by Garry Ocean
“Still, something is very peculiar about this savage!” the Judge’s in-born intuition that had never failed him in the endless court intrigues, was restless. What did Hvat tell him? The Judge moved his lips, thinking, “The Gift does not work on him, you see, neither on his mind, nor on his body! How can that be? The Gift works on everyone, both people and animals alike and to the same degree. Can he be an exception?” the Judge sighed so deeply he whistled.
“Perhaps, they are just confused?” the Judge thought about that idea for some time, but then had to discard it, regretfully, mumbling, “No, that cannot be.” He knew the abilities of his people better than anyone else. Kar, with the Droopy Ears, alone was a wonder himself. The Judge smiled as he thought of him, “The way he exposed the Alchemist, ah? And who would have ever thought? For all these years, he was pretending to be a meek idiot! Allegedly, not interested in anything else but science. And when tested, it turned out that the Alchemist himself was marked with the Gift,” the Judge frowned at the thought, as if a poison-spitter burned him. “A wretched reject!”
The Judge needed a drink badly. Just put his lips to the bottle and forget about everything, at least for this one night. The Judge rubbed his chest on the side of his heart. He couldn’t stand the Rejected. He was afraid of them and hated them, from his early childhood. His memory brought back a penetrating gaze of his stepmother. Her heterochromia eyes scared him. One eye was of a dull gold color, while the second was as green as the Dominia’s light on a clear night. She always had flickering dancing sparks in her eyes that suppressed his will completely and paralyzed any desire to resist. The Judge shrugged his shoulders, subconsciously trying to shake off the unpleasant memory he thought he had forgotten. How tired he was! This permanent fear was exhausting. The fear that you are not the master of your own decisions but that someone else, drop by drop and step by step, is putting strange and hostile thoughts and ideas into your head, forcing you to make wrong decisions. He was tired of being afraid, tired of being on guard all the time, checking and rechecking his thoughts hundreds of times a day. Not trusting himself was against nature. Damned Gift! Damned Rejected, just like weeds, always breaking through in a flowerbed that you have just so carefully tended to. With his trembling hands, the Judge started to unfasten the tight buckles of his tunic. His chest was tight, his lungs lacked air. He took in deep breaths trying to calm down his racing heart.
“Well, you will all get what you deserve pretty soon! All and in full!” he didn’t notice that he was speaking out loud.
At that very moment he heard the sound of a rolling thunder. The Judge trembled and quickly came up to the window. The sky at the horizon was covered with lead-heavy clouds. The Judge felt a chill running down his spine. “It’s starting,” he thought. “I only hope that we are indeed ready for the Big Exodus!”
*****
The rain was calming down. The heavy thunderstorm clouds were moving toward the Forest. Nick was standing on the hut’s rickety porch peering into the horizon. It was dark. The emerald Dominia’s light was hardly breaking through the lead-heavy clouds. Only far ahead the dark wall of a thunderous front was constantly flashed by the lightening strikes. The door creaked and Whisperer appeared in its frame.
“Can’t sleep, Nick?”
“The Harbinger, however, was too fast this time,” Whisperer waved his hand uncertainly. “Must be washing over the Near Forest now at full force. And then it will reach the Forest in no time. I can feel from here all the beasts coming to life there,” the old man rubbed his temples. “They are happy. And that’s understandable, water is life for the Forest.”
“What do you think, Whisperer, is it time for us to move?” Nick pretended not to have heard the old man’s last words. He was indeed of a very advanced age, and he was also very tired. Who knows what he could have felt. Recently Nick had been having very disturbing dreams as well. To be honest, he couldn’t remember what the dreams were about no matter how hard he tried in the morning.
“We will leave tomorrow morning. I hope the water will go into the ground during the night,” the old man looked around suspiciously. “But we will still have to keep to the higher grounds: The roads are washed out, we can get stuck.”
“I wonder how Ron and Valu are doing,” Nick looked at the old man.
