‘Why? Is it the robes?’
‘Well you are a monk, aren’t you? You’re supposed to be mature and dignified and serious; a real figurehead in the community.’
‘That makes me sound about seventy five with no hair.’
Anna waited, letting her breathing settle. A ruminative silence drifted in on a desert wind. ‘You know you never talk about the Order. To think about it, you never talk about your family. Not one bit. Everyone else has sat around the fire and shared stories of some kind, even Kara, but you haven’t.’ His gaze had turned away from her. ‘If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand. I was merely curious.’
Bobbing, bobbing, bobbing…
He unsealed the vault and let the day come back to him. Seven years later and the contents are unfading.
‘I prefer not to bring up the past. It is a fruitless endeavour.’
‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘And you have not.’ He considered his training; the unpacking of the taxing event with Elder Francis and the wisdom he had imparted: ‘Do not try to forget it, you cannot, but let it go.’ It was the same wisdom the young monk had shared with Anna. How was he expected to move on if he kept his past hidden? ‘I don’t have any family, Anna. I was orphaned at a young age.’
‘I’m sorry, I had no idea.’
‘Don’t be. It was many years ago. It does not affect me.’ Anna did not pry further. To prove he was not rattled, however, he continued: ‘I was thirteen years old and going to a grammar school I loathed, always getting into fights, always destroying chairs and desks and books for amusement.’
‘I couldn’t have imagined it.’
‘Like I said it was a long time ago. Thankfully.’ He recovered his train of thought. ‘I’d truanted for days. Seven, eight? It was absurd. Gone in the school through the main gate and left it out of the back one. But I had to return eventually and when I did my teacher pulled me up in front of class, prepared to make an example out of me. Before the cane could slap down over my knuckles I’d grabbed it and was beating him into submission. I can remember him shouting to stop. I didn’t. My classmates had to restrain me.
‘Needless to say I was expelled from the school. I refused to leave so they sent for my parents. My mother was angry. Livid even. Father, on the other hand, was just disappointed. Could see it in his eyes. Never a good actor, my father. We walked back and they tried to get me to think about what I’d done. I can’t say I really cared. Could’ve been worse, I thought.’
A light trickle, like running water, churning away under the sand.
‘The clouds had been threatening rain the entire day. When it first started it was dismissible, but it grew rapidly and we were caught unawares in the middle of a country lane with the trees cut back and no place to shelter. My parents had, by that point, turned their attentions to one another’s failings and were busy haranguing one another, not noticing where they were going or the ever-increasing rain. They were in front of me. I’ll always remember it. There in front. And the rain just swept them off the bridge. I ran for the bank and they used their last breaths to shout for me not to move. I watched as the river took them.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Again, there is no need for apology. It was an accident. I know I could not have done anything and I have reconciled the past, even though I may not choose to bring it up by the fireside.’
The trickle has morphed into an awful rumbling. Like something rushing through earth, pulverising anything in its path to sugar grain. Mateo has recognised the sound from the prior night and focuses his attention on it. Distinguishing finer qualities is tricky, but he can hear phases of movement, up and down, up and down. It's not moving on – it's making rings beneath them.
‘Can I ask how you came to be with the Illuminate Order? Did they take you in?’
‘After my parents passed away I lived on the streets for a time. We had been a small family. Apart from my parents, there was only me and an uncle who, after their passing, was entrusted as my guardian and that of the estate. It seems responsibility did not become him. He threw me out with nothing but the clothes on my back. From what I heard he gambled my father’s money away. I’ve no idea where he may be.’
Mateo goes to tell Andres but the boy has already heard it.
‘For eleven months I was without a home. It would be fair to say I made a poor thief – I hadn’t the instincts for it – but I learned to survive. On a bitter night, after days of no food, I saw a cake in a window and put a stone through the glass to get at it. Before I could take a bite Elder Francis knocked me off my feet with this thing,’ pointing to the Staff of Ohmer in his grasp, ‘then presented me with an opportunity that I accepted. And that is the life story of Lysander Alwell. Speak it to anyone upon penalty of—’
The rumbling becomes a bellow. The ground starts to quake and the sands shift.
