by Col Buchanan
The Milk! his rattled mind cried again, knowing it was lost to him now, a fortune in Milk; that they would sniff it out and bring it back with them to their warrens.
Cursing bitterly, the longhunter leaned forward with the rifle held out to one side for balance, his muscles sinking deeper into the rhythms of his mount while he kicked it for all it was worth, keenly aware that other kree might still be in pursuit of them.
They followed hard after the cat like refugees cast from a dream, man and zel bearing the last guttering light through the emptiness of the Great Hush, for the end of his canvas-wrapped rifle was still burning, trailing a thread of sparks and smoke through the long night.
CHAPTER THREE
Cheōs
Halfway up the mountain path the Dreamer staggered and dropped to one knee, slapping a palm against the rocky track whilst the gusts roared and shoved at her back like bullying giants. Cursing, she raised the borrowed shield above her head again for protection against the falling hail, and looked out at the black storm clouds rushing in over the Painted Mountain, hardly believing what she saw.
The hailstones were growing larger now, chunks of white ice dropping from the broiling sky the size of fists, hammering against the wooden shield in her grasp and bursting noisily all around her on the boulders and scree of the slope. In panic, a family of mountain goats brayed and scampered downwards in leaping kicks. The Dreamer gritted her teeth, pieces of ice almost knocking the target shield from her grasp. With keenly narrowed eyes she scanned for cover, and when she spotted a nearby outcrop and set off for it through the barrage, Shard was thinking fiercely: this is no ordinary storm.
Beneath the overhang of rock, she bent her long body under its shelter and watched the deluge of ice turning the mountain slope white with frozen debris. Shivering, she pulled the fur collar of her longcoat about her neck against the blasts of frigid wind, and tossed the chipped and splintered shield to the ground.
Shard gasped aloud, running a hand over her dark, slicked hair while she felt the mirrored half-mask growing chill against her face. It was the first real storm of winter here in the Free Ports, by far the worst she had ever seen on the island of Salina, and she was starting to realize how crazy she was to be out in it.
Thank Erēs the hail was lessening, vanishing with a last few clattering strikes on the slope, though in its absence the blasts of wind grew fierce enough to pin her to the rock, flattening her dark hair and the black and white feathers sprouting from her collar.
Should I risk it? she considered in all seriousness, but then a tree limb went whipping past in a gust and the air whistled in warning, and Shard leaned back to reconsider her options.
Some help would be needed if she hoped to make it any further. Her numb hand plucked a vial from one of the many leather pockets on her belt, and she twisted it open, took a good long sniff from the powdery contents within it, bitter and numbing at the back of her throat. The Dreamer gasped from the dazzling effects of the narcotic now surging through her blood. Her eyes dilated, senses sharpening towards a point where time was slowing down. Details leapt out at her.
A linen shirt flew through the air, flapping its arms as though trying to return to the washing line it had just been swept from. Not far from the lines of washing below, some of the garrisoned troops were trying to stop the zels in the corral from breaking out in their collective fright. Behind the struggling figures rose the white buildings and domes of Cheōs, her beloved Academy of Salina, nestled in descending terraces on a broad shoulder of the Painted Mountain, which itself rose as bare rock from the tree line below, ringed by bands of colour, stripes of ochre and honey.
From the many chimneys, grey smoke blew to nothing in the blasts of wind. Sparks flew from the wires of the Sky Batteries hanging between the domes. Even as Shard watched it, a turning water-wheel on the side of the foundry seemed to slow in its motion. A few students hurried from the library across the open spaces, their feet kicking aside bits of ice, heading for the exotic gardens where broken glass gaped from the glasshouse roofs – worried, no doubt, over their personal crops of hazii weed and stimulants. Mandalay would be in a fine lather over the damage to her glasshouses, where the Observer grew all manner of experimental plants for their medicinal properties.