“By all estimates, they should have made it to the pier,” Whisperer tugged on his beard. “If, of course, nothing happened on their way.” He looked ahead. “But no, they should have made it with no obstacles.” Whisperer fell silent for sometime. “I am afraid that they will not wait for us at the Tower, I bet they will go to the village. I don’t feel good about this. Oh, not good… Well, all right, tomorrow is a new day. I’ll go get some sleep now,” Whisperer went inside, mumbling something to himself.
*****
The grass under their feet was springy and made sucking sounds with every step. A heavy fog was rising from the ground. The sky was still covered with clouds, but the Orphius’ rays were already breaking through here and there. It was becoming a lot warmer. Nick was walking in the back of the cart and from time to time pushed it, helping the exhausted horse to move on the washed-out road. Despite low visibility, Whisperer was leading their little squad with confidence.
Closer to noon the fog started to go away and when they got up the hill, it dissolved completely. The ground on the hilltop was not soaked by the rain as badly as in the valley. Walking became a lot easier.
“Sith!” Whisperer commanded again, sticking his head out of the cart, “Keep straight to that hill ahead! We will take a break there, as our nag’s dragging her hooves. She will drop dead soon if we don’t give her a break. And we need to eat something too.”
A beautiful view opened up from the top of the hill. To their right in the valley, a dense fog was still covering the ground. From the top it looked like a fairy-tale milky river, through which the toy-like houses of a local village were sticking out with their red-tile rooftops. Piercing silence was enveloping everything around. The thunderstorm moved beyond the horizon, and only rare faraway lightning strikes reminded them of the powerful force of nature that had just swept by here several hours ago. Sith was the first one to notice the cloud. That is, Nick noticed it earlier, but he didn’t think it was worth mentioning.
“Look over there, Whisperer!” the boy pointed his finger in the same direction where the Heavenly Harbinger had moved. “Over there!”
Now Nick started to look at it more attentively. He focused his eyes. It was still very far away to see all the details. But Nick realized immediately that it was not a simple cloud. First of all, it was clearly floating against the wind, moving with a speed much higher than a regular cloud. Second, it was changing its shape all the time, constantly extending long branches, like tentacles, and then retracting them back. “It looks more like a swarm,” Nick thought, “a huge swarm of flying insects.”
“There’s another one,” Sith was getting anxious, “and one more over there. What is it, Whisperer?”
The old man was gazing intensely into the distance. It took him at least a minute before he said, muttering in a whisper, “This cannot be… These are flouds.”2
“What do you mean, flouds?” the boy widened his eyes. “Where would they come from, in these lands? There can be no flouds here, Whisperer.”
“True. There can be no flouds here, Sith,” the old man looked at the sky, thinking. “But you see? Here they are. Flying.”
Nick looked at each of them in turn, bewildered. Meanwhile, there appeared more dark clouds in the sky. The one that was closest to them had already grown to the size of a hockey field. It was moving fast, and, as Nick estimated, only at about three hundred feet above the ground, not more. It was of dirty-green color and constantly moving, taking different shapes: at times, it was elongating into a spindle, at other times – recoiled into an almost perfect sphere. Sometimes, it extended into the ground its tornado-like funnels. The cloud now looked more like one giant living breathing or
ganism than a mindless swarm of insects.
Absolute silence penetrated everything around, as if all life on the entire planet froze. Only the cloud was making a steady quiet hum: It seemed like thousands of small propellers were working inside there. At about one mile from the hill where the hunters were standing, the cloud hung in the air, as if thinking where to go next. Nick looked at it intensely, focusing his vision again. The picture now was clearer, and he could discern some details. The cloud was made up of an enormous number of quickly rotating spindle-like bodies that were in constant movement, changing their shape with no pattern and seemed to be moving chaotically. After it hung like that for a short time, as if reflecting in uncertainty, the cloud suddenly but swiftly changed its shape and, slightly lopsidedly, started to float toward the hunters.
