The Heretic Land

by Tim Lebbon

  ‘So, plans?’ she continued. ‘Fuck plans. I wouldn’t honour them by making plans. Fuck them.’ She trailed off again, and Bon pressed sideways against her, a subtle but obvious movement. Not so blatant as a touch or a hug, but a gesture of comfort.

  ‘Even if you had, I bet I wouldn’t have been in them,’ he said.

  ‘Right.’ She sighed, drumming her fingers on her leg, the air heavy with something unsaid. But they sat in silence.

  Before them, Juda rolled on a bed of dried twigs and leaves, a foam of spittle and blood sheened across his chin and lips.

  Bon looked out at the shadowy valley one more time, saw no movement, and leaned his head back against the rough wall of the shelter. Tomorrow, he would begin his first full day on Skythe as someone hunted, and scared. But at least he was with a friend.

  Someone shook Bon awake from a dream of being chased by a swollen killer, a heavy-cloaked thing bearing a spiked staff and his dead son’s face.

  He rose from his dream like a god looking down, and in that brief omnipotence he saw himself sprinting across a desolate landscape spotted with bright purple plants, each of them a blooming bruise. The son-thing lurched after him, barely walking and yet closing on him with every step he took. Behind the son-thing came a shadow that belonged to something larger and more dreadful. Its shadow tendrils seemed to emanate from them both. And while he ran and his son-thing lurched, the shadow seemed to dance with unalloyed joy.

  ‘Bon Ugane,’ a voice said, and Bon blinked himself awake, leaving the dream behind. For an instant he wondered whether that monster was still closing on his fleeing self, then Juda leaned back from him and smiled down. ‘You must have really needed that sleep.’

  ‘How long …?’ Bon asked.

  ‘It’s barely dawn.’ Juda’s smiled seemed strained, pained. There was blood smeared across his jaw.

  ‘Leki!’ Bon said, sitting upright and kicking at Juda. What has he done where is she why did I fall asleep?

  ‘The water woman’s fine!’ Juda said, sprawling back.

  ‘Then where is she?’ Bon stood, remaining stooped in the shelter. Dawn sunlight slanted in between the roughly tied uprights, and his clothing was damp with dew.

  ‘I was taking a piss,’ Leki said from outside. ‘And keep your voice down or you’ll scare them away.’

  ‘Scare who away?’

  ‘Come and see.’

  Bon’s shock settled and he smiled hesitantly at Juda. The man nodded back, wiping at his chin with one hand. He must have seen Bon looking at the dried blood.

  Outside, Leki was standing beneath the shadow of the trees, looking out across the narrow, deep valley at a herd of creatures on the opposite slopes. Pale brown, the size of a child, they flitted back and forth across the grassed slopes like a flock of birds. Their hoofsteps sounded as a vague mumbling, and their call was a piping cry that mourned across the valley.

  ‘Anything?’ Juda asked from the shelter behind them.

  ‘No,’ Leki said. Bon realised that she had been to the ridge to check if anyone or anything was following, but now she seemed more taken with the creatures seemingly performing for them.

  ‘Hat-hat,’ Juda said. ‘Taste good with rose herb.’

  ‘I’m happy just to watch,’ Leki said.

  The hat-hat streamed left and right across the slope for some time, and then a pair of hawks swooped down from out of the sun and took one. They tore it apart on the ground, and as they ate the rest of the flock grouped tightly together and fled over the hilltop.

  ‘He says there’ll be two of them following us,’ Leki said. ‘They’ll pick up our scent and be on our trail. Today’s the day we have to escape them, or they’ll hunt us until we drop, or they do. And it won’t be them.’

  ‘Then why aren’t we moving now?’ Bon asked, knowing there was an answer. Today had a strange feel already, as if he had woken into a world with different rules.

  ‘Because Juda is going to try and use some magic.’

  Bon caught his breath, staring at Leki, waiting for her to elaborate. Magic? The word was used as a turn of phrase, but Leki had given it weight.

  ‘So what happened when I was asleep?’ he asked.