Over the gleaming dome of the sky observatory, used on cloudless nights to study the cosmos though closed now and shedding ice in the gale, she could see down the mountain slope to the coastal lowlands of the island and the blue sparkle of the Midèrēs beyond, where a fleet of League warships patrolled for Mannian incursions.
The sun was still shining down there. Apparently the storm was a localized phenomenon, streaming in from the west in a narrow band of dark clouds. More evidence that this was anything but natural. Shard wondered what they were making of it in the shack of exotics at the very top of the mountain, where wizened old Observers pursued their obsession of understanding and predicting the weather.
Shard, are you there?
The voice in her head came through the farcry she wore like a belt beneath her clothing, a warm and fleshy object pressed against her skin. For a moment she thought it was Remedy again, one of her rooks in her private eyrie further up the slope, contacting her to ask what was taking so long. But when the voice spoke again in her head she realized instead that it was Coya Zeziké, her contact within the Few. Shard frowned with impatience.
What is it Coya? This isn’t the best time for chat.
Trouble?
A storm just hit the island. And one of my rooks is in trouble. Where are you anyway?
Are we secure? Can we talk?
Of course.
I’m on Breaker’s Island, a few hundred laqs south-east of you. I’m using the farcry on my skyboat. Listen, Shard, I’m with the Rōshun. I finally recruited their aid!
The Rōshun? You found them? As usual, Coya’s news was of the most surprising kind. Where were they hiding all this time?
In Cheem, just like I said! The Empire has destroyed their monastery there. Now they’re keen to join us and take them on.
The war, Shard realized with growing unease; he was contacting her because of the war.
For ten years now the people of the Free Ports had lived under siege and blockade by the Empire of Mann. It was an ongoing struggle for their existence, in which the most crucial front lay in the easternmost island of Khos, where the famed city of Bar-Khos stood right on the throat of the Lansway – that bridge of land connecting the island with the occupied continent to the south – blocking the Empire’s endless assaults with the colossal walls of the Shield.
Shard had arrived in the midst of it a year into the siege, as a young girl and refugee from the southern continent. An awful and harrowing business, and she had been glad to be gone from it when her family had moved elsewhere in the Free Ports. But now the Empire was attacking again with all its might, stirring up the coals of the war once more. Already they had landed a force in Khos by sea, an Expeditionary Force that had threatened to storm Bar-Khos from behind – before General Creed, Lord Protector of the island, had stalled them by launching a surprise night attack with a much smaller army, in the process felling their leader in battle, the Holy Matriarch of Mann herself.
Shard, I’m going to Bar-Khos after I finish this business with the Rōshun. The city is in trouble. The Empire closes in on them again.
A frown formed on her fine Contrarè features.
But I thought there was a lull in the fighting, now that the Holy Matriarch is dead? You said last week the Expeditionary Force were stalled in the middle of Khos, fighting amongst themselves?
They still are. But now trouble comes from the south, in Pathia, against the Shield. An old villain returns to the scene of his crime. General Mokabi, previous Archgeneral of the Empire. The man who launched the first assaults against the Shield of Bar-Khos, and was retired when he failed to take the walls. He’s leaving Sheaf now with a quarter of a million mercenaries, intent on finishing what he started.
You’re joking. How many?
Enough, Shard, he’s bringing enough to storm the walls of the Shield no matter how many reinforcements the League sends to the city. Bar-Khos can’t hope to hold on without intervention.
No doubt he was making it sound worse than it really was. Which was his usual tactic whenever he was about to ask her a favour, something else on top of all those things she was already undertaking for the Few – this secret network that she had somehow been made a part of, by Coya, yet about which she still knew very little, save that they were a scattering of individuals throughout the Free Ports, working behind the scenes to maintain the spirit of the democras – people without rulers.
Well she wouldn’t have it, not this time, not with everything they were already doing in aid of the war. For all that Shard knew, one of her rooks was up there even now in her eyrie losing her mind for the cause. They could give no more.
Shard?
You’ve always said the Lord Protector knows what he’s doing. I doubt he will make it easy for them.
