by Liz Williams
‘Then who are these people?’ I gave Goat-girl a shove with the toe of my boot.
‘Vali, I don’t know. They look like something out of myth. I’ve never seen anything like them before.’
But I thought of the forest outside Hetla, the creature tied to a tree that then blazed up, taking the thing shrieking with it. There seemed to be a lot of odd things living in the forests of Darkland – including Skinning Knife.
‘Whatever she is, we have to find a way out.’
I pocketed the scalpel. My weapons were gone and we would waste time in finding them. ‘Come on, then,’ I said. We slammed the heavy door of the laboratory behind us. I hoped it would seal the pair in before they had a chance to wake and sound the alarm, but I did not hold out a great deal of hope. Eld and I ran back up a flight of stairs to the gallery and then along the corridor, finding the arched doorway and the room where I had awoken. We went out again, and located another door. We went through into a corridor.
‘Glyn Apt seems to be taking quite an interest in you,’ Eld said.
‘Not as much as she was taking in you. After all, you were the one on the slab.’
But Eld did not reply. By now we had reached a higher-ceilinged section of the corridor. A fine mesh was set into the wall and beyond it, a light was visible. A spiral stair led up into a wide chamber, made of the same black stone containing the ghosts of ferns. To my surprise it was also lined with windows. But they did not show the snowy wastes of Morvern, or the blight of Sull. They looked out onto stars. I saw Loki hanging close, his craters and meteor scars clearly visible.
‘That’s got to be an illusion,’ Eld said. I agreed.
A console stood in a basalt column at the far end of the room. When we came close, I saw that it contained nothing but a swirl of shadows. There had been no further sign of the white data birds and this worried me: surely my absence would have been noted by now. A moment later, I discovered I was right.
Goat-eyed Morrighanu troops poured out of the walls, shouldering their way through fronds of ferns that were suddenly real, as if the walls had melted and left us standing in a forest. Their slitted eyes glittered, their jaws gaped, and their hands were adorned with long, artificial talons. Behind them stalked a tall figure whom we’d last left lying on the floor of an interrogation chamber. Commander Glyn Apt did not look pleased.
TWENTY-THREE
PLANET: MONDHILE (SEDRA)
I spent another day or so in the vicinity of Moon Moor, trying to find the underground place. But those mountains – the blue ice that crowned them, the way the light shadowed the snow, the pattern of high and distant rocks – were still calling to me, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist. Winter was coming. I had to make for the mountains while I could.
I did not see the four strange people again and I was glad of it. But it did suggest that what I had seen, or thought I’d seen, beneath Moon Moor hadn’t merely been the product of the dreamcallers’ manipulations – unless those ancient dreams had somehow become preserved here, trapped by the lines of the land and held in the fabric of the moor; unless I was already mad.
I followed a snaking track up the mountain, made by wild mur. There was no sign of the animals, either, and I kept a sharp look-out. Whatever the way of things, I did not fancy meeting my death by being torn to pieces by a herd. But only the ravaged turf, a remnant of the passage of their clawed feet, remained. Soon, I had reached the first of the foothills, and kept going. The air bit into my lungs, wonderfully fresh and scented with the fragrance of the scrub, rising up from the Moor. At the top of the highest ridge before the mountain slopes, I stopped and looked back across the expanse of the Moor. There was the place where I had found the cave, clearly visible. I thought I saw something moving around it, a pale shape, but my eyesight wasn’t what it used to be and though I squinted, I couldn’t make out the shape. An animal, perhaps – but it looked too tall and that suggested one of the half-humans. I waited, but it had gone behind the ridge and did not emerge, and so I turned and went on.
But if I thought I had left the half-humans behind by going up into the mountains, I was mistaken.
It probably was a foolish thing to do. But then again, I had come out here to die, and let the world choose the manner of it. I had neither reason to complain, nor any reason to expect that I’d live through it.
