The Demon Horsemen

by Tony Shillitoe

  Swift appeared, knife in hand, followed by Chase carrying Jon and finally Wahim. Meg ended the portal spell.

  ‘What’s happened here?’ Chase asked.

  ‘Someone else has moved in while you’ve been gone,’ Meg told him.

  ‘With some nasty animals,’ Swift noted.

  ‘We’d be better off heading for my shop,’ Meg said.

  ‘Someone else is probably living there too,’ said Wahim. ‘It’s been a year since we left.’

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ Meg argued.

  ‘Oh shit!’ Swift exclaimed and bolted for the front door. She wrenched it open and dashed into the street with Wahim following her. Chase and Meg looked on, bewildered. Jon started to whimper.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Chase crooned to calm his nephew.

  Meg stepped out into the lane and saw, twenty paces on, Swift and Wahim helping a scrawny figure to her feet. Three people at the end of the lane were staring at the scene. Wahim waved to them, calling in a friendly tone, ‘It’s all right. She fell. She’s fine.’

  As the trio reached Meg, Swift said, ‘It’s Mouse. Remember? She came with us when we first sheltered at your bookshop.’

  Meg stared at the gaunt, spindle-thin girl, her hair bedraggled and much shorter than Meg remembered, and recognised someone who’d been through a great deal of torment.

  Mouse wept for a long time in Chase’s arms, her ribs pressing against her thin yellow smock with every deep sob. When she finally stopped, she told them what had happened after they’d escaped the city. She explained about the new laws, and how she and a host of girls who worked as prostitutes were dragged into the squares, dressed in yellow-dyed smocks and had their heads publicly shaved to show everyone they were sinners. She told them how the gambling houses and inns and taverns had been forced to close and how the soldiers carried out periodic searches for illegal alcohol. She described the public executions of people who rebelled against the new order or who were caught reoffending after public humiliation. She said she’d come back to Passion and Chase’s cottage to hide and had bought three big dogs from Rose’s friend for protection, and told how she’d struggled to sustain herself through begging from the temple and occasional opportunities to work for small businesses. Finally, in a lowered voice, casting a concerned glance at little Jon who was playing with Whisper, she told them that she’d heard Passion had been caught and paraded through the streets.

  ‘My sister!’ cried Chase. ‘Where is she?’

  Mouse squirmed. ‘In the Bog Pit.’

  Chase turned to Meg, his fists clenched. ‘We have to get her out of there!’

  ‘I thought they’d caught all of you and that she was the only one alive,’ said Mouse, sobbing again. ‘I thought everyone was dead.’

  Meg encircled the girl and Chase in her arms. ‘We’re all still alive,’ she said, ‘and we’ll get Passion out of the Bog Pit.’

  Runner stared at the bloating corpse among the rubble in the vacant lot. Dead people appeared with monotonous regularity in the old docks. Some, like this man, were genuinely dead. Others were meant to be dead, but eventually reappeared in the city. Sometimes men who were meant to be dead but had survived, turned up dead some time later. Dying seemed as complicated as living for some people.

  Runner scanned the lot and the late afternoon shadows thoroughly before he ventured out of the lane to explore the corpse’s pockets. Dead people occasionally gave others an opportunity to live longer. And he was in luck because no one had beaten him to the scavenge. A quick fossick produced three pennies, a shilling, a crumpled piece of paper, a small compass and a key. He struggled to remove a silver ring on the man’s hand, but the bloated fingers held it fast, so he used his knife to cut the treasure loose. He tried not to look at the corpse’s pale blue and white face. It wasn’t about being squeamish; he’d seen plenty of dead people. He just didn’t want to know the identity of the corpse he was robbing. He shoved his booty in his pocket and skulked away before anyone caught him.

  He jogged along the streets, winding through alleys, avoiding crossing the paths of the City Watch, until he reached a familiar laneway. Checking that no one was following or observing him, he headed towards a cottage with a faded blue door. He watched the windows for movement, hissing at a tabby cat perched on a low stone wall. He stopped and checked again that no one had followed him, then ventured inside.

