by Roger Taylor
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to intrude,’ Atlon said. He searched the young man’s face. ‘Do you want to tell me what you meant when you said you’re sometimes here, sometimes somewhere else?’
Pinnatte looked at him but did not reply.
‘I’ve had some experience with head injuries,’ Atlon said, crouching down by Pinnatte, ‘and with nasty incidents such as you were involved in last night. Either on its own can prove more troublesome than you’d think; both together can be a real problem.’
Pinnatte tried to be dismissive. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I just feel a bit… distant at times. Not exactly dizzy, just faraway. Somewhere else.’
Atlon nodded. ‘May I look at your injury?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think there’s anything to see,’ Pinnatte replied, pointing to the back of his head. ‘It’s just a little sore to touch.’
‘Remember what I said about your hands, friend.’ It was the guard again, calling across the room. He was not concerned about Pinnatte, however, but indicating someone just beyond the door. As Atlon looked round, Ellyn came in. The guards moved with her. She nodded to Rinter then looked at Atlon, who stood up. Rinter performed a hasty introduction. Uncertain how to treat ‘Barran’s wife’, Atlon settled for a slight bow. For the first time since he had entered the Jyolan, he felt almost at ease. This strong-looking woman with her searching but not unkind gaze seemed in some way to be immune to the building’s pernicious influence. Indeed, he suspected, she was probably immune to many of life’s vagaries. Words such as complete, self-sufficient, came to him.
Ellyn’s eyes narrowed curiously and she tilted her head on one side, looking past him. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing to Dvolci.
Atlon gave his usual answer, ‘Just company for me on my travels, ma’am.’
Dvolci clambered out of the pack, jumped down to the floor and sidled over to Ellyn. One of the guards stepped forward, reaching for a knife, but Ellyn held out a hand to stop him. Dvolci sat back on his haunches and looked up at her.
Ellyn’s mouth creased a line, and her eyes shone. ‘Is it all right to touch him?’ she asked.
‘He won’t bite you,’ Atlon said, perpetually hesitant about giving his friend’s permission for such matters, even though it was obvious what was going to happen. ‘I wish I could seduce women as easily as that damned felci does,’ a friend had once said to him bitterly.
Ellyn bent down and ran two fingers over Dvolci’s narrow head.
The felci closed his eyes ecstatically as she tickled behind his ears.
Sunlight seemed to be coming into the room. ‘He’s delightful,’ Ellyn announced. ‘What is he? I’ve never seen anything like him before.’
‘He’s a felci, ma’am,’ Atlon said. ‘They live in the mountains in my country.’ Adding caustically for Dvolci’s benefit, ‘They’re very tame and quite intelligent.’
Still stroking Dvolci, Ellyn looked up at him. ‘You’re not from the city, then?’
‘No,’ Atlon replied. ‘Just on a journey south, for a friend.’
‘I thought there was something different about you.’ Ellyn was attending to Dvolci again as she said this but there was a note in her voice that Atlon could not identify. Relief – surprise? No, it was something deeper than both.
Then Dvolci dropped back down on to all fours and walked over to Pinnatte. He stood up, resting his front paws on Pinnatte’s knees.
‘He’s not usually very keen on too much company,’ Atlon said, uncertain about what was to follow. Certainly, Dvolci would not have put on this performance for any slight reason.
Tentatively, Pinnatte imitated Ellyn’s action, stroking Dvolci’s head with his bandaged hand. It seemed to relax him and Atlon felt the disturbance emanating from him slip even further away. He reproached himself. Dvolci’s judgement in these circumstances would be sounder than his. The felci never seemed to be affected by the Power or any of its manifestations; felcis never did. They were an ancient race.
Dvolci dropped back down again and, scuttling up Atlon with wilful clumsiness, ensconced himself in the pack. As he did so he whistled softly to Atlon. ‘Look at his hand. Be careful – very careful. You won’t like it. Remember where you are. The woman’s interesting.’
Atlon affected a heartiness he did not feel. ‘Well, that’s Dvolci for you. Very much his own animal.’ He spoke to Pinnatte. ‘I was going to look at your head.’
