Once walked with Gods e-1

by James Barclay

‘I know.’ Methian straightened suddenly. ‘That’s a whole lot of sails.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Take a look. Heading this way from the west. Ten. Twelve perhaps. Not merchants. Not elven.’

  Pelyn followed Methian’s gaze and felt her whole body sag.

  ‘This isn’t getting any better, is it?’

  Chapter 14

  Combat is the simplest of relationships. Your enemy wants to kill you. Stop him. The rain had beaten down on Auum the whole way up the cliff. An hour’s climb at the very least. Every hold had been a study in concentration, every move a risk greater than the last. Every moment had reminded Auum why he loved the rainforest, loved Yniss’s creation and loved the blessing of strength and agility that Yniss had bestowed upon him.

  He lay on the cliff edge with the first vegetation of the rainforest almost within arm’s length and let the rain wash the dirt from his clothes and body. He pulled in great gasps of air and held them, waiting until his temples pounded before exhaling. Here was life. Here was reason enough to desire to save all the elves had built. None should be denied this if they desired it.

  Auum sat up with his legs dangling over the drop. Between his feet he could see his boat pulled up on the bank and tipped onto its side against the rainfall. He felt energised but his limbs were tired, like after a three-hour spar with Serrin, the Silent Priest as fast as a TaiGethen. Auum smiled.

  A sound to his left and he glanced round. The rain obliterated so much when it fell this heavily. Gyal’s tears were the TaiGethen’s friend. Hard to be sure what it was. Auum moved smoothly to his feet. It could have been a falling tree branch. It could have been the death fall of an animal. His sense of wrong told him it was neither.

  Auum was exposed out here on the cliff edge. He ducked under the canopy, letting the dense foliage hide him. The noise had been quite close. An impact of some kind. He stared into the gloom, trying to pick out anything unusual in the chaos of banyan, fig, balsa, vine and moss-covered branches. A hundred shades of green and brown, the shadows of great leaves and a riot of brightly coloured flowers met his gaze.

  This was his land. The land of the TaiGethen. That impact did not belong here. Auum moved silently into the forest, leaving the freshness of the cliffs behind him. He tuned to the natural sounds. Monkeys chittering in the mid-branches, birds calling at every level. The rustling of ground beasts. The singing cacophony of insects. All of Tual’s denizens in full cry.

  And something else too. A scent, like burned bark but with a bitter edge akin to singed abuta. It came from his right. From where the impact had sounded. Auum crouched. There was movement in the undergrowth and low foliage. The clumsy shaking of leaf and branch. A heavy footfall.

  Three men. Presumably one of them had fallen heavily, although the impact had sounded more like something coming down from the branch of a banyan. Auum stilled and tucked into the trunk by which he had stopped. They would come to him and wish that they had not.

  Auum could see them. Two were warriors. Leather armour, ungainly swords and daggers. Tall men, violent. And, just behind them, one standing still and wearing very light armour, no sword. He was one of those Auum had heard called “mage”. Dangerous. The mage took a single pace forward and vanished.

  Auum blinked, sure the mage must have ducked behind a tree or dropped prone. But if he had, the warriors were ignoring him and moved on slowly, staring beyond Auum or down at their tangled feet. He ignored them, scrutinising instead the foliage at ground level in the mage’s predicted path. Nothing moved.

  The air seemed to still, suck inwards almost. It was a curious sensation. The next instant Auum felt an awful pressure in his ears. It slammed pain around his skull. He clamped down on his jaw to stop himself screaming but knew something had escaped his throat.

  Auum felt disoriented. His eyesight blurred for a moment. He put his hands to his head, trying to ease the shattering pain. He could hear nothing. He sagged to his knees. He blinked furiously, determined to monitor where his enemies moved. He could see blurred shapes. Too close. Whatever had afflicted him had left them apparently unaffected.

  They had seen him. Auum’s head began to clear. Slowly, but it would be enough. His swords were still in their scabbards, his jaqrui pouch closed. He made no sign that he was capable, remaining with his back hard against the tree and his knees drawn up against his chest. The warriors split to come at him left and right. He still couldn’t see the mage.