  Seeing the common room full of strangers, he bolted, only stopping at the end of the lane because a woman shouted his name. He turned. Ten paces away was a familiar woman, except that her red hair was longer than he remembered ever seeing it. ‘Runner,’ she said quietly, opening her arms.

  ‘Why have you come back?’ he asked.

  ‘I missed you.’

  ‘Not enough to come and see me!’ he retorted. ‘Not enough to be a real mother!’

  The barb silenced Swift. Runner stared past her at the cottage door.

  ‘Where’s Mouse?’ he said.

  ‘Inside. With Chase.’

  ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, and vanished into the street.

  He ran until he was exhausted, and by then he was on the edge of the Foundry Quarter and the temple bells were calling everyone to prayer. He cut into a narrow lane separating two factories, climbed a stone wall and sank between stacks of tiles at the rear of a tile factory. He glimpsed two workers walking towards the factory’s prayer space and knew he would be safe for at least a short while. He fished his recent acquisitions from his pocket and spread them on the ground. The lack of money was disappointing. The compass and silver ring he could pawn. The key was useless without a clue as to what it might open. He threw it away. He opened the crumpled paper to find it covered with writing. Frustrated, he screwed it up and tossed it aside.

  Why had his mother come back? What did she want? Who were the strangers in the cottage? He wanted to ask her so many questions, but all he’d felt when he heard her call his name and saw her in the lane was anger. What did she want? She had lied to him. She’d said she missed him. If that was true then why wasn’t she ever around? Why was she always away? He wished he’d seen Mouse. He felt guilty for running away and not seeing her. If it wasn’t for her, he would have no one. At least she was company. How long would it be before the strangers left them alone?

  He gathered his meagre possessions and stuffed them back into his pocket. On a whim he retrieved the crumpled piece of paper. What was it Mad Dog had said? ‘People carry important information in writing that might make you rich.’ He crushed the paper into his pocket. The shadows of evening were lengthening. Prayer would end shortly and then the streets would return to normal. If he was lucky, Byroads the pawnbroker would still be open for late customers.

  Swift wouldn’t speak to anyone. She sat in the dark corner of the common room on the floor, her head buried in her arms on her knees, and refused comfort. Meg sat with her a while, but she couldn’t bridge the emptiness that yawned between mother and son. She too was gripped by a numbness unlike anything she had felt before. Knowing that the suffering young woman whose life she had already saved was very likely her granddaughter, and knowing that she couldn’t prove it to be true, hung like a lead weight from her heart. Learning that her great-grandson was an angry street boy added to that weight. She sat silently beside Swift, feeling her pain as intensely as she imagined the spurned young woman felt it, and wondered what would heal the deep wounds.

  ‘Food and water,’ said Wahim finally. ‘I’ll see what I can find.’

  ‘Without money you won’t find anything any more,’ Mouse told him. ‘Unless you beg at the temple. And the new law forbids storekeepers selling goods after evening prayer.’

  To everyone’s surprise, Swift raised her head, her eyes puffy and red, and said quietly, ‘I know where there’s money.’

  ‘Where?’ Chase asked.

  Swift stood, pushed past Wahim and headed for the door.

  ‘Where a
re you going?’ Meg asked.

  Without answering, Swift walked outside.

  Wahim followed her into the lane, but Swift hissed at him. ‘Don’t follow me! Stay there until I come back!’ And she walked briskly towards the intersection into the city.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The ship’s rolling motion was highly unpleasant. He would avoid sea travel in future, Word decided, after spending a significant part of the past three days at the railing relieving himself of everything he’d ever eaten.