  ‘Our lives changed,’ Leki said. She looked at him at last. ‘And I found out why our saviour and friend is just a little mad.’

  Juda emerged from the shelter and lit a roughly rolled cigar. He breathed in deeply and glanced their way, nervously.

  ‘Magic?’ Bon asked.

  To begin with, Juda did not respond. He took a long pull on the cigar, shivering slightly and closing his eyes. Smoke drifted from his nose and curled like a living thing, caressing his cheek and forehead before dispersing in his hair.

  ‘Why else do you think I’d come to Skythe?’

  ‘You came here voluntarily?’ Bon asked.

  ‘Could say that.’ He stood beside them, taking deep, long pulls on the cigar. Seemingly without noticing, he clasped at the air before him with one hand, searching for something that was not there. Mad, indeed, Bon thought, but he was never one to judge madness on simple deviation from the norm. He knew the norm to be an ambiguous thing, a construction of doctored beliefs and prescribed outlooks. It could be that Juda simply saw in a different way. ‘I came here looking.’

  ‘For magic,’ Leki said.

  ‘Where else would I look?’

  ‘You’re not Regerran?’ Bon asked.

  ‘I’m told my mother was,’ Juda said. ‘But the nightmares are mostly my own. Magic does strange things, when you’re close to it for a long time.’

  ‘And those cigars?’ Leki asked.

  ‘Scamp smoke helps. A problem hidden, not cured. Scamp keeps the nightmares deep, for a while.’ He stared across the valley. Even with the cigar clamped between his teeth he seemed to be sniffing the air. ‘You need to break camp. Prepare yourselves for a fast, long journey. We must escape the slayers today, and to do that we first have to gain a good lead.’

  ‘So shouldn’t we be running now?’ Bon asked, panic blooming.

  ‘We’re about to. But I’m leaving something behind.’ Juda glanced back at them and nodded up at the steep hillside beyond the shelter. ‘Climb. Snuggle together and watch. But don’t come close. I’ll join you soon, and then we run.’

  Bon and Leki packed up the few things they had with them and left Juda behind, sitting on a fallen log close to the shelter and absently kicking loose soil over the remains of their campfire. They climbed silently, the brief respite already behind them. Bon felt an urgency borne of fear, and confusion about why they hadn’t run through the night, why Juda couldn’t have smoked and gone further despite the nightmares. But then he thought of the reason Juda said the people of Vandemon kept fires flaming in the dark, and he wondered whether night was a safe place for visitors to Skythe.

  The slope soon became steeper, and for the last stretch they were climbing on hands and knees, crawling up from handhold to handhold. Bon tried not to look down, but the knowledge of Juda called him. That, and what their rescuer might be doing. I’m leaving something behind, he had said. As they reached the ridge and sat down, panting and sweating, Bon looked down into the valley to see.

  Juda was moving slowly around the shelter and the site of their campfire. He paused many times, seemingly listening or waiting for something before moving on. Smoke from his scamp cigar drifted about his head, forming a larger cloud that settled over the area and stole colour and sharpness.

  ‘Why is he taking so long?’ Bon asked, but Leki merely shrugged. She was frowning, concentrating, and Bon wondered what she was waiting to see. He had no idea what magic was supposed to look like.

  Juda finished patrolling the site and knelt down. He reached into his pack and seemed to sprinkle something on the ground, moving his hand left to right in a casual wave. Then he stood, surveyed the area one more time, and started climbing.

  ‘That was it?’ Bon asked. Leki shrugged again. Her silence deepened her mystery. He wanted
to clasp her hand, ask what she knew, but he was certain that she would only tell him if she wanted to. She’d had ample opportunity, and remained silent.

  ‘So now we run,’ Bon said. ‘Maybe I should just go the other way. Let the two of you flee, I’ll go back and meet the slayers on our trail.’ He didn’t mean that – not after the horrors he’d seen on the beach – but he was trying to provoke Leki into saying something. Anything.

  ‘Self-pity is ugly,’ she said. They watched Juda climbing towards them, and no more was said until he arrived.

