by Greg James
Then, in one of the burning houses, something went off with a sizzling bang of boiled oil. Liquid fire splashed out, striking another house, feeding the fire even more. Sarah followed a group to a burning wall, which was already blackened and crumbling. Punching holes in the mud walls, they made handholds so as to tear it down piecemeal. They pulled the wall down with their bare hands, breaking it into bits that could be made soft and used to rebuild later. Hot straw and wood from the roofing, rough as animal teeth, burned and cut Sarah’s fingers. Grunting, straining, sweating until drenched, the group dismantled the walls of the burning houses and knocked out the supports with kicks and heavy blows from hammers. The burning thatches sagged and fell into crunching heaps, where they were thoroughly stamped out. Once homes, now ruins, but they would be rebuilt again. The fire had been stopped. It was no longer spreading. Picking splintered threads from her palm, Sarah watched the last of the fire die. Tearing down those houses had saved the village. The sparks that would have created a conflagration had fallen onto empty earth.
Ashes were all that remained.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Clouds dashed by and the wind whipped Sarah’s hair back across her shoulders as she held onto Sinh’s waist. The ground was far away. The village of the Cham passed by below, looking smaller than toy houses, and the people were indistinct blurs moving along the paths and walkways, like ants hurrying from one nest to another.
It was the day after the Dracken attack, and the sky was a clear blue. The winter sun was bright and high as noon came and went. The Batracca she and Sinh were riding looked like a giant bat to Sarah’s eyes, with a slender fox-like face and big brown eyes. The Cham rode Batracca for recreation, but also to fight invaders on their land.
As they settled into a glide, Sinh took Sarah’s hands and fastened her fingers around the reins attached to the Batracca’s bridle.
“Now, it is your turn, Sarah. Remember, we do not fly him, we fly with him.”
Sarah shuddered as she took the reins, her gut tightening as she realised how far below the ground was and how high up they were. Taking deep breaths, she gave gentle tugs on the reins and the Batracca banked left and then right. A whoop escaped her as she watched the land tip on its side beneath her, first one way and then the other. She let the reins relax and the Batracca righted himself and returned to flying along in a steady glide, parallel with the land below.
“You are doing well, Sarah. Soon, I think, you will be able to fly alone.”
Sarah smiled. That was why she needed the training. There would be no ship she could board now without being caught by Fellfolk. She could have used the Sword of Sighs to open a portal, but the hilt was useless as long as she wore the ring. Also, she did not know where K’th’li’li was, so she might end up sending herself to the middle of the ocean and drowning. As darkness and shadow spread across the land, it grew more and more difficult to trust people, except for those like the Cham, who were so cut-off and outcast that the bearers of His Shadow’s tidings did not bother them.
“How much longer will soon be, Sinh?” she asked as he took back the reins and the Batracca began its spiralling descent back to earth.
“Seven days more, maybe less,” he said.
Sarah’s heart leapt, and she held onto his waist all the tighter. Soon, she would be able to leave the Cham. It had been so long. Weeks had grown into months, but there was no hurrying the art of riding the skies on a Batracca.
If only learning how to use the Flame had been like this, thought Sarah, then I would be able to use it as weapon, rather than a live grenade I’m tossing from hand to hand with no idea of when, or if, it’s going to go off.
The Dracken had come to the village every so often, but the Cham had been safe, so far, from worse assaults by the Fallen. Perhaps it was the ring after all—a curse but also a blessing, because it held the Flame in check and none of the creatures hunting for her could sniff her out as they had done before. Sarah looked down at the ring as Sinh helped her dismount from the Batracca.
“Perhaps,” she said, “I’ll keep it on, always, and never take it off.”
Her words sounded far away and distant as she spoke them and she noticed Sinh’s brow furrow deeply at her words.
~ ~ ~
Sleep came for Sarah, and so did dreams. Bad ones.
