by Tim Stead
“What will happen if the assessment goes against me?”
“There are options. You are unlikely to be harmed.”
“What does that mean?”
“The most likely outcome is that you will be resettled on another world where you will not be out of place.”
“Exiled.”
“If you like.”
“It makes no difference to you that I do not wish to be exiled, that I want to go home?”
“That will be taken into account.”
“I have done no wrong. Why do you wish to punish me?”
“It is not punishment. It is simply necessary that the things you know are not known widely.”
“I will not tell anyone.”
The man shrugged. “We cannot know that for certain, and these matters are best raised at the assessment.”
“Will you be there?”
“Yes.”
She understood. Alder would be there as her advocate and another Ekloi, possibly this one, would be there to speak against her. Finally she would be given a chance to speak, and then they would make a decision, probably to take her from her own world, to cast her out among other people, different people whose ways she would have to learn. It would be survival, but she would be like a mariner forced to live on land, a bird with no wings. A pointless existence.
“You can go,” she said.
“You have no more questions?”
“None that you would answer.”
The man nodded, stood and left. She was alone again. How bleak the future seemed. She tried to imagine a world without her family, without White Rock, without East Scar, Yasu, Samara, a world where there were no Kalla trees, no guardsmen, nobody to speak to her in her own tongue.
She did not think that she had ever appreciated her own world as much as she now did. The sun, the wind, the trees; the way ships were rigged and their triangular sails that scooped the wind, the dark colour of the sea, the snow that lay thick on the mountains and in winter visited them in the town, the dusty roads, the smell of baking bread. It would all be different somewhere else, could be. The people, too, would be different in ways that she could not imagine.
How can I sway them?
She relived her life a piece at a time, trying to pin down the moments of significance, but she had followed an unremarkable path until the last few months. If anything was the key it was there, somewhere in her frantic pursuit of Karnack the killer across half the world. She had met important people, people who mattered, but would any of them be bothered if she simply failed to show up again, if she vanished without trace?
She tried to think of something that tied her to these people, but nothing came to mind. She had not promised to see them again, and even if she had done so, a broken promise was not a remarkable thing in so troubled a world. They knew of her warrant, and her search for Karnack, but that was it. They might be surprised if she did not finally serve the warrant, but probably not curious enough to seek her.
The more she thought the more it became clear to her that she was doomed to exile. She was nobody. Only her family would care that she was gone, and she had run from them in her pursuit of Karnack. They did not know where she was, and could only hope that they would see her again.
She lay down on the bed. It was night outside, and she could hear strange noises carried to her on the warm breeze. Birds and insects, or whatever took their place here she thought. It would be like this for ever. Strangeness everywhere. She could not sleep for a long time, but lay on the blankets listening to the sounds and smelling the strange scents of this world, wondering why she could not weep.
* * * *
She woke in the middle of the night. She did not know what had woken her, but there was a familiar phrase in her head, and she examined it.
When you look in the mirror you do not see what others see.
She did not know what it meant, but for some reason it gave her comfort, and she fell asleep again almost immediately.
It must have been hours later when she was woken again. This time it was quite clear why she had awoken. A figure was bending over the bed shaking her gently by the shoulder.
“Be quiet,” he whispered when he saw that her eyes were open. “Make no noise or we will be lost.” He withdrew to the other side of the room and stood there in the darkness.
“What is going on?” she asked. “Am I being taken to the assessment? They could have waited until morning.”
“Please lower your voice,” his was an urgent hiss. “Do not make a light. It will be seen. I am here to take you home.”
She felt a sudden surge of emotion when she heard the word, but she knew where she had to go. “White Rock,” she said. “I have to go to White Rock.”
“As you wish,” the man said. It was clearly a matter of indifference exactly where in her own world she wanted to go. “But hurry. Dress and gather your things. We must leave now.”
“Do the Ekloi know what you are doing?”
“They must never be told. Once you are back in Shanakan you will be safe. They will not move against you. But you must be true to your word – tell nobody of what you have seen and heard. To speak of it will provoke them. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
She was suspicious. By now she was naturally suspicious of anything, but she could not see a motive in this. She packed what she could into a bundle. There wasn’t much. She hadn’t brought anything with her other than a coat against the wind and a cloth to keep her hair in place.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Is it not the right thing to do?”
There was something about him. Every time she asked him a question he told her something that wasn’t quite what she wanted to know. He never quite answered the question.
“You are Ekloi,” she said.
He was still for a moment. “Yes.”
“So where are you really taking me?”
“To White Rock, on Shanakan. That is where you wish to go, is it not?”
“It is. But why are you going against the others?”
“The decision is not yet made. If you are returned home before the assessment there is no violation of the will.”
A technicality. But he had failed to answer the question again. In the end it did not matter. If he was really going to take her back to White Rock it was all that she cared about, but it would be too late. She would have missed the caravan to Woodside.
