Torrodil

by Luke Geraghty

  It had awakened in the seven a profound yearning. The three Venecians had not seen their homeland in a month, and recalled stories to one another in their mother tongue, leaving the four Carric wanderers to lead the way. How the droll becomes poignant and the joyful bittersweet. Snippets of conversations they had shared, clips playing on repeat of late-night conversations during training when mosquitoes bided their time until the three retired and, when they did not, flew home to their stagnant water lairs dolefully carrying their slim pickings. The fort they had trained in had a vista of lime-green paradise – not that they could enjoy it with their twenty-hour days. When they had been broken and re-cast, they were despatched with their comrades over the mountains. But the three Venecians had not been sufficiently changed; there was no bloodlust or berserker rage. They were young and preternaturally knowing, not prepared to lose their lives for a pointless war. Today they found themselves nomads and the never-ending cicada song of their homeland vanishing under the mire waters.

  The Carric travellers also burrowed for transitory moments. For Anna and Tommy it was family: simple people you can’t wait to be away from and can’t wait to get back to; small conversations that had punctuated silence and not vice versa since the onset of adolescence. There was no way for them to know whether their loved ones were safe. They had gotten their wish and left Leitrim, but an old saying had rung true: be careful what you wish for.

  Kara and Lysander were alike in that they did not dwell on family. Lysander policed against stray thoughts. Of the seven, he had the greatest capacity to ward off the effects of his environment. Yet the mire had wells of ancient patience. The eternal night would weaken his defences and then it would take pleasure in that image of his parents, bobbing, bobbing, bobbing, gone.

  For Kara the thought of her mother was not to be brought up when scrambling over stacks of rock. The mire instead educed from her a feeling of loneliness. There were the two Carric kids and their attentive guide. There were the three bandits ploughing on and sharing stories. And there, on the periphery, was Kara and the whispering shadows, who sang to her like a siren, enticing her back and when she would not come bidding her forward but to shiny gems that turned to stone in her hand.

  Sensing she grew weary of its trickery, the mire had one last go at taking her for its own. On a small island it crafted its illusion: a jewel of a thousand facets with the pristine clarity of diamond, yet of a sublime radiance no mortal hands could have helped shape. A ray of light had seemingly been permitted through the permagloom to mark out this jewel. It is a small island and she can reach. She extends and pivots. Close, so close. She knows her body and stretches it to its limits, then over, desperately wanting it, letting that want overpower her judgement, her feet slipping on the slimy rock, seeing the illusion dissolve before her face hits the water. The mire gives lead to her boots. She flails as she sinks deeper into the abyss, acid water swimming through her sinuses, down into her lungs. The body convulses and bubbles rise through the water to the surface. Still the weight drags her down and the water unites her with the mother mire. Energy is expended, limbs flail less, she drifts.

  The mire vows to cherish the girl and to hold her in its embrace away from wriggling creatures. But hands come. And arms and heads filled with crushing tenacity. They purposefully delve into the water for its quarry and when they find it they do not let it go, tugging it to where torchlight pervades through the cloudy waters. Cesar and Mateo push her upwards into the hands of the others and drag their sodden bodies onto land, Kara coughing up the remnants in every branch and sac. Breath drives out the mire water and she regains control over body and mind.

  ‘Are you alright?’ they say. ‘What were you doing?’

  Kara looks to the small island. A spherical, algae-covered rock looks back. Mateo comes to her with his fur-lined coat, left on the ground while he dived. Dripping, he wraps it round her shivering body. ‘Why?’ is what she utters. Why help me when I have revelled in your flaws? When he says, without stutter, that she would have done the same, she feels flushed with self-loathing.

  It took half an hour before they reached the halfway point and made camp for the night in the remnants of a plantation. Tommy complained that his blisters had blisters. Anna said that after tonight they may have more than that.

  A fire soon blazed and Kara tried to shake the cold from her bones. Rooting through the contents of her knapsack, she saw little was ruined – not that there was much that could be, as the boys carried the majority of the food and besides personal effects, water, weaponry, vials and a mat to sleep on, Kara had only a large box of gold coins that had helped to sink her.

