Betrayal

by Lara Morgan

  There was no wind and it almost seemed impossible that such a savage storm of sand had even existed. She rubbed carefully at her eyes and tried to blink the last grains of sand out. Dimly she could sense Tallis’s presence somewhere to the west and wondered if she should try to go to him, but Asrith suddenly hissed and she saw the serpent gazing up at the sky.

  He is coming, she said.

  She was right; the sense of him was becoming rapidly clearer and stronger. With a sigh Shaan sat down in the sand to wait. They arrived a short time later and immediately she saw something was wrong. Tallis was riding with Rorc in front of him on Marathin, followed by Mailun and Irissa on Fen, but Rorc was slumped over, lying half along Marathin’s crest. Shaan put a hand up against the spray of sand as they landed, then ran across to them.

  ‘Shaan!’ Tallis shouted down to her, grim faced as Irissa came running to help him pull Rorc off the serpent.

  ‘What happened?’ Shaan stepped out of the way as they carried him a short way from the serpent and laid him on the ground.

  ‘He was trying to hold me on the serpent’s back when the wind came,’ Mailun said. She crouched by his head, white faced. ‘He fell. There were rocks and thorn shrubs.’

  Shaan dropped to her knees beside him. Rorc’s eyes were closed and he was barely breathing. A gash of blood marked his head, and there was also a great rip in his shirt and a rough bandage had been tied around his abdomen. It was soaked in blood, still wet.

  Her fingers tingled and the urge to heal rose in a powerful rush through her breast.

  ‘Shaan …?’ Tallis was kneeling near their father’s head.

  ‘Tallis said you could help him,’ Mailun said. ‘Where’s your pack? Do you have medicines in it?’

  Shaan swallowed, her mouth dry as she shook her head.

  ‘What?’ Mailun stared at her.

  ‘Water?’ Shaan didn’t look at her, glancing up at Tallis instead. ‘He’ll need some.’

  ‘Irissa, get the water skin from my pack,’ he said, and the clanswoman spun around, running back to the serpents.

  With unsteady hands, Shaan peeled back the bandage. As soon as she touched Rorc, she felt the labouring of his breath, the slowing of his heart. He had lost so much blood. Fearful, she cast the cloth aside to reveal the wound.

  The cut was deep and jagged, running from the base of his rib cage and down across his side. She could see muscle and bone — and other things.

  ‘It’s so deep.’

  ‘You can do it,’ Tallis said.

  ‘What can you do?’ Mailun’s face was hard with fear.

  Tallis took the water skin from Irissa as she returned. ‘Mother, just give her room,’ he said.

  Shaan took a deep breath, laid her fingers carefully over the wound and closed her eyes. A maelstrom of knowledge flooded her. She felt the slow rhythm of Rorc’s heart, saw how his muscles and organs and skin should fit together, how the tissue should knit, the severed veins rejoin, and everything else fell away. She began to persuade his body to heal. She poured her own energy into his. Sweat ran from her and at some point she realised Tallis was holding her up, but she was caught in a strange fugue state that made the outside world disappear. She didn’t know how long it took, but finally, with great effort, she opened her eyes and lifted her hand away, slumping back against Tallis.

  ‘Finished,’ she whispered weakly. There was a long moment of silence as Mailun and Irissa stared at her and then at Rorc, now peacefully sleeping. With a shaking hand, Mailun reached out and ran a finger along the pink scar that had formed under Shaan’s hand.

  ‘He’s going to need a lot of water and rest before he can move,’ Shaan said, and pushed at Tallis’s hands at her waist. ‘Let me up.’

  He stood and helped her get stiffly to her feet. She felt lightheaded, but the pressure behind her breastbone was gone.

  ‘Here.’ Tallis handed her the water skin.

  Taking it she drank deeply despite the warm, slightly stale taste. She felt as if she hadn’t drunk anything in a week. Then she shuffled away to sit near Asrith with her back nestled in the sandhill. The serpent lay with her head curled around her body like a cat, apparently sleeping, and paid her no attention. Exhausted, Shaan closed her eyes.