  The warriors closed. Auum saw the set of their bodies and the heft of their blades. They thought him incapacitated. Auum kept his body relaxed and his facial expression pained. He shook his head as if just coming back to his senses. The warriors moved in faster. One slipped on the sodden ground.

  Auum drove himself up and forward. He reached over his left shoulder, grabbed a blade and threw it at the right-hand warrior. Immediately, he dropped, rolled left and kicked up, the tips of his toes catching the other warrior in the groin. The man yelled and doubled over, one arm across his stomach. Auum bounced to his feet, grabbed the warrior’s head in both hands and twisted savagely.

  Auum turned away from the falling corpse. The other warrior was trying to pull the blade from his gut. Blood sluiced from his mouth and washed from around the wound. Auum heard a twig snap. There stood the mage. Behind his dying comrade. He was smiling. His lips were moving and his arms were reaching out.

  Auum sprinted at him. He wasn’t going to be fast enough to stop him. The mage turned his palms inwards, ready to clap them together. He dropped his head to his chest then raised it to look straight into Auum’s eyes. Auum stopped running, choosing instead to send a prayer to Yniss to protect his soul.

  The mage jerked forward, almost fell. He made a choking gurgle. He stared at Auum, confusion in his expression, blood running from his mouth. The head of a jaqrui blade protruded from this neck just below his chin. He pitched onto his face.

  Not ten yards behind Auum stood an ula. His clothes were tattered and roughly mended in a few places. His face was gaunt. He had the remains of a long beard on his chin and cheeks. Where there was skin, it was covered in cuts and scratches as if he’d tried to shave with a blunt knife. His hair was similarly wild, sticking up in clumps, tangled with twig and leaf and hacked shorter in places and left to grow untamed in others.

  But he held himself proudly. His arms were by his sides but his hands were moving, fingers rubbing against his thumbs or into the palms of his hands. His eyes darted here and there and there was a twitch in either cheek. When he breathed his nostrils fluted. Auum watched him move smoothly to the mage and work his jaqrui free.

  ‘Lucky I can still use one of these.’ He laughed then looked to his right. The humour died. ‘I have never forgotten. I trained when you weren’t watching me. You don’t watch me all the time, do you? No, I thought not. One victory for me.’

  Auum watched his saviour walk to the dying human warrior. He knelt by the man, moving his hands away from the hilt of Auum’s blade. He took the hilt in one hand, twisted it, rammed it hard into the man’s body and drew it out slowly, almost reverently. The man slumped to one side.

  The wild ula stood up, wiped the blade on the man’s clothing and walked to Auum, offering it to him hilt first. Auum took it and nodded his thanks, still unable to frame his question without it sounding horribly sycophantic in his head. The ula stared at him and shrugged.

  ‘Well I think he recognises me. Perhaps the hair needs a little attention.’

  He growled and the sound made Auum start. Doubt crept into his mind.

  ‘Actually, I recognise him. I never forget a face. Particularly when the owner is one of the finer students of the art.’ In his eyes there was both warmth and wariness. ‘You are Auum.’

  Auum’s legs almost gave way beneath him. He sheathed his blade. He felt a wash of relief.

  ‘Arch Takaar, I am honoured you know me.’

  And then cursed himself for his first words.

  ‘Ha!’ Takaar clapp
ed his hands together. ‘Told you, told you.’

  Takaar gripped Auum’s shoulders.

  ‘Good. It will be good to have someone else to talk to.’

  Auum just caught himself before he asked the obvious question. Instead he smiled.

  ‘The TaiGethen will bless Yniss that you still live,’ he said.

  Takaar’s face hardened. ‘I doubt that.’

  Again he glanced to one side. He muttered something Auum couldn’t catch before spinning on his heel and striding away into the rainforest. Takaar spoke over his shoulder.

  ‘A good question. A very good question and you utter few enough of those. Why are you here, Auum? No one invited you. I detest the unannounced. Not that I have had any visitors these past ten years.’

  Takaar stopped and turned.

  ‘Come on, come on, you’re here now.’

  And off he went again. Auum trotted after him, breasting through the undergrowth, marvelling at how Takaar moved so quickly and left no mark whatever, not even the briefest of prints in the mud underfoot.

