, really little more than a rock. If he’d walked fifty paces to his left, he’d have tumbled down the jagged stones into the sea. Forty paces to his left, a sheer cliff would have thrown him to the same death. The rock was grey and smeared with bird shit. There was some of it on his sleeping furs and probably more on his face. He scraped a hand down his cheek. Yes, there it was, brown and foul.

  He didn’t fancy using seawater to wash it off. The waves looked vicious as they pounded against the shore, and who knew what lived beneath them? He used a little drinking water instead, then chewed a strip of jerky for his breakfast, standing so he didn’t get any more muck on him.

  There was absolutely no sign of Rii, and when he’d finished eating he could no longer ignore the gnawing worry that she’d just left him here. It wasn’t as if the island had many places something that large could hide. If she was anywhere, it must be beneath the far cliffs. He walked carefully over the rocks towards them, cursing as cruelly beaked seabirds cawed and swirled and spattered more of their shit about him.

  The cliff wasn’t as steep as it had looked from a distance. There was something like a path down and he didn’t think he had much choice but to follow it, shielding his face from the salt spray of the sea as it dashed itself against the rocks below. There were creatures here, too: massive ones. He couldn’t imagine how they moved. They had no arms or legs that he could see and only the stubs of flippers on their long, grey bodies. One of them rolled on to its back and groaned as it scratched itself against the rock. Its face was quite the ugliest thing he’d ever seen, like a mammoth’s only whiskery and even more squashed-up.

  ‘An adequate repast,’ Rii’s voice said behind him.

  He turned to see a brief glimpse of the giant creature suspended upside down by her feet from the roof of a deep cave. Then she dropped and spun to grab one of the grey creatures between her claws. The others barked and flung themselves into the sea, but there was no escape for the one she’d chosen. Eric saw its wrinkly head twisting from side to side in desperation until Rii sank her fangs deep into its neck. There was a horrible gurgling, slurping noise and she dropped the creature’s limp body and licked the gore from her teeth.

  ‘Ain’t you gonna eat the poor bugger now you killed him?’ Eric asked.

  ‘Thou art welcome to the meat.’ She widened her grotesque mouth in what might have been a smile. ‘Only the blood pleaseth me.’

  ‘I ain’t hungry.’ Eric stared at the steaming corpse. The hook-beaked seabirds were already hovering above it, waiting for Rii to go so they could scavenge what she’d left. She was eyeing the sea, probably hoping for another of the creatures, but Eric didn’t reckon there was much chance of them getting within a hundred paces of her after that little display.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked her. ‘I know you don’t have to tell me, but can you anyway?’

  Her small, unfocused eyes studied him for a moment, then she launched herself into the air and flew back to her perch in the cave. Her claws hooked into a crack in the ceiling and she hung suspended, her wings wrapped round her like a cloak. ‘I am to take thee to the servants of the sun.’

  ‘The sun? I suppose that don’t sound too terrible.’

  ‘They are terrible indeed.’ She bared her fangs. ‘They slaughtered my people and bound me to obey them.’

  ‘But what do they want with me?’

  ‘They have a purpose for thee, but it is not the true reason for thy journey.’

  ‘It ain’t?’

  She reached out one of her legs and made a gesture with her long claws that he realised was meant to summon him. He swallowed hard and thought of ignoring it, but it wasn’t like he had anywhere to run if she chose to fetch him herself. His legs wobbled as he walked to stand beneath her.

  ‘Thou needst not fear me, morsel.’ As if to instantly undermine her point, she reached out with her furred leg until her claw rested against his cheek. He clenched his arse tight to make sure nothing leaked out of it, but he couldn’t stop himself letting out a small whimper.

  ‘I dreamed of thee last night. The moon fell into the sea and was quenched, but thou didst leap in after at great peril to thyself and lift it out.’ She ran her claw gently down his cheek. He thought she might have meant it as a caress, but it left a trickle of blood behind.

  ‘Right,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘Two nights ago I dreamed I was performing in a play with the King’s Men, only I was stark bollock naked and I’d forgotten all my lines.’

  She hissed and drew back, folding her claws beneath her. ‘In darker days I dreamed of the future, morsel, and such a dream is this. The moon’s life rests in thy hands.’

  ‘The moon? The moon god, you mean.’ Eric knew he’d heard something about that, back in Smiler’s Fair. He couldn’t for the life of him remember what or where. He’d left the business of gods to the Worshippers, who were better equipped to handle them.

  ‘The moon god indeed, the enemy of those that thou art being taken to serve.’

  ‘So you’re saying I’m gonna betray the people what bought me? That don’t seem sensible.’

  ‘Sense or not, it is thy fate.’

