In his own body, Cley heard his breath as it entered his nostrils and his lungs expanded to use it before expelling it again. Underneath that rhythmic cycle, another regular sound - the beating of his heart. At rest, his heartbeat was much faster than…than what? Cley felt a moment’s distraction as the comparison he was reaching for eluded him. How could he compare his heartbeat to anything else? It was all he had ever known.
With an ease arrived at through tens of thousands of hours practice, he released the thought and listened again. Now, underneath his breath, beyond the pump of his heart, past the thin rush of blood through veins, he found the stillness of the song. The silence that contained everything, from which everything constantly arose and returned. Each moment unfolded from the silence and flowered into emptiness, becoming the silence once again.
Deeper.
Something lodged in the silence, something resisting. Cley couldn’t listen with his heart while this presence blocked a complete letting go. He allowed his attention to settle on it for a moment. It took on the aspect of a figure, taller than anyone he knew, unfamiliar yet personal. He felt confusion at its presence, then allowed his practice to take over as he let go of the distraction, watching it fall apart and lose substance like bark thrown on a fire.
Cley listened.
And, when his mother finally spoke, he knew himself as a note in the song, ephemeral, yet essential.
“Since you returned, it’s as if you are someone else entirely.”
“I am your son.”
“Yes.” Sopharndi looked long and hard at Cley. “I know it. I am thankful for every dawn since your Journey. I never thought I would see you again. But I know my son, and you are not Cley. Not…not completely.”
Still Cley did not speak. Sopharndi waited for a denial and was glad when one wasn’t forthcoming.
“Don’t misunderstand me. I know you are no demon, as Davvi might have us believe. I see Cley in you, but I see more than that. I do not fear you, I am not angry with you. Without you, there would be no Cley. I understand that. You speak of the Singer. You speak of the Last Song. I have listened along with the rest. I have seen how the young are drawn to your message. I have heard others talk of healing you have performed. I…”
Here she stopped, uncertain how to continue. Cley leaned forward and placed a hand on her arm. She did not flinch. Whatever her instincts told her, this was still, somehow, her son.
Cley’s expression was, as always, open and unguarded.
“You speak a truth I barely understand myself. You are right. I am not just Cley any more. But I do not fully understand who I am. I cannot speak of what I cannot grasp. I can only ask you to trust me. Because my message is real, what I am teaching is the truth. The Singer has spoken to me, and through me.”
“You remember this? You remember the Singer, up there in the mountains on your Journey?”
“No,” Cley admitted. “I have no memory of it. The past has clouded over. I remember my childhood, I remember you, my mother. But after setting out on my Journey, the memories are unclear. I have knowledge, I have the teaching to pass on, but I cannot truly tell you where that teaching came from.”
Sopharndi placed a hand on top of Cley’s.
“I have watched you closely, I have listened to your words and I know you believe the truth of what you say. But—well, it isn’t like listening to Davvi sing the songs. He believes in the Singer, and he tells us that just by singing the words, we are pleasing Her. With you it is different. You play with the words. It’s as if you don’t think they’re important. You want us to listen, to wake up, but sometimes…I don’t know. Sometimes what you say makes little sense.”
“Labels on bottles,” muttered Cley.
“What?”
“I don’t know. It just came into my mind. Yes, again, you are right. The words are not important to me. They must lead the listener to silence. If they do not, they have failed.”
Sopharndi stood and paced around the small clearing at the base of the blacktree. She did not like to sit for too long, preferring to be active.
“You ask a lot of the People. And you ask a lot of me.”
“Yes,” Cley admitted, “I do. And I ask you to trust me now. I know you have never truly listened. Some will never truly learn how. It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter? I am your mother. How can it not matter that I do not experience what you say is true.”
“You will, everyone will experience it, eventually. You must hear the call yourself, no one can, or should, force it upon you. What is far more important is the fact that you trust me despite this. I cannot make you see what I see, hear what I hear. I cannot help you to know that the future of our tribe, and all the tribes, will depend on this. The Last Song must be heard by all, not just the People.”
“You tread a dangerous path,” said Sopharndi. “Yes, I trust you. I see my child in you, and I know he would never lie to me. But you do not know the danger you are in. Laak will not be Leader for much longer. Cochta will replace her. She will seek to rid the tribe of your influence swiftly, and brutally.”
“I can protect myself,” said Cley. A small insect bit into the softer flesh at the heel of his claws. He swatted it away. “What of you? She has always seen you as a rival.”
“She is mistaken.”
Cley stood then and joined his mother as she paced. “Cochta should be pitied. She has become so attached to her envy and ambition that she projects the same character flaws onto everyone else. She never encounters anyone as they truly are, only seeing a distorted version of them. For her, the world is a colorless, small, fearful place.”
Sopharndi sighed. “I’d find it easier to pity her if she wasn’t such a bitch.”
They both laughed. Cley felt a twinge of something - a memory? at Sopharndi’s crude turn of phrase. Then the feeling passed.