The screaming, the running, the volleys and streams of fire. The grass at her back ripping and tearing as Fellfolk and Phages charged in. Deepest night becoming brightest day. Arrows rained down into trenchworks. Swords flashed bright. Blood fell, wetting the crisp grass and soaking the soil. In white-on-black, stop-go motion, people were running, routed by the Fallen, fleeing the battlefield in disarray, scurrying deeper into the Grassland Plains, seeking sanctuary there. But they wouldn’t find it tonight.
Greater screams fell, demonic lights erupted in the sky above. Catapults sent up scalding showers that struck home against the winged nightmares. Some ignited and fell shrieking, others burst as gruesome fireworks. Death tore across the land and through the sky in so many forms. Then, it all stopped.
All was quiet.
And then the earth shook to its roots as He reached out from his tomb under the mountain. The Fallen One strode across the land. In a matter of moments, all fell under His Shadow. All of the lights went out.
When Sarah awoke hours later, it felt like no time at all had passed. She stretched the cramps out of her neck. Her shoulders felt threaded with barbed wire. Wiping sticky grains from her eyes, she sighed. The stuff of her dreams was quickly dissipating, leaving nothing for her to grasp onto or really understand this time. Without Ossen or Mistress Ruth, she had to figure things out for herself, and it was hard. Really hard. The rotten taste in her mouth wouldn’t wash away. The hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, cold and clinging, would be with her for the rest of the day. Trying to wish away the way she was feeling wouldn’t work either.
She knew, because she had tried that before.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The eve of Wintertide came to the village and the Cham made sure that all decorations were inside, out of sight of Fellfolk patrols and Dracken. All a Phage would need was the glimmer of a festive lantern or a shimmer of star-paper to start rounding people up. Mashed tatties, boiled peans and turkey were passed around the table in the Feast Huts. Sweetmeat pies were scoffed down, and the small trees in the corner of each hut made memories of home surface for Sarah once more. She wiped at the wet sheen of her eyes. There was no point getting homesick. There was nothing she could do to get back there right now. In the evening, she went outside to gaze up at the stars, turning the cursed ring around on her finger.
“I miss you,” she said.
“You miss who?”
It was Sinh, standing in shadow. Sarah stiffened as he approached, hands clasped at his back.
“You miss family?”
“Yes. My sister, Kiley, and my mom. It’s like I’m missing a part of myself.”
“A piece of the puzzle. A word from a riddle.”
“Very poetic.”
“I am sorry for your pain.”
“It’s not pain—”
“It is. You try to hide it, and that is why I can see it.”
“I can handle it.”
“Many say the same, but few of us can. War and pain are things we endure and hope to survive. I hope you see your family again. Good night, Sarah. Sleep well.” He squeezed her shoulder for a moment before he left.
Sarah reached up and squeezed at the same spot, not sure what she was doing or why.
Still thinking, Sarah wandered down the dirt road out of the village, passing a grove of clustered trees. The smell always made Sarah gag. In the branches of the trees were the Batracca houses: suspended, bottomless bamboo frames hanging over squares of matting. Dried droppings were spattered across them all. The Cham sold the droppings as fertiliser. Inside the darkness of the hanging frames, Sarah could see the leathery forms of the Batracca shifting in their
sleep. They looked hooded and monkish, hiding from the light.
Was one awake?
Not sure, Sarah peered into the shuttered gloom, shading her eyes with one hand, trying to dissipate the glare of the full moon and stars. She was sure she’d seen two shining points alight in one of the frames—midnight suns, illuminating for a mere moment then vanishing. Perhaps the noise she had made was disturbing the slumberers.
Overhead, the dirty rag of a night-bird went by, crying forlornly.
Sarah walked on until she could see the Cham fishing boats moored in the icy canal. She saw a faint movement and felt a halting understanding as a few moving shadows separated from the still ones of night.
Out of the darkness, harsh shouts shattered the peace and quiet of Wintertide. Dim forms plunged into the canal, sloshing through its mud and water. She saw faces, the red light in their eyes, the way they were looking at her. Out of the water and into the water, more came, burning within from His dark fire, turning their open mouths and eyes into demonic lanterns.
Sarah watched for a moment longer before running back to the village the way she had come, yelling as loudly as she could that the Fellfolk were on their way.
