by Stan Nichols
Reeth and Kutch watched him go with the communards into one of the round houses. Excitement over, the rest of the crowd melted away.
‘Well, that’s us dismissed,’ Caldason said.
Karr’s meeting proved much longer than promised. The morning stretched into afternoon, the afternoon into early evening, without sign of him.
Kutch and Reeth killed time by exploring the settlement. Their first impression was confirmed; the buildings were in a dilapidated state. Doors were off their hinges, corral fences were broken, the pigment used to stain woodwork was blistered and peeling. The animals, both livestock and domestic, looked undernourished. There was a general air of decline.
The communards, who appeared no less gaunt than their stock, left them to their own devices. People occasionally stared, but didn’t trouble them.
Given the impoverished state of things, Reeth, and Kutch in particular, felt uncomfortable about asking to be fed. After being led to a refectory, where all the tables save theirs were empty, they were served watery soup, black bread and tart apples. Adequate, if bland fare.
Now, as the evening shadows lengthened, they made their way back to the round house Karr had entered. Its door remained fenced off.
Caldason grew impatient. ‘This delay’s starting to irk me. How much longer’s the man going to be?’
‘I suppose they have a lot to discuss,’ Kutch replied, shrugging. He’d noticed how his companion’s mood had darkened.
‘I’ll hurry them.’
‘That might be thought uncivil, Reeth. Best to wait.’
‘Until when? Morning? I’m no man’s servant.’ He broke away and strode towards the building.
‘Reeth, no. Wait!’
Ten paces short, Caldason stopped. The door had opened, a square of light in the gathering gloom. Chattering people disgorged. There was some good-natured laughter. Karr emerged, saw Caldason and hurried to him, cloak flowing, arms outstretched apologetically.
‘I’m sorry, truly. It proved much more drawn out than expected.’
‘That’s all right,’ Kutch assured him.
Caldason was less forgiving, and a little sarcastic. ‘Part of your grand project, was it?’
‘It was important. More than that I can’t say at the moment.’ He ushered them away from the round house. ‘Walk with me, my friends.’
Bunched together, they steered clear of the communards.
‘What do you think of the place?’ Karr asked.
‘We certainly had long enough to form an opinion,’ Caldason replied.
‘Yes, I said I was sorry. But what do you
think
?’
‘The people seem decent enough. As to the set-up here, I’m not too impressed.’
‘Kutch?’
‘I think the same as Reeth, I suppose. Things don’t seem too efficient, and you’d imagine they would be after… What is it? Ten years?’
Karr smiled. ‘I agree.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes. I don’t think this place works either. I never thought it would. Right motivation, wrong approach.’
‘So why come here?’ Caldason said.
‘I promised them I would. Besides, I don’t say everything they do is wrong. But this isn’t the time to discuss it.’ He glanced at several passing communards. ‘Look, the day’s well advanced and none of us got a great deal of sleep last night. We’ve been invited to stay until morning, and I suggest we accept. Tomorrow we can make an early start.’
Kutch had no objection. They took Caldason’s silence as assent.
‘We have a choice of places to bed down,’ Karr explained. ‘There are dormitories, which most of the communards use, or one or two quieter places if you want privacy.’
‘I’d prefer something private,’ Kutch decided, ‘if nobody minds.’
‘No problem. But remember the embargo on magic. We don’t want our hosts offended by any late night spell-casting.’
‘I promise. What about you?’
‘I’ll take a dormitory.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought that was what you were used to.’
‘Because I’m a patrician?’ Karr grinned. ‘Don’t look embarrassed; you’re right. But it’s politic for me to enter into the co-operative spirit.’ He looked to Caldason. ‘You’re quiet, Reeth.’
‘Just tired.’
‘Where do you want to sleep?’
‘Out here.’
Karr was perplexed. ‘When you have a warm bed on offer? And a roof over your head?’