Creed? He’s still recovering from his heart attack. From what I hear he’s hardly his old self.
You haven’t spoken with him?
He ignores my missives. But his people say he’s in a bad way. I’ll be travelling there myself soon to see what aid I can lend them. Many of us are heading to Bar-Khos right now. It’s where we need to be.
The lump in her throat grew sharper. She knew now what he was going to ask her, and Shard no longer felt the cold against her skin, no longer felt the wind at all.
Shard, I need you to come with me to Bar-Khos.
Now you really are joking. Have you any idea how much I have on my plate right now?
Bah. So you always say whenever I ask you to leave the Academy. You’re the only Dreamer we have, Shard. Not to mention the best rook in the Free Ports. This time I really need you. The democras needs you.
I’m not your pet Dreamer, Coya. I’m not here to be dragged in front of an army every time you need to scare them witless with some fancy light and dazzle show.
That isn’t – strictly – the only reason why I need you there.
Then why?
Because . . . you’re Contrarè.
The woman straightened at that, banging her head against the overhang of rock. It was the last thing she had expected him to say.
In blood only, she hotly replied. I was raised in a town, Coya. I went to school. I’m no more Contrarè than those fake totems your bodyguard keeps sending me for his own ridiculous reasons.
He wants you, that’s why he keeps sending you those baubles, Shard.
I know what he wants – you’re avoiding my point!
You’re still Contrarè, Shard, no matter how much you try to hide the fact. We need you. Marlo suggested the plan and he’s right. If we are to save Khos, we must make another effort at gaining the aid of the Contrarè in the Windrush forest, bring them into the war on our side. They can help tie up the Expeditionary Force indefinitely in the north, while the Khosians focus on dealing with Mokabi’s threat to the south. Which means I need to go there personally and speak with the Contrarè. Which means I need our resident Contrarè Dreamer along to show them whose side I’m on. Which would be you, Walks With Herself, unless you know of another.
Shard was twenty-three years of age, but she felt altogether older than her years as she crouched beneath the rock, blasted by the storm, feeling herself pulled this way and that by the demands of her abilities.
Barkbeaters was the derogatory name for her people, the indigenous Contrarè of the region. In the city of Sheaf where she had grown up, the local Pathians had treated her kind like dogs – those Contrarè living there after their tribes had been pacified, driven from the diminishing forests of northern Pathia to work whatever sweat jobs they could find in the cities. Shard barely knew what it was to be Contrarè, save for old myths told by her parents and how to sing songs during dances and, much later, how to pretend she hadn’t noticed the fascination of eyes upon her features and the grasping of preconceptions.
I can’t, she told Coya firmly. I have too much going on here to just drop it all and leave.
Shard!
Contact me later. This isn’t a good time right now.
With a command of will she broke the connection between their two farcrys, then offered a shake of her head and a few worthy Contrarè curses to the gale; another legacy of her parents.
Coya’s words echoed in her mind like ghostly accusations.
How she loathed this war with the Empire, resenting the time it robbed from her studies of the raw bindee, her attempts at exploring these abilities she still barely understood as a fledgling Dreamer.
Thank kush her parents had gotten her out in time, not long after Pathia had fallen to Mann. And thank kush she had gone on to find her place in this world, right here on the slopes of the Painted Mountain, in this academy which welcomed anyone of ability regardless of their fortunes or their blood or their gender, and which supported itself and its students largely through donations and outreach colleges in the towns and city, where its name of Cheōs, reflecting the spirit of open-minded learning, had become synonymous with wisdom itself.
After so many years spent studying here, Shard held a deep love for this place where she now lived as a rare prize to the Academy, a Dreamer in residency – indeed the only Dreamer in the Free Ports. Certainly, she had no wish to leave again any time soon.
Absently, Shard’s gaze was drawn to the open palm of her hand, where the rainbow colours of her glimmersuit swirled like oil on water, a transparent second skin that lived upon the entirety of her own.