~ ~ ~
A mist rolled in to settle over the village. It clung like fungus, spreading root-like fronds that ran down the walls, over the roofs, and into doorways, seeming to become one with everything it touched. The Fellfolk followed it like a silent storm born from the abyss. Hissing and low were their voices, bringing with them a cold that crept over the earth and into the surrounding huts. Cham bowmen rained arrows down on them from the roofs of their homes. Women, children, and old folk huddled inside. Fellfolk collapsed under the deadly volleys. Those not struck down by arrows found trip-wires that brought them to the ground where they were battered and beaten until they were still by Cham armed with clubs.
About time they got a taste of their own medicine, thought Sarah.
Sarah closed her eyes for a split-second, centring herself, breathing in the night. Someone had placed a Cham club in her hand and she was ready to jump out and join the fight, until, opening her eyes, she saw it standing in among the huts. It was thin and horrible, its translucent flesh and tentacles catching the light of the moon, and it was looking at her without eyes.
The Mind-Reaver had come to the Cham village for her.
Sarah could feel it behind her eyes, burrowing into her brain, scratching away the topsoil, peeling back the sticky stuff of memories. She dropped the club and found herself scratching at the ring on her finger. The band of metal had grown bitterly cold. The Reaver was in her head, seeking out the burial ground, the cemetery, the place where Sarah hid her one fear. Her most primal phobia. The flashpoint that would burn out the flame of her existence for good. Blinking, in a second Sarah knew what she had to do. She could feel the grave being undug, the exhumation of soft wood from rotten soil. Old nails, pounded down by sleep and dreams, were disintegrating into the grains of her tired red eyes. Raw fingers raked the underside of the coffin’s carapace, desperate to be set loose.
No, you won’t get it out of me, she thought.
Sarah closed her eyes just as the imagined coffin shattered. The wight within was out, shrieking wildly through her mind. But words have power, and she remembered two that would work as well as the Flame right now.
“Bang-dead!”
Something squirmed in Sarah’s eye, a small white worm, wiggling. She plucked it out and threw it away, and the Reaver was lying on the ground, spasming to death.
It was then that the first of the mortars fell on the village.
~ ~ ~
Sarah moved from shadow to shadow, keeping her back to the walls and her eyes open for Fellfolk and Phages. Her teeth were grinding and sweat prickled her brow. Shouts, cries, and the sound of steel striking on steel tore through the dust-salted air, as well as the pat-pat-pat of Cham feet running and the heavier thumps of the footsteps of more feral things. She ducked and ran into the shelter of a small porch overhanging bundles of cut bamboo. Peering out, she took it all in. Fellfolk lay all around. The heads of arrows and the shrapnel from phosphorus mortars pockmarked the corpses. There were Cham dead too. Keepsakes were scattered into pieces: ornamental eating-sticks, incense bundles, and the remnants of lockets. Another searing rain of mortar rounds hammered down, studding the village with craters and igniting more of the huts. They were following a pattern. Creeping. Targeting. Coming Close. Closer. Closer.
Sarah felt a clutching sensation in her gut as she saw Sinh standing in the path of a falling mortar bundle. She grabbed him by the shoulders, flattening him onto the ground, winding the young scholar and using her own body as a shield of meat and bone. The mortar went off, chucking a fine hail of dust and dirt into the burnt air. Shrapnel whined by, missing them both—just—and cutting through the space they had been standing in. Sarah rolled off Sinh and helped him up.
“Are you okay?” She dusted him down.
“Yes. You saved my life, Sarah.”
“It’s what I’m here to do. I think. For all of you.”
Even though I don’t want to, she thought. This is too big for me. For anyone. Saving a whole world from war.
Sinh paused, a slight disturbance washing across his face. It was a very brief stir of feeling; then, he was calm again. He placed a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “I thank you as a friend, Sarah. I will see you leave here safely and repay my debt to you. Follow me. Quickly.”
He ran in the direction of the Batracca houses, and Sarah followed.
They passed a small boy, missing an arm and a leg, who was curled near a crater. An old woman, unwounded but with her face knotted tight, pulled stiffly at the cloth of her tunic. Shock. Fear. Then heart failure.
