Dae Hyo looked back at Uin and found him already fifty paces away and staggering further, towards the mounted men. Krish made a move towards him, but Dae Hyo took his arm. ‘Let him go, brother. We’ve got worse problems.’
19
It wasn’t that tupping a woman was horrible, precisely. Eric had plenty of practice at it with his wives, although the Tears of Mizhara made the whole thing a bit of a dream. It was just that Drut wanted him to do it so very much, and he had to keep seeming enthusiastic. But if there wasn’t another cock involved in proceedings, his enthusiasm waned along with his member. At first when he was with her he’d thought about Lahiru, but after a while that had started to seem like a betrayal. Daft, really, when his whole time with her was a sort of treachery, but a boy felt what a boy felt, so now he thought only of her.
Drut was close to spending, and he could keep his interest up just a little longer. She had his face between her hands, her lips on his, motionless now that she was so close. He kissed her anyway and muttered the sort of sweet nothings his time at Madam Aeronwenn’s had given him a fair store of. They seemed to do the trick, as Drut soon gasped, shuddered and stilled.
He made the right noises for finishing too, though the truth was he was nowhere near it. Still, his prick wilted appropriately and he pulled it out of her, using his arms to hold himself above the growing swell of her belly.
She liked to be held after, unlike most of his clients. He curled an arm round her and swept the sweat-soaked golden hair away from her neck. The ice above them was softening, dripping on to his bare skin. He’d have been happy doing this down below, in Rii’s realm, but it had seemed to make Drut uncomfortable. She built them little round ice houses instead, which lasted just long enough for the deed to be done and then melted away all the evidence. He had to be impressed with her cunning. He hadn’t thought she had it in her.
‘We should stop this,’ she said. She said it quite often, but sounded less convincing every time.
‘I’d die if you left me,’ he said.
She sat up abruptly and he thought he might have laid it on too thick, but then she took him in her arms, squeezing far too tightly, and said, ‘I will never leave you, Eric. You’re my husband.’
‘But you ain’t just my wife to me, Drut. You’re more than that.’
She loosened her grip so she could lean back and look him in the face. Her own was flushed from their bed-sports. ‘You mustn’t say these things, Eric.’
He darted forward to peck her on the lips. ‘I’ll only think ’em if that will make you happier.’
That surprised a laugh out of her, a rarity. But her expression quickly shifted into shock.
‘You all right?’ he asked.
She touched her stomach. ‘I think she moved.’
‘Our baby?’
‘Yes. Yes! I felt it again. She’s quickened!’
‘Oh.’ It had to happen, of course. He wanted this child, or at least Rii did and he wanted Rii to get him out of there. But it still gave him a nasty jolt. Suddenly it went from ‘Drut’s pregnant’ to ‘Drut’s having my baby’, and those weren’t words he’d ever once imagined thinking.
‘Here,’ she said, taking his hand and pressing it against her belly, ‘can you feel?’
They stayed that way a long while, but there was nothing except the warmth of her tight-stretched skin. ‘No,’ he said eventually. She looked terribly downcast, so he added, ‘But it don’t matter. I’ll feel it another time. I got months and months.’
‘Three months,’ she said, and he frowned. He hadn’t got her in the family way all that long ago. ‘We don’t carry our children as long as your kind,’ she explained. ‘Usually they are within us for no more than half a year. One of my sisters told me it’s because our infants can’t wait to see the sun with their own eyes.’
‘Only three more months.’ He tried to keep the alarm out of his voice. Rii must have known it, he supposed, but he’d thought they’d have far longer to put their plans in place.
Drut dropped her eyes and pulled away from him a little. ‘Eric, I’ve been told the way it is in the wider world. But among us, daughters are raised by all the sisters. We aren’t told who bore us – our only attachment should be to Mizhara, and after that all our sisters equally. She won’t be told that you’re her father either.’
