by A J Dalton
Thomas finished relating his story as he guided the horse pulling their wagon onto a near-invisible side road. Aspin laughed and slapped his thigh. The blacksmith’s yarns had worked their charm all afternoon, helping the mountain warrior to relax and forget his aches and pains, completely winning him over.
Jillan remained quiet. At first he’d been enthralled by the tales of his parents in New Sanctuary, but his unease had increased with each anecdote. He couldn’t put his finger on it exactly, but there was something about the stories that just didn’t feel right. It felt like Thomas was criticising his parents, although Jillan couldn’t remember anything specific he’d said. As Aspin had hooted louder and louder, Jillan had withdrawn into himself more and more.
Thomas suddenly stopped and looked all around, anger flickering in his eyes. ‘We’re being followed.’
Aspin also looked around and groped behind him for his bow. ‘How do you know? I haven’t seen or heard anything.’
‘It’s what we haven’t heard. I know these woods. They’re too quiet. There’s some hunter out there. I can lose them, though,’ Thomas replied, and flicked the reins.
‘How can we possibly lose them?’ Aspin wondered.
‘My people know the hidden paths of the woods. There are the roads everyone can see, but then there are other routes and ways. Otherwise, the Saint and his Heroes would have found our hamlet long ago.’
‘Is it magic?’ Aspin asked with raised eyebrows.
‘Yes and no. It’s to do with all life energy somehow being connected, but our wizard, Bion, can explain it better than me. Have your bow strung nonetheless, warrior.’
Aspin worked quickly and had an arrow nocked and his weapon raised before Jillan had even begun to wonder whether he should be doing the same. He watched everything as if in a dream. He was detached from it all somehow. There was no sense of danger as far as he could tell.
A large shadow blocked the route ahead. The blacksmith cursed vilely, dropped his reins and produced wicked shimmering blades out of nowhere. ‘Shoot it, warrior!’
Aspin raised his bow.
Jillan blinked. ‘No, Aspin, do not.’
The mountain warrior hesitated, blinking himself and half shaking his head.
‘Shoot it!’ Thomas grated.
‘Do not! It is my friend. You will not shoot, Aspin. All is well.’
A huge black wolf sat in their path. Its orange eyes watched them carefully. The horse reared and shied and Thomas had to scramble for the reins again. ‘Woah! Woah! Damn it!’
A woodsman stepped from the trees and smiled apologetically at them. His hands were empty and he held them out from his sides. ‘I am sorry if my friend startled you. He did not know how else to present himself, you see.’
‘Ash!’ Jillan grinned.
‘Jillan, hello! Fancy meeting you here like this.’
‘It is no coincidence,’ Thomas sneered, causing the wolf to growl softly and the horse to roll its eyes and whinny in terror. ‘None can chance upon this path unless they have deliberately bent their will to it. You have been stalking us. You do not speak the truth. Aspin, keep your bow trained on them.’
Ash wobbled his head this way and that. ‘What can I say? Not much escapes my friend the wolf. He was concerned for Jillan and I simply followed him here.’
‘Aspin, it’s all right,’ Jillan ventured.
Aspin shook his head again as if troubled by invisible buzzing things. ‘This man cannot be trusted. He is … inconsistent. I can read that he will one day betray you.’
Ash’s ready smile slipped slightly.
After all, he has already betrayed me once. But how can Aspin know Ash will betray me again? Surely the future isn’t already written, is it? If it is, then I fear all will happen as the Book of Saviours says. Are we all doomed? Me, my parents, Samnir, dear Hella, Aspin himself? Should I just give up?
Jillan, remember yourself, sighed the taint. Ash may have betrayed you before, but he had no choice in the matter. You know that. It might happen again in the same way. So what? Who are you to judge betrayal, eh, when you betrayed your town, the Empire and everyone who loved you? There is one person you still have not betrayed though, isn’t there? Yourself, Jillan! Betray yourself and then it will truly all be over. Still, at least I wouldn’t then have to point out the obvious to you every five seconds. Look, let Ash come along with us even if it’s just to put that blacksmith’s nose out of joint. Besides, who wouldn’t want a big black wolf at their side? That creature would make even the mad Saint hesitate.