“It’s a pity you weren’t a day earlier,” she said. She tucked her bundled coat under an arm, and now she was fully awake. “I am ready to go.”
He reached forwards and took her wrist in his hand. She was prepared for the step this time. That’s what they called it, this amazing transfer between worlds – no more than a step. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on an image of home; blue skies and dusty houses, the windswept streets of White Rock town. She felt the world spin away, twisting in a dozen directions at once. She held herself rigid and focussed on the image she had conjured. The nausea was quite bearable, but her head still spun, and then there was a sensation of ground under her feet again. It was odd, but she had not felt it go, had been unaware of leaving the ground, but it was suddenly there again, and she opened her eyes, managed to keep from stumbling or falling down.
“We are here,” the man said.
She looked at him. He was revealed to her in the daylight that flooded the town. It was evening light, but compared to the night of that alien world it was brightness itself. He was shorter than Alder, and very much younger. His eyes had a strange vacant look, but without that she might have counted him good looking.
“What day is it?” she asked. She would have to make up some tale to tell the colonel if she was not to reveal what had really transpired.
“It is the same day that you left,” the Ekloi said.
She stared at him. How could that be?
“How can that be? We have been gone for two days at least. Can you travel back in time?”
He smiled. “No. Time’s arrow is fixed, but all worlds do not travel through time at the same rate. You were fortunate to travel to quicker places. You have been gone from here for seven hours, no more than that.”
She looked at the streets; saw the bulk of rock looming over the town. This was White Rock indeed. She turned to speak to him again, but he was already fading, a figure in shadow untouched by the evening sun. As she watched he twisted into nothingness and she was alone in the street. For the first time in her life she felt uncomfortable being on her own. She was unprotected, naked, exposed; she felt like prey.
The walk back around the great rock and up the road to the gates seemed longer than she remembered. She hurried, wanting to see other faces again, other people, simple people who inhabited just one world. She dreaded that there would be no guards on the gate, that all the world had been stripped of what was important while she was away, and she was delighted to see the usual couple of relaxed guardsmen bracketing the gate. They straightened as she approached, became more alert.
“Is everything well, Ima?” one of them asked.
“It is well,” she replied.
“Only you came up that hill like something was chasing you.”
“Just hurrying,” she said. “Glad to be back.”
The guardsman nodded, but there was still a touch of disbelief in his expression. She passed them by and went through the gate, heading directly for the stair that led up to her chamber.
“Felice.”
She turned with a start at the sound of her name, but even as she turned her brain made sense of the voice. It was Sabra, the colonel’s lieutenant. A friend.
“Lieutenant.” She said.
“I was worried,” the woman said. “I have been waiting for you.”
“I am back, as you see.”
“Yes, I see, but when Alder returned without you…”
“He is back?”
“Yes. You did not know? He came back almost two hours ago. Had you not returned by dark I would have questioned him. Where have you been?”
“In the town,” she answered a little too quickly, and knew at once that she had. “It is something that I cannot discuss. Please do not ask.”
“As you wish, but I must be certain that you have not been harmed.”
“I am quite well,” Felice reassured her.
“And yet your dress is torn at the hem, stained with dirt at the knees, and there is an impressive bruise on you upper arm…”
Felice said nothing. She could not deny what Sabra saw, and she could not explain it without some elaborate lie. She would not lie.
“I am sorry to detain you, Ima,” Sabra said and stepped out of her way.
At once she felt that she had slighted the lieutenant, and wanted very much to confide in her, to tell everything, but she knew that it would be a mistake. Nothing would be gained, and both of them would be at risk.
“Sabra,” she said. “Thank you for waiting for me.”
“My duty, Ima,” the lieutenant said.
She went on her way, climbed the stairs to her room. What did it mean that Alder had returned? He should have been back on that alien world, waiting for the assessment to begin. She did not know how much faster time passed there, but they could already have discovered that she was gone.
She listened at her own door, but could hear nothing. Even if somebody was in there she would expect to hear nothing, she realised, and opened the door. The room was empty. It seemed cold and unlived it. Her clothes and other belongings clustered at the foot of the neatly made bed as though huddling together for company. She joined them, sitting on the bed, and then jumped up again, having sat on something hard beneath the blankets.
She reached under the bedding, and found a bundle of cloth tucked well down, flattened, invisible. She pulled it out and carefully unwrapped it, laying each fold open with great care. She knew what it was, what it had to be, almost at once, but she did not really dare to believe until the last fold was opened out and it lay in her hand. Pathfinder. It was the knife, Pathfinder.
It was not just the blade, not only being reunited with Jem’s gift which had served her so well, but what it said to her. Alder had brought this back. He had carried it to her room and hidden it in her bed in a place where only she would find it. He had known that she would be returning. He had known that she would come back. He had been part of it.