  ‘This isn’t what I had planned for the day,’ said Takaar. ‘Very funny. Perhaps you could be quiet for a time. We have a guest, after all. I will not be doing that. At least, not today. So you keep saying.’

  Auum kept up easily. After setting off with the skill of the finest TaiGethen, Takaar became erratic in both movement and direction as if he was lost and confused. He muttered and shouted by turn and Auum wondered how he had managed to stalk the mage so effectively. Should anyone else be tracking them closely, their job would be rendered simple.

  This was not the Takaar he had hoped to find. Not yet anyway. The question of how he would react when Auum told him the reason for his visit was open to serious debate. Too many of the possibilities were distasteful. Too many of them the elves could not afford. This was not an elf who could possibly unite the threads and restore the harmony.

  ‘Almost there,’ called Takaar. ‘Come, come to my humble palace.’

  He chuckled. Above, Gyal’s tears were drying and the sun was edging through the heavy banks of cloud. Auum followed Takaar into his camp and stopped to look at a place that was not the creation of a disturbed mind. A sound mud and thatch hut, a stretched-hide bivouac and what looked to be a peat and stone kiln. Perhaps all was not as bleak as it appeared.

  ‘Such things do I have to show you. A thousand ways to die. A hundred ways to live. All here. Right here under our noses and within the grasp of our fingers.’

  Takaar disappeared inside his hut. He was still talking and pinching his index fingers and thumbs together repeatedly to illustrate his latest point. Auum followed him in and came up short, staring at the shelves of pots, the stained and stretched hammock, the stinking wood bucket of vomit and the long table covered in further jars plus a scattering of leaves, flowers, barks and stems.

  ‘This isn’t a house, it’s a workshop,’ he breathed then plucked up his courage. ‘I am sorry to disturb your solitude, Takaar.’

  Takaar wasn’t listening. His full attention was taken with a knife and a thin strip of polished wood, carving symbols into its surface.

  ‘A thousand. A thousand ways and-’

  He broke off, swung about and marched to the long table. He slapped both hands on it, upsetting a couple of jars and juddering everything else that lay on it.

  ‘That was never my intent. Always it was for research. My legacy. My…’

  The anger left him and he nodded, his expression sad as he returned to his work.

  ‘That is true. I have never denied it. Indeed, I deserve it. But a failed elf can still do good. Not by way of recompense, just to do good.’

  ‘Takaar,’ said Auum.

  Takaar’s head snapped round, his face full of ire. Only slowly did it clear.

  ‘Where is my hospitality?’ he said. ‘I’m not really set up for three.’

  ‘Thr-’

  Takaar picked up the knife again. He walked across to his bivouac.

  ‘I have infusions of piedra and cloves. Also some nutmeg if you have a yearning for it,’ he said, tapping stoppered jars. ‘Cold of course but good, all of them. Nothing to eat. The odd root perhaps. Hunting is at dusk. Care to hunt? It would put his nose out of joint if nothing else.’

  Takaar tipped his head at a rough log stool in the corner of the bivouac.

  ‘And that would please you?’ asked Auum.

  ‘Enormously,’ said Takaar.

  ‘Then it would be a pleasure to learn from a master.’

  Takaar’s eyes sparkled. He walked to Auum and placed his hands on the young TaiGethen’s shoulders. His face was clear, uncluttered, and for the first time Auum saw the focus he remembered in Takaar’s eyes.

  ‘And when we are eating our kill, you will tell me why it is you are here and what it is that is about to consume the elven race.’

  The clarity and focus disappeared. Takaar rubbed at his face and hair. He jabbed Auum in the chest.

  ‘Good thing you’re here. I need a shave. And a haircut. Knife over there, sharpening leather over there. No time to lose. Jump to it.’

  Chapter 15

  Rarely do gods speak. It is a shame that so often we choose not to listen. Ultan-in-Caeyin. A name of the ancient tongue, translating as “Where Gods Are Heard”.