  ‘Mother, help me put a shelter up over him,’ she heard Tallis say, and then came the sounds of feet moving in sand, the clink of poles, then nothing as she slipped into sleep.

  When she woke it was late afternoon and for a moment she was confused as she was looking not at the sky but at the underside of a stretch of hide. Underneath her head was a folded shirt, and from beside her came the faint draw of breath. Turning her head she saw her father lying next to her, his eyes still closed.

  Tallis must have moved her. She slowly pushed herself up on her elbows to sitting, the low roof of the tent brushing the top of her hair. She couldn’t see any serpents, but Irissa was setting up a bundle of dried sticks to build a fire while Mailun put together a spit out of old arrow shafts. Tallis was skinning what looked like a mar rat a short distance away.

  It was still hot, the air as dry as an oven, but she felt as refreshed as if she’d been swimming. It was the best she’d slept in longer than she could remember. Her limbs were suffused with a pleasant languor and she shuffled out of the shelter and walked over to sit beside Mailun. A huge yawn stretched her face.

  ‘How long have I been asleep?’ she said.

  ‘Most of the day,’ Mailun said. ‘The sun will set in about two hours.’

  Rubbing her face, Shaan reached for a water skin and took a long swallow.

  ‘Careful,’ Mailun said sharply, ‘there’s no water here until we reach a clan Well.’

  Shaan put the skin down, stoppering it.

  ‘How are you?’ Mailun said. ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘Much.’ Shaan nodded.

  Mailun tied two sturdy sticks together in a cross with twine. ‘That storm blew us a way off our path,’ she said. ‘We’re closer to the Jalwalah lands now than the Halmahda.’

  Shaan sifted sand between her fingers. ‘Are we changing course then?’

  ‘Depends,’ Mailun said. ‘Rorc might still want to go to the Halmahda first — they will be an easier clan to deal with.’ She tied another set of sticks together. ‘We’ll probably head that way.’ She nodded her head to the northeast. ‘Past the Temple of Kaa, which is just over that rise of dunes.’

  ‘The temple?’ Shaan looked at the dunes.

  ‘Yes, it’s not far now.’

  Shaan almost felt the urge to laugh. So she had dreamed and wandered out into the desert and a sandstorm had blown them here. The look she shot her mother was filled with bleak humour at the tenacity of all gods.

  ‘Strange, isn’t it?’ Mailun said quietly.

  Shaan lost her brief flash of humour. ‘No, I don’t think it is.’

  Mailun was silent a while, then she said, ‘I’ve been there once, not long after my heart mate ceremony.’

  ‘Why?’

  A flicker of pain passed through the older woman’s eyes. ‘Women of the Clans go there when they are with child, supposedly to honour Kaa and ask he does not take their child in birth. I thought for a long time I had offended him the night I went there — yet you lived.’ She gazed long at Shaan’s face. ‘But still, I’m not sure I wasn’t right. Here we are again.’

  Shaan felt a strange, nervous sensation peeling up her spine and Mailun turned away, picking up an old arrow, the feathers damaged and worn.

  ‘But who knows,’ she said, ‘Rorc may change his mind when he wakes and decide we should go in another direction. He was always surprising me before; what would make him change now?’ She began to slice the feathers off the arrow with a short knife. ‘Tell me, have you always been able to heal?’

  ‘I touched the Birthstone,’ Shaan said in a flat tone. ‘It almost killed me, but then,’ she shrugged, ‘I started to be able to … do things a little while ago.’

  ‘It’s a useful skill.’
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  ‘For others,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t work on me.’

  ‘You can’t heal yourself?’

  Shaan shook her head and Mailun put the arrow down. ‘You saved your father’s life,’ she said. ‘That is no small thing.’

  ‘Let’s just hope he remembers it.’ She meant to be light-hearted but failed, and Mailun clasped her hand firmly.

  ‘What will you do about the temple?’ she said softly.

  Shaan hesitated; her breath caught in her throat. ‘I don’t know.’

  Mailun regarded her from sad eyes filled with regret. ‘I wish I had defied Karnit that night,’ she said. ‘I wish I had known what it would bring you to.’