‘Anna, what are you doing?’ shouts Tommy.
‘It’s not me!’
Dunes behind them are collapsing in a golden avalanche; the desert itself shaking in terror. Gazon is running, his brown pitted skin turned deathly pale. He’s past Tommy, now Anna and Lysander, running back from where he’s come, scared out of his senses, fearful for his life. The pashminas. All for the pashminas.
What’s he saying?
‘Ilus! Ilus!’
What does that mean?
Gazon doesn’t have time to translate. The squawking buzzards died down with the pipe but they did not leave. With the pipe confiscated, locked away in the tavern, they have grown strong. Where they’d circled above, blocking out the sun periodically, they now whisk up the sand with their wings, flying low with their beady eyes transfixed. His talons against theirs. And theirs are many.
In the grip of delusion, Gazon stops and guards his face. Then, in the twinkling of a beady eye, a grotesque being thrusts out of the sand underneath him, snatching the man with its barbed teeth as it shoots up. With a loud crunch it snaps his spine and swallows him whole, a tiny scrap for its giant length.
The seven look at its hard shell, covered with fine, cilium-like hairs. With a single eye the beast spies for the others it could sense from under the surface. Its vision is poor and it relies on hearing and vibration.
‘S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s—’
Limbless creature cranes its neck. Most of its body is submerged.
‘Sandworm!’ shouts Mateo, whereupon the seven act upon an earlier impulse to flee and tear away through the sand, beast in hot pursuit. In and out of the sand it dives, not stopping to stick up that periscope head because each of the seven’s steps is like thunder next to its curved-in ears. Diving and hearing their little hearts pump warm juice, bones creaking with exertion. Bone juice for the thirsty beast, bone juice the tasty treat.
Anna is first on the menu. The one closest. Swimming through the sand in big, long strokes with her sweat gathering in pools under her arms, waiting to glide down her ribs. It can feel every one of her steps; how the hot sand leaks into her shoes to tickle her baby feet, crunchy toes and crunchier nails.
Diving and snapping at her with its colossal jaws because it can sense the wind rushing over her back. Swooping down with a long stroke, her toffee hair flowing out behind her, its jaws extending, strands of drool slipping out, bone juice and baby feet at the back of its mouth, about to make the girl offal, missing, getting a good taste of the dry, dry sand as it plummets down under, sending Anna to the ground with its force.
Up into the biting air, girl fallen off sensor, stick-carrying man too. Sharp pain in the back and a reflexive yowl as Anna comes down, stabs her sword into its flesh and grips on for dear life. Lysander hits the sandworm a moment later and slides down past her, grabbing an arm just in time. Together the monk and the daeva ride the Sandworm Express and brace themselves for the face full of sand that’s incoming. The Express cannot be held accountable for the loss of personal belongings. Or limbs.
Sandworm spots second appetising girl and a drippi
ng-with-sweat boy.
‘Can’t you do something?’ Tommy shouts at Kara.
‘Yes, run like that word that begins with k that ladies do not say!’
Looking back, seeing the beast’s sharp teeth and ravenous appetite. What the? Running, looking again. Yep, there’s two people riding the worm back there.
‘A vial, throw a vial. It’s gonna kill ‘em!’
Kara snatches one up, runs side on, squints and lobs it, where it spins through the air till it shatters on the creature’s tongue. A green cloud chokes the worm and it gives out a cough that changes into a booming roar.
‘I think you’ve angered it.’
‘I can’t believe I’m going to die…with you!’
Sandworm lunging forward, its passengers looking a little worse for wear. Jaws elongating, mouth opening – Shaper, how many sets of teeth does it need? – bearing down, about to run its teeth across Kara’s back and beating heart, getting an arrow in the gums and another that breaks off the end of a tooth. Andres pulls a third arrow from his quiver and takes aim for the eye, giving up when Tommy and Kara reach him. Together they scurry away and wince when they hear the pounding fire up yet again.