  So, a future she wouldn’t elaborate on, ending in a betrayal of his unknown masters in service of a god he couldn’t recall.

  ‘I understand thy sorrow,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘I am taking thee away from all that thou knowest. But my dream has told me this: th
ou wilt return to the lands that thou hast left.’

  ‘When?’

  Her eyes blinked shut again and her wings wrapped tighter round her. Her voice sounded slurred with sleep or drunk on blood. ‘When the moon rises.’

  18

  Nethmi didn’t know if she was more afraid of what hid inside the cave or the men waiting outside it. The rock wall was cold and damp against her back, but it was the thought of the creatures that might emerge from it that made her shiver. Jinn and Vordanna seemed equally afraid. His teeth were chattering so hard she could hear them. The first time she’d ever seen him, he’d told her that the worm men were the moon’s servants and the moon was his god, but that didn’t look to be much comfort to him now.

  Only In Su didn’t seem to worry about the darkness in the depths of the cave. His entire attention was focused outside. His bow was in his hand, an arrow nocked, and there was a fine quiver in his arms as he held the string drawn. Five Seonu warriors had tracked them to this stony valley. Nethmi thought In Su might be able to kill two of them before they got within axe range, but would he? They were his tribesmen, maybe even his friends, men who had been sent to hunt them from Winter’s Hammer. His face was calm but sweat beaded on his forehead.

  The men outside were talking in their own language. In Su must understand them, but she couldn’t. One of them looked towards the cave and she shrank back as Jinn’s hand reached for hers. She took it and squeezed, probably too hard. In Su’s arm was beginning to shake in earnest now. Her father had let her hold his bow once and she’d been astonished at the tension in the string. In Su wouldn’t be able to keep it drawn much longer.

  It was a beautiful day outside, the sky pretty with white puffs of cloud and the air filled with the twittering of birds. Spring had come as they’d made their cautious, hunted way down from the Black Heights. She’d seen her first yellow bell this morning, a flower Jinn told her grew only near the plains. She didn’t want to die before she reached them.

  There was a muttering to her left and for a terrible second she thought the worm men had come. But it was Vordanna. Her eyes were closed and her lips were moving. Maybe it was a prayer to her moon god, but Nethmi wished she’d stop. In the silence of the cave it seemed terribly loud.

  Perhaps the moon god heard, though. The Seonu hunters took one final look at the cave, then turned their backs on it and jogged away.

  ‘Are they really gone?’ she whispered, when they were lost to sight among the rocks.

  ‘They think we go south,’ In Su whispered back as he finally released the tension in his bow. ‘One says: look in the cave? But the others say they will look if he will look first and he says no. They fear the ash men.’

  ‘So do I,’ Nethmi hissed. ‘This place has never seen the sun. Surely we can leave it now?’

  He slid his arrow back into its quiver. ‘A thousand heartbeats more.’

  Her heart seemed to take a very long time to beat. She eased away from the wall and Jinn came with her. She realised she was still clasping his hand.

  ‘The worm men don’t come so quick,’ he said. ‘They ain’t everywhere in the earth, that’s what Olufemi told me.’

  ‘Olufemi?’

  He glanced at Vordanna. ‘She’s Mamma’s particular friend, a mage out of Mirror Town. She says the worm men can sense the warm blood inside us and it draws them, but they got to make their way to us from wherever they’re lurking. We’ll be safe here another few hours at least.’

  ‘You’re welcome to wait here if you like.’

  He grinned at her in that disarming way of his she still hadn’t learned to resist, despite more than a month in his company. ‘Oh, I reckon I’ll stroll outside when In Su says it’s safe. Just to stretch my legs, mind.’

  They couldn’t risk pausing for breakfast. The hunters from Winter’s Hammer had headed south, so they went north, through a disappointingly familiar landscape. Low hills merged into each other without the startling cliffs and sheer drops of the Black Heights, and if there were no fields marked out on them, in every other way they looked like Ashanesland. After crossing the spine of the world to the land of the tribes, she’d expected something more impressive.

  ‘Are we safe here?’ she asked In Su as they walked. ‘You said Seonu warriors wouldn’t hunt on another tribe’s land.’

  ‘Yes, on the land of the Four Together. These hills were Dae. The Dae are dead, so any may come here.’

  A bush shook to their left and Nethmi felt a stab of fear, but it was just a rabbit with peculiar black-and-white stripes in its fur. It turned to watch them a moment, twitched its ears and then bounded away over the young spring grass, flashing them its tail.

  They followed its path, surrounded by the soothing smell of crushed grass. The sun was high in the sky and the fear of the morning seemed far behind. Then they crested another in the sequence of dull round hills and Nethmi saw what the plains truly were.