  ‘Do you really think it would have made a difference?’ asked Shaan. She looked at Tallis, who had stopped skinning the mar rat and was watching them, aware of what was going on. ‘I have the feeling that we have no choice but to follow this path to its end — whatever that is.’ She pulled her hand gently from her mother’s and got to her feet. ‘I’ll see if Tallis needs help.’

  Rorc slept until long after sundown, waking some time after they had finished eating. Mailun went to give him some food and water and he came slowly out from under the shelter to sit by the fire.

  He was pale but not as pale as before; some colour had returned to his face.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said to Shaan. She nodded awkwardly. But that was all he said and it surprised her. She had expected questions, demands, but he only picked up his cup of water and said, ‘We should leave first thing tomorrow. We’ll go to the Jalwalah; their Well is closer.’

  ‘How long will it take to get there?’ Shaan asked.

  ‘Most of the day,’ Tallis answered her, ‘even on the serpents.’

  ‘Where are the serpents?’ Irissa said.

  Tallis was silent a moment then pointed south. ‘There,’ he said. Mailun and Irissa gazed in the direction he pointed but Rorc, Shaan saw, kept his face to the fire, staring into the flames, his expression unreadable.

  She woke later suddenly, as if pushed up from deep underwater, sitting up with a sharp intake of breath. They hadn’t erected any tents in case another sandstorm caught them, so she had been lying with her feet near the fire. The embers were cold now and the sky above thick with stars, the sand a pale, shadowed expanse surrounding them like a dry sea. Everyone else was asleep. Even Tallis was snoring softly nearby.

  She wasn’t sure what had woken her, but she thought it might have been a dream. She couldn’t quite grasp it now but she had been left with a profound sense of being called — as if someone had shouted her name. It was strange that Tallis hadn’t woken. But even as she thought it she realised she could not properly feel his presence. It was as if a fine veil separated them.

  Her heart rate increased and she got to her feet and, turning, looked in the direction of the dunes. She knew why she had woken. It was time to go to the temple. Her heart thudded hard.

  What is cannot be changed. Tuon’s words came back to her again and, taking a long breath, she began to go toward the dunes.

  There was no wind, no animals or insects making night noise. Everything was silent. After a while Shaan began to wonder if she was really awake. Her legs moved forward as if of their own volition and yet it didn’t feel like she was travelling anywhere. The landscape stayed the same — sand shimmering away, marked in waves as if it had once been water.

  She didn’t know how long she walked, but at one point she realised she had reached the dunes; a long undulating line of them peaking up to the black sky. Bending she put her hands into the chill crust, sinking down to feel the sun-warmed sand beneath, and on all fours began to climb, moving up the wall of the dune like a strange spider until she reached the peak and could see the other side.

  Just beyond the base of the dunes was a circle of nine stone columns, each two arm’s lengths apart. They were of varying thicknesses, some as wide as she was tall, some she might be able to encircle with her arms, but all of them were the same height, rising up about fifteen feet from the drifts of sand around their base. The columns looked eerie in the starlight, deep shadows stretching from them in sharp relief. There was nothing but smooth sand between them and the stone was pale, weathered. From where Shaan stood she could not see which one had the eye.

  She set her jaw and waded slowly down the face of the dune to the edge of the circle.

  As she reached it a small, slight woman with white hair emerged from behind the stones, as if materialising from nothing. It shocked her and Shaan wondered if she was real or imagined, or perhaps even a god. Then the woman spoke.

  ‘Shaan,’ she said. ‘You look just like your brother. I’ve been waiting for you.’

  Chapter 29

  Shaan didn’t speak. She had not been expecting anyone to be here; she didn’t know what she had expected, but a tiny woman was not it.

  ‘My name is Shila,’ the pale-haired woman said. ‘I’m the Dreamer of the Jalwalah clan. I haven’t seen you since you were a babe.’ She took a few steps toward the younger woman, hair glowing in the starlight, pale eyes regarding Shaan gravely. ‘I brought you here on the request of your mother — although I think now there were other forces guiding me that night.’

