by Jen Williams
‘What were these, Micanal? Did they have a particular meaning for you? Or for Eri’s parents?’
The sea was a dark band of grey, and on it sat a bristling collection of golden ships. The day was an overcast one, and in the distance the clouds were tall and ominous, but the ships still shone, as though they existed in their very own bubble of light.
‘Well, that’s not especially subtle, but perhaps you were pressed for time.’
The prow of each ship was carved into the shape of a war-beast head; griffins, wolves, great cats like Kirune, and several dragons. They were all beautiful, and as Tor watched, they came to life, bearing teeth and rolling eyes. Micanal’s voice rolled over him again.
‘They come with us in spirit, my friends, I do believe that. Because I think we are returning to their true home.’
With a lurch Tor found himself above the sea, the ships now speeding along below him. Their sails were wide and white, and they clipped along through the waves in precise formation. Tor thought of the remarkable giant fish he’d seen off the coast of Jarlsbad, which swam, he had been told, in ‘pods’. The sky was ablaze with oranges and purples as the sun set to the west.
‘It is far, and it is dangerous. The Barren Sea has earned her name, my friends, not because there’s nothing in it, but because it is so empty of traffic – no one with any sense would try to cross it. Passage is dangerous, but not impossible.’
Night crowded into the sky, then, a purple bruising that turned black and star-lit, and Tor watched, entranced, as the stars grew brighter and brighter, each of them blazing like comets. A scattering of them glowed with coronas of startling yellows and blues, and Tor was wondering if this was more of Micanal’s artistic licence when the significance of the stars became clear. Several distant islands – each surely no bigger than the central city of Ebora itself – began to glow with the same light.
‘It’s a map! Vintage is going to be crowing about this for months.’
The journey continued, nights burning into days, days sinking into nights so swiftly and so often that Tor quickly lost count. Always the incandescent stars, turning in the sky, and distant landmasses that appeared and vanished like beacons. Once or twice the sea boiled and unidentifiable shapes wrestled just under the surface, but the ships sailed deftly around these unseen dangers each time. Looking at them made Tor think of all the stories he’d heard growing up about the Barren Sea: a timely reminder that the Wild, and the unsettling beasts that populated it, did not exist solely on the land.
‘My friends, I know that you believe as I do – that the true roots of Ygseril lay to the north of Sarn, that the key to Ebora’s salvation could be there too. The terrible losses we have suffered do not need to be the end of us.’
Far to the north, a great light was growing in the sky – a shining white essence that made the sunlight look dowdy. Within it, it was just possible to make out something. Another landmass, perhaps?
‘You have your own reasons for staying, and I understand them. But if you should ever change your minds, I have every confidence you can find us. Please accept this gift of hope from me – it is all we, as a people, have left.’
The light in the north grew and grew till everything else was lost – the sea, the sky and the brave ships were all swallowed up in it. Tor winced against the light but looked for as long as he could, hoping to see some final clue. There was nothing, save for a delicate tracery of connecting lines, or branches . . . He blinked. Or the cracks on the inside of a tablet of amber.
He was awake, still sitting on the stone bench outside Lonefell. His rear end was cold and numb.
‘Well?’ demanded Vintage. The shadows had grown longer, suggesting he had been in this position for some time, but Vintage looked as though she hadn’t moved an inch since he’d started dream-walking. ‘What did you see? Clearly it was something.’
‘It was certainly something.’ Tor rubbed his hands over his face, wincing slightly at the stiff texture of his scars. ‘It’s the Golden Fox expedition, Vintage, which I know very well you are familiar with as you have lectured me about it often enough – the legendary journey Micanal the Clearsighted took to find the origins of Ygseril. It’s a map to where they went, if you can believe it.’
‘Extraordinary!’ Vintage’s grin threatened to split her head in two. ‘What a time of wonders – and horrors – this has turned out to be. It seems that Eri’s parents were close with him, so much so that he shared his plans with them. Should we assume he took the other amber tablets with him?’
Vostok rumbled deep in her throat. ‘It’s possible. Micanal was an honourable man. I believe that the loss of all the war-beasts would have encouraged him to complete his work, not abandon it.’