“What are we going to do, Whisperer?” Nick heard alarm and anxiety in Sith’s voice. “The floud is moving right at us.”
“Now,” Whisperer’s voice had metal notes in it, “we need to move slowly in different directions. Most importantly, no sharp movements and no running, no matter what happens!”
He didn’t have to say it twice. Sith, leaning forward a little, walked briskly in short steps along the flat side of the hill. Nick did not understand what was going on and why they had to scatter so suddenly. But either Whisperer’s dead-serious tone had its effect or because he suddenly remembered the words of his drill sergeant, “A true warrior first executes the order and then thinks about its meaning,” Nick started to crouch in the direction opposite of Sith. And Whisperer just sat on the ground, with crossed legs as if preparing for meditation.
Nick hardly made it into a little ravine when a huge shadow covered him. Only then he realized that he couldn’t have picked a worse tactical position to protect himself from an air attack. The hill that they had selected to break camp was covered with short grass. Low brush was vary rare, and even a child could not hide in it. So he had to make do with a ravine that was only half of his height deep.
The humming increased. Nick stuck his head out a little to look around. The huge cloud was hanging over the hill. Sith was seen nowhere around. The old man was sitting right on the ground, with his eyes closed and legs crossed, swaying a little from side to side, and whispering something with no sound. Suddenly, the swarming cloud started to extent a sprout at a mad speed. As it was approaching the ground it started to look like a giant swaying elephant trunk. Nick felt a stream of air washing over him. The trunk morphed gradually again, and instead of it Nick saw a giant tornado-like funnel. Its end was hanging several feet above the ground and, just like a vacuum; it started to suck in everything that was within its radius. Branches, rocks, and grass went up the air. The impression was that the cloud was carefully and methodically exploring the hill. Nick had no doubt who it was looking for. He was horrified. He now regretted that they had left their spears in the cart, even though they could hardly be of any use right now. Meanwhile, the vortex slowly moved toward Whisperer. Nick was struck with an idea of running at full speed in the opposite direction, to distract the giant, but Whisperer’s firm voice was ringing in his eyes, “No running, no matter what happens!” Nick was still hesitating, when the vortex stopped at about fifty feet away from its prey, and suddenly changed its direction, moving toward the cart. Their poor horse, as if feeling it was doomed, stood on end and bolted down the hill, taking with it the cart that was jumping and skipping on the rocks.
Now Nick realized why Whisperer told them not to run. The unhurried humming trunk suddenly sharply bolted and in one second caught up with the crazed horse. Nick saw the animal, still moving its hooves desperately, being torn away from the ground and slowly sucked up into the dark mouth of the madly rotating vortex. The scared animal neighed loudly in desperation. The cart, still harnessed to the horse, started to rise with it. Nick’s hair rose because he couldn’t believe his eyes. Suddenly, as if on command, the humming weakened. The vortex slowed down dramatically. Its grip loosened and the horse, finding the ground under its hooves again, raced down the hill, biting the bit, not looking for the road or any direction. The cloud hung over the puzzled hunters for a little while. Then it sucked in its trunk-like tentacle and slowly stated to float away, toward a cliff on the hill on the other side.
Nick came out of stupor only after the edge of the cloud was completely out of sight. Not daring to straighten to his full height, he ran low to Whisperer. The old man’s face had a grayish-green hue to it; his forehead was covered with large pearls of sweat. Nick squatted in front of him, not daring to ask how he felt.
“Everything’s all right, Nick,” as if reading his mind, the old man said. “Now everything’s all right.”
Sith’s disheveled head appeared behind the old man.
“Wow, Whisperer, wow! You’ve done it!” despite the scare he just lived through, the boy looked at his teacher with admiration. “Diverted such a huge floud! Wow, just wow! I thought we were dead already, but you diverted it just like that! Now I will tell everyone how strong our Whisperer’s powers are!”
Nick looked at the boy with pity. He must have been really scared, to mumble this nonsense. But to be fair, Nick had had his share of being scared too. His hands were still trembling.