‘Won’t be told …?’ He was surprised at the genuine outrage in his voice. He hadn’t thought he cared a whit for this child, except for the freedom it could buy him. But he was the father. He’d made this life.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But you’ll know her. I’ve thought about this, and read such passages in the Perfect Law that relate. There’s nothing to forbid us taking an interest in our daughter, in watching her, as long as we don’t make any claim on her that’s different from the claim of sisterhood we all make on each other.’
She looked pained, and as his irrational anger died he knew it was a good thing. It was useful that she cared about this child. He’d hoped for longer to talk her round, but this seemed a good opening to broach it.
‘Our daughter,’ he said. ‘You always say that. But what if it’s a boy?’
‘Why would you say that?’
‘Well, I’ve wondered. You must have thought I would. You lot are all women, so what happens to the boys? I ain’t been a father before, but I know this much: half come out with dangles and half without.’
‘Not among us,’ she said. ‘The Servants of Mizhara are all as she: female. It wouldn’t be … It could not be that I’m carrying a boy.’
‘Yeah, but what if you were? I’m a boy, ain’t I? Stands to reason I might produce one. And there’s a first time for everything.’
‘No there isn’t – not for that!’ She rose and made to stride past him.
‘Hey now, I didn’t mean nothing by it.’ He reached for her hand.
She shook him off. ‘Never speak of that again, Eric. It’s unthinkable. Abomination! Our daughter will be perfect in Mizhara.’ And with that she was gone, ducking under the low lintel of their little ice hut.
He rolled back onto the fur bedding and sighed. Only three months, and that was how she felt. He needed to talk to Rii.
Except, as he realised a while later, Rii was nowhere to be found. He’d visited the furthest sun-pear orchard, where she sometimes liked to loiter, but there was no sign of her, not even the imprint of her huge clawed feet in the snow. There was another place she’d showed Eric, where the snow was sculpted into wonderful whorls and spikes. He’d thought it a natural thing, until she’d flown him above it and he’d realised the design was actually writing, in a language he didn’t know. ‘My master’s work,’ she’d said proudly, but today she wasn’t there either.
Finally, he descended to the ancient city beneath the Servants’ quarters. He’d decided not to go there too often. He didn’t want his wives getting funny ideas about where his loyalties lay. But it was early in the day – Drut always came to him early – and there were few of them about. He nodded and smiled at those he saw and made his way to the staircase of ice leading down.
He remembered how the transition from ice to stone, light to darkness had once scared him. Now he took comfort from the old place, the moon’s place, still whole even if clearly conquered. The moon would rise again and Eric would rise with him, that’s what Rii had said. Staring into the darkness of the vast rock chamber, with its ranks of silver-skinned statues, Eric could believe that.
Only Rii wasn’t there either. It had been days since he’d seen her, he realised. That wasn’t so unusual. She came and went as she liked, despite being bound to obey the Servants. But he really did need to speak to her. Three months and Drut appalled at the mere thought of bearing a boy? He needed to speak to Rii today.
‘Rii?’ he called out quietly, and then more loudly, ‘Rii!’
The echoes chased themselves around the cavern, but there was no reply.
Perhaps she was deeper than his voice could reach, walking or f
lying the streets of her dead lord’s city. Eric had never been further than the bottom of the stair. He didn’t know what else lay beneath Salvation and he’d never felt much urge to find out. Was afraid to, if he was honest with himself, and what was the point of lying inside your own head? This wouldn’t wait, though.
He’d discovered, after a while in Salvation, that the light suffusing even its lowest rooms didn’t come straight from the sun. The ice walls were inlaid with some substance, ivory maybe, that gave out the glow. He’d missed it at first, because it was all white like the rest. But now he knew what to look for he only had to ascend the stairs four flights and he found it: a panel carved in the likeness of Mizhara, with yellow glowing gems for eyes. When he was sure he wasn’t being watched, he dug his fingers into the ice to either side of the panel and pulled.