Before the storm had hit, she’d been down in the culture-tanks checking on the latest experiment for the glimmersuits – trying to create a method that would reproduce them from samples taken from her own. But the results remained unsatisfactory, the secrets of the second skin still largely a mystery; something else the Few would no doubt be pestering her about soon, even as Coya tried to persuade her to drop everything and come with him into the maws of the war.
Shard, please respond.
Coya, I’m serious, this isn’t—
It’s Remedy, cut in the voice of one of her rooks.
What is it?
Just suggesting you hurry if you can. Moon’s worse than we thought.
Is she conscious?
Her eyes are open. But I don’t think anyone’s home.
Thunder cracked the sky open, shook the mountain and the air and the juices in the pit of her belly. All day Shard had carried a feeling of sick anticipation in her stomach without knowing that it was for this moment now. Moon had been her finest, her brightest. Now the girl was likely gone.
Stay clear of the Black until I get there. I’m doing my best.
Understood.
Lightning flashed and struck the iron conductor of one of the domes, for an instant coursing along the dangling lines of the Sky Batteries.
The Dreamer could do little about the lightning just now, but at least she could do something about the wind. When the height of her narcotic rush began to subside at last, Shard knew she was deep enough to work a glyph, and pictured one in her mind, a golden shining thing she had crafted from the bindee with such occasions in mind.
Her glimmersuit began to warm against her skin, colours swirling faster across the backs of her hands; a conduit of her will, rousing itself to the raw bindee around her. For three years now she had worn this second skin upon her own, ever since stepping from a hidden pool in the Alhazii desert; the shell of living liquid reaching into every orifice of her body, never to dry. Yet still she could feel the touch of things. Still she perspired.
When Shard willed the mental glyph to life the wind around her fluttered and began to lessen. She stepped out from cover, the worst of the gusts deflected around her by the subtle manipulations of chance some distance upwind.
Normally it took little effort to maintain this kind of glyph, for it was always
easier to manipulate non-living things such as the movements of the air. But she was still drained from last night’s work, and her mind was buffeted by the elements. She needed to be quick.
Shard ducked out from the rocks and hurried upwards along the track, propelled by the steady eagerness of the wind. At least it was no longer trying to barge her flat to the ground.
She was panting by the time she reached the steps leading to her eyrie, though she maintained her pace as she stamped up to the log house above, perched on an outcrop of rock amongst a lone stand of shaking dwarf pine.
Reaching the front door, Shard dropped the glyph in her mind and stepped inside, her longcoat suddenly billowing with air.
CHAPTER FOUR
Terravana
In the frigid darkness of a cave the farlander Ash stood alone, smiling to himself in reverie.
Through his mind and heart ran a memory of his lost apprentice Nico; the night in Bar-Khos when they had stolen into the menagerie, creatures calling out into the darkness all around them. The boy’s sly humour as he turned from the pond with the dripping egg in his hand, thrilled at his own bravery.
Your turn!
A smile tugged at the corners of the old Rōshun’s mouth. Eyes opening to slits, Ash gazed into a small alcove carved into the wall of the cave, where a candle flickered warmly, blackening the rock above it with smoke.
The small alcove had been empty when they had first arrived here a day earlier by skyship, at this ancient island Hermitage in the sea. Now it was swept clean and occupied by the candle, along with two stout urns of clay.
In the larger urn were the bones and ashes of Oshō, leader of the Rōshun order, his friend and mentor fallen in the defence of their monastery in Cheem. Next to it, the smaller vessel held the remains of his young apprentice Nico, months passed now since the boy’s death in the far imperial capital of Q’os.
Swaying in something of a trance, the farlander was filled only with the lingering impressions of the boy who still haunted him, still lived on in his mind where his son and his wife also lived on, all three in some way entwined. At his back, the never-ending growl of the Terravana lulled Ash into a peaceful stillness, sent a vibration through his bones that soothed the pain in his lower spine. He basked in the strange sounds, carried along by their rhythms and the flow of emotions washing through him.