The Pilgrims: Book One (The Pendulum Trilogy)

by Elliott, Will

  What was meant? Perhaps that he should see the vision now, but not before setting out with Kiown. Why?

  If I’d seen it before, he thought, I might have shot him in the inn that morning.

  And they’d have wandered, lost and aimless, perhaps headfirst into death or capture. Was he meant to travel with the spy, the traitor? Was Kiown meant to guide them to a certain point? How would he know when that point had come, when it was time to run?

  If he’d seen the vision now, perhaps the time to leave was now.

  In Eric’s pacing, he hadn’t noticed that Kiown had stopped snoring, that his eyes were open, and were on him. ‘Has Nightmare returned?’ he said drowsily. ‘Perhaps to seek your counsel, O Eric, road-walker?’

  Eric laughed, nerves betraying him. ‘Just can’t sleep.’

  ‘Mmm. Your world must be very different. When trying to sleep, we lie down. Happy pacing, then.’ Kiown’s eyes closed and, after a time, his snoring resumed.

  Over breakfast, Eric didn’t let on what he knew, though he hoped it wasn’t written as plainly on his face as he felt it was. How badly he wanted five minutes alone with Case to talk, but he was afraid to ask Kiown to leave them be. Kiown meanwhile seemed his usual chirpy self, babbling about what comforts awaited them in the city. If he suspected Eric knew something, he didn’t show it. He kept teasing Eric about Nightmare as they polished off the last of the innkeeper’s goods for breakfast. The bread was stiff by now, but the meat and fruit were still good. Down by the road, the army patrol had gone.

  ‘One last day’s walk,’ said Kiown, stretching as he stood. ‘Hot baths, steam rooms, whores, cooked meals. That awaits us, O Eric, breakfast-eater, O Case, his loyal steed. I am going to hire three whores at once, I think, and pay them extra to battle naked for the right to my cock. The winner gets it first. The others will just have to make do with what they have. For a while.’

  ‘Is all this available in an Aligned city?’ said Eric, hoping the question sounded casual.

  ‘If you know the right places and people,’ said Kiown, gazing across at the chimney-smoke rising from beyond the hills. ‘Or the wrong ones. The wrong ones are usually more fun. And yes, I know them. Just because the castle owns the city doesn’t mean everyone there loves them for it. Most don’t, and wish to leave. They can’t. The soldiery and a few overseers are the only ones living well.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure we’ll be safe in such a place?’

  Kiown now gave him a look which seemed, for just a second, to be shrewdly appraising him. He said, ‘Safe, you ask. Nowhere’s safe. Even if we had run of a Free City, it wouldn’t be safe. The world is deadly dangerous, O Eric the timid. Haven’t you noticed?’

  Eric said evenly, ‘I have. Here, danger has a way of … sneaking up on you, I suppose, from unlikely places. When your back’s turned. As it were.’ The instant he’d said it, he wished he could just suck in a deep enough breath to take the words back with it. Why do it, why turn this into a game? he furiously asked himself. The answer: he wanted to be sure what he’d seen was real before potentially taking a life. It had seemed real in the vision, and his bones still felt it was, but here, now, in the light of morning …

  And he got his wish. Kiown looked at him without talking, seeming shocked for just a moment then suddenly wary, eyes darting from Case to Eric. A laughed forced itself belatedly out of his mouth. ‘Yes, yes, yes! You are quite right. You may even say there is no such thing as an unlikely place from which danger should spring upon one. But, how cryptically phrased, O Eric the intriguing. Is there something on your mind?’

  ‘No,’ said Eric, affecting casualness again, though too late, he sensed. He stood and gathered up his things.

  Kiown still watched him. ‘Unpleasant dreams? Eric?’

  ‘Yeah. Don’t worry. It’s nothing. I dreamed we went to the city and something bad happened to us.’

  Kiown nodded. ‘When your … back was turned. As it were.’

  ‘Well. Yes.’

  ‘Scuse me,’ said Case irritably, ‘can you two poets let me in on all this? You’re talking about something, and it’s pretty serious near’s I can tell. Want to try it in plain talk for the elderly among us?’