Pinnatte, brighter now, turned and placed a finger on the back of his head. ‘It’s sore just there.’
‘Are you a healer?’ Ellyn asked.
‘I’ve had some training,’ Atlon said, examining Pinnatte’s head. ‘And I’ve picked up one or two things on my travels.’ He patted Pinnatte on the shoulder reassuringly. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong there – just a bump and a little bruising. If you’ve come through the night without problems then you should be all right, though you’ll probably have a headache for a day or so.’
Ellyn looked pleased that her own prognosis had been confirmed, but Atlon was waiting to see if Pinnatte would take the opportunity to refer to his dream again. He said nothing, however. Atlon took hold of his injured hand.
‘It’s all right,’ Pinnatte said, withdrawing it nervously. Atlon noted that Ellyn looked uneasy. ‘The bandaging’s well done,’ he said, suspecting she feared some criticism.
‘I put a drawing ointment on it,’ she said. Atlon looked at her inquiringly. ‘It was quite a nasty graze, and there seemed to be…’ She hesitated. ‘There seemed to be a crystal stain on it.’
‘What do you mean?’ Atlon asked, genuinely at a loss.
Ellyn looked surprised by the question, but Atlon’s open-faced expectancy left her no choice other than to answer it. ‘It’s something that mainly the miners do – the crystal miners.’ She rubbed the back of her hand nervously. The gesture was all the more powerful because it so contrasted with her otherwise assured demeanour. ‘They… incise the skin and close the wound with crushed fragments of crystals.’ The words came out quickly. Atlon drew in a sharp breath and raised a hand to spare her any further description.
‘I’ve heard of the practice,’ he said grimly. ‘And I grieve for anyone misguided enough to do it. It’s a sure route to destruction. It’s a fundamental quality of crystals that they take more than they give. Is it a common thing here?’
‘No. Not in the city. Not yet. But many miners do it. It’s the nature of the work.’
‘And your ointment is effective against it?’
‘It helps a little, if it’s not too late – if the habit’s not too ingrained. But it can’t do anything about the desire. It’s only a wound-cleaner really.’
‘Is this something you’ve done to yourself?’ Atlon addressed Pinnatte sternly.
‘No.’ Pinnatte’s denial was buttressed by many years of professional protestations of innocence. ‘What would I do something like that for?’ He grimaced. The idea was repellent. ‘And where would I get crystals from to waste like that?’
Atlon turned back to Ellyn. ‘It looked like a crystal stain,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I thought it odd at the time, given that he was probably only a Den-Mate. And it wasn’t near one of the usual pulse nodes.’ She lowered her voice. ‘And the mark looked almost green.’
Atlon’s eyes widened and, without further comment, he took Pinnatte’s hand firmly and began unwinding the bandage. Pinnatte made only a cursory attempt to retrieve his hand. Dvolci whistled softly to Atlon. It was a timely reminder, for as the bandage fell away, the sight of the wound struck Atlon even more forcefully than had his first contact with Pinnatte. Once again, even though there was no direct threat to him, his inner self cried out to him to defend himself, and once again he had to struggle to set it aside. It was difficult.
Superficially, the wound was no more than a bad graze – raw, red, and glistening damp with healing and ointment. It was clean and seemingly free from infection, though there was a hint of darkness to one side of it
which was the remains of Rostan’s Anointing.
But beyond that, to Atlon’s deeper sight, the edge of the darkness was a churning maelstrom of contamination, as Ellyn’s simple ointment and Pinnatte’s natural well-being battled against the culmination of Imorren’s and the Kyrosdyn’s work – against the mysterious resource in their unguent, given unholy vigour by Rostan’s use of the Power, which sought to use Pinnatte for purposes unknowable even to its creators.