Coming to an unexpected cliff, the five peer over a sheer drop into a valley. Death by falling? Looking down at the jagged rocks. Death by sandworm? Looking back at the hideous beast. And here are Anna and Lysander to join in the contemplation, pitched off the worm's head and arriving with a thump in front of the five. Anna kisses the sword to thank it for saving their lives. Darn, she’s just got a mouthful of sandworm squash, and it kinda tastes like figs pickled in cat pee.
Worm tunnels up.
‘Anna, if you’ve got any tricks up your sleeve, for the love of everything that is holy and not disembowelled, use them!’ shouts Tommy.
‘I need time.’
About to emerge from the sand.
‘We don’t have time!’
Creature pushes its misshapen head out of the ground and goes in for the kill, seven bracing themselves for it, creature’s jaws elongating, creature’s massive weight crippling the cliff and launching them down in a cascade of sand and rock, beast roaring, seven screaming, sun going about its business. Sigh, another humdrum day.
Dragging their bodies out of the sand, they see walls ahead. Soaring, tough, thick walls. But the beast is quiet. Dead. They breathe a sigh of relief, inspecting their bodies. Cesar gives Anna one of his trademark winks. ‘See, easy,’ he says. Then the worm whips its tail up out of the sand and smacks him against the walls. Six flee in his direction. Sandworm, entire body out in the open, snakes its way towards them, faster since it’s been freed from the earth.
They run through an open archway.
The sandworm smashes through the walls and grinds fallen bricks to powder.
Rushing through a settlement, the world is a blur. Oases. Obelisks. And up ahead a temple with an impractical amount of steps.
The beast bangs its head on the ground and a shockwave flings the seven through two wooden walls of a food store, demolishing it in the process. Shattered and sprawled out over dirt and reeds, they await the fatal crunch. With his last ounce of strength, Andres aims, shoots and puts an arrow through the worm’s eye. Blood spews out in a grisly spray. But the creature does not rely on this relic to hunt. A roar to conclude their clash. Bone juice for the thirsty beast.
A disc of spitting flame takes a chunk out of the sandworm, which veers back in surprise, taking volleys of stone and ice to its exposed chest. Pain, penetrating pain. The worm senses a running woman. It will take her under the ground and abandon this place. Lunging for her and biting down on stoneskin, shattering two teeth and tasting no flesh. A burst of air right past Mateo’s ear and then there are three shapes darting into the air, raising the worm out of the sand and up into the sky. Effervescent beings of water and air hurl weather-bolts at the floating beast, masters by their side, attuning their thoughts with the elemental constructs.
Powerless, the sandworm twists and turns in their onslaught. When the breath has been drawn out of its lungs and its great length hacked down to size, the three shapes that sustained the tornado settle into concrete form. With twirling fingers a woman with grey flecks in her hair wraps up the worm’s cadaver in wind and throws it out into the distance along with its severed chunks.
Forty women surround the seven.
Forty daeva.
Nineteen – To War
Queen Katharine rides with her cavalry, passing through the Waverpine Forest and over the Eyre River, collecting reinforcements as she goes and marching ever on. Her declaration of war has outraged King Barbosa. Spies in the Venecian capital of Aracille say he has dispatched a minor portion of his forces – some ten thousand men – to rip through Carrigan like a sickle through wheat.
The Council would rather see that punishment saved solely for Katharine. While her hair-raising speech was a trifle overwrought, it succeeded in convincing the people that war was inevitable, pitting the two great nations of Torrodil against one another with barely an afterthought for how defenceless Carrigan was going to fare. The infantry, longbowmen and Queen’s specialised, lighter cavalry currently amount to less than a thousand men. In short: it’s going to be a bloodbath, and Carric men will be the ones doing the bleeding.