  Kiown shrugged as though Eric were the one being strange. He seemed, however, to have been put at ease by Case’s outburst; perhaps it was evidence that Eric and Case did not share any plots or suspicions. He hummed a tune as he gathered the soft grass in rolls and put it back in place for the next campers to come up here, weighing the bundles down with rocks. Then he went to the corner of the platform they’d reserved for such functions and pissed down the side.

  Eric saw his chance. He whispered, ‘Case, when I say now, put on the charm and get the gun ready. Be ready to shoot him. I’m serious.’

  ‘What’s this about?’ whispered Case.

  There wasn’t time to talk more. ‘Let’s away,’ said Kiown, bowing flamboyantly. Eric had a moment’s doubt, then thought of walking down the steps, no railing beside them, Kiown within reach of them both. ‘Case. Now.’

  Kiown looked the question at them both. Case hesitated, then reached into his pocket, the charm in one hand, the gun in the other. He showed Kiown the gun then slipped the charm over his head, vanishing.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ said Kiown, one hand going uncertainly to his sword’s handle. ‘What are you two cooking here?’

  ‘First, let me tell you something,’ said Eric. His heart was beating wildly, but he tried to keep his voice level. ‘Don’t come any closer, don’t try to run away. There’s something you weren’t told about how I killed the Invia.’

  ‘Wounded her, you said …’

  ‘Yes, within an inch of her life. I brought something with me from Otherworld. A weapon. You have magic here, we have technology there. There’s maybe not a lot of difference, except any fool can use technology. My weapon’s a simple one. Point, make a fist, and boom.’

  Kiown laughed. He spread his hands. ‘O Eric the strange! What is all this talk? Do you resent being Anfen’s trinket and yearn to be free? Is that what really happened, is that why you left? Listen! It’s simple. Bargain with him. Or with whichever Mayor he hands you to. Demand a price for your labours. You’ll get it. You could be rich.’

  Eric said, ‘Take your sword out and toss it away, handle first.’

  Kiown laughed in disbelief. ‘What? Have you gone funny in the skull? Case! What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Do what he says,’ said Case’s voice, to Eric’s right.

  Cunning, Eric thought, seeing where Case is. Eric moved away from where Case’s voice had sounded, so it wouldn’t be possible to attack them both at once. ‘Drop the sword, Kiown.’

  ‘Pardon me, I think I’ll keep it. It’s me, Eric. You’ve spent many nights right beside me and come to no harm, apart from the gas and bad breath. I thought we were companions.’

  ‘Did Doon and the others think that of you, as well?’

  Kiown’s eyebrows shot up. For a moment, he couldn’t speak. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ He shook his head as though baffled. ‘Doon? I told you what happened to him. Soldiers got him.’

  ‘Just soldiers?’

  ‘I told the group to retreat. They didn’t. They didn’t respect my leadership. It happens when Anfen puts doubt in their minds at the outset. Did you hear him? Kiown leads you, wisely I hope.’ He laughed. ‘Have you been listening to Sharfy? Or to that fuzzbrained coot, Loup? I know they think I’m no good, they have for a long time. They forget the times I saved their lives. Ask Anfen to tell you those tales. I saved the whole band, more than once.’

  ‘That’s not really relevant to what we’re discussing now.’

  ‘What are we discussing?’ Kiown said, anger rising in his face and extravagant gestures. ‘I’ve half a dozen deep scars that were meant for Anfen’s delicate places. Siel’s too. There were fights where the whole group walked away alive because of me. Look at this!’ he lifted
his sleeve, showing his bandaged arrow wound.

  Eric said, ‘You got off lightly in that fight, didn’t you?’

  ‘Lightly? I was shot with an arrow! I’m lucky it wasn’t poisoned!’

  ‘Remarkable luck.’

  Kiown’s hands began to shake, his eyes now blazing with rage. He took a step towards Eric, hand closing on his sword handle. Eric stepped back. ‘Unbuckle your scabbard and drop it to the ground, Kiown.’

  ‘Case? Can you reason with him?’ said Kiown.

  ‘Don’t speak, Case. He’s trying to find where you are. Kiown, put down the sword. I’m serious.’

  ‘You’re seriously funny in the skull,’ said Kiown. ‘Here’s my sword.’ He drew it with a flourish. ‘Sharp one, nicely weighted. Got a thin core of dead stone, so you don’t need to rub it on every day. Worth two red scales. Come take it.’

  ‘Do what he says,’ Case said tiredly, his voice closer to Kiown.