“A change is coming,” he said. “Whatever the outcome, this time of uncertainty will pass for the People.” He scratched at the insect bite on his hand. “There will be suffering, there will be pain. There will be death. But every moment dies so the next can be born. Every note in the song has its place to be sung. The melody is eternal, there should be no mourning one note, when it is still there, always there in the song.”
Sopharndi shrugged. “Do not speak of death, my son.”
They hugged then, under the shadow of the cursed blacktree, before Sopharndi turned and headed back to the settlement.
Cley watched her go, absently scratching at his hand. It took him a few minutes to realize something was wrong, a few more before he became aware of what it was.
He looked at the flesh at the base of the claws on his left hand. There was an angry area of swollen skin where the insect had bitten him. He had been bitten but insects before. It wasn’t even particularly painful.
So why the rising feeling of alarm?
He experimentally unsheathed his claws, and winced as the skin split and began to bleed.
Then he had it. Since he had returned from his Journey, he had been able to heal. Not just others, himself. It was the same power he used to create the water from nowhere, the miracle that had brought so many to listen to him in those first sessions by the fire pit.
He looked down at the blood. He reached out with his mind, focusing on the wound. Nothing happened. He allowed his thoughts to clear, brought his mind back to the stillness he spent most of his life stepping in and out of.
Nothing. The blood slid down to his wrist, then fell to the floor in fat, purple drops.
He reached into the air to create water.
Nothing. Again.
Something tugged at the corners of his consciousness, an insistent, panicked flash of warning. As if someone was desperately trying to get his attention, but in a dream where he could no longer hear or see.
Something. Something important. Something he must never forget.
A word.
There was a word. If he said it, he would be able to heal again
. And he would be able to bring the People to the Singer.
One word.
If he could just…
His head snapped up.
“Pause,” he said.
The color drained out of the forest around him, and the sound of the wind faded to nothing. Acting without conscious thought now, but knowing it was right, Cley spoke again.
“Home.”
From the forest floor, a doorway rose into view. Cley stumbled through it.
He looked around him. The surface he stood on was different somehow. Harder. He pushed at it with his foot. Unyielding.
At first glance, he thought the trees were different too, but now that he looked properly, he could see that they were familiar to him, Akrarn and blacktrees bordered the path on which he stood.
Cley looked around him wildly. Nothing seemed strange about this place, apart from the fact that he had arrived there through a strange opening in the forest. He looked into the sky. The sun was low, and he could see all three moons, pale in the darkening sky. Everything was how it should be, but somehow that terrified him.
He felt compelled to move then, to head along the path which led down a gentle slope toward water. He felt a rising sense that, if he didn’t get to the water, everything would be lost, his life would have been worthless. His heart hammering, he broke into a run.
As he got close to the water, he saw two figures standing there. He felt a flood of relief. That was right! There should be two, a male and a female. Everything would be clear when he saw them properly.
The sun was in his eyes. When he closed to within a few yards of the figures, he cupped one clawed hand over his eyes. Blood dropped onto his face, but he ignored it. He squinted.
One of the figures was his mother. Next to her stood someone so familiar, it took Cley a few seconds to realize who it was.
It was a young male. He was rocking from side to side, spittle at the corner of his mouth. And he was humming.
Cley fell to his knees, feeling blackness closing in on him.
“No,” he said, thickly, “no. This is not right. It’s not right.”
The chaos of his thoughts built in a frenzied crescendo of confusion. Then, nothing at all.
32
Sopharndi woke with a start hours before dawn. She knew she had heard something. Around her, there were the sounds of others stirring in nearby dwellings, of frightened whispers. She grabbed her spear and belt, tucking her knife in as she ducked out of the doorway.
The same sound again. Still with a nightmarish quality, made more surreal by the fact that she was awake now. Again. Louder, this time. A huge creaking, cracking, sound. It was coming from the river. She jogged toward the source of the unfamiliar noise.
At the sound of the first screams, Sopharndi broke into a sprint, her claws unsheathing as she ran. She knew every fighter would be doing the same, other than those posted on the perimeter.
Three loud bangs sounded with a couple of seconds of each other, so loud the ground shook slightly. Sopharndi couldn’t imagine what she was about to face. If they were under attack, the river—still fast-flowing at this time of the year— was a strong natural defense. Therefore, the most lightly guarded. She put on a fresh burst of speed.
As she ran, she caught sight of Katela among a group of fighters forming a pack just behind her. She slowed momentarily, to let them catch up, then barked orders between snatching breaths.
“Three groups. You go west. Katela, take the east. I will take the center.”
There was no more to be said. They parted, and as Sopharndi and her group ran on, other fighters emerged from dwellings to join them.
As they broke through the last line of dwellings at the northern edge of the settlement, they saw the source of the noise. Three of the tallest akrarns on the north bank of the river had been uprooted and pushed forward until they toppled, forming natural bridges across the water. Making their way across the trees were the fighters of the Chosen. They were easy to identify, the skin of their face tattooed with white dots around the eyes, giving their features an animal-like appearance, designed to mimic the dominant predator of their region, the shuk.