I first knew something was wrong on the morning of the third day up in the mountains. After sleeping amongst the rocks and cairns as usual, I walked through most of the day for as far as I could before I grew too tired. On the evening of the second day, however, the weather turned warmer – an unseasonal day of sunlight, summer’s borrow, as we say – and after a few hours of the sun on my face, the clouds drifted down and brought rain, not snow, in their wake. By that time, I was already camped for the night, secure, or so I thought, in the greatcoat, wrapped against the chill. I got only a little damp, and for someone raised on the coast and accustomed to storms, I didn’t think anything of it.
In the morning, however, I woke to a thick mist. I decided not to push on, but I needed to light a fire. When I stood up to go in search of sticks or moss, assuming any had survived dry through the night, my head felt light and there was a faint singing in my ears, as though the wind was whistling through me. I sat down again, abruptly, with my back against a rock, and my sight dwindled to a small dark point. That was that for the next few hours. When I came round, the mist had rolled away, leaving a perfect, cloudless sky and a bitter chill. By this time, I was shaking and cold to the bone. I tried to stand, and couldn’t get up. Some kind of bone fever, brought by the wet cold. My chest hurt with every breath. I huddled in the coat, staring at the mountains and thinking: so, this is it. I was not too sad at the way of it. Bone fevers are nasty but quick, and it would soon be over.
I don’t know how long I lay there. I remember growing colder and colder, and then I was warm again – feverish by hot – and I knew this meant I was close to the end. I heard voices and I thought that they were the spirits of Eresthahan, who had come to bear me to the land of the dead. I hoped the pregnant warrior of Moon Moor was among them, and maybe my sister also.
But the voices faded in and out, and the darkness above me changed to a dull blue glow. I felt something cold and sharp touch my arm; there was a moment of intense clarity, and then blackness again.
And after that, I was awake. I was in a forest, but it wasn’t like any forest I’d ever seen in the north. Instead of the crimson trunks and black leaves of satinspine, these trees were cloudy and grey, like smoke. There was the pungent smell of burning in my nose, but the air around me was cold, almost as chilly as the mountains in which I had lain down to die. I looked down at myself. I still wore the greatcoat, but my clothes were a lot cleaner than they had been over the last few days. My hands were still wrinkled, the veins roped across the thin skin of my knuckles, but there was no pain, no difficulty, in moving and I knew that this meant I was dreaming. Maybe this was hell, after all. But there was no one there to greet me. I stood still like a fool for a time, and then I thought that I might as well explore the place a little, see whether there was anyone else there. I started walking, forcing my way through undergrowth that was as thick and thorny as that of Moon Moor, but which shortly turned to powder as I made my way through it. I walked on ash, seeing bushes and trees that seemed intact until I touched them, whereupon they crumbled. The ash rose up in clouds, releasing heat, and coating my skin with its dust. I started to cough.
A clearing. In it stood a house – an odd-looking thing, with a low gabled roof, made out of logs. The door was open, and warily I went up to it. I couldn’t feel any house defences sizzling under the earth, nor anything else, for that matter – no metal, or water, only endless stone under the coating of ash. This was a place without landlines, a land that had died. I stepped inside the house.
Now I knew that this probably was Eresthahan after all.
The blue glow, the voices – those had been my death,
and now my spirit was walking in the land of the dead. Soon, no doubt, I would begin to grow younger, here in this hunting lodge.
I knew it to be a lodge because of the bones. They rattled along the ceiling, twisting in the breeze from the thin chains that held them. Some looked animal, though I couldn’t have said what kind they were. But some were human – there was a pelvis, and over here, sitting on the desk, a skull. Not large, either – whoever used this place had been hunting children. That wasn’t acceptable, but it happened – and maybe here in the land of the dead, it didn’t matter anyway.
All the bones had been polished in the traditional manner, and some of them were tipped with metal to give an ornamental effect. It reminded me very much of a lodge I had seen in the satinspine forests north of Essedura, high along the coast. I’d spent a pleasant few days there years ago, in the company of two other huntresses from other settlements. So the place had a comforting air of familiarity, for all that it was filled with death.