  He scrambled up the slope and sat beside Bon, lighting another cigar. He was breathing heavily, but seemed otherwise untroubled by the climb. Bon wondered how long he would be able to keep up with Juda and Leki. Already his legs burned, his muscles ached.

  ‘That might help,’ Juda said.

  ‘What did you do?’ Bon asked.

  ‘Left something behind for them. A dreg.’

  ‘What will it do?’ Leki asked.

  Juda seemed upset and distracted. ‘We need to move. I’ll know exactly when the slayers reach here, and whether they’re still following our trail. And the more distance we put between them and us, the better.’

  ‘How will you know?’ Bon asked.

  Juda puffed on the cigar and the scamp smoke hung heavy and spicy in the air. He stared at Bon through the smoke, and seemed very far away. ‘You don’t know much, do you, Bon Ugane? How will I know? I just will.’

  Juda set the pace, taking them along the ridge and down into the next, much wider valley. He marched with purpose and determination, and it soon crossed Bon’s mind that Juda seemed to be rushing towards something, not away from something else.

  Venden Ugane came awake with something dead beneath him. He could feel it nestled under his stomach, an object whose presence was different from the bundled blankets and the sparse mattress he’d made from moss and hat-hat hide. It was cold and hard. It did not belong.

  For a while he did not move, staring across the clearing at the remnant and those objects he had spent so long gathering to it. It had now arced up into a perfect half-circle, and the dead tree stump at one end had tipped over to an extreme angle, a skin of dried bark fallen to the ground. It had shifted more while he had been sleeping.

  He rolled onto his side and looked down to find what had died.

  He had no name for the orange spiders. As large as his fist and the colour of bloodfruit, this one must have crawled down from the low cliff and dropped from the overhang into his bed just as he rolled in his sleep. They lived up on the cliff face, spinning funnel webs in holes in the rock, venturing out at sundown to harvest any prey caught in the web traps they set elsewhere across the cliff. He had observed them keeping to their own traps and not thieving from others, and he had wondered why. It hardly bode well for survival. Catching and examining a spider had crossed his mind, but there had always been something else to do, and he’d never had the chance. Now, the chance had come to him.

  It had burst beneath him. Its insides were slick and sticky, stringing from his jacket as he sat up. The creature had seven legs and, search though he did, Venden could find no evidence of an eighth. Lost in a fight, perhaps. But it was just as likely that it had mutated this way. He prodded the sad body, and its ruptured shell was cool and surprisingly soft.

  ‘Seven legs,’ Venden said. Whenever his voice sounded across the clearing, it felt like an intrusion into the wild. ‘Nature welcomes even numbers. Hard walking. Goes in circles. And the eyes.’ He turned the dead creature a little, leaning close and trying to ignore the acrid smell. ‘Simple surface eyes. All but blind.’ There was a thick line of thread still hanging from the spider’s abdomen, trailing across Venden’s mattress and disappearing into the grass. He scanned left and right until he saw where the sun glinted from a hanging thread high above his head, drooping down from the overhang and waving in the slight breeze. Perhaps it had been lowering itself down when it fell. Venden touched his face and throat, because he had never known how these things hunted, or killed. He found no punctures.

  Beneath the overhang was a rock with a hollow in its surface, and Venden took his morning scoop of water from here and drank deep. It never tasted fresh. Water dripped from the overhang above, and he wondered how long it had taken to filter down the surface of the cliff. Perhaps some of it was run-off from the previous night’s dew. Or maybe it originated deeper, filtering down through the cliff and exiting eventually to drip into the hollow, and pass into him. This filtering water might have been many years on its journey through porous rock, and he wondered what this clearing had looked like when the rain fell.

  Barely taking his eyes from the shifted remnant, Venden went through his usual waking ritual of toilet, a meal of dried fruit and a silent moment of reflection upon this land. He had been here for years, and he was more certain than ever that the war and its results had banished humanity from these shores. He was only a visitor here. That the unknown presence, the hollow inside, seemed to feel at home disturbed him, but he did not dwell on it.