‘Aspin, is it Ash’s intention to betray me?’
Good boy. For once he listens.
‘No, probably not.’
‘Then he comes with us. I assume that’s what you want, Ash?’
‘More fun than staying in that shack, or prison as you call it, on my own. The wolf gets bored just eating squirrel skewers by the fire and I can’t stand his bilious guts. You know how he gets.’
‘No!’ Thomas said vehemently. ‘I will not risk him coming to the hamlet. The decision is not yours, Jillan. The Saint will know.’
‘Ash is Unclean, Thomas. He has never been Drawn. The Saint will not know. Either Ash and the wolf come with us or Aspin and I will be leaving you right now.’
The blacksmith’s brow became an anvil, but he had no choice but to agree. He gestured furiously at Ash to climb into the back of the wagon and then lashed the sidling horse forward with the reins. The wolf had already disappeared.
Minister Praxis moaned in the darkness as he clung to the top of the pillar. His fingers were so numb he could feel nothing. For all he knew, he was clutching at thin air and spinning through the eternal void. His teeth chattered a prayer to anything that could hear him or would listen. He hardly knew his own name any more.
Something slapped him in the middle of the back and he screamed like he’d been crucified.
‘Pssst! Grab the rope, lowlander. Put the loop round you.’
Ever so slowly, he unclenched himself and dragged elbow and knees in. He did not know if his body had the strength to support even its own weight any more. It was a dead thing to him. Was he rising or falling? He travelled on the wind. Free at last! But he became tangled in the rope. He flailed at it but it drew tighter around him and trapped him. It yanked him back into the world of hardship and suffering.
‘No!’
‘What are you doing, lowlander? Have you lost your mind? Be still, curse you!’ the voice shouted, the stone shelter amplifying it. ‘Mind your head.’
‘Argggh!’
‘I warned you! Up now. Like being born again, isn’t it? The hole is a cunny of sorts, they say. The cunny of the gods. Here you are. Drink this,’ boomed the voice in his face, all but overwhelming him.
A mug was roughly pushed into his hands. Its contents were warm but smelt awful, like goats or something equally unclean.
‘I … cannot.’
‘Then you have lost all sense and I may as well throw you to your death right now. It’s fermented goat’s milk. It will restore you. You are nothing but bones. I had no trouble pulling you up on my own. Do you not eat? Drink it or I’ll stuff you back down the hole and you’ll end up broken at the bottom of the mountain. Then you’ll never have your revenge, will you?’
Praxis, you must endure.
The Minister tentatively sipped at the foul substance. He blinked and finally took in his rescuer. ‘You are the chief’s son,’ he said slowly, gazing at the brute’s bullish face and hefty young shoulders.
‘Tell me of this revenge you plan,’ Braggar insisted. ‘And drink!’
Several sips. ‘I-I will see them all die for what they have done to me. Every last one of them will die.’
‘Yes!’ Braggar said eagerly. ‘But my father is a coward. He will not fight. He shames me and all the warriors of the upper village. How can he claim to be faithful to Wayfar of the Warring Winds when he will have no war? Even you, a mere lowlander, seem to have more courage than he. Yet he
refuses to step aside to let a real man lead the people. He will not be persuaded.’
A larger sip this time. He was feeling a little better. Endure! ‘I see, I see. Then he must be … removed, for the good of all, so that the desire of your gods can be carried out. If you do not do as the gods will it, they will turn against you and put an end to your people. Do you not see that if you love your people and the gods, Chief Blackwing must be removed? If you love your father’s good name and hope to be able to honour his memory one day, then he must be removed before he can shame himself in front of all your warriors tomorrow.’
‘Yes, yes! It must be done tonight. You will do it, lowlander.’