  The Ultan was a huge open grass bowl, U-shaped and bounded by sheer cliffs that provided a barrier to the sea, the rainforest and the River Ix. It had remarkable acoustic qualities and, since the founding of Ysundeneth, had been the place where the elves met in times of celebration and strife. It could hold a quarter of a million, iad, ula and child. The entire population of Calaius and more.

  For hundreds of years it had been left as Yniss had designed it, but recently work had begun to create a lasting monument to the gods. Great stone slabs and pillars were being cut from the quarries to the west of Ysundeneth and moved by barge to form a stage at the northern end of the Ultan where the cliffs met the sea. Carvings were being made to depict the deeds of god and elf, a charting of the often violent history of Hausolis and the trials of life on Calaius.

  Talk was that the whole of the open grass area would eventually be set with benches in concentric arcs around the stage. Some wit had suggested a roof might be in order too. Katyett was still able to feel a passing lightness of mood as she gazed up at the vast open space and imagined the timber span that would be required.

  This morning, of course, there was no celebratory mood, nor even a common purpose. There was anger, there was frustration, desperation and confusion. And among those whom the TaiGethen now protected, there was fear too and an intense sadness.

  The Ynissul evacuation was an open secret by now, and the TaiGethen guarded the approaches and entrance to the Ultan, a good number of them hoping an attack would be mounted. A disappointing reaction in one regard, utterly elven in another. Katyett had complete sympathy and her memories of the temple piazza held no guilt.

  Almost three thousand Ynissul sheltered in the Ultan. They had precious little food, just the clothing on their backs and the few possessions they had managed to grab as they were ushered from their houses, places no longer safe for elves of the immortal thread.

  They were secured by thirty TaiGethen. Katyett’s first act had been to dispatch the birds who would carry the muster message into the rainforest. They would fly to the shrines to Yniss scattered about beneath the canopy, there to wait in secured nesting boxes until any Tai cell checked in to read the message, release the bird and pass the word.

  It was necessarily an inefficient method of communication. There was no set check-in routine. Birds were prey to predators above the canopy and, despite the design of the nesting boxes and their entrances, to the attentions of snakes and rodents.

  In the vastness of the bowl of the Ultan, the few thousand Ynissul and their guards looked precisely what they were: an insignificant demoralised group of elves soaked by the rain before dawn and huddling under the inadequate shelter the Tai cells had been abl
e to construct. A few fires had been lit and their smoke rose to join the pall that hung over Ysundeneth.

  TaiGethen moved among the refugees, offering comfort where they could and giving out what information they had of the immediate future. But rainforest warriors were unused to the roles of counsellors and shoulders on which to cry. However, they missed nothing they were told, and a trend was emerging that was causing a growing fury.

  Katyett watched other birds flying over the Ultan. Not those of the Ynissul and the TaiGethen. These would be bound for Tolt Anoor and Deneth Barine. The former a day’s sail along the coast east of Ysundeneth. The latter a long journey by sea, river or rainforest trail to the eastern coast of Calaius. She sighed. The conflict was spreading, sped on the wings of Tual’s denizens.

  Beside her on his stretcher poor Olmaat raised his head a little to see an approaching knot of TaiGethen, led by his Tai, Pakiir. Katyett put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Don’t strain, Olmaat. Rest.’

  ‘Hothead,’ managed Olmaat, his tortured lungs and throat grinding breath and voice. ‘Lot to learn.’

  Pakiir was with the Tai of Makran, Kilmett and Lymul. They were a relatively new cell, in training only for the last fifty years and with a zeal that needed to be tempered. Their expressions confirmed that their zeal was in control of their emotions.

  ‘We must return to the city. We must clear it. Crimes have been committed that strike to the core of our faith.’

  Pakiir’s voice echoed about the Ultan. His face was twisted with the anger surging through him. Katyett paused for a deliberately long period, refusing to add fuel to their fires. She chose to speak formally, knowing they had no choice but to respond in kind.

  ‘First, we must lower our voices such that those we seek to comfort are not further scared by the din of our desire for conflict,’ she said quietly. ‘Second, we must all be in possession of the entirety of information that pertains to this debate. And third, we must retract our demands of the Arch of the TaiGethen and seek instead to recommend and persuade.’