  She understood the word, of course, but she hadn’t truly visualised it. They were so flat. Flat and empty and endless. Her father had taken her to visit her cousins at Delta’s Strength once. They lived at the great mouth of the Opal River, beyond which lay the sea. She’d marvelled at the width and power of the ocean, but this was stranger still. She’d never seen a horizon so distant. She hadn’t known the world was so large.

  In Su seemed equally stunned. He paused beside her to stare.

  ‘I take it these are the plains,’ she said.

  He nodded, not moving his gaze. ‘Yes, lady. I think.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I have never left Seonu lands. I have only heard.’

  ‘Those are the plains,’ Jinn said. He frowned. ‘We’d better hope In Su here’s right that the hunters went south. A person ain’t exactly hard to find out there.’

  Some of the tension that had eased from her shoulders returned to them. In the moment when she’d … when Thilak had died, it had felt like an end. When she’d fled the shipfort she’d foolishly believed her troubles over. Why hadn’t it occurred to her that they’d be followed? She’d – she had to think of it, face it – she’d murdered a shipborn lord. Of course they’d try to bring her back.

  ‘We’ll be safe on the plains,’ she said, and decided to believe it. Even terror became tedious when you experienced it for too long. She began walking again, and smiled when she saw more yellow bells sprinkled through the grass.

  The plains looked near but she soon realised it was because they were so vast. Once past the brow of the hill the grasslands were lost to sight again and only the sun helped to draw them westward as it set. It was staining the hills red when they found the abandoned wagon. It sat beside a small, stagnant pool, its canvas hood slashed along one side, but otherwise whole.

  In Su gestured her back, drawing his axe and placing himself in front of her. They waited in tense silence, but heard only the sound of the horse cropping the ragged grass around the pool. A bird landed on its back and its flank twitched to dislodge it. In Su slowly lowered his axe, and Nethmi waited a moment longer and then walked towards the wagon.

  There was no one in it. There was a little food inside, a few scattered clothes, but it had clearly been ransacked and anything of value taken. It wasn’t hard to see why the thieves had left the wagon itself, which was a shabby, ill-put-together thing. The horse looked almost as decrepit, sway-backed and evil-eyed.

  ‘What happened here?’ Nethmi asked.

  ‘Raiders,’ In Su said. ‘Thieves.’

  ‘But where are the owners? They didn’t kill them.’ There were no bodies. There wasn’t even any blood.

  ‘It was the Brotherband,’ Vordanna said unexpectedly. She spoke little and seemed to get more ill with every day of their journey, but she nodded firmly when Nethmi looked at her. ‘The Chun did this.’

  ‘Mamma’s probably right,’ Jinn said. ‘Last time we passed through here the Brotherband were all the folk of the plains could talk about.’

  In Su was making a slow
circuit of the wagon, examining the ground all around. ‘Four men attacked, and two people taken. Women. There are no men’s clothes here.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of the Brotherband,’ Nethmi admitted. ‘Are they another tribe?’

  ‘No,’ In Su said. ‘Not a whole tribe. Part of the Chun.’

  ‘The Brotherband were Chun raiders,’ Jinn agreed. ‘That’s how they started. Then they attacked the Dae and killed the whole lot of ’em. Now you might as well say the Brotherband are the Chun. Any who wouldn’t follow their new way of doing business were killed alongside the Dae and the rest moved to the Rune Waste two years back. Everyone thought they’d seen the last of them. The Rune Waste ain’t no place to live. It ain’t even a place to visit if you value your life. But last summer the Brotherband came out stronger than ever and started raiding the Four Together. Now there’s thousands of ’em and they’re the scourge of the plains.’

  Nethmi reached out to stroke the horse, which snorted with disdain. ‘But how do you know it was the Brotherband who did this? I can’t see anything they left behind apart from a few muddy footprints.’

  ‘They took the women,’ In Su said. ‘No other tribe would take women and leave a horse behind.’

  Jinn nodded. ‘He’s right. The Brotherband hate women, that’s what people say. These poor folk that’ve been took, they won’t be for wives, like it is with raiders from any other tribe. They’ll use them like the whores of Smiler’s Fair, willing or not.’

  Nethmi looked again at the muddy footprints. Their outlines were as clear as if they’d just been made, and when she felt beneath the horse’s harness there were no sores. In Su saw her expression and nodded. ‘They’re close, lady. We must go.’

  ‘But where? Seonu hunters, Brotherband raiders. There’s nowhere we can go to be safe.’

  ‘The moon will protect us,’ Jinn said. ‘He meant for all this to happen, I know it.’

  ‘He meant for me to – to kill my husband? He meant for these women to be raped?’