  The journey to the Fallen Star Islands was a necessity, Scripture had told him, to ensure the labourers under the direction of Seer Law and the twenty acolytes serving him were cultivating the euphoria plantation efficiently. But Word suspected it had more to do with His Eminence not wanting to travel by ship. Word knew that Law’s recent appointment to oversee the euphoria production was a belated disciplinary action due to Law’s closeness with the old Kerwyn king, Hawkeye. Not that Law was rebellious or a threat to anyone; it was just the way Scripture operated—choosing favourites among his colleagues; often not playing his hand until some time after the transgression. So am I in or out of favour? Word wondered as he pondered the reason for his visit to the islands. Or does Scripture trust me to act in his place in his absence?

  When a sailor shouted ‘Islands ho!’ from the crow’s nest, Word edged along the heaving deck until he could see past the ship’s prow. Five scattered and low lumps appeared on the dark blue horizon. The closest, towards which the ship headed, was the largest with a central dominating hill. Formerly owned and farmed by the Merchant family, the Fallen Star Islands were the only place the tall euphoria plants matured luxuriantly. Many entrepreneurial merchants and businessmen had attempted to grow euphoria on the mainland, with limited success. Those who managed to coax plants to maturity inevitably received a very low yield of extremely poor-quality euphoria extract. That was why the Merchant family was able to establish its monopoly in the drug market, and also why the Seers, when they learned that high-quality euphoria enhanced their Blessings, had acquired the Fallen Star Islands with King Shadow’s help. Crystal Merchant’s incarceration in the Bog Pit was inevitable because of her irreligious attitude and greed, but it also enabled the Seers to accelerate the establishment of the new order under King Shadow. Free distribution of low-grade euphoria brought converts to the temples in droves and made the Port of Joy population malleable in whatever plans the Seers implemented. And since Creator had refined the higher-quality euphoria into enlightenment, the Seers finally had the key to unlock the gates to the Demon Horsemen and, ultimately, Paradise for the true believers.

  Overpowered once again by the ship’s movement, Word retreated below deck to his cabin to wallow in his misery until someone came to tell him they were moored. As he lay on his bunk, he contemplated the news sent by Scripture just before he set sail. Unconfirmed as the news was, one potential interference in the fulfilment of Jarudha’s plan had been eliminated with the assassination of the Ranu president by Kalan insurgents. Any Ranu plans to invade the Kerwyn kingdom—if Shadow’s political interpretation of the Ranu conspiracies was accurate—had been effectively curtailed as the Ranu people directed their attention to resolving the internal turmoil of their vast empire. This meant the Last Days were closing in without external threats and Jarudha’s Paradise was assured.

  Word doubled over and retched into his wooden pail, convinced that his own last days were upon him.

  The heat was already stifling and the sun hadn’t yet reached its zenith. Word mopped his brow with a damp rag as he gazed from the basket of a light blue dragon egg moored to the eastern slope of the island’s central hill. The dragon egg hovered over an ordered town where rows of huts, each square and uniform in colour and style, spread out from a green-tiled mill along arrow-straight streets. Dotted around the settlement were structures that didn’t conform: the individualised homes of artisans who served the general needs of the community through building and repairs, sewing, boot-making, growing produce. A Jarudhan temple with a steep green-tiled roof stood on a small rise overlooking the harbour.

  ‘As you can see,’ said Law, waving his arm with all the importance of a lord of his domain, ‘the settlement has accommodation for two thousand workers. The children sent by King Shadow to farm the plantations have been a boon in increasing the efficiency of production. Mrs Merchant’s plan was to make the settlement utterly self-sufficient. Her father had wasted a lot of money and time shipping supplies and goods to the islands to support the smaller population of plantation workers, but she started developing an infrastructure to improve efficiency.’

  Word was flagging due to the heat and Law’s babble. He noticed the sun-browned backs of some children kicking a football on a rough field between the town and plantation, and remarked, ‘Not all the children work?’

  ‘Shifts,’ explained Law. ‘We rotate two shifts. They change at lunch and at midnight.’

  ‘They work all night?’ Word asked, surprised.

  ‘The mill runs continuously, processing the plants into powder. The plantation is farmed only in the daylight hours, but if we had a bigger mill, or another one, we could also work the plantation day and night. One mill was more than enough for Mrs Merchant’s trade, but we have to ship a lot of euphoria back to the mainland to keep the whole city population happy.’

