She attempted to run away when the snake raised its head from the water. But only her upper body had been released and all she could do was twist at the waist. It watched her with its carmine eyes, its head swinging side to side in a lethargic arc and dripping water from its underside. It drew back suddenly and struck at her – a movement so fast she saw only its product: a gaping, fanged mouth that filled the whole scene. It snapped shut inches from her face and whipped back, its forward momentum checked by a body still leaden with magic.
She flinched away in reflex, but her lower legs were still fixed in the river like posts and she hinged back on her knees, grasping at the air as she fell into the water. She resurfaced, but wasn’t able to rise on her vertical shins and went under again. With water rushing around her face she hugged her knees and heaved herself back up, then stood there coughing and spluttering as she watched the snake. It was looking at its body now, trying to understand why its back half was fixed in the river and raising waves of water as it flexed and coiled; trying to pull free. But when it caught sight of the impaled rider it slithered over and without the slightest hesitation sunk its fangs into him, dislocating its enormous jaw to swallow him whole. And as its old master travelled through its body in peristaltic waves it turned its focus back to her.
She pulled desperately at her frozen legs, looking like someone stuck in deep mud instead of water. She would be released from the magic soon, but so would the snake. It was swishing from side to side now, each undulation moving further down its body. When her legs eventually came free she staggered back, triggering it to strike again. Nearly all of its body was free of magic now and this time its lower jaw bumped her chest and knocked her over. But perhaps sensing its fading opportunity, it didn’t retreat this time. Its open mouth strained against its body like a dog on a leash and it inched forward in pace with her splashing retreat - its vile breath puffing out a stinking green miasma. She got back on her feet and fled, feeling the first pulses of pain from her poisoned leg. She scrambled up the far bank and in a racing hobble, set off to find her Uncle Jarl – the man with whom she would spend the next five hundred years…
A Dangerous Acquisition
Izle broke his connection with a gasp. He had spent more than an hour bent over the girl and his fingers had made imprints on her face. He pushed himself to his feet and considered the dishevelled enigma before him. Despite his best efforts she had resisted his draw; retreating into her mind like a rabbit down an improbably deep warren. She had lost him in the twists and turns, but he had found her eventually; the whole of her consciousness wrapped up in an elaborate memory. He had applied himself to her extraction with resurgent ferocity, but to no avail. It was like she had dissolved into the memory – a trick he would never have thought possible; and one he begrudgingly admired.
How such a wretched girl could stall his plans and resist his draw was both sobering and infuriating. But it wasn’t a complete surprise. He had learned of the girl’s existence during his visits with the Indomitable Spirit and had even spent time tracking her down - researching old census records and making enquiries in places the Butcher suggested he look. But he had pillaged the girl’s mind before his imprisonment and his information on her past whereabouts was so old, it was virtually worthless. If she had stayed in any of the places he listed, it was well beyond the living memory of the current inhabitants. But he had discovered a tantalising lead in the valley town of Harbrook.
The late warden was a diligent record keeper and in one of his browning log books he found several entries concerning a carpenter who had settled there with his niece. The girl had been lamed by a snake bite and walked with a crutch. The warden was suspicious of the man as he could provide no references. But he allowed him to work there for a probationary period during which he proved his worth and was granted permission to stay. They became popular and well respected members of the community, but one night they vanished without a note or a word to anybody – their possessions abandoned in their river side log cabin. It was the girl and her beloved uncle, he was sure of it. He had checked the records of all the villages within a fifty-mile radius, hoping to pick up their trail. But he never found another mention of them. In the end, he had found her when he was focused on other things – crossing his extended consciousness as he spoke to the shapeshifter.
In the last few days he had learnt much of what she called Absence; experiencing it first hand through that part of him trapped inside her. When she left her bed to search for the shapeshifter he had simply observed – feeling the internal adjustments she made to leave her body. It was a skill he might never have learnt, if he had to force her to teach him. But through their blend he had learnt it instantly. When she fell asleep in the gaol he took her into Absence without waking her up. He didn’t need the pathetic colour separation method she used; for he was quick to see it for what it was: nothing more than a focusing aid for her weak mind. He had found such preparation unnecessary, gleaning the shortcuts intuitively and performing Absence in a fraction of the time. Whether he could do it in his own body was yet to be proved. But it wasn’t much different from his extended scour technique, which he was now beginning to think of as a tethered Absence.
There was still a lot he could learn from the girl: the secrets of longevity, the origin of the Creator Stone and the history of her people. But there was no time; a Reader Ceremony was imminent and his men were in position. The problem was, she was too dangerous to put aside until later. For as he learnt from her, she had, at least subconsciously, learnt from him. She could now leave her body in an instant, as if the shortcuts he had used to take her into Absence were mental doorways he’d left open for her. This, combined with enough power to throw a toruck against a tree, made her a significant adversary. He could not allow her to take leave of her body again and now after years of searching for her he had to kill her.