The Queen has decided to round up willing fighters herself, travelling first through the Inner Kingdom she knows and loves. At Orcester her forces are augmented by two hundred sons of gentry; in the city of Northwood, producer of the Empire’s limited stock of gunpowder, fifty engineers and three hundred musketmen join her ranks; then loyal buccaneers sent from the former colony of the Frozen Isles; archer women from Milbourne; fishermen from the seaport of Shelsley; and swordfighters from Edenford Academy. Two hard of hearing ladies who invited Katharine in for a spot of afternoon tea were very enthusiastic about joining up, showing the queen their deceased husbands’ portraits, and Floss the cat, and Tyler the dog, and the plant hospital (it was touch and go whether the marigolds would last another week). Katharine politely declined their request. Four times. In the end she gave them her autograph to show to their bridge club and snuck away, being pawed in a most undignified manner by Tyler on the way out.
Lord Sutton is in isolation following an embarrassing fainting episode on the Kelgard promenade. It wasn’t really the fainting that was the problem – just that he chose to do it in the lap of a married woman. With her husband sitting next to her. Claims suggesting His Lordship’s frailty is grossly exaggerated and convenient considering the timing are, quote a House of Sutton representative, ‘pure slander that will be promptly dealt with’ and that ‘His Lordship is actively pursuing his legal options’. Said representative has discreetly confided that the only thing Lord Sutton is actively pursuing is the bottom of a whisky bottle.
Meanwhile, the Red Lady and her army head into the Middle Kingdom, intending to round up the garrisoned forces and move on quickly. The Venecian army advances through the Ashvale Mountains to the west, thoughts firmly on the spoils of war. With any luck the Queen will be able to strengthen her ragtag and ill-equipped army with the good farmers and labourers of the Outer Kingdom, who she hopes will go to war for her as she has gone to war for them.
Twenty – The Gauntlet
Cesar had never wondered what it might be like having an ice javelin held to his throat. Now he wouldn’t have to.
‘Anna.’
‘Cesar.’
‘Why aren’t they saying anything?’
‘Those biceps of yours. Mesmerising.’
‘You promised no more comments,’ Cesar says, inwardly pleased that the attention has been drawn back to him. The early morning workout routine: it’s paying off!
A daeva of slim girth eyeballs Cesar like he’s sandwich filling.
‘They’re your people,’ he says tensely, addressing Anna as if she were descended from a race of acid-spitting, mutant squid crossbreeds. ‘Reason with them.’
But there’s no need
. A woman with grey flecks in her hair approaches them, ordering her kin to stand down. She sees no-one but the girl and with searching eyes does she present her with an invitation she cannot refuse.
Hidden in the Lost Valley, the secluded settlement of Thrace does not require imposing walls to safeguard its contents, but they have proved an effective device to ensnare potential thieves and desert wanderers, who seek to either steal or fondle the antique treasures within. There is a moral code in daevan society and it does not extend to strangers.
They asked Anna why she had come but they knew. Each could sense the gift that infused her essence. Normally it was static that could be shaken off. With this girl, however, the energy had manifested itself as a steady throb; in close proximity a drumming that could not be ignored. She was as painful to feel as she was to behold.
Through porticos and palm tree-covered courtyards did they lead the seven onward. Kara appraised the women’s bejewelled clothes, rings of amethyst and amber, silver bangles, weighty pendants and the single serrated pauldron worn on their left shoulders. Anna took in the oases with water more green than blue; black obelisks with depictions of daevan heroines etched in gold; white stone staircases inscribed with runes. The men were not concerned with clothes or edifices. Their eyes trailed down bare midriffs and skirt slits. Lysander understood then why the monks of the Illuminate Order isolated themselves from the opposite sex, and why the daeva did the same.
The forty women whittled down to ten, and ten to five. Lysander’s note from Elder Francis was burning a hole in his pack and he was keen to be rid of it, yet the daeva did not respond to his or anyone else’s requests – they led the seven to a shaded banquet table and encouraged them to replenish their strength.
Very strange to not find themselves in a cell or a hall. The idea that the food or drink may be poisoned did cross their minds, but it was too appetising to resist and they found themselves eating and drinking no sooner than half a minute after they had sat down. The woman with grey flecks in her hair scrutinised them from afar. The men were a grievance, yes, but the indomitable Anna Gray was her primary focus. The girl the winds had sung of had made it to the desert alive, and an eleven-year-old mistake would have to be corrected.
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