It came out easy as you like. It wasn’t a big thing. It fit in his palm quite neatly, with the yellow glowing eyes looking up at him. He shivered. It was like Mizhara herself was watching him, and he knew what he was doing now must be breaking one of her many rules. But then, he meant to break a great many more before this was over.
At the bottom of the stone stairs, he held the panel up and swept it around. The light came from its eyes like a yellow beam, piercing the darkness. He saw more statues, a line of them stretching all the way from the foot of the stair to the distant wall. Their silver eyes reflected back the light, rejecting it.
The statues led, he could see now, to a gateway in the cavern wall. He walked along the line of them, darting the beam of light here and there to see what else he could uncover. To his left the light picked out another carving in brief, mismatched glimpses, so that it took Eric a while to realise it was just one figure, as immense as the chamber itself: a gaunt, tip-eyed man. Was that the moon god? He didn’t have a very comforting face.
Halfway to the door Eric passed five wells, hooded over with silver. One had red stones in it, rubies probably; others were sapphire, amethyst, emerald and a bright orange gem he’d never seen before. He took a quick detour to look over them, but when he shone his beam downward he couldn’t see the bottom, though he could hear the distant sound of waves lapping. Was it water below? It seemed strange to have these five separate wells where just one would do. Anyway, there was no chance Rii would fit down there, so he moved on.
The gateway when he came to it was carved with the same writing as the ice outside and the stone stair: curved and twisted and hard to follow. There was writing like it on the great machine at the heart of Salvation too, but he could see now that it had been changed, overwritten with Mizhara’s words when she’d taken the power of the machine for herself. Her writing was all straight lines and angles, as unbending as the Servants.
Then he was through the gates, and there it all was in front of him: the moon’s city. He’d somehow thought it would be just like the cavern at the bottom of the stairs, large and empty and rough. It wasn’t. It was beautiful. The buildings were all curved, just like the moon’s writing. And they fit together in odd ways that bent the eye. He’d be following the line of a wall and suddenly it would seem to become another house’s roof. The structure on top of the tallest tower looked like a dome one minute and a bowl the next. As he stared at it in bafflement it flicked between the two – dome, bowl, dome, bowl – until he had to tear his gaze away.
The place was vast. He’d thought the cavern beneath the stairs was big, but it would have fitted under here a hundred times. The top of it was so high even the light from Mizhara’s lamp couldn’t reach it. It might almost have been in the open air. A flight of stairs led down to a broad way that he guessed must be the main street. He hesitated before descending. If Rii was hiding in the city there wasn’t much chance he’d find her. But he’d come this far and a boy didn’t get anywhere by just giving up.
His footsteps in the cavern above had been muffled by dust. Here they rang loudly on every tread. It was as if the long-deserted city had been thirsty for sound and pulled every drop of it out of him. He tried to walk on his tiptoes but it did no good. Well, not to worry. He wanted Rii to hear him, didn’t he?
Then he was at street level with the round-walled houses on either side. At first they were plain, little more than churl huts made from stone rather than wood. But as he walked deeper, navigating the curving streets by instinct alone, they began to get bigger and grander and decorated all over. The carvings were wonderful to look at. There were beasts like the monsters of the Moon Forest, but walking side by side with men and women as if they were all great friends.
On the next house there was a carving of the underground city itself. Eric leaned closer to look and saw that the very house he was looking at was part of the carving; and had a carving of the city on its side. It was as he looked closer, leaning right in to see if the carving of a carving had a carving too, that he heard the footstep.
He jerked upright and spun round, but the beam of his light showed only more walls and more carvings. Just his nerves, he decided, but his pace was quicker as he walked on and he didn’t stop to look at any more decorations.
When he came to a crossroads, he heard it again: not just one footstep this time, but many. He stopped and they halted just a beat after he did, as if he’d caught them by surprise. His breath hitched and his heart pounded once, hard, and then raced like it wanted to break out of his chest.