‘Imagine what that could be worth to us, now . . .’ Vintage pushed her springy curls back from her forehead. ‘Even if he didn’t finish it.’
From behind them came the heavy footfalls of Kirune. The big cat looked up at their faces, and shook his coat out.
‘There is a dead body in the house,’ he said.
15
Some time later, Vintage and Noon stood together in the living room of Lonefell, staring with some trepidation at Eri’s bucket, which stood in the middle of the floor, still covered with its length of sacking. Noon had come looking for them as the night began to draw in, flying out across the city on the back of Fulcor, the bat she had stolen from the Winnowry when she had escaped.
‘One of us is going to have to look in it,’ she said. ‘We may as well get it over with.’
Vintage sighed, her hands on her hips. ‘What could have possessed the boy? Why, by the bones of Sarn, would he go to such . . . lengths?’
‘A long time by yourself can do strange things to you.’ Noon met the older woman’s eyes, and she smiled hesitantly. ‘I wasn’t really alone at the Winnowry, with all the other fell-witches there, but it’s not as though I spent much time with other people. Normal time, I mean.’ She thought of the purgings, and of pressing her fingers to the iron grill in the floor, always unable to reach Fell-Marian. ‘It’s easier to keep things inside than to . . . than to look at them very closely.’
‘We don’t even know when they died, but I imagine it was a very long time ago. He has been looking after the house and the property by himself, pretending that everything is all fine and shipshape, when actually his mother is a mummified creature in a nightie, and his father . . .’
‘Where is the kid now?’
‘In one of the bedrooms. Helcate is with him. My dear, I thought he would never stop screaming.’
Noon frowned at that. Where was the boy’s human comfort? Had they given him up to the war-beasts? Were they so afraid of his grief?
‘Look, it can’t be so bad.’ She stepped forward and in one movement whipped off the piece of sacking. Inside the bucket was a collection of yellowed, polished bones – all quite clean, and apparently well cared for. A pair of eyeless sockets stared back up at her. ‘Just bones, that’s all,’ she said, feeling some of the tension ease out of her own chest. ‘This was a human being once. Well, an Eboran. Should we . . . bury them or something?’
Vintage joined her at the bucket. Her expression of dismay had been replaced by a more familiar one: curiosity.
‘Well, it looks as though Eri’s father died some time before his mother. You can see that he has scrubbed the bones, but I can’t imagine him doing that until the body was quite thoroughly decomposed. Otherwise he’d have had to remove a lot of flesh . . .’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Anyway, my darling, I’m afraid I know very little about Eboran burial customs.’
‘I’m assuming the usual approach isn’t just to carry them around in buckets, though. What about Nanthema? Did she know Eri’s parents?’
Vintage looked up at her, a touch of amusement curling the corner of her mouth.
‘Noon, Eborans don’t all automatically know each other.’
‘No, all right. I suppose not.’ Noon cocked her head to one side. ‘Where is she, anyway? I
haven’t seen much of her since you both arrived. Are you . . . sharing quarters together?’
To Noon’s surprise, Vintage dropped her gaze. ‘I’m afraid that Nanthema has had to suffer something very similar to poor Eri, and . . . I think she’s having trouble coming to terms with everything that has happened. She needs some time alone. No, my dear, I think we will have to deal with this without the intervention of our Eboran friends. We should ask the poor lad what he wants to do.’ She paused. ‘What do you imagine could be learned about Eboran physiology from examining a complete adult skeleton?’ She caught Noon’s look, and nodded reluctantly. ‘Come on. Let’s go and talk to the boy about his bucket.’
It was a sad room, Noon thought, and all the sadder as the shadows of the evening began to pool in the corners and paint the walls grey. It was crammed with things, just like the rest of Lonefell, with bookcases full of books and several bright tapestries on the walls, but everything was covered with a thin layer of dust, and in an uneasy way it made her think of her cell at the Winnowry – loneliness and a kind of secret despair was written all over it. Or maybe I think that because I know what the kid has been living with all these years. She had the bucket in her hands, and she put it down on the floor very carefully, so as not to rustle the contents.
