“It was a dream,” Will said.
She shook her head. “No. This was not just a dream, Will.” She shuddered. “Just as you woke me, I saw soldiers driving to her house.” She heaved herself from her hammock.
“Where are you going?” Will asked.
“To talk with the captain,” she said. “Ask him to turn the ship.”
“Turn the ship?” Will asked blankly. “Why?”
“There are paths between the world,” N’tombe said impatiently, as though this was a fact that everyone should know. “One opens five days north.” Climbing the ladder, she hammered on the hatch. “Open up!” she shouted. “Come on! Open!”
A sailor’s surprised face gazed down at them. “Thought you was all asleep.”
“I was,” she said grimly. “And now I’m awake. I need to talk with the captain.” Pushing herself through the trapdoor, she climbed onto the deck then, pausing, put her head back through the hole. “You want to come with me?”
Up on the deck, the storm had passed; wisps of clouds brushed fine lines across the evening sky. The captain, wearing a ragged wool jersey and patched breeches, seemed unimpressed when N’tombe issued her orders. “Can’t do that, miss,” he said.
“You must, I tell you.”
He looked up at the mast with the fluttering pennant. “Wind’s in the wrong quarter. Besides, we’re running low on supplies. Ain’t about to turn her now.”
N’tombe’s hands turned into fists. Uh-oh, thought Will, and ducked for cover.
“I must leave,” she said.
“Now, miss,” said the captain. “What’s a day or so’s delay?”
N’tombe pointed at the sky. As though in answer, clouds began to swirl. A shudder of power jolted the boat. On the mast-top the pennant fluttered, and turned into the breeze. The lookout shouted, pointing at a distant line of land, as sailors scrambled with the sail-ropes. Mouth agape, the captain stood on the deck and watched the weather change.
N’tombe lowered her hands. “Now,” she said, “the wind is in the right quarter.”
The captain nodded, like a man facing a dream, or a nightmare. Will heard a roaring as though the earth itself was enraged. The deck shook and he fell to his knees. This is wrong! The panicked sailors called, but their voices sounded frail, like the cries of wild seabirds.
TeSin’s head popped through the hatch. The man’s face was startled and still slightly green from seasickness. “What happen?” he called to Will
Will, unable to reply, just shook his head.
“I turned the wind,” N’tombe said.
TeSin looked up at the sky, at the clouds that raced across the sky, propelled by the unnatural wind.
“Not right,” he said. “You must not.”
Will, still on hands and knees, nodded.
“I have to,” N’tombe said.
Will felt sick. What had the enchantress done? He could feel a hole, a blank void of air. There were consequences; he could feel the earth trembling. Was this what she meant, by feeling the world? Certainly, the sailors didn’t seem as affected as he. They were scared and probably angry, but Will could barely move.
“Too much,” said TeSin.
Will nodded weakly.
N’tombe looked at both of them, doubtless taking in their pale faces and their looks of concern. “Well,” she said angrily. “What would you have me do, then?”
“Restore balance,” said TeSin. “Balance is important.”
“Tell that to your Emperor,” she sniffed. “What does he care? But me, when I need something done, and have the power to do it – you tell me to stop. But why? Why should I?”
“Even the Kamaye,” TeSin said, “respect balance.”
“Enchantress.” Will hated the weakness of his voice. He felt deeply weary: as though the effort of keeping his heart beating had sapped his strength.
“Balance necessary,” TeSin steadied himself against the hatch. “Important.”
N’tombe shrugged.
“Enchantress,” Will said. “You know he is right.” At his core he felt the gnawing wrongness.
“My aunt,” she said, and now her voice was the wail of a disappointed child.
“Your aunt knows this too,” Will said gently, hoping this was true.
She nodded in agreement and Will felt a sudden relief. Her eyes were sad. She looked up at the sky, at the green-blue swell. The land was further away now.
“You are right,” she said softly. “Aunt Zissi says this too.” She took a deep breath, raised her hands again. Will fell to his stomach on the deck. He pressed his face to the floorboards. Was this it? Would she call down a thunderbolt, to blast him for his presumption? Heart pounding weakly, he waited for the end.
But it never came. Instead, the sea calmed; the wind whispered gently. The sun came free of the clouds, and warmed his back. Will lifted his head. What had happened?
On the deck N’tombe sat weeping.
* * *
Much later, TeSin spoke to Will. “Wise one, she speak of cracks between worlds. You know of this?”
Will shook his head, but added, “There are other worlds.” The night they’d left the kingdom there had been a tremendous storm; lights in the sky and the wind roaring. And after the storm had cleared the horizon was empty; there was wild ocean where once a whole kingdom had once stood. What had N’tombe said then? That the Guardian had moved the kingdom, to a place where it might be safe?
“My master not know of this,” TeSin said.
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Very good.” TeSin hesitated. “I ask you, Will, what happen if he does know?”