He needed to leave – right now. But the footsteps had been behind him. If he turned round he’d be heading straight for them. He hurried on instead, finding streets that curved towards the exit, his stride growing quicker and quicker until he was almost running.
The footsteps behind him matched his pace. They weren’t trying to hide now; they must have realised he’d heard them. And he could hear breathing too, a rough rasping that wasn’t quite human.
He did run then, too fast. He turned left, left again, but the streets curved and twisted and soon he’d lost all sense of direction. After that it was just panic. He was gasping for breath, his legs burned and the footsteps were still with him. They were to the left of him, so he turned right, and then they were to the right of him and he turned left, and when he finally heard them in front of him and his lungs just couldn’t drag in air fast enough, he fell to his knees in the centre of a hexagonal plaza.
They approached from every one of the six streets, moving slower now, their footsteps a steady tap-tap-tap. They must have realised that he’d stopped, that there was no escape for him.
When the first of them emerged from between two narrow, orange-painted buildings, he couldn’t stop a whimper. It was a worm man. He’d never seen one before but there was no mistaking it: ashen-skinned, black-eyed and viciously clawed. He swung the light towards it, though why he wanted to see it more clearly he wasn’t sure. But the instant the beam approached it fled, fading back into the darkness with a high scream.
There was another footstep behind him. He stumbled to his feet and spun towards it, spinning the beam too, and it fled. They feared the light. Of course they did: it was Mizhara’s. The worm men couldn’t abide the sunlight, every child knew that. He swung the light all around, making himself dizzy with it. The worm men fled it and he smelled the stink of burnt flesh. The light could hurt them.
But there were so many of them. They ducked and weaved and came on, and didn’t seem to mind that their grey flesh was scored with black scorch marks – until one got close enough to strike his arm and knock the lamp from his hand.
It fell face-up on the cobbles, slightly tilted so that the beam of light shone upward and leftward, falling on the top of a distant building and illuminating a winged shape. For a moment of fierce hope he thought that it was Rii, come to rescue him. But it was only a sculpture of her, or something like her, and now the worm men were between him and the light.
He shivered, knowing he was staring at his death. It didn’t seem possible that it could end this way and he felt almost more angry than afraid. What a stupid way to go. Unburied and unmourned. Would
his body even rot, in this dry place so far beneath the ground?
A worm man stepped forward, his raggedly clawed hand held out. Eric closed his eyes and took one breath, three, ten, until his chest was so tight you could have played it like a drum.
But the blow never came and on the eleventh breath he opened his eyes.
The worm man was right in front of him. Its thin cheek and thinner arm were striped with scorch marks and its big black eyes were studying him, running up and down the length of his body. Close up, he saw that its eyes weren’t entirely dark: there was a sliver of silver curving up one side of them, like the crescent moon. And all of a sudden the fear left him. These were the moon’s Servants, that’s what Rii had told him. These were what his son would be, the son whose very first movement Drut had felt today. He ventured a tremulous smile.
The worm man tilted its head and blinked. He was glad it didn’t try to smile back. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see what its teeth looked like. Then it lowered its hand and pressed it against Eric’s stomach.
He had to tense every muscle to stop himself flinching away from those long, bony fingers. But the worm man didn’t try to hurt him. It just kept its hand against him, surprisingly warm, and frowned.
And suddenly Eric realised what it was trying to do. He was the father of a worm man and somehow this one knew, but it didn’t quite understand.
‘It ain’t inside me,’ he told it. ‘I ain’t the mum – I’m the dad.’
It watched his mouth move as he spoke, but it didn’t seem to understand words either.
‘It’s all right,’ he said anyway. Filling the eerie silence made it easier to ignore the press of that inhuman hand against him. ‘The baby’s safe. I won’t let no harm come to it.’
The Hunter's Kind: Book II of The Hollow Gods Page 20