‘Eri, darling? How are you doing? Do you feel up for a couple of visitors?’
The boy was curled on the elaborate four-poster bed, with Helcate curled around him like some sort of over-sized dog. As Vintage approached the bed, Eri looked up. His face was creased and damp but no longer obviously hysterical.
‘I don’t know what you must think of me.’
‘Oh, what a thing to be worried about!’ Vintage perched herself on the edge of the bed. ‘I think you are a young man who has been through a very tough time.’
‘I am hundreds of years older than you.’
‘That’s not the point, my dear.’ Helcate sat up and peered at them. In the gloom his eyes were like silver mirrors.
‘I . . . My parents took me to Lonefell when I was very young, too young to remember anything clearly. I have images of people who might have been my grandparents, but I could have imagined it. They, my mother and father, I mean, said that Ebora was going through a terrible change, and that it was safer if we kept ourselves apart from it. We lived out here by ourselves for so long that Ebora became like a story, and . . . so did other Eborans. There was just us, and I was happy. Mother and her garden, Father and his stories.’
Noon came to the foot of the bed and curled one hand around the bed post. ‘They thought they were keeping you safe out here by keeping you isolated? Locking you up?’
‘No. I mean, it wasn’t like that.’ Eri leaned against Helcate, visibly taking support from the war-beast. The bed creaked with their weight. ‘I was safe. I was happy. They didn’t like me to go far, but Mother taught me how to hunt, and Father made me a bow. I used to . . . I used to hunt rabbits . . .’ Some fresh tears spilled from the boy’s eyes, glistening in the poor light. ‘But the things they feared came for them anyway. One winter, Father started to cough, and he said, “Oh, the seasons, they change and they take my breath away for a time,” but that wasn’t what it was. The cough got so that he had to lie down all the time, and then his skin started to split. He bled a lot. Towards the end, he shouted about the humans, about how they had ruined us.’ Eri’s gaze flickered up to Noon and away again. ‘But I don’t think he meant any of it. He was just scared.’
‘The crimson flux.’ Noon looked at her feet, thinking of Tor. ‘There isn’t any outrunning it, then.’
‘He died, and Mother was sad, and it all seemed so wrong.’ Eri’s words were coming faster now, as though he’d broken through some interior dam. ‘She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t look at his . . . body, so I said that I would take care of it.’
There was a long silence then. Noon stood and listened to the boy’s thick breathing. Tor had drunk so much of her blood when he was healing, and no doubt a fair amount of other people’s before hers – any single sip of which could summon the crimson flux. Whatever risks he was taking, he had clearly decided it was worth it.
‘You have to understand,’ said Eri eventually. ‘It had just been us three for so long, and it seemed wrong for us to be apart. I put Father in one of the old rooms we didn’t use, I dressed him and cleaned him and I talked to him like I always did, but by then Mother was starting to suffer too.’ He coughed thickly into his hand. ‘Not the disease, but a kind of wasting away. She became weaker, tired all the time. Her hair turned white and her skin crumpled. The knuckles of her fingers became swollen, and eventually she couldn’t remember Father, or sometimes she did but she didn’t remember that he had died.’
‘She grew old,’ said Vintage simply. ‘No more Ygseril, no more sap. Something else that couldn’t be run from.’ She patted the bed lightly. ‘I am truly sorry, my dear.’
‘She died too. A long time after Father. When I went to see her and I saw that she had gone, the idea of moving her out of that bed . . . why should I? It was only ever just us three, and I didn’t think that would ever change. We could all just stay here. No one else mattered anyway. So I kept hunting rabbits and deer, pickled the things from the garden, just like Mother had shown me, salted meat and stored it up for winter. And there were all the books and the stories. I could always read about Ebora, and it was like . . . like I went back there, in my mind, even though I don’t really remember it.’ He looked at the bedclothes, embarrassed. ‘I talked to Mother and Father still, and I had the stories to keep me company. And I never thought I would see a real war-beast.’