  Word cast an eye in the direction of the harbour and counted at least fifteen ships at anchor or moored at the wharf for loading. Several sets of sails were visible at varying distances on the ocean towards the horizon. He hadn’t realised how enormous the euphoria operation had become since the introduction of free distribution.

  ‘So what news have you brought from His Eminence?’ Law asked.

  Word passed on the report concerning the assassination of the Ranu president. Law responded with the symbol of the holy circle, saying, ‘Jarudha’s hands move quickly.’ Then Word described the additional developments being made with the airbirds, and the magical abilities the enlightenment variation of euphoria gave the Seers. The latter news excited Law.

  ‘I knew it!’ he exclaimed. ‘I knew Creator would justify me!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Word asked.

  ‘When we land, I’ll take you to a small cave, a special place I’ve kept for conducting my own experiments. Creator is not the only one to have inspiration.’

  Law’s beaming face concerned Word. If what the Seer said was true, he was transgressing into a colleague’s area of responsibility, an act His Eminence would label heretical. ‘Jarudha gives us each our place in the greater scheme and we should not covet or steal what we are not chosen to do,’ Scripture often reminded the acolytes, and applied the maxim ruthlessly to his Seers. Nevertheless, Word’s curiosity was aroused, and as the dragon egg began its steady descent he was keen to see what Law had been ‘experimenting’ with.

  The glowing blue portal across the entrance to the deeper section of the cave left Word speechless. As he stared at the shimmering haze, he discerned shapes in the light, like denuded, twisted trees.

  ‘Isn’t it a miracle?’ Law whispered.

  Transfixed by the light, Word asked, ‘You created this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Word turned to his colleague. Both of them were stooped in the low-ceilinged cave. ‘How did you know what to do?’

  ‘Creator showed me some of his research, a long time ago when he was first experimenting with the works of Reason and Faith. He thought that if we collaborated we might solve the problem together.’

  ‘He has solved it, as I told you,’ said Word.

  Law grinned. ‘But only if a group focusses on a place together. I did this alone.’

  ‘How?’

  Law shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you take a larger dose of the euphoria?’

  ‘No. That would kill me.’

  ‘Then Creator sent you some of his enlightenment.’
/>   ‘No. I wasn’t aware of the new enlightenment until you told me.’

  ‘You must have done something different.’

  ‘That’s what I don’t understand,’ said Law. ‘Since I came here to oversee this plantation I can do much greater magic.’

  ‘His Eminence would call you a heretic for using that word,’ Word warned.

  ‘Blessing,’ Law apologised.

  ‘Where does this portal take you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Word’s left eyebrow rose. ‘You must know. Creator explained how you need to focus on a known place in order to open a portal to it.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ Law said. ‘I was imagining opening a portal back to the temple. What opened was what you see. Because I didn’t recognise anything, I didn’t go through.’

  ‘So what will you do now?’

  Law looked at Word. ‘I was hoping you would give me your advice.’

  Seeing his colleague’s pleading expression, Word was humbled. ‘I…I don’t know what to suggest.’

  ‘When Creator made his portal, what did you notice about it?’

  Word ran through the event. ‘We had to all focus on a specific point in the chamber. The light formed and he invited me to step through. I did.’

  ‘What did it feel like?’

  Word grimaced. ‘As though I was on the edge of a cliff, looking straight down.’

  ‘And then you went back through?’

  Word shook his head.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There was no return light where I ended up.’

  Law sighed. ‘As I feared. That’s why I haven’t dared to go through this portal. I don’t recognise the barren landscape beyond—it’s not where I wanted to go. And whoever does go through may not be able to get back—unless they can make a new portal.’

  ‘But you know how to make a portal,’ said Word.

  ‘I made this one appear,’ Law replied, ‘but I couldn’t make it go where I wanted. Why should it be any different on the other side of this portal?’