‘I’m accustomed to sleeping outdoors. Stars are the only roof I need.’ He indicated a small stand of trees, just beyond the commune’s outermost buildings. ‘I’ll be there.’
The patrician’s eyebrows rose a smidgen. ‘As you please. Come on, Kutch.’
Kutch bade Caldason goodnight, and felt a little wounded when there was no response. They left him standing in front of the round house.
Karr led the boy to a shack, run-down outside but clean, if spartan, within. It had a reasonably sized cot and a good supply of blankets. The patrician let Kutch know where he was sleeping, closed the door and left.
There were candles on an upended crate, but Kutch didn’t bother with them. He realised how tired he was, and took to the bed fully clothed. It was comfortable. In truth, now that a wave of fatigue had hit him, a stone floor would have seemed inviting.
He thought he should at least get out of his jerkin. But he didn’t really want to move. And his boots. He should definitely take those off. In a minute he would, when he’d relaxed a bit. He’d just lie here for a while, then undress properly. In a minute or two.
He slipped into a velvety, dreamless sleep.
An immeasurable slab of time passed.
Then somebody was shaking him awake. A figure in the dark he couldn’t see properly, looming over him. He tried to cry out and a hand clamped against his mouth.
The figure leaned closer.
‘Help me,’
it whispered hoarsely.
12
Kutch’s night visitor must have left the hut’s door ajar, because a gust of wind made it creak open a fraction. A sliver of light entered, dispelling the shadows concealing the intruder’s face.
Caldason, wild-eyed, dishevelled.
He took his hand away from Kutch’s mouth. The boy relaxed a little, though his friend’s crazed appearance still made him nervous.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong?’
Reeth put a finger to his lips in a hushing gesture. His movements were uncertain, like a drunk’s. But he hadn’t been drinking.
Kutch dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘What’s the matter? Are you ill?’
The last of the sleep ebbed away and he guessed what was happening. ‘Is it another of your -?’
Caldason nodded.
‘What can I do?’
‘I need your help… like before. ‘ His voice wavered. He looked around the sparse room. ‘This isn’t a good place. Come with me.’
Head spinning, Kutch scrambled from the bed. He saw that Reeth was carrying a coil of thick rope, and that there was sweat on his brow.
‘Quickly,’ Reeth hissed. He made to leave.
‘One second.’ Stooping, Kutch rolled up some bedclothes, then covered them with a blanket. Someone taking a cursory look might be fooled into thinking the cot was occupied.
‘Hurry.’
‘All
right
.’
They left the shack, Kutch quietly closing the door behind them.
It was the middle of the night, and the moon was full and fat. They couldn’t see anyone about, but crept stealthily, keeping to the pools of denser gloom where buildings overhung.
Caldason walked like a man who’d just run a hard race, breathless and slightly clumsy. Kutch followed, afraid they’d meet somebody and of what Caldason might do if they did.
As they came to the corner of a barn, Caldason motioned Kutch to stop. They peered ro
und at the nearest thing the co-operative had to a town square. It was the confluence of four serpentine lines of buildings, with an open space where their dirt roads met. A gathering area for the communards when group decisions had to be made or a newborn’s head wetted. The space was big enough to think twice about crossing if you didn’t want to be seen, and some of the buildings around were still burning lights.
‘What now?’ Kutch mouthed.
Caldason pointed. Just beyond the edge of the settlement was the small copse he’d chosen earlier as a place to sleep. To get to it they had to break cover and cross the square.
‘Me first,’ he whispered, hoisting the rope over his shoulder. ‘I’ll signal if it’s clear.’
Kutch nodded and watched him go.
Caldason moved in an ungainly way, half doubled over, as though an ache troubled his guts. His progress was sluggish, but he cleared the common without incident. Reaching the far side, he put his hands against a wall and leaned there, head down. That gave Kutch a queasy moment.
Then Caldason raised his head and turned to face him. Looking to the left and right, he waved Kutch across. The boy dashed over to him.