  Anna explored the ruins with Andres and Tommy. It was obvious from the foundations that the plantation had been sizable, but what resources could there have possibly been to support it?

  ‘It was a ripe land once, full of cotton,’ explained Lysander. ‘Carric men and women used slaves to work the ground until it became barren and sunken. This site was the central and largest plantation with hundreds of workers. It’s documented in The Chronicles that it burned down in a fire.’

  ‘You’ve read The Chronicles? Entirely?’ said Anna.

  ‘The Order has a vast, if unorganised, library.’

  ‘What is this book?’ asked Cesar.

  Anna replied, ‘Not one book, but several. They’re historical volumes and an extensive account of Carric history. There are few remaining copies of volumes three and five.’

  ‘If I had known you appreciated them so greatly, I would have requested that you be allowed to read them. Perhaps when we get back.’

  ‘If we get back,’ corrected Tommy, pinkie finger searching for an elusive nugget of wax. ‘What? I’m saying what you’re all thinking. It’s going to be ages till we even arrive at this Mezbollah place and then who knows how long you’ll be with those daeva women. Months? Years? What are us three,’ including Lysander and Kara with a wave, ‘supposed to do in the meantime?’

  Anna told him not to be daft. She was going there to find answers, not live with them.

  ‘But who knows whether you’ll find more than that? Maybe you won’t want to come back with us, or they won’t let you.’

  ‘I’m not going there to be told what to do either – that’s why we left, remember?’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘Don’t know why I’m arguing with you really. Guess I’m just tired.’

  The day had been long and hard, yet the drowsiness working at the cracks came from an external source. Andres offered up a tale about woodland satyrs, but the circumstances eluded him. There was talk of preparing a chicken stew on the fire as the meat could not last, but yawns gave way to heavy eyelids and it was not long before the group retired to bed.

  When Anna awoke she found the campfire had died down. Her internal hourglass was warped, and time fled before her. The others slept soundlessly, but on a distant rock stood Lysander with his back turned, gazing down at a pool, scrying for answers. His clothing fluttered in the endless chill.

  ‘Are you alright, Lysander?’

  No reply.

  ‘If you want some time by yourself, I understand.’

  Then he said, as if his family had been found melting on a human bonfire, ‘Nothing seems to make sense anymore. I know you but everything else…’

  They were walking around spirals of fog, Anna trying to get closer and failing.

  ‘There was no more fighting. The pain had gone and I felt nothing, floating somewhere in the mist. Now my mind is filled with unfamiliar thoughts. To see you having fun and laughing like your actions have no consequences…I hate it. I feel it coiling round me. And yet I know what I did to you was equally unkind. We are very selfish, you and I.’

  ‘I’m no more selfish than anyone else,’ said Anna, heart in her mouth. Riddles and no beginning or end. She was running and catching up to the figure who heard but did not care.

  ‘Lightning from the sky. Did that make you feel po
werful? Tell me the truth..’

  ‘He did not deserve to die.’

  ‘He did not deserve to live either. And it felt good, didn’t it? It made you feel bigger than everybody else because you have a gift and they don’t. What about that man’s wife and daughter? How will they cope now he is gone?’

  Anna had reached the figure and they both came to a standstill. ‘You do not frighten me.’

  The figure slanted its head as if to peer out of the corner of an eye. ‘Then why are you trembling?’

  ‘It’s cold.’

  ‘That isn’t cold you’re feeling.’

  ‘Face me.’

  ‘You know who I am.’

  ‘I must see!’ Anna pulled on the figure’s shoulder, rotating him round and into sight. Husk for a body. A face whittled away into nose and chin, vapour drifting out of empty eyes. The gas solidifies to a maleficent sheen as Bale lets the Aether take him, luxuriating in the consumption. In a blast of air he disintegrates into ravens that fly at Anna, scratching her face with their talons as they beat past into the starless sky. The girl is left to the mire, fog rolling in.