Will had a sudden vision of the Arm of the Eternal, the relentless army of the Emperor, spilling unchecked throughout the worlds.
“I am good soldier,” TeSin said quietly, “but such things must not be.”
“No,” agreed Will.
“He must never know of this.”
Will nodded quietly. A thought struck, and he grabbed at TeSin’s arm. The man’s muscles felt hard and wiry beneath his fingers. “What if there are others like your Emperor, on these other worlds?”
TeSin said nothing, but Will saw his pupils widen, as realization dawned. “War,” he whispered.
“As we’ve never seen.” He remembered a summer’s day, long ago. He’d been a boy, twelve years old. The schoolmaster had pressed a burning torch into the pyre that had once been his home town, and slowly the place hand began to burn. The greasy column of smoke twisted into the air. It had smelled of coal and roasting meat and death and loss. All his life, that smell had been at the back of his throat. It would be the smell across all the worlds, should the Kamaye and the Emperor find the paths between them.
“Where do you go,” Will whispered, “Once you’ve conquered all the world?”
“It must not happen.”
“These cracks. They must be closed.”
I have to get to Dana, Will thought. He remembered what she had told him: In the city is a silver fountain and at the base of the fountain is a dagger, made of jade. Will, it alone can kill the Emperor.
And once he’s dead, Will thought, we must make sure there can be no more.
* * *
That evening, N’tombe sat with clasped hands pressed between her knees. She looked lost and surprisingly vulnerable. “I was wrong. I am sorry.”
Will shook his head. “I understand. You want to go home. You want to help.”
“Thank you.”
They sat quietly, watching the stars come out. Venus, thought Will. The star of love, the star of evening. He remembered the day he’d first met Dana, when N’tombe was trying to begin another storm. The enchantress seemed to like storms.
“N’tombe,” he asked, “when you turned the wind? I felt it.”
“You did? What did you feel?”
“Just …” What he wanted to say made no sense. “It felt wrong.” He felt stupid.
She sighed. “It was wrong. Aunt Zissi,
most certainly she would not have been impressed.”
“Enchantress, how could I feel that? I mean, feeling the weather! Am I going mad?”
“You feel balance; you are aware of when it is lost.”
“How?”
She smiled. “Will, because that is what TeSin has been training you for. To see what cannot be seen with the eye.” She patted his hand. “Do not fret. That you felt this – it is good. Very good.”
They sat for a moment, looking out at the moving sea.
“What is she like, your aunt?” Will asked.
“Aunt Zissi?” N’tombe smiled. “Ah, she is fiery. Her temper has everyone in the village terrified. Even the chief runs away when Aunt Zissi is coming. I used to laugh about it; we all used to laugh. The smallest woman was the most feared.” She shook her head. “But she is kind, too. Oh, very kind.”
“She raised you? After your mother died?”
N’tombe nodded.
“How did your mother die?” Will asked before he could stop himself. But N’tombe seemed to understand why he might ask this. It was the question asked by one motherless child to another. How did your mother die?
“She fell down some steps and hit her head.” N’tombe’s dark eyes appeared to be looking far away. “The nurses in the hospital did not realize my mother was with child. This is because she was very early in her pregnancy, you understand, and was not yet showing. Aunt Zissi arrived at the hospital – she caused a huge fuss, she told me, because she just appeared, poof! Out of nowhere, and the nurses they did not appreciate this.”
She smiled. “But Aunt Zissi has never been one to care greatly for the opinions of others. She told me that the nurses were nuns, and so were not accustomed to childbirth and pregnancy. They were truly shocked when they realized this unconscious patient in their care was expecting.” Glancing sideways at Will, she added, “My mother was not married, you understand.”
“She wasn’t?” Will also felt mildly shocked. Pregnant unmarried women had a certain … reputation. He could just imagine how a group of nuns might take the news. “Who …?” He stopped. No. He was not going to ask an enchantress who her father was. She might take it amiss, and then where would he be?
When N’tombe laughed softly he blushed. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I know it’s not my business.”
“Do you think I am embarrassed by your question?” She sounded amused. “Will, do you think I have not asked the same question of my aunt, over and over and over again?”
“What did she tell you?”
N’tombe spread her fingers wide. “That she did not know.”
“Have you tried to find out?”
N’tombe looked out at the land, now growing closer. There were lights along the cliff edge. “Aunt Zissi said it was better I did not know.”
“Do you remember your mother?”
She shook her head. “My mother passed away just after giving birth to me. But Aunt Zissi said the nuns were foolish creatures, and did not understand the difference between life and death. She said my mother knew about me, and had decided to stay in her body until …”
“Until you were born.”
“Exactly.” She looked at Will, suddenly, her gaze arrested, as though she’d only just realized something important. “Aunt Zissi said that she went to be with my father.” N’tombe gripped his hand. “Will? What do you think she meant?”