  Kiown’s wrist moved fluidly, the sword slicing a figure-eight through the air. He had moved towards Eric, two steps taken, when Case fired: Boom. The bullet struck the ground just before Kiown’s feet, chipping the rock. He dropped his sword in panic and leaped backwards, hands to his ears, not knowing in that instant whether the Otherworld weapon had harmed him or not.

  Eric too had jumped at the Glock’s enormous noise. He recovered first, rushed forwards, grabbed the sword by the handle as it still jumped and clattered on the rock floor, then stepped back, the blade held the way Sharfy had shown him.

  Kiown laughed, though his face showed dark hatred. ‘Had some lessons, have we? Anfen teach you? Not Sharfy, surely. Hope you’re a prodigy. I could kill you bare-handed.’

  ‘Wouldn’t try it,’ said Case wearily. ‘That was a warning shot. Next one won’t miss you.’

  Kiown laughed again. ‘I thought you were fibbing about the weapon. I really did.’

  ‘It’s like a bow and arrow, or crossbow,’ said Eric. ‘It shoots a little piece of metal, faster than anything you’ve ever heard of. As we speak, Case has it pointed right at your chest. Want to talk honestly for a while?’

  Kiown began to speak several times, then he laughed bitterly. ‘I’ve been nothing but honest. This is all a big mistake.’

  ‘Don’t make me do it, please,’ said Case quietly. ‘I’ve had to do it before. I didn’t like it then, won’t like it any more now. Though it sounds like maybe you deserve it.’

  Something in his tone — sombre, regretful — sank in. ‘Fine,’ Kiown muttered. ‘Fine. Let’s talk.’

  41

  ‘Where are you taking us, and why? Let’s start there.’

  They’d told Kiown to sit cross-legged, directly in the middle of the platform. Case was behind him, still invisible, Eric to his side, well out of reach of a lunging charge. ‘To Hane,’ Kiown answered, ‘like I told you. I have contacts there.’

  ‘Then where?’

  ‘Then to find Anfen,’ said Kiown. ‘Believe it or not, that much is true. I’m supposed to take you back to him then carry on in his group, give them the same story I gave you. I suppose now I’ll have to dump you at his feet and run, since you have things to tell him about me.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Eric. ‘I have trouble trusting the word of someone who can kill the companions they slept beside the night before.’ Not just kill, either … kill like someone possessed. Eric recalled the manic viciousness of Kiown’s sword slicing into Doon’s back, the savage way his boot had stomped down.

  The conflict across Kiown’s face was visible — admit it, or keep denying? ‘Let me ask you something,’ he said. ‘What makes you so sure you know these things? Who’d you speak to? Something happened, something changed, from dinner last night to now. Something made you go from regarding me as a friend to … to this.’

  ‘I’m not sure we were friends.’

  ‘We can be!’ said Kiown. ‘I don’t hold a grudge. Maybe we have a lot in common, more than you think. Our best interests, at least.’

  Eric laughed at him and saw the sincerity instantly crumble to make way for the swiftly rising anger he’d seen before. ‘Do you know what Anfen and the rest really are?’ Kiown snarled, giving in to it. ‘Do you know what the “Free Cities” really are? They hold back the progress of the race! They always have. They’re parasites, they’re pointless. Do you know what we are creating at the castle, right now? We’re making ourselves gods. Do you understand that? Do you know what secrets we will learn, what power we’ll command? And you can be part of it. Lay one brick down in the great structure, you share in the glory.’

  ‘You used the plural, I notice,’ said Eric. ‘Who gets to be the god?’

  Kiown shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘I bet I know,’ said Case. ‘Vous does.’

  Kiown looked around wildly. ‘You aren’t fit to speak his name,’ he spat with great venom. ‘Not in any tone, let alone that grim foreboding one, you filthy pathetic old shit.’

  ‘A custom in our world,’ said Eric, ‘is to speak a little more politely when someone’s standing nearby with a gun pointed at you.’

  Kiown calmed down and rolled his eyes. ‘This is fine theatre and all, but can I have that sword back when you two have had your moment? I paid a lot for it.’

  ‘Sorry, no,’ said Eric. ‘I’ll keep it. Now you can tell us more about … what was the name, Case?’