A gulp of liquid that was too hot. ‘I?’
‘Yes. Or I have no more use for you and you can go back down the hole.’
See how corrupt and conniving these pagans are. To think that a son would condone the killing of his own father! How typical then that the son should lack the courage and conviction to commit the deed himself. Yet what was the life of a pagan to him? Less than nothing. Every pagan that lived was an offence to the Saviours. Every pagan that died represented a weakening of the Chaos. It would not be murder. It would be Salvation. ‘How must it be done?’
‘My father scales the peak with the coming of every dawn, to see the world born anew and to greet storm, sun and rain. Of late he has drunk through the night before making the climb. I pray that he never slips, but if the gods should will it then so be it, for I am ever their faithful son.’
‘It will be done.’
‘Then I will go see him one last time and raise a toast in his name.’ Braggar laughed.
With satisfaction, Elder Thraal watched through the waking dream as the organising intellects of the regions schemed and fought among themselves. He’d always known that D’Selle of the west and D’Zel of the north had designs on challenging him and becoming elders. That was precisely why he’d persuaded the council to endorse his promotion of one as young and inexperienced as D’Shaa to the rank of organising intellect. Just as Elder Thraal had known would happen, the ambitious D’Selle had been unable to resist attacking D’Shaa. Elder Thraal had then held off punishing D’Selle’s failure so that D’Zel would be drawn into the conflict. Thus distracted, none would have the capacity or resources to plot against him.
All had gone just as he’d planned and knew it would. His indirect but deliberate destabilisation of the southern region was also beginning to succeed in drawing out the pagans and the Geas. If he could secure the Geas on behalf of the Declension, then the glory would be his rather than the Great Saviour’s. Surely the Declension would then consider having him replace the Great Saviour of this world.
Elder Thraal congratulated himself on having had the extreme foresight to put himself forwards as Watcher of the elders millennia ago, when his kind had first arrived on this world. In his role he was often awake, in regular close contact with the organising intellects and capable of influencing them and events in their regions directly. By contrast, the other elders and the Great Saviour himself were all but permanently asleep, influencing affairs in this realm only indirectly as they communed with their kind and the cosmos beyond this world. Yes, he aged faster than them as a consequence, but the final victory would ultimately be his alone.
Chief Blackwing stood upon the edge of eternity and spread his arms wide as he welcomed the rising sun. How it burned his eyes! Such was the cost of gazing upon the light of the divine. The wind numbed his face and he let his cape drop to the ground so that he was naked save for his necklace of gemstones. If he stood like this for the time it took the sun to rise, he would die of exposure. Such was the cost of being embraced by the air of the divine. Blood trickled between his toes. The sharp stones of the mountain peak had cut the bared soles of his feet as he’d made his dawn pilgrimage. Such was the cost of walking on the ground of the divine. The clouds around the peak made his skin wet and the rocks wet. If he was not careful, he would slip and break open his head. Such was the cost of sharing the life-giving waters of the divine. Death was the cost to a mortal who approached too close to the divine. Yet no mortal could exist without the divine or resist its call either. That was why death always came, he knew. That was how he could be so accepting of it.
He was prepared. He was ready as he heard death moving up behind him. He’d said goodbye to his son, a son whose eyes showed him that now was his time. Chief Blackwing did not regret the life he’d led, nor did he regret the death he would have. How could he? It was what his warriors needed of him and he’d always tried his best to give them what they needed. He just hoped that it would not be they who regretted it.
‘Have faith, my people, have faith!’
A stone skittered behind him and he turned.
Chief Blackwing smiled. ‘You bring death to my people, do you not?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Minister Praxis replied as he pushed the pagan off the peak.
CHAPTER 10:
For and from the sin of being
‘Ah, you’re awake, dear one. You slept a good number of hours. How do you feel?’
‘I am well, friend Anupal, thank you,’ Freda replied, shading her eyes against the bright sky. ‘Where are we?’