  ‘You’re the one who sent Tallis and Jared toward the Black Mountains,’ Shaan said.

  Shila turned toward the circle of stone. ‘Come, there are but a few hours of darkness left before the dawn. You must do what you came to do.’ She walked back toward the circle.

  It was cold in the shadow between the columns and the stones rose up on either side of Shaan like sentinels guarding that empty space between them. Shila stopped at the edge of the open space.

  ‘Do you feel it?’ she said quietly.

  Shaan struggled to breathe normally because it felt as if a hand was suddenly pressing on her chest, and there was a feeling in the air; a presence unseen.

  ‘Enter the circle with me.’ Shila pulled gently on her arm, but Shaan didn’t move. Directly across from her, carved three-quarters of the way up a column, was the eye. It was lidless, barely more than a simple curving of lines cupping a circle, but it made her feel a chill and once she saw it she could not look away.

  ‘Come,’ Shila whispered, and drew her in.

  At once a dreamlike state settled over her. Shila stood behind her, murmuring something, words indistinct and running together. She clasped Shaan’s wrists and the sense of her faded until all Shaan could see was the lidless eye. There was a rushing sensation, like a wave surging toward her, and then she could not breathe, her chest paralysed. She struggled but Shila’s hands were suddenly as strong as the earth, stronger than stone, and they held her still. The stars winked out, the black sky changed to a deep purple. She blinked, breath rushed from her lungs and something stepped out from behind the column with the eye.

  An elongated shadow, a wraith, a whisper of nightmares that come in the dark. It moved like drifting wind on limbs too long, its arms stretched almost to the sand, but it had no dimension and no feature.

  ‘Shaan,’ it said, ‘the result of our folly.’ Its voice was deep and echoed around her as if it came from everywhere.

  She stood frozen in the strange twilight. She could breathe again and Shila’s hands still felt like shackles on her wrists but she knew if she looked she would not see her. She had shifted somewhere else.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked. Her voice sounded thin and flat, barely her own.

  ‘All things and nothing. Sabut, your clansmen name me, but I have other names.’

  ‘Why am I here?’ Shaan said. ‘What do you want?’

  Sabut oscillated gently, his shadowy limbs stretching toward her then receding.

  ‘You must learn the truth of your birth, of Azoth who you call a god, and your path for the future.’

  ‘I already know about my birth and about Azoth.’

  ‘In some ways.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Shaan heard the fear, sharp, in her voice but faced him with a
lifted chin.

  ‘Azoth and the Four are our creations,’ Sabut said.

  It was not what she expected. ‘Your creations?’ So were they not truly gods then?

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

  ‘They were made to be the caretakers of this world,’ Sabut said. ‘We left it with them. It was a … mistake.’

  ‘A mistake?’ If she could have moved then, she would have. She wanted to recoil away from this Guide, or god, or whatever it was, who could so calmly talk of a past of slavery and death as a mistake. ‘How can you call it that?’ she said.

  If Sabut saw her disgust, he seemed unmoved. His form still swayed gently like a water weed. ‘We gave them a token of power to use wisely, to create, but they did not act as we intended,’ he said.

  ‘Azoth enslaved and killed thousands!’ she said. ‘And now he wants to do it again, using that token of power, and you call that a mistake?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sabut’s voice was emotionless.

  She almost could not speak. ‘Why didn’t you stop him then?’

  ‘We have left this existence; it is why we created them — to free ourselves for other tasks. Much of our power still resides here, though, in the lands of our first people. We closed the border of this land to Azoth and the Four, but that is all we could do. We cannot return in corporeal form. We can only advise, influence through conduits.’

  ‘Then advise Azoth to stop!’

  ‘Our children are beyond our direct influence now. But we were … disturbed. We spoke to our conduits and sent the man who would seed you to the woman of ice. We encouraged the creation of you and your other half. You shall be the messengers of our will.’

  ‘Your will?’ Shaan’s anger seemed to fill her throat, so her voice came out too high, coarse. So it was not just Azoth who sought to use them now but these Guides as well. And they had played with their lives, moving them around as if they were pieces in a game of tiles. All to clean up the mess they had created.