  Anna awoke the next day with the night speckled with unreliable sights and sounds, a slight fever chewing on what was left of her lucid thought.

  ‘Dry crusty bread: the food of kings,’ said Tommy.

  The boy’s disposition was starting to grate. Lysander said there was some ham if he wanted it. Cesar had taken it along with the butter.

  ‘Well that’s probably gone then. Why you’d give it to him? He’d eat it, bread or no bread.’

  ‘I apologise. I did not know.’

  ‘Don’t mind him, Lysander,’ said Anna, stretching to try to slough off the night skin. ‘He gets like this when he’s hungry.’

  Tommy was too busy trying to get his teeth into a hard end of loaf to take immediate notice, but the words eventually filtered through. With crumbs down his top, he said, ‘I’m not an animal. And what’s with your face? It’s uglier than usual.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There are scratches all over it. Maybe you’ve been having night terrors again.’

  Anna touched her face and felt raised marks, soreness taken by the cold. At the water’s edge she saw that they were superficial cuts, likely to heal and disappear quickly. She found Kara sitting on a rock there, staring at her own reflection and seeming atypically morose.

  ‘You alright?’

  When Kara went to return her gaze, Anna felt the hairs on her back rise in anticipation, but this figure was human.

  ‘Just thinking. Your face: it’s cut.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  The swirling questions were of no use to Anna. There was no rational explanation. This was a place skilled in deception and it must have been another phantasm conjured up to amuse the mire. Anna dismissed it and went to sit next to Kara, finding the rock colder than she had expected and, according to the damp blotch it was engraining on her backside, noticeably wetter.

  Anna said, ‘You know it’s nice to have another girl in the group. Another day stuck travelling with boys and I reckon I would have started to go loopy.’

  The hooded girl smiled an honest smile.

  ‘What’s that in your hand?’ asked Anna.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve not seen it before, but it reminds me of morrowbean. See these prickly leaves,’ Kara traced a finger around the outside, ‘they likely contain an irritant. I’ll bring it to my father when we get back. He’ll find it fascinating, I’m sure.’

  ‘He must be an intelligent man.’

  Kara looked to water and saw the alchemy lab and her father, dismissive of food. ‘Yes, he’s very dedicated to his work.’

  ‘Did he teach you what you know? About alchemy, I mean.’

  ‘He tried. You could say I wasn’t a model pupil.’

  A frank look Kara gave Anna sent them both into a fit of laughter that caught them off-guard. Blame the morning or the absurdity of their situation, but this was cheek-reddening, side-splitting laughter and they were united by it, causing the very fog around them to shrink away with each girlish giggle.

  ‘Shaper,’ said Anna, wiping away a tear, ‘I don’t know what’s come over us.’

  Cesar was shouting. ‘Ladies! Sorry to break up your fun but unless you would enjoy spending another night in this krukhole we have to get moving.’

  They gathered themselves up and took a deep breath, trying to shake the laughter and not looking at one another in case they set it off again. Packing up their bed rolls sobered them up and by the time they had started walking they were back to normal, navigating around rocks and pools and scenes that were interchangeable. Had it not been for Lysander’s resolute sense of direction, which needed no stars or sun to steer the group on, they would have been lost to that place.

  With cuts and nicks, hungry stomachs from skipping lunch, and plenty of disillusion, the seven plodded on, eager to get out. The mire’s power waned per step and no lure could enthral them or convince them to stay. When one began to fall behind, another went to their side and amused them with jokes, keeping their eyes from dwelling too long on the changeable waters.

  Boulders and dead trees became avenues of opaque stone. Slowly the mists cleared and the shade brightened, from darkness to twilight to cloudy sky. Pools widened to blue-black streams and animals came out of hiding, frogs croaking to their hearts’ content. The group could hear a river ahead and restored cheerfulness carried them on to it. On a hill at the edge of the mire they gave in to their appetite and set their eyes on a happy sight: a view of the sun folding into night above the jungle of the Kurashi Wilds. Beneath them ran a shimmering cobalt river. Hunger satiated and thirst quenched, they meandered down dry rock and set up camp on wildflower and grass, leaving the mire to bubble and plot.