It was well governed, too. There was a spit on the fire, and the ashes had been cleaned from the grate. Two cooking pots were placed by the side of the hearth. A table bore traces of herbs – again, ones that I did not know – and there was a low bed covered with animal pelts along one wall. Someone lived here, or at least had been staying for some time, and was clearly making a good job of it.
I’d have been quite happy to stay. If this was the land of the dead, I’d seen a lot worse. The lodge was clean, functional, and cared for. I found a chair, started to pull it up by the grate, with thoughts of heading back out to locate the wood store.
But something was tugging at me. Something insistent, buzzing, like an insect that had lodged inside my skull and was trying to battle its way out again.
‘Leave me alone!’ I said.
A voice replied, ‘I think she’s coming round.’
‘Make sure her hands are secured. Are the bonds still holding?’
I didn’t like the sound of that.
‘It’s all tight. It’s old, but it still works. You saw that last year.’ That voice sounded odd: furred and lisping, like the voices of the half-humans I’d seen on the Moor. But I could understand what this one was saying, though I couldn’t see anything apart from a thick blackness. It felt as though they’d blindfolded me. I struggled a little, hearing an exclamation of alarm from my captors, but the bonds were indeed holding. Pity. All I could do then was to wait.
TWENTY-FOUR
PLANET: MUSPELL (VALI)
They’d already interrogated me once, so they didn’t bother to do so again, except to check how I’d managed to break out of their cell. Glyn Apt tried to wring it from me, but this time fatigue and stress turned out to be my friends and I simply fainted during the mind ’ride. I remember feeling smug as I passed out.
Then, I didn’t know how much later: ‘Vali.’ Someone was whispering my name.
‘Who’s there?’
My voice caught in my throat, as though snagged on thorns.
‘Vali, this is Eld.’
‘Thorn,’ I said, and it made me laugh.
‘Vali, remember the Skald? Tell me about the Rock. Tell me what they make you do, in the early morning meditation sessions.’
‘I don’t go to those,’ I said. I stared up at a black glass ceiling. We were in the same cell. ‘It’s for the acolytes.’
‘All the same, tell me what they do. I’m curious.’
I looked across. He was sitting on the edge of one of the rough beds, leaning forward a little, once more in that fur-collared coat. There was nothing on his face, no pity, no amusement.
If there had been, I would not have told him what he wanted to know, running through the meditation, focusing first on the soles of the feet, then the ankles, then each part of the body in turn. It knitted me back together again, not whole, but enough to allow me to sit up.
Eld’s face was still that bland, unreadable mask.
‘How are you feeling now?’ he asked.
I grimaced. ‘Sick. Disoriented. It’s to be expected.’
Eld nodded. ‘As you say. It will pass.’
‘I’m surprised to see you in here.’ This was a one-person cell, clearly: a single cot, limited washing facilities. I’d been grateful that it hadn’t been another stone dungeon, but perhaps they didn’t trust me in that. But that they’d put Eld in here with me was odd.
‘There’s some kind of panic on,’ Eld said. ‘I don’t know what’s happening. They brought in some people – I didn’t see them but they were making enough noise on a psychic level to wake an army.’
It puzzled me. ‘Darklanders? Or my people?’ The war. What the hell was happening back in the Reach? And I was here, not safe, in enemy territory, but still unable to do anything to help my home. I tried to stifle the guilt and failed.
‘I don’t know. Glyn Apt wasn’t exactly forthcoming. I think they needed the cell space, so they put us together.’
I’d already communicated to Eld how I’d broken out of the previous cell, and I wanted to discuss options with him, but we were probably under surveillance. I strolled over to the doorway and closed my eye, hoping he’d understand what I was trying to do. Eld was silent, but when I opened my eye again, a black bird was in the room.