Keeping low, they crept from the settlement. Impacted earth gave way to dried mud and clumps of spongy grass. Now they were in open ground, and twenty paces later waist-high bushes. Then the stand of trees loomed over them, their branches cobwebbing the moon.
Caldason tossed the coil of rope to Kutch. Its weight had the boy staggering back a step, knees bent.
‘Tie me,’ Reeth ordered, panting. ‘To that tree.’ He nodded at the biggest. ‘And take this.’ He bent and fished out the knife hidden in his boot. Kutch slipped it into his belt.
Caldason sat with his back against the trunk. As Kutch began winding the rope around him he said, ‘What did you do before you met me?’ It was gallows humour, but Caldason took it seriously.
‘If I was near the innocent I got as far away as I could. If I was facing an enemy, I didn’t bother.’
‘What
is
wrong with you, Reeth?’
‘Just hurry! And make that
tighter
!’
Kutch finished the knots, with some instruction, and stood gaping at what he’d done.
‘Now get away from here,’ Reeth said. ‘No, wait! We have to stifle any noises I might make. I need something to bite on.’
‘Like what?’
‘It’ll have to be rope. Use the knife to cut a length.’
Taking an arm’s length from the coil’s end, Kutch severed it with the razor-keen blade. He fixed it around the tree so that it ran across Caldason’s mouth, like a horse’s bridle.
‘Good,’ Reeth said. ‘When you’ve done this, get out of here.’ His eyes were starting to roll and he was breathing harder. He bit down on the rope and Kutch pulled it tight, knotting it at the back of the tree. Then he did as he was told and withdrew.
But not very far.
All he knew was pain.
Acrid odours prickled his nostrils. The air stank of charred wood and burnt flesh. A blaze crackled somewhere nearby. Further away, there were screams and shouts.
He must have been on his back, because he could see the sky. It was on fire. Flaming crimson overlaid with streamers of oily black smoke. Ashes spinning in the heat.
Then something obscured his view. A figure, bending over him, blurred, indefinite. Laying hands on him. He glimpsed those hands as they came away and they were bloody.
He tried to speak but couldn’t. It was as though he’d forgotten how.
A cup was held to his lips, but he seemed to have forgotten how to swallow, too. The liquid was poured into his mouth. Whatever it was it scorched his throat like molten lead, and when it arrived in his stomach it caused an incendiary spasm.
Pain increased to agony.
The hands were there again. He fancied they made certain gestures over him, complicated arcane movements whose significance he couldn’t grasp. His discomfort was alleviated a little. He thought the person tending him might have been an old man, but he couldn’t trust his eyes.
Time passed. It was filled with the blushing sky and the burning flesh and the far off screams.
Then he was aware that whatever he was resting on was being lifted. They were moving him, whoever they might be, and the deed brought his body fresh agitation. It made him ache anew, every jolt and bump a thrust from a white-hot dagger. Once more he tried speaking, or to be accurate crying out, but no sound came.
He saw, thought he saw, the tops of burning buildings, and trees alight. And always that sky, churning with flame.
At last he was taken into a sheltered place, exchanging the angry sky for a cross-beamed wooden ceiling. To his relief, the movement stopped.
Those veined and bloodied hands ministered to him. Unable to utter a sound, he could do no more than stare at the buttressed ceiling. Tormented, helpless, misery held sway for an indeterminate period.
Then there was a sudden shift in reality.
What he could see of his surroundings – the wooden ceiling, the hazy figures attending him – was wiped away. Or rather, another scene imposed itself. A dream within a dream.
He stood on the edge of an unimaginably steep cliff.
Below, a vast plain stretched out. Cities blossomed there, as though sown. Fabulous crystalline edifices, shimmering spires, arching bridges no more palpable than moonbeams. Clusters of towers fashioned from solidified light, framed with steel rainbows. Gigantic floating structures, bubble-like, anchored by palpitating tendrils. Municipalities where ice and fire conspired in breathtakingly graceful lines and impossible, vertiginous angles.
All in flux.