  ‘Vous. And I could tell you things about him would make you shudder.’ Kiown sensed he was being baited now, and shrugged passively. ‘What kind of idiot wants to be a god anyway?’ said Case. ‘And tell me this, what kind of crackpot gets all steamed up following such a person? You sounded like that Inferno girl a minute ago.’

  ‘You are quite, quite right,’ said Kiown mockingly. ‘What was I thinking?’

  ‘So, the castle’s interested in us. How do Case and I figure into these grand plans? If it’s true they want Case and me back with Anfen, what comes after that?’

  Kiown shrugged. ‘Talk to me, Kiown,’ said Eric, but Kiown just stared into the distance.

  Here’s the problem, Eric thought, pacing. If our roles were reversed, if it was me holding back info on him, it’d be easy enough: he’d start breaking bones till I talked. For him it would be the logical action. I can’t do it, and he knows it. That’s why the bad guys win.

  Eric could not invoke the required sadism, but he could mimic it. He said, ‘You’d better tell us the rest, so we can decide what to do with you. We could fire into your knees and leave you here. Won’t be fun getting down those steps. It’d hurt a lot more than that arrow’s scratch did. I don’t want to do it but I will.’ I hope he believes it. ‘You say we can still be companions. Make your pitch.’

  Kiown rubbed the bridge of his nose, eyes to the ground, as though it hurt to speak: ‘My mission is to get you two back to Anfen. Alive and well. I know no more. I get the minimum I need to know, in case I end up in this very predicament. And that’s all.’

  ‘What are you, exactly?’ said Case. ‘Spy? You one of them greyrobes I saw?’ From the direction his voice came, it sounded like he’d sat down. ‘And hurry this up, make it honest. I’ll shoot you the second Eric asks me to. We’re out of food and I like an early lunch. We aren’t going to be up here all day.’

  ‘I’m what they call a Hunter,’ said Kiown irritably. ‘We’re the elites. We know more than the soldiers, the First Captains, probably more than the Generals. We speak directly to the Strategists, sometimes even higher. Some of us in every city, no more than a couple hundred of us, all told. They train us harder, tell us more. We’re not necessarily the best swordsmen in the military, though we have to be good.’

  ‘Then what makes you special?’

  ‘We can be trusted, they know it. We have to be good at many things.’

  ‘Like acting.’

  Kiown smiled. ‘Yes, O inn-finder. But believe it or not, I’ve been my real self the whole way through. Even around Anfen’s band, and the other enemy bands I ran with. I was thei
r ally as much as I could be.’

  ‘But you never told anyone you worship Vous,’ said Case.

  Anger flickered across Kiown’s face, and he fought visibly to bury it. ‘It’s not your fault. You just don’t understand it. It’s not merely the man I swear to. It’s the Project. He’s already halfway to being a Great Spirit. If he can, we all can, any one of us. They’re going to watch the process, see how it’s done, then repeat it. He’s just the first, the experiment. It may happen in our lifetime or in our grandchildren’s. Or tomorrow! They’ll learn a lot when it does and perfect the process.

  ‘And ah, what then? What happens if we find the step up from being a Great Spirit? The next rung on the ladder of greatness, of evolution? Sooner or later, we become so great we surpass the Dragon! One day, we make our own worlds. Perfect worlds. Imagine it. Don’t dwell on what things must happen today — imagine that perfect future. That is what the Free Cities obstruct! Just what is the point in human lives scuttling about like the same old insects, asking and answering the same old pointless questions, living and dying, repeating it all, never reaching beyond?’ His laugh sounded tired. ‘You’re new here, you old twit, you don’t know our history. Since time began, since men began to play with magic, some of us wondered if it could be done, the grand elevation. But the magicians were too cowardly even to ponder it. Then after the War their stupid system didn’t allow us to try, not properly. Vous was the one who outsmarted them. He was the one who dared get his hands red, risk his own life and others. He is a hero. You hear me? A hero.’ Kiown turned his head Case’s way, lip curled. ‘You didn’t know what you saw, when you looked on him. Yes, he’s mad. Such visionaries have to be.’

  Kiown began to stand. ‘Stay there or you’re dead,’ said Eric quietly. Kiown sat back down, surprised, as though he felt his impassioned speech should have changed the situation. Eric said, ‘You were to take us to Anfen. Now what do you propose?’