Now she could sleep.
17. To Woodside
The steward Alder, Sinalder the Ekloi, whatever he might be, did not show his face the following morning. By the time Felice had risen and eaten her fill of breakfast in the archers’ mess hall a number of wagons were assembled in the great courtyard and the place clanked, shouted, snorted, stamped, banged and jangled with purpose. It smelt of horses, it smelt of journeys. Someone offered her a cup of jaro, and she took it, sipped it, felt the warmth and sweetness in her mouth, just as on that other day, a century ago it seemed, when she had stood with Cedric in her father’s yard in East Scar, and again, the same again, in a strange warehouse yard in Samara, talking with Ella Saine, the king’s advisor.
It was mostly people who travelled on this route, but not a great number, for there seemed plenty of room. The wagons must bring back a great deal more from Woodside than they took there, she supposed. She looked again for Alder in the courtyard, but he did not appear and she did not think it her place to seek him out. If he chose to keep to himself that was probably his business. She would have liked to have seen him, though, just to nod, to smile, to let him know that the knife was back with her.
One of the drovers told her where to stow her baggage, and she climbed in alongside it, using her roll of clothing as a cushion for her back. She wedged herself sideways on the wagon so that she could look forwards and backwards with ease. She sat and waited for the preparations to be complete and for the journey to begin.
The trip would take three days. She could have done it in two on horseback, but she did not know how to ride. It had never seemed important. Three days was all right. She would be in time. Karnack would still be there.
She tried to think about Karnack, but had difficulty summoning up his face or the sound of his voice. She closed her eyes and cast her mind back to the tavern by the strand in Yasu. The Red Sail. She had no trouble seeing the row of ships, the busy sailors, even the little eating house at the end of the docks where she’d enjoyed a sweet cake and a cup of hot jaro. She could even recall the face of the shop’s proprietor, a man of middle age, polite, kind eyes, a little excess on his belly. These images were sharp, but when she tried to think of Karnack her mind slipped away from the memory. It was like trying to stand round stones on top of one another, they always tumbled away no matter how hard she tried. Todric eluded her, too. But that was not true. She could remember him perfectly from East Scar, arguing over the dinner table, his eyes bright, his voice assured, and she trying to make him see that he was gambling with their profits when there was no need. He was always too fond of the grand coup, the success that reached beyond modesty. She never thought him arrogant, though. Todric was simply attracted to excitement. He had seen life as a game, and had not doubted that he could win.
Beyond East Scar his memory became shadowy. It was as though he had begun to fade as soon as the wagons had crested the steep walls of the valley, as though he only really existed in those happy times.
“Ima.”
She looked up to see that a horse had stopped in front of the wagon. It was Sabra. She sat comfortably astride the horse, a short sword at her hip and a bow slung over her shoulder. Two quivers of arrows hung from the pommel, and she was dressed in a thoroughly warlike manner.
“Lieutenant Sabra. You are going somewhere?” It seemed a stupid question when she had spoken it, but Sabra did not take it so.
“We are coming with you,” she replied.
Felice looked around and saw that a small troop of guards were formed up to the rear of the wagons. She counted ten of th
em.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“The colonel feels that you’ve had enough excitement for the time being. We are to ensure that your trip to Woodside is uneventful.”
“You suspect we may be attacked?”
“I suspect nothing, Ima. I follow orders. Like the colonel I am a guardsman. It is what we do.” She turned her horse and trotted back to the end of the wagons. A moment later there was a shouting from the front and the whole train began to move, each cart taking its turn to jolt into life and roll carefully beneath the great arch, out beneath the unfettered sky.
So that was White Rock. She gazed up at the walls as they passed down the spiral road. She was hungry for the sight of them now, as though realising for the first time that it was a remarkable thing to be here, to see them, to have had the chance to do so. This was the centre of the world. In one way it was, but in another it was a place of simple certainties, all of which were illusions. Beneath their certain foundations the Ekloi and the Faer Karan carried on their secret struggle, their dance of hunter and prey, and even now, somewhere in the world, they sought Kalnistine, and perhaps others. It was a shadow play hidden from all the world. From many worlds.
She watched the fortress diminish behind them as they rolled southwards through the trees, the long straight road giving her a wonderful view of the rock and the walls that crowned it until they turned at a bridge, angling south-east, and the panorama was lost in the tall trees.
She looked back at the guardsmen trailing in the wake of the wagons. They rode as far to the side of the trail as they could, keeping away from the white dust that the wheels kicked up. There was something that Sabra had said that picked at her. She followed orders. Like the colonel. Had she meant it in that sense? That the orders came from somewhere higher? But that would mean Serhan, and she was sure that the mage lord was barely aware of her existence. Again, hadn’t Borbonil said something about Serhan? She struggled to remember, but could not recall the words.