He slipped a dagger from his robes, but before he could draw it across her throat his hand was stayed by a fresh wave of bitterness. The girl had jeopardised years of preparation and simply bleeding her delicate throat would not satisfy him at all. So with another idea in mind, he turned to Karkus. The toruck dwarfed him; but what contrast there was physically was reversed mentally. To Karkus he was an omnipotent and infallible power, whose will was inseparable from his own. And if he were to command it, he was sure Karkus would drop to his knees and pull his own throat out with his enormous hands - a theory he might one day take pleasure in testing.
The subjugation of the torucks had been key to his plan. He had lured them from Rockspur with a plume of smoke, funnelled them into a glue bog to render them a captive audience. From the edge of the bog he had turned them with a projected scour – a process that proved more difficult than he expected. The toruck mind was surprisingly robust in areas concerning loyalty and righteousness and they had thrashed and cried as he took down the noble edifices of their mind. But by the early hours they were his. Since then they had been his eyes and ears in Rockspur and Irongate. Karkus was going to be his personal bodyguard once he was back in the city, but after the girl’s kidnapping he would have to lay low for a while. Another thing to thank her for.
He spoke to Karkus now, though the channel he had carved in his mind.
‘Her body clings to life and her soul hides deep inside. Take her to the chute and throw her to Gomsa. He should be ravenous by now. But understand this: she cannot be permitted to leave her body again. Keep a blade to her throat and if she so much as twitches you must kill her immediately. I’m flying west now to Irongate. When you’re done here, return to the Tower of Misrus and wait for me to send word.’
He watched Karkus lift the girl from the slab and disappear into the glass tunnels. It pleased him that she would end her meddling life as ballast for Gomsa’s stomachs. There was a small chance that she would resurface once Karkus dropped her down the chute; but Gomsa would be waiting and she would be far too occupied to be any trouble. He smiled. The more he thought about it, the more
he hoped she would be awake for her final moments.
Glass Tunnel
The jungle passed by unseen to Kye’s whirring mind. His head throbbed with a clamping headache and he was sure Ormis had ruptured something with his rough scour. But he didn’t care. He would gladly suffer ten times worse for what he had done for Najo and Allie. He had helped them to pass and it had been the best feeling of his life. Not a physical pleasure, but a deeply satisfying and wholesome one. Now he knew how to help Emilie and as he walked on, he vowed to return to the lake and give her the painless escape she had been robbed of. The only problem was Ormis. He had promised to burn her up in one of his barbaric exorcisms and there was nothing he could say to change his mind. So he had decided to run away as soon as they got back over the mountains and find his sister before Ormis did.
The jungle gave way to a new type of terrain, populated by huge towers of vegetation that ran either side of a wide lane. Each tower was different and some were beautiful to behold. The flowers on one had petals like peacock feathers and throbbing egg yolks for hearts. On another, the flowers were as white as royal bed sheets; their long stamens blowing bubbles that caught little rainbows of light before they burst – forming a snaking vapour that caressed the leaves.
But some of the other towers were downright sinister.
One was covered in a beard of cottony fibres which barely hid a colony of bloated slugs. Another was a stinking wall of palmate leaves through which horn shaped projections grew; their open ends swollen like lips and glossed with crimson nectar. He saw several insects disappear inside; but none came out.
As they travelled between these strange towers he started to think of them as sleeping giants, and once the idea took hold he began to hear the bubbling of their guts and the restless fidgeting of their creaking joints. What followed was a feeling of being watched. He glimpsed surreptitious movements in the corner of his eyes, but when he looked there was nothing to see. With every step along this creepy avenue, he expected a flowered structure to split open and a grotesque hand to snatch him inside.
His first look at the Eastland after coming through the Wall had left him feeling cheated. Lady Demia had done a full lesson about the Wilderness, painting a picture of a twisted land, full of dark and dangerous horrors. But he didn’t feel cheated anymore. The Wilderness was a land of horrors - she just hadn’t told them about their beautiful costumes.
Ormis caught him goggling and tapped his chest; giving him a look he had no trouble translating: Stay focused boy, this is no place for nonsense. The exorcist had agreed to let him go on in an uncharacteristic moment of weakness. But whatever had come over him was long gone and his grey eyes were as hard as ever. He snapped out of his daydreaming and continued with renewed concentration, paying more attention now to what was going on upfront.
It wasn’t long before the jungle started to close in and they had to weave around thick cobwebs that hung from squat black trees; staying well clear of the red eyed residents that were hiding in the web flowers. Most of the obstacles looked benign: stems of long flowers bobbing in the breeze and gnarled roots sticking out of the ground. But with the memory of the shredder still fresh in his mind, he complied without question when Suula signalled for him to duck or give something a wide berth.
He began to see masonry beneath the vegetation, realising the structures were in fact overgrown ruins and the spaces in between, ancient streets and alleyways. He saw several balusters of a stairway in one and the top of an arched doorway in another. And as he was staring he stumbled over some broken cobblestones.