There were more. Sarah’s eyes went from dead to dead, counting the lives that were gone. Not because she had to, but because she wanted to. They were little memories she wanted to keep with her, their faces in death.
Strange how it looks like you’re sleeping, just sleeping, after it happens, she thought.
A little girl was dead too, a mortar blast having knocking her off her feet. Sarah didn’t know her name, but she knew her. The child was always the first to greet her whenever Sarah walked past her hut. And the last to say goodbye. She had given Sarah a withered blossom as a Wintertide gift a few days ago. Sarah could feel her throat catching at the sight of her.
All children dream of flying; this was too cruel a way to go.
Soon enough, Sarah was crying, and remembering her promise.
To kill the Fallen One.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sarah let Sinh lead the way. Thrashing aside branches and brambles, Sarah followed him along the path. The fine mist was spreading further, discolouring and souring the air. It brought tears to her eyes and upset her stomach. The trees around her looked like crusty chrysalises, and the leaves were becoming patches of scabby, flaking skin. A strange silence was also settling along with the mist. An abeyance. An unnatural pause that made Sarah hold her breath. It was a silly thing to do, but she did it.
It felt as if the whole world was waiting for something.
Bracken broke open at her back and Sarah ran on, knowing they were there: Fellfolk, Phages, and His Shadow. Sarah looked back into the undergrowth, peering into its tangles and its hangman’s leaves. Nightmare trees spread their fungal limbs out before her; black arteries and strangling veins threaded the paper-white flesh of their trunks. The moon overhead seemed no longer the moon but a diseased eye that stared down upon cemetery cities and graveyard towns. That same sound of bracken breaking was all around her now. It was an echo with nothing to echo from. No walls she could see. Sarah stopped running. Her lungs were burning. Every breath was a gust from a furnace. The way ahead was obscured so much she was no longer sure she was moving. She felt as if she’d been running on the spot for ages. Wheezing heavily, her shoulders shivering, shaking, she heard the bracken breaking again. She didn’t move this time. She knew tha
t whatever was out there wasn’t going to let her go. She was done for. Then a hand reached through the mist and grabbed her arm, dragging her free and into cleaner air.
Sinh had awoken one of the Batracca and was muttering soothing sounds into the groggy creature’s ear as he fitted the bridle and saddle webbing onto its back. The Batracca snuffled and scratched at the dirt as it heard the sounds of battle in the village coming closer. The mist was drifting nearer.
“Sarah, help me,” said Sinh.
She adjusted straps and ensured the bridle was fitted comfortably around the Batracca’s head. She stroked its fuzzy cheek and each of its fluttering ears.
“Do you know where the island is?” asked Sarah.
“I have studied the parchments, Sarah, and I trust in the old instincts passed from blood to blood. We will find K’th’li’li.”
So saying, he climbed onto the webbing and Sarah followed him, clinging onto his waist as he leaned forward, muttering a few words to the Batracca.
A Phage charged out of the mist, red-eyed and lashing the air with the segmented metal cables that made up its one arm. It had no jaw, and Sarah could see a pale white tongue hanging in the space where a mouth should have been.
And then, Sinh was yanking on the reins, and with a gust and a jerk, the Batracca was aloft, passing over the head of the Phage and the Fellfolk that followed him.
Sarah did not need to look back to know that the Cham village was already being burned to the ground.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The flight out to K’th’li’li scared Sarah, made her angry.
Below, in the morning, she saw oxen, their heads down, sloshing through soil and mud, dragging their yokes. Men at their backs were guiding the ploughs along. Women and children seemed to drift as dryads through the low waters of the fields. The sunlight caught in the dikes and canals, which shone spectral bright. Morning mist shimmered with sparkles, siliceous gossamer and angel hair. Sarah wondered what they were thinking—the men and women hidden inside their low curling hats, bowed out of sight. She wondered what the poor of the kingdoms thought of the war. The people here, they just kept on going. Ploughing their fields. Living out their time. And dying. The serene scene disturbed her. There was something about it, a buried voice speaking, profound.