I looked a question. ‘They didn’t have time to look for my final implant,’ Eld said. ‘Their loss.’ He gestured towards a socket on the wall. From most angles, it looked like nothing more than a lump of moss, an artful conceit, I thought, especially since the Morrighanu hadn’t bothered to make it all that convincing. ‘It’s safe to talk. I’ve shortcircuited the camera.’
‘But can you open the door?’
Eld laughed. ‘Unfortunately . . .’
‘I could try again.’
‘They’re probably wise to that by now. But Vali, one thing – you told me that you accessed one of their birds. That should mean that you still have its co-ordinates in your head. Can I try to contact it?’
I hesitated. ‘I think it was just a door lock. And anyway, you’re probably right. It will have changed by now.’
‘But even though it might not open the door, it’s still encoded information. We don’t know what it will do until we try.’
‘No, we don’t know.’
‘Will you let me try?’
‘What exactly does that involve, Eld?’
So he showed me.
The last man who had touched me had been Ruan. He was Mondhaith, it’s true, but really just a gentle boy with a feral side. I’d cared what happened to Ruan, but I hadn’t loved him. Before that, it had been the Hierolath, and before that Frey, and before that, my brother. Best not to go to those places, best to stay away – or so I told myself, even though I knew that keeping away was not an option, for why in that case did I keep going back? Letting Eld into my head might have been another violation, but he’d already been there, he already knew me better than anyone else, except perhaps Idhunn, and she was dead. I told myself this, and I winced as he touched me, and he understood. Hands on either side of my ruined face, that was all, a brief and flickery touch, and then it was gone. Eld’s mind brushed my mind and it was icy cold, with the promise of heat far within. I didn’t want to look at the possibility of that furnace, either. I jerked my head back, but Eld had already seen what was to be seen. I looked up to see white wings. Eld said, ‘Well, well, well.’ He made a gesture. A raven swooped.
I felt the brush of feathers against my skin and then I was inside, Eld’s raven breaking down barriers. The white bird was no more than a sketched ghost: they had stripped it of most of its encoding, but it was still showing the raven the way.
Snowstorm. Tendrils of ice licking my flesh, leaving paradoxical fire in their wake. Dimly, through the snow, distant lights: a homestead, perhaps, or the landing lights of a rescue craft. I struggled towards them, battling cold and the weakness of cold, but they danced away from me like marsh fire. I walked on, thinking that at any moment the fenris would come at me out of the storm and t
he dark, that the lights were its hot yellow eyes, laced with sunbright death. At that thought, I tried to turn away, cowering – knowing that my body was still in the cell and that Thorn Eld’s wary hands were hovering around me, hoping to steady without touching. Eld had learned something of me, and did not want to breach any more barriers. That, by itself, almost made me cry.
Snowdark. I knew there was something I should be looking for, but I didn’t know what it was. I moved towards the light, as the ancient myths tell you to do when you are at the moment of your death, but the light was information, cascading around me in skeins and torrents, data scrolling too fast for me to grasp its significance. I wondered whether this was what it must be like for Glyn Apt, perpetually in the heart of a data gale.
And someone was calling my name.
‘Eld?’ I said, or thought I heard myself say. But there was no reply from the man at my side, or if there was, I did not hear it.
Vali.
‘Who are you?’ I knew the voice, that was the strange thing.
Vali. I’m here. Walk towards me.
Very clear now. I did as the voice – it was a woman’s – told me.
Vali!
‘Oh, the gods of my mothers,’ I said, because it was Idhunn.
She was standing in the middle of the streams of data, like someone who stands beneath a waterfall. The data poured down, dripping from her long white hair and over her hands, but she made no move to brush it aside. She looked much younger, and as I stepped closer I saw that she was younger: this was not Idhunn as I had known her, but a woman in her late twenties, close to my own age, and this Idhunn was herself composed of data. She wasn’t real, but she’d been encoded.
At first I thought she was some kind of trap. But there was a weird rightness to her, as if this was her home and her place and one couldn’t properly expect her to be anywhere else.
‘Vali?’ she said.
‘It’s me. How do you know who I am?’