  He judged that it was approaching late afternoon. The sun dipped towards the low wooded slopes in the west, setting fire to the treetops and smudging the landscape with vibrant fire colours. He still had time.

  The remnant loomed higher above him than it ever had. He circled it twice, examining the ground where it appeared rooted with the tree. Though it had moved, its end still disappeared into the ground, soil around it disturbed and upset, wet. Its other end also pierced the land, and there was no sign of any upset from the movement – no disturbing of the long grass, scoring of the turf or topsoil. In order to rise as far as it had, it must have grown.

  He moved back to the tipped tree trunk again and knelt to examine it. There were thousands of ants crawling around the exposed roots, gathering countless spotted white eggs and transferring them down beneath the soil again.

  ‘Only just exposed,’ he whispered. A breath of air passed across the clearing, rustling plants growing on the cliff face and waving the grass in complex patterns.

  The object he had brought back that morning was still where he had dropped it close to the cart. He remembered the remnant’s strange movement, and dropping the spined object as he dashed for his place beneath the overhang. After that there was nothing, and sleep must have come quickly. This journey had been a long one, and tiring, and he still felt weary.

  He touched the object, and the sense of raw power struck him hard. There was no movement this time, but a staggering potential that made everything clear and defined, smoothing blurred edges of doubt. And he knew what he had to do.

  The object was light and comfortable in his arms. He pressed it to the remnant many times – its end, its underside, the edge with the longer projecting spines. When he shifted it in his grasp and presented the shorter spines to the remnant’s underside, standing there with the shape arching above him and slicing the darkening sky in two, there was an immediate attraction that tugged the thing from his hands.

  The world turned over. Venden fell, fingers digging into the soil, terrified that he was about to fall off. His heart thudded against his chest, and he squeezed his eyes closed, thinking, This is what I was always meant to do. After a pause he rolled onto his back and looked up, and the remnant was more complete.

  The object had melded to the arched underside, spines now bent and connected to the remnant as though they had never been apart. Venden stood and stretched up to see, but there was no sign of any connection, no join. The two had become one, and when he reached up and touched the object it felt no different from the remnant.

  It was as if they had never been separate, yet, until Venden, they had been forty miles apart.

  ‘And there are more,’ he said, looking at the five other objects around the clearing. Each had a story of his finding them – guided by the presence that resided within him, shown and told where to go. Scattered across Skythe, they had been brought together again by his hands.

  One of th
em resembled a network of petrified veins, almost the size of his torso. It looked delicate, yet when he had recovered it from a deep pool beneath a waterfall he had felt the strength inherent in its structure. It was something that belonged inside. He had not applied pressure, but knew that, if he had done so, the object would have resisted, perhaps even pushed back. It had lain in the grass beside the remnant for three moons, and now he picked it up to see where it might belong.

  This time he was still clasping the thing when it hauled itself against the foot of the remnant close to the upended tree, and though the mountains seemed to shrug, he retained his balance. Part of the remnant for a moment, he felt none of the upset. It was as if it was keeping him safe.

  When Venden picked up the boxy, bony shape he had discovered in the ruin of a Skythian lakeside town, he thought that his actions resembled something like building. But as this shape also moulded itself around the remnant’s underside, he let go and fell back, acknowledging what he had somehow known all along: that he was not building something new.

  This was reconstruction.

  Chapter 5

  seed

  Milian Mu senses the sun and moon shifting around her, as if she is central to their existence, and the passage of time is an ambiguous thing. Her breathing fills the cave in rhythm with the tide, and then faster, and faster still as the smell of the sea comes in and the sense of movement fills her torso. Her blood flows, her nerves jangle.

  She shifts to a kneeling position, one hand splayed against the cave floor, shelled things falling from her body as she flexes and twists them away. Some of them she picks up and puts to her mouth, sucking out the slick insides and swallowing without chewing. The taste is neutral, but she can feel their goodness spreading through her insides.

  Some time later, Milian Mu manages to walk around the cave. Motionless for a long time, her body has lost touch with the world, and being a moving part of it once again is like being reintroduced to a former lover.