It was unequivocally the source of the other unease that Atlon had felt in Pinnatte. Forcing himself to stay calm, and weighing his every movement as if the least carelessness might unleash something terrible about him, he nodded slowly. ‘Your ointment’s been very effective,’ he said. ‘The wound’s clean. You must show me how to make it. I’m naturally clumsy – always cutting myself.’ The light-heartedness was almost choking him while the urge to ask Pinnatte how he had come by such a mark was virtually uncontrollable. He sensed however, that no answer would be forthcoming. This was no trivial thing. Even without a close study he could tell that green crystals were involved in some way, and from what he had learned from Heirn it seemed highly unlikely that this young man, with his generally unkempt appearance, would be able to afford such things. Besides, there was more at work here than just an addictive habit… much more. Green crystals alone, used thus, would almost certainly have killed the man within hours, whether they were near a pulse or not.
Ellyn was handing him a clean bandage and the jar of ointment. He took them from her absently. As he opened the jar, the smell of the ointment wrapped itself around him and drew him away from the turmoil. It was clean, sharp and deeply familiar. Immediately he was a child again, being tended by his mother, delicately dabbing at a gashed knee. All about him was the indestructible solidity of his childhood. It had an intensity that no description or deliberate memory could have captured.
‘Relics of our ancient hunting days,’ someone had once said to him, discussing the extraordinary power of scents to recall the past.
His vision blurred. As he lifted a hand to wipe his eyes, Ellyn caught it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I should have warned you, it’s very strong when it’s fresh. Don’t get any in your eyes.’ A small white kerchief was pushed into his hand. He wiped his eyes then returned it gratefully.
As he applied the ointment to Pinnatte’s wound, the memory of his mother and his childhood remained, though it was a shadow now of what it had just been. Contrasted with it was the horror of Pinnatte’s hand and, suddenly highlighted, the sense of the cloying wrongness that pervaded the whole city and which seemed to be focused here, in the Jyolan. Untypically self-pitying, Atlon found himself asking, ‘How did I get here, to this awful place?’ But even as he asked the question, he knew the answer. It had been asked and answered many times before.
‘Step by step.’
And who could say which step he might have taken differently to avoid this conclusion?
It was the only answer he would ever get, but he felt easier nevertheless.
He was about to bandage Pinnatte’s hand when he changed his mind. He must get the young man out of this place. Standing, he wiped his eyes again, though this time with the side of his hand. He had to clear his throat before he spoke to Ellyn. ‘I think the ointment’s done all it can. The wound looks clean. It’s probably best to let the fresh air get at it now – give it a chance to heal.’ He looked down at Pinnatte. ‘If you’ve been in here since last night, I think some fresh air would do you no harm either, not to mention a little exercise.’
Pinnatte eyed him unsurely. There was something about this stranger that disturbed him. He didn’t seem to belong here. And his voice was odd. Was he really from a land beyond Arash-Felloren, or had he just misheard? His thoughts swung between extremes. This man would look after him, would take the confusion from his head – put right whatever it was that that Kyrosdyn had done – for, despite his earlier protestation, his hand was troubling him, albeit not in any way that he could find words to describe. Then Atlon was almost like a demon – a fearful shadow – come to obstruct him on his way to his rightful future – come to keep him from the wealth and power that would be his, now that he was on the verge of leaving Lassner and working for Barran.
‘Barran wants to see me,’ he said eventually. ‘I should wait for him.’
Ellyn intervened. ‘Barran’s busy now, and liable to be so for most of the day. Don’t worry, he’s not forgotten you – nor will he – not after what you did. He spoke about you this morning.’ Briefly her gaze locked with Atlon’s. ‘And Rinter’s friend is right. It’s dismal in here. Get outside, into the light. Walk around – get something to eat. You’ll feel a lot better for it.’
Pinnatte’s thoughts shifted under this gentle onslaught. The room was gloomy, and the two guards who had been with him for most of the time were ill company, making no effort to disguise their boredom at the chore.
Atlon extended a hand and Pinnatte took it. ‘You’re right,’ he said, pulling himself up.
‘I’ll tell Barran what you’re doing, if he asks,’ Ellyn said. She reached into her bag and produced some coins which she offered to him. ‘That’ll get you and your friends a meal. Come back this evening and ask to see me.’
Used to stealing almost everything he needed, this unexpected generosity shook Pinnatte and left him gaping. Ellyn folded the money into his dithering hand with both of hers.