‘Oh Eri, my dear. It’s an attractive thought, the idea that nothing ever needs to change, but unfortunately that’s not a choice we get to make.’
‘Speaking of choices, you need to think about what you’re going to do, Eri.’ Noon kept her voice soft, but the boy still flinched. ‘This is still your home, but . . . I don’t think there is anything here for you anymore.’
‘Helcate,’ murmured Helcate.
‘We should lay your parents to rest,’ said Vintage. ‘Let them stay here, in the place where they were happiest.’
The boy looked up then, staring across the room, and Noon knew he was looking at the bucket of his father’s bones. Of course he’d known they’d brought them into the room.
‘And after I’ve done that, you’ll let me stay with Helcate? Wherever you go, whatever happens, I will have Helcate?’ There was an edge of that hysteria to Eri’s voice again, and Noon saw Vintage frown at it, but the older woman simply patted the bed again.
‘Of course, my darling. You and Helcate will be firmest friends for all your days, I am sure of it.’
In the end, Kirune dug a hole in the garden, working swiftly and quietly and without any complaints, to Tor’s surprise. He and Noon wrapped the skeletal remains of Eri’s mother in a pair of thickly embroidered blankets, and together carried her down to the garden. By that time, it was fully dark, and a clear night had given them an audience of stars. The corpse they laid carefully in the dirt, and then the bucket they settled by her feet.
‘Today we say goodbye to friends we weren’t quite lucky enough to meet,’ said Vintage. Eri was standing next to Helcate, and she squeezed the boy’s shoulder. There were two spots of pink colour high on his cheeks, and his eyes were shining too brightly. ‘Is there anything you want to say, Eri?’
The boy seemed to shiver all over at the question.
‘No. I mean, I suppose. Mother and Father, I . . . am sorry. I can’t stay here anymore. I love you.’
‘Helcate,’ murmured Helcate.
Afterwards, Vintage took Eri back indoors while Tor and Noon shovelled the dirt back into the hole. Kirune had offered to help, but Vintage had pointed out, in a low voice, that the big cat covering up the hole might look a little too much like he was hiding his own excreta. Tor paused to remove a rock from the pile of dirt, and caught Noon looking at him closely.
�
�What is it? Do I have something on my face?’
‘No,’ she said. For a moment it looked as though she might say something more, but then she bent back to her shovel. ‘No, it’s nothing.’
16
If she kept looking to the east, all Hestillion could see was green hills and lakes, largely untouched by the Wild and given hard edges here and there by dirt roads. If she turned and looked behind her, she would see the Behemoth, crouching like a growth amongst the wreckage it had caused while the queen’s various creatures scuttled around it. She kept looking to the east.
‘What do you think, Celaphon? It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’
With some effort, the war-beast raised its head to take in the view, his eyes narrowing as though he were looking at a painfully bright light.
‘Outside. You brought me outside.’
‘Yes, sweet one, remember? We’ve been out here for an hour or so. Fresh air and real sunlight on your scales. Doesn’t it make you feel better?’
Celaphon didn’t answer. He lay partially in her lap, his body limp and much lighter than she liked. His brief growth spurt had not lasted, and if anything, the energy it had cost him seemed to have made him even more sickly; he ate only listlessly and with no enjoyment at all. A few feet away from them two homunculus creatures waited with a platter of fresh meat and fruit, largely untouched, and behind them stood one of the queen’s experiments – the looming man-creature with his stunted wings. Since Hestillion had last seen the creature the queen appeared to have given the thing more defined features – she could see the angle of its nose now, and a thin slit of a mouth.
That morning, Hestillion had taken Celaphon his breakfast and had been unable to wake the war-beast up. He hadn’t responded to her shaking, or to her panicked shouts, and in the end she had screamed at the homunculus to fetch the queen. As it happened, Celaphon had awoken before the queen arrived, but Hestillion had siphoned the rapid beating of her heart and her terror into a severe scolding, demanding that she and Celaphon be allowed outside the corpse moon to breathe free air. To her surprise, the queen had agreed. She’d not even argued the point.