No words were necessary now. The People’s fighters were trained from childhood in the art of killing. They lived their lives simultaneously hoping they would never be called on to use their skills, and yearning to engage in real combat, where death and honor were at stake. The Challenges around the fire pit were not just a traditional way of ensuring the best fighters got ahead, it was also a safer way of allowing the strongest, most aggressive among them to release some of their bloodlust. Only a Challenge to the First was fought to the death, but even minor Challenges sometimes left a corpse behind.
The fighters lived to fight, their instincts, strength, and minds focused into a deadly knife, spear and claw-wielding beast while they were engaged in combat.
With roars of aggression, they launched themselves fearlessly toward the enemy.
The next few minutes passed in a melange of focused fear and rage. Sopharndi had experienced this before but knew the younger warriors were about to witness the unexpected flexibility that time assumed in a real battle. Moments seemed to pass incredibly slowly, with every detail available to eye, ear, and brain, but—at the same time—it was as if everything was accelerated, every stab, parry, lunge, kick, slash, duck, roll, and recoil occurring with such speed that they seemed virtually simultaneous. Then, disorientated, at the end of the fight, the survivors would look in disbelief at the position of the moons, finding that minutes had passed, rather than hours.
On a purely physical level, Sopharndi accepted, even welcomed the fight. Every minute of training and preparation meant her mind lost all capacity for anything other than the battle. Her body was a blur as she threw herself at the Chosen fighters, cutting two of them down in as many seconds during her initial onslaught. As she fought on, she was always aware of the positions of her group, as they pressed forward as one.
The enemy was making its way across their makeshift bridges as fast as they could, but the very part of their plan which had given them an element of surprise was proving to be their undoing. The Chosen had spent much of the night digging at the roots, cutting through those to the south of each tree, unearthing those to the north, unbalancing each akrarn. They had engineered pivots, using the hard wood of the blacktree, and had levered the giant trees until they fell. The fallen trees bridged the river, but they hadn’t reckoned enough on the effect the branches and foliage would have on the speed of their progress across the water.
As Sopharndi fought on, pulling her claws from the throat of one young female, while slashing across the spine of another with her knife, she saw Cochta lead a group through the carnage, making her way to the trees. Her group numbered under a dozen, but they lit up the scene like daylight. Each of them carried four torches, the animal-fat soaked skins wrapped tightly around the top, their light exposing every detail of the bloody scene. Bodies lay everywhere, and those still fighting were grim and bloody. There were no taunts now, no sounds other than the hiss of effort, the clash of weapons or the tearing of flesh. The warriors looked, in the flicker of the torches, like they were performing some kind of macabre dance as they fought, stepping over corpses as they spun and hacked at each other.
Cochta’s group split into three, heading for each tree. Four of the group fell as they got closer, cut down by the Chosen fighters. But Cochta had picked her moment well. The Chosen were sending their attack across in waves, and Cochta had seen a gap appear. She reached the central tree while the next enemy fighter was only halfway across, shoving her way through some tangled branches. She looked up at the sight of Cochta’s flaming torches, saw the danger and redoubled her efforts to get across. As she broke free of the branches, Cochta set light to the trunk where it had fallen onto the back. As it began to burn, she threw her other torches further onto the akrarn.
It had been just over a week since the last rains, so the leaves and branche
s were parched and dry. The fire caught quickly, the leaves curling into ash, twigs bursting into flame and, moments later, bigger branches dancing and blackening as orange-white tongues licked them into contortions. The trees to the left and right were also ablaze, and the enemy fighters already on the trunks had turned and were heading back to the far shore, and safety.
The Chosen fighter on Cochta’s tree had evidently decided she was too far forward to retreat. With a war whoop full of rage and bloodlust, she ran toward the flames, launching herself forward and to one side, away from the burning trunk, landing ankle deep in the shallows, knife drawn and teeth bared. She advanced quickly, with the practiced economy of movement shared by all experienced fighters.
Cochta, caught up in the triumph of the moment, did not see the danger immediately. When she did see the approaching fighter, she stumbled backward, avoiding the first slash of the knife.
Sopharndi twisted a spear out of the chest of a fallen fighter and hefted it to her shoulder.
Cochta tripped as she backed up, landing squarely on the chest of a headless corpse. The advancing Chosen fighter emitted a triumphant shriek and raised her knife, not realizing that Cochta’s fall had saved her life.
Seeing a chance for a clear shot, Sopharndi didn’t hesitate, twisting the spear slightly as she released it. A second later, as the enemy warrior’s knife began its descent toward Cochta’s unprotected throat, the point of the spear entered her chest precisely where Sopharndi had intended. It was a throw of about fifteen yards, so the momentum carried the point and a foot of the shaft through the female and out through her back. She didn’t die instantly, but as she fell, the impact of the spear hitting the hard ground caused the shaft to splinter, widening the wound in her chest considerably. Her heart continued to pump blood for nearly a minute, but, as crucial arteries had been crudely severed, most of the dark fluid pooled on the ground beside her while she gasped out her last few breaths.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 113