They slowed as they progressed, Suula spending more time looking around and twitching her nose in the air. The smell of flowers had gradually strengthened and now it was a cloying redolence that seemed to be hindering her. When she stopped he thought it had blocked her senses completely, but then he saw the big hole beyond her.
She signalled for them to wait, dropped to the ground and crawled forward to peer inside. The rest of them watched whilst the sun baked their necks; listening to the drone of insects. She reached into the hole, took her arm out and sniffed at her fingers. Then, after listening for a few minutes she got to her feet and waved them over.
Kye was surprised to see the hole was in fact a tunnel; cut straight into the ground at a steep angle. The walls were made of green glass - flawlessly smooth and unblemished by lichen or moss. A set of steps were hacked into its base. The crude cuts went right through the glass and into the clay and the treads contained crystalline splinters of the smashed material. There was a muddy paste on the lip of the first few and he realised this was what Suula had been sniffing at. He counted the steps; but the tunnel descended quickly into shadow and his eyes failed at fifteen.
‘They went in no more than an hour ago,’ she said. ‘There were traces of the girl’s blood back at the tree, but I can still smell it in the tunnel. Fresh blood. Most likely from wounds reopened by rough handling. She’s still alive.’
Kye beamed. He hadn’t doubted Della was still alive; but Suula’s confident confirmation still felt like a weight lifting from him. He saw an altogether different reaction on Ormis’s face. A casual observer would have seen indifference in his stony countenance and rigid posture, but Kye had been around him long enough to know better. There wasn’t much to go on: a slight tip of his head and a faint clenching of his jaw - but he could tell Ormis was stirred. He had just been told by his most trusted source that the girl he had exorcised was alive. Kye expected him to challenge her, but to his surprise he just stood there, staring into the tunnel.
Suula was the only one left with a backpack after the disastrous river crossing and she slipped it off now and took a little pot from one of its inside pockets. She thumbed off the lid, stuck her fingers into a greasy paste and smeared it onto her short sword. Kye was struck instantly by the smell - the same rose-pine redolence his britches smelt of before he fell into the tree monster. She removed another pot and sprinkled what appeared to be dead insects onto the grease. When they started to buzz, he realised they were fieraks. They began crawling over the blade, each one igniting with a familiar green light. The lights strengthened and merged, becoming a single flame that encompassed the entire blade. Then the fieraks were taking off, whizzing around the sword and dipping into the grease whenever their glow started to fade.
‘Their light is weak and so is their heat,’ said Kring, putting his hand into the flame. ‘See.’ He treated one of his big swords in the same fashion, then did the same to a dagger and handed it to Kye. ‘If you move it too fast you’ll lose them,’ he said, swishing his sword to demonstrate. The fieraks were left behind by the sudden movement and for a split second there was a perfect teardrop of flame hanging in the air. But then the flies swarmed after the blade and it collapsed in a green blur. ‘Move it nice and slow if you want them to keep up.’
They waited while Ormis treated his sword then gathered at the rim of the tunnel.
‘Once we start down we’ll communicate with hand signals and whispers only,’ said Suula. ‘Voices will travel far and true along glass walls.’
Kring went in first, followed by Suula, Kye and Ormis. Shadow enveloped them and the sounds of the jungle soon faded away.
Runaway Sundial
They descended in cautious steps with their flaming swords held out in front of them. As the gloom thickened, flecks in the glass wall began to reflect their light and it was like they were travelling through a barrel of twinkling green stars. The gradient levelled out and the steps ended, delivering them to a passage of similar dimensions. Kring took them on, stopping where the tunnel was joined by others so Suula could decide which way to go. Some of the openings were plugged with rocks. Kye’s first thought was that the tunnels had collapsed, but an overhead swish of Suula’s sword revealed their glass ceilings to be intact. The others exchanged a knowing look and without a word between them they continued on. The side tunnels had been blocked up on purpose - to keep something from getting out.
Kye took an instant dislike to the water and when Suula pointed to indicate Karkus had gone in, he felt a rising panic. The water seemed to be watching them and the thought of wading through it filled him with dread. But Suula didn’t hesitate and she went in on tiptoes, rippling its brooding surface. When she was knee deep she turned back and squatted, holding an arm out to suggest they proceed in a chain. They linked up with Kye at the back and started forward; their reflections distorting in the sloshing water.
Kye followed with rising dread and with every step he became more and more certain something bad was about to happen. He had once played a game in which he had to walk as far as he could with his eyes closed. It looked easy, but after a dozen steps there was always the feeling of something looming in front of him; an obstacle that was never there when he opened his eyes. He had a similar feeling now, but with his eyes wide open. With every churning step he felt an invisible peril gathering in front of him; a feeling that became so strong he planted his feet, bringing the rest of them to a stop. Ormis turned back, inquiring after his behaviour by raising his brow. None of them noticed the unnatural speed with which the water settled. In less than a second it was a flawless mirror; reflecting their flame lit faces to perfection.
Absence_Mist and Shadow Page 20