  Eleven – A Nine Year War

  A peaceful sleep held the seven until morning song, when adventurous, rainbow-feathered birds came to the waterside to inspect their guests and seek out food troves. Fresh water was gathered from the river and each washed off the mire from their skin, careful not to be taken along with the current. The river was too vast to be waded through, so they set off following it west in search of a bridge. Welcoming the sun after the last two days, the seven soon discovered it sharp in the clear sky, opening up pockets of strain on their shoulders and backs like dormant larvae squirming beneath a communal sac. After an hour of no bridge, dizzy heads and many breaks, they turned to Anna for a possible solution.

  ‘You want me to snap my fingers and conjure up a bridge from thin air, is that it?’

  The girl was rested, but the events of the mire had not left her and the moment had passed in which she could tell them. She did not want to add another burden to their heavy load, yet that is what they were asking of her: to use her ability when they knew, as she did, of its source. Tommy was berating her in their usual manner and it did not faze her. Childish insults would not change her mind.

  ‘So we have to go back through that wretched place just ‘cause you’re too pig-headed to even try?’

  Mateo attempted to ease the boy by saying there was probably a bridge up ahead somewhere and they’d find it if they kept moving.

  ‘No, I want to know what’s gotten into her. She happily used Cesar as a duster in the monastery but now, when she’s needed, she refuses to help us. Something’s not right.’

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like, Tommy. You have no idea.’

  Tommy approached her. ‘Then tell me. I want to know.’

  Anna closed her eyes to stop the emotion from creeping up, pushing it all the way down for a better time. ‘Freedom. I don’t want to lose myself to it.’

  ‘You won’t,’ replied Tommy. ‘I won’t let you.’

  ‘Charming as this is, I’m beginning to crispen,’ said Kara, chewing on the moment’s toxic schmaltz. ‘Can we get a move on?’ Cesar barked that there was some shade over there and they wouldn’t mind if she lost herself in it. ‘Venecian, if you insi
st on talking to me then please enunciate. Your butchering of my language is one thing but I can barely understand a word that you say.’

  ‘¡Piérdete!’

  ‘See, if you want to speak proper Carric you must rid yourself of those horrible r’s. You sound as if you are coughing up a furball, though with your cleaning habits and that amount of hair, one would hardly be surprised.’

  ‘Please,’ begged Andres to Anna, ‘save us.’

  ‘…a Vial of Webbing will solidify the tongue, just stop struggling…’

  Anna looked to Lysander for reassurance and found hesitance in his nod, but a nod nonetheless. He knew there was likely no bridge nearby, as there was no need for one. The girl had to learn to control her powers and this would come through practice, not patience.

  With the six behind her, Anna turned to the river. She sought the feelings that had brought the Aether: despair, pain, grief. The elemental magic she wielded did not come through study in cold halls with wizards and witches; it was intuitive and reactive, called upon when she had dire need for it, and with no reigns that she could ever hope to fully seize. Searching, bringing up the emotionally-charged memories of Leitrim so that they were flagrant. Still no sorcery surged from her hands.

  After ten minutes the group took refuge in the shade and gave her the solitude she needed. The Venecians spoke in a bilingual medley of language and jargon, with Tommy taking a yellowcup and shining it under everyone’s chins to see if they liked cheese – everyone except Kara, that is, who gave the boy a disbelieving squint and held up the dagger she was sharpening.

  Meanwhile, Anna was letting the sun divine for water on her forehead. She let her mind lapse through the tunnel of thought, past the tendrils and Bale into positive sensation. She was a girl letting the rain soak into her skin, rolling amongst the red and brown, floating and swirling with the wind, watching the birds, glowing in Lake Leitrim’s radiant patina, reclaiming the memories that had been scattered to the four corners.