‘Heading south. Would you be able to run, do you think? We would make better time that way. The world never stops or waits for anyone, you see, not even me. If we do not get to where we need to be on time, it might not even be there any more, and we might never find it, for places are people as well as rocks, trees and buildings. Places are moments in time. Do you understand what I mean, dear one?’
She stuck her tongue out in concentration. ‘So if I went back to the mine now, it wouldn’t be the same place?’
‘Precisely.’ He smiled approvingly. ‘Some of the same rocks would still be there, but others wouldn’t. Some of the same people would be there, but some wouldn’t and there’d probably be new ones. Certainly it wouldn’t be an entirely different place, but it would be different enough in very important ways.’
She could see that. Without Norfred there, the mine would never be the same place for her. ‘So a place can only ever be visited once? There’s no going back to it … in time? That’s strange. And also very sad, Anupal.’
Her observation slightly caught him out. He’d never thought of it like that before. Yes, it was sad really. The wonderful places he’d known but would never see again. They could not be recovered. Such a shame that the mortals of this world had such short lives, like leaves on a tree waiting to fall. He forced the corners of his mouth up. ‘But let us not be melancholic or downhearted, dear one, for we are in a good place now. We have each other, yes?’
‘Yes, Anupal.’ She nodded, mimicking his smile, although it made her cheeks grind. ‘I have a question, though. If we do not know if a place will be there when we get there, how do we know where we’re going in the first place?’
‘Ah! And here is the nature of the will. Your will must decide what it wants or needs and then create that place by travelling there on time. With most places, there isn’t much need to rush, but with others you are tested to your limits. And some places are impossible to find, just fantasy.’
‘I see. What is it your will wants or needs then, Anupal?’
‘Why, I have been told there are people in the south who might also become my friends if I arrive there in time to do things for them. Do you remember I said I try to do good things to make good friends? That is enough for me. What is it you want or need, dear one?’
Freda hesitated. He’d told her what he wanted, so it only seemed right she told him the same. And he was her friend. ‘Well, I need to find someone called Jan, who either went east or south, although I don’t know what east is. And I need to … to …’
‘Is that a stutter you have? Be not afraid to tell me, dear one,’ the Peculiar said and touched her injured hand.
His touch sent a sparkling thrill through her. Other than Torpeth, he was the only person ever to touch her in a w
ay that wasn’t hurtful. He didn’t feel as warm and firm as Torpeth – in fact, his light fingers felt like a spider that had scuttled over her once – but it excited her nevertheless. In a rush, she said, ‘I need to find three lost temples so that I can then find Haven.’
His head jerked up and back as if she’d punched him. She was suddenly worried she’d upset him, but then his lips took on their habitual smile. ‘Do you indeed, dear one? Curious places to need to visit, and they may well test us to our limits, but I will help you find them if you help me make these new friends and promise to go with me to the Great Temple one day.’
‘What is the Great Temple? Is it one of the lost temples?’
‘Nothing quite so interesting, I’m afraid. It sounds far grander than it really is. It’s just my home, that’s all. I need to go there to rest sometimes, but I could not bear to be parted from you, my friend.’
‘I will go there if it makes you happy, Anupal.’
‘That’s good. We are agreed and now of one mind and will. We are one, Freda.’
‘We are one,’ she echoed. It sounded nice, if a little strange.
‘Then let us run together, Freda! I will race you. First to the horizon, that line in the distance.’
Exhilarated by the idea, she dived off the wagon and into the ground. The road here was paved, so there weren’t too many tree roots in the ground to slow her down. She came back up and coursed forward, her flesh intermingling and speeding through the road’s substance.
‘Hey, not fair!’ the Peculiar yelled as he leapt to set the horse free, giving it a mental command to follow on behind them. Then he lengthened his perfect limbs and began to sprint after her. He skimmed over the ground, only lightly touching it every ten metres or so. He quickly overtook her and then created a cape for himself so that he could soar and swoop at even greater speeds.