Everything was constantly changing, evolving, mutating and reforming. Constructs expanded, compressed or dissolved. New shapes emerged; jagged, forked, rectangular, spiked, pyramidal. Their essences rippled, their surface textures continually altered. The colours attending them danced back and forth across the visible spectrum and beyond.
Nearly level with his cliff-top, but far away, mountains slumbered uneasily. They slowly undulated. Peaks flattened, fresh ones arose. Fissures opened and dribbled lava.
Above, the sky changed colour randomly. From green to grey to orange. Purple transformed to yellow, yellow to red, red was flooded with gold.
Hosts of entities were in the air. Metamorphs, resembling beasts one moment, something like men the next; often corresponding to no known being, or taking on complex abstract forms. All inspired wonder. Many, revulsion.
He knew that everything he saw was animated by energies coursing through the earth. A grid of power, sensed rather than seen, permeating the whole of this world and saturating it with vigour. Power that flowed through him too, throbbing in rhythm with the beating of his heart and the pumping of his blood.
His emotions were contrary. He felt a stranger, an outsider in this place, and was fearful of it, but also that he somehow belonged here.
As he watched the cycle of destruction and creation going on all around, he became aware of a presence. A consciousness, near to hand, seeping depravity and malevolence. The impression was of pure mind. Not singular but many; a vast coupling of intelligences that formed a miasma of spite. He couldn’t see it, it seemed to have no substance, but he knew it could snuff him out.
It approached.
A shadow fell over him, though it had no visible source. Its cold touch relayed terror.
He turned and ran.
The black, malignant force pursued him.
He took to the air, lifting as easily and lightly as a bird. It was wholly instinctive. He had no wings; belief elevated him and thought directed his flight. The talent came naturally, and of all the wonders this world had to offer it seemed the least remarkable.
Now he was among the myriad other airborne things, twisting and dodging to avoid them. The dark intelligence was at his back, ready to pounce. He dived, spun, soared, trying to shake it off. His course took him th
rough clouds of the flying grotesques. As he passed, they were drawn into the inky embrace of the multi-mind, swelling its might and rancour.
It brought lightning bolts into existence and hurled them at him. He swerved and spiralled to escape the crackling, dazzling strokes of energy.
Then one struck him. Every particle of his being was ravaged by its intensity. He plummeted down to the ever-shifting, fickle earth, and was seized by a power greater than mere gravity.
Trapped, defenceless, he could only watch as the manifold blackness descended inexorably to engulf him. And he knew that death was the least it could inflict.
He screamed.
Instantly, the fiery sky reasserted itself. Then that was blocked from view as the wooden ceiling reformed.
He was prostrate, staring up at joists and rafters, as the pain flooded back.
Again he screamed, until the dark swallowed him.
Late afternoon saw the trio back on the road to Valdarr.
Karr took his turn as wagon driver, with Kutch at his side. Caldason travelled behind under canvas.
It had been an awkward day. Caldason was taciturn and troubled looking, only speaking when he was spoken to and not always then. There had been no time for Kutch to discuss the night’s events with him. Not that the Qalochian seemed very inclined to do so.
Kutch had watched what happened to Reeth during the night in horrified fascination. When it was finally over, in the small hours, he found that the rope gag was almost chewed through. He got him back to the shack somehow, only avoiding being seen by sheer luck, and bedded him down on the cot. For himself, Kutch took the floor, and they slept erratically for a couple of hours. Naturally they said nothing to Karr the next morning. And once the communards had been thanked and their weapons retrieved they made an early start.
Now Caldason slumped in the back of the wagon looking exhausted. Kutch, confused as ever about what ailed him, was lost in thought. Karr seemed his usual self. But Kutch was coming to realise that in his way the patrician was as hard to read as Caldason. The difference was that where Reeth retreated into sullen silence, Karr covered his true intentions with verbosity. Kutch half suspected the patrician had some idea of their nocturnal adventure, though he made no mention of it.