‘Come back this evening,’ she said again.
‘I’ll see he does, ma’am,’ Rinter said earnestly, a little concerned that he was being left too much to one side in the developing proceedings.
As they made their way out of the Jyolan, led by one of the guards, Pinnatte once more felt himself torn by doubts about this newcomer. This washis place. He belonged here, wandering its complex warren of passages, searching, learning…
Learning what?
How to become rich and powerful by studying the ways of Barran and those who followed him? No, it was something else. Tantalizing images flitted elusively about his thought.
‘Are you sure your hand isn’t bothering you?’ Atlon’s inquiry scattered them.
‘No, it’s fine.’ Pinnatte waved it airily.
‘I’ll have a proper look at it in the daylight,’ Atlon persisted. ‘Just to be sure.’
Pinnatte was inclined to argue, but before he could speak a dark form emerged from a side passage just ahead of them. It stopped as they did. Then it turned towards them and growled.
Chapter 22
The guard hesitated for a moment, then drew his sword and stepped between Pinnatte and the animal.
‘It’s that damned dog that caused the panic last night. It ran off. We couldn’t find it.’ He shouted this information, as much for his own reassurance as for that of the others, but unfortunately, his voice echoed the tremor visible in the extended sword.
The dog, hackles raised, stared at the group. It might have been completely outmatched in the arena the previous night, but it was a large and powerful animal and in an uncertain temper. Even in the dim light of the passage, bone-crushing teeth could be seen beneath a viciously curled upper lip. And the throaty rumble of its growl was not a sound that invited confidence.
Used mainly to dealing with people less physically able than himself, and that in the company of his own kind, the guard was uncertain what to do. He opted finally for retreat, pushing his charges into an awkward shuffle as he began moving backwards. ‘We’ll go out another way,’ he said, mustering such command as he could. ‘Then we’ll get a party together and trap it.’
Abruptly, Pinnatte stepped forward. ‘No!’ he cried, his voice strange. ‘It is prey. It is mine, it must be taken.’
Atlon seized his arm anxiously but Pinnatte shook him off, unexpectedly strong. He moved towards the dog. It redoubled its growling but made no movement. Atlon tried again. ‘Leave it.’ he urged Pinnatte. ‘It won’t attack us if we don’t attack it. There are plenty of places for it to run. It’s more
frightened than we are.’ The last remark was uttered more in hope than from knowledge. The dog had, after all, been trained as an attack animal, and it certainly did not give the appearance of being about to flee.
The guard recovered from Pinnatte’s sudden move and now came to his side. ‘He’s right. We should leave it. It’s…’
‘It is prey.’ Pinnatte cut across his appeal. ‘It is mine.’
He moved forward again but this time both Atlon and the guard seized him. Pinnatte stopped, then, letting out an eerie mewling cry, he flung off the guard as if he had been little more than a child. The big man stumbled into the wall and his sword clattered on to the floor. The sound seemed to release an endless sequence of clanging echoes.
Through the din, Atlon found himself looking into a face that was demented with rage. It bore no resemblance to the uncertain young man whose injured head and hand he had just examined. Pinnatte’s voice was strained and distant, almost as though he were unfamiliar with speech.
‘You do not belong. You are…’ He faltered, then recognition came into his face. And hatred. Fear almost overwhelmed Atlon. But mingling with it came a burning rage and disgust which told him that this abomination should be destroyed now, where it stood, and without mercy. It should be obliterated utterly before it grew and gathered strength and… Pinnatte was going to attack him! He could feel the wild precursors of the Power building in him. Yet, insofar as he was thinking at all, he knew that to defend himself in this place might have untold consequences.
But not to defend himself would surely see him destroyed!
Then it seemed that neither he nor Pinnatte nor Rinter or the guard were part of the Jyolan – or anything. They were empty mannequins in a grey nowhere that was beyond, or between, all things.
He became aware of a high-pitched, insect whine. Even as it touched him, he and all around him were whole again and the whine was a penetrating screech filling the passage. Everyone else pressed their hands to their ears. Pinnatte dropped to his knees. The dog was gone.