“No, Sith, it’s all my fault, let disgrace fall on my gray beard,” Whisperer coughed to clear his throat. “How did I fail to see the flouds? When I felt them, it was already too late. I must have become really rusty in the City.”
“Don’t say this, Whisperer!” Sith tried to reassure him empathetically. “Who could have ever thought that the flouds would reach all the way here? They are hard to encounter even in the Near Forest, and for them to go beyond the Rapid Waters…”
“The Exodus is coming,” the old man said after a short pause. “The Big Exodus. Now we need to be ready for anything. We need to see where this monster is headed.”
Nick helped Whisperer to get up, and the three of them went to the cliff. When there were only several steps left to the edge, the hunters, without a word, dropped to the ground and crawled the last several feet.
“Oh, the Departed Gods!” Nick exclaimed against his will.
The floud did not even think of going too far. It was hanging over the village still covered by the fog. This time, it had at least three or four vortex funnels. They were tangling and braiding each other in unthinkable patterns and this is why it was difficult to tell how many of them there were exactly.
The fog was hiding what was going on underneath. The hunters could hear muffled screams of the villagers and the loud mooing of crazed cows. Reflexively, Nick closed his eyes and didn’t see what happened next. The hum that the floud was producing suddenly stopped and its entire mass just dropped down on the village. The hunters moved forward to see better, hanging over the cliff almost to the waistline.
“That’s it,” the old man whispered in a dead voice, “It has sunk.”
Nick realized immediately that was it indeed. There was no more village, no residents, nothing. Even the rooftops were gone. There was only a huge dirty-green swaying mass. The floud was turning into a thick green jelly-like slime. It was from time to time disturbed with rare waves, and something inside was making disgusting slurping sounds. Nick ran to the side and threw up violently several times.
Then Nick and Sith were running all over the hill to catch and calm down their crazed horse. They also spent some time searching for their bags. One of the cart’s wheels was wobbly but they decided not to fix it. Everyone wanted to get away from this deadly place as soon as possible.
They were proceeding in complete silence. Even the ever-talkative Sith didn’t say a word. He did not whip the horse, probably feeling pity for it. To be fair, this was not needed: All the way from there, the horse never lost pace. Nick broke the silence first. He decided that since he’d have to go into the Forest soon, it would be better to talk about things, even such unpleasant ones.
“Whisperer, who are these flouds?”
“Flo
uds?” the old man half-opened his eyes, unwillingly. “They are beasts from the Forest, Nick, who else?”
Nick hesitated, not knowing how to find the suitable word. He just now realized that the local language did not have the equivalent of the Interling word meaning “predator.”
“And how often can one encounter them in the Forest?”
“Rarely, Nick,” the old man thought a little, as if trying to remember something. “About twenty or so years ago, I don’t remember exactly, but it seems like two Exoduses ago, there was a huge fire. The Forest was burning then on the southern side. That was when many southerners moved into our lands. But that’s a different story. So, I got interested. I was much younger then, and had a lot of energy and strength. So I went to see everything with my own eyes. When I got there, the fire had already stopped. But there was still some smoldering smoke. Well, I have to tell you it burned a lot. If I were to estimate, then I’d say probably two Great Cities in size, not less maybe even including the suburbs. This is where I saw them for the first time. No, not the first of course, but I’ve never seen so many of them in one place, and so large. So, I hid myself and started to watch. And they were hanging there over the ashes, hovering for some time, and then they’d sink,” Whisperer shivered at the memory, “Just like today.”
“I was sitting there like that, in hiding, till evening, and they were still flying in,” the old man fell silent for a minute, and then concluded, “I think this is how the Forest was healing its wounds.”
“Healing its wounds?” Nick felt nauseous again. He turned around. There were long flocks of dirty-green spots moving toward the City, hardly noticeable in the darkening sky.
“And in place of this village,” Nick chocked up a little, “What’s going to be there?”