Will disengaged his hand gently. It meant N’tombe was an orphan. Like him.
N’tombe shook her head. “No. That is not what she meant.”
TeSin, sitting beside them in the darkness, stirred. He’d been listening all this time. He was a good listener. He kept silent and still and folk forgot he was there. This was a gift, Will realized. And it was also dangerous.
“You aunt?” TeSin asked. “How many days ride to her?”
N’tombe looked toward the east. “Many, many days,” she said softly.
“Men in dream,” TeSin asked. “When will they reach her?”
N’tombe shook her head. “I do not know. I could have been seeing something in the future, or might have been watching something that has already passed.” She sighed. “Unlike the Guardian, I am not skilled at dream-sense.”
“You still talk with aunt?” TeSin asked.
“I …” N’tombe hesitated. “Sometimes I think she hears me. Sometimes I think I hear her. But who knows if I am right? Perhaps I imagine all this; perhaps I hear only what I want to. My world lies far away from yours. How can my thoughts bridge that distance?”
“You love your aunt,” Will said. It was not a question.
“Of course.”
“Love is strong bond,” TeSin said. “Why not you talk to her? Perhaps she hear you.”
How Will wished that were true. He thought so often about Dana, and probably she thought about him too. But thoughts, no matter how strong, just weren’t the same as actually being there.
* * *
The boat anchored in an isolated inlet, and the travelers were taken ashore in a dinghy. The captain sat in the prow holding a dark lantern. “Best of luck to you, lad,” he said to Will. “Hope all turns out for you and your lass.”
“You know about her?”
Captain smiled into his beard. “Couldn’t help but hear you talking.”
“I talk about her?”
A few sailors chuckled.
“Oh aye,” Captain said. “Just a mite.”
“A mite!” A rower muttered.
“Hey!” Captain whacked the nearest sailor across the head. “Don’t mock the lad. Ain’t often we get such good entertainment on the journey.”
“True-spoke,” muttered a chorus of rowers.
“Lads and me, we put a bit together for you.” The captain passed a clinking bag to Will. “By way of thanks.”
He’d been entertainment? “Thanks,” he said sourly.
“Don’t thank us. Made a tidy bit on your fighting.” Captain winked at Will. “Those scum,” he nodded at the sweating rowers, “they didn’t reckon you’d last five minutes.”
“And you did?”
“Ah, well. I heard about you, see.”
“Who from?”
“Oh, Ma herself. You watch that one, Davey, she says to me. Looks mild enough, but he fights like a demon from hell.” He looked over to the beach, gray in the starlight. “Here we are. Time for you to get out.” He nodded at the small clinking purse in Will’s hand. “You take that, get yourself some provisions. You’ve still got a tidy journey ahead of you.”
Will slipped the purse into his belt and shook the captain’s hand. “Thank you.”
“Tis naught. Go well, you hear.”
“I will. And,” Will hesitated. “Give my regards to Jed, won’t you? When you see him.”
Captain smiled wryly. “Reckon he’ll be mighty relieved to see us and all.” Carefully, he lowered an anchor over the side of the dinghy. It slid into the dark water with barely a ripple. Years of smuggling, thought Will. Bet he knows all the coastline. “Ma, she seemed taken enough with him at the time,” Captain added, “but since the Master passed she ain’t never settled on one man for long. Good thing we’re heading back, if you take my meaning. Now, you folk all right for getting to the beach? You’ll get a mite wet, but you’ll dry soon enough once the sun rises.”
Beyond the beach lay a line of low clay hills. They climbed them slowly, as the sun rose, and stopped at the top, panting. Below lay blue sea and the western horizon. Far to the east, the sun was rising behind snow-topped mountains.
TeSin pointed east to distant threads of smoke. “Town.”
By the time they arrived at the rough brush walls of the village Will’s feet, unused to walking, were aching. Fortunately, the Emperor’s army was well known about here, and the villagers, recognizing TeSin as an officer, were only too happy to offer them some horses in return for their speedy departure.
“They’ll tell others about us,” Will said.
N’tombe turn
ed in her saddle. Will felt the air ripple as a light wind fluttered, churning the dusty hoofprints. Soon all tracks of their passing had been covered. Will lifted his face to the sunlight, inhaling deeply. The air moved again, and as if fighting an invisible opponent, he pushed against it.
“Will!” N’tombe snapped.
He glanced quickly at her. What had he just done? “Sorry.”
Now and again he caught her looking at him, but she said nothing.
* * *
Riding single file, they followed a rough track into the hills. At the rear, Will wound a scarf about his face to stop the dust. The world felt subtly different. Now and again he thought he heard a whisper, as though a tune was being played just beyond sound. It made him jumpy. Mindful of ambush, Will kept an eye on the heights above. But save for a few wild animals, hares and such-like, the hill country appeared empty.
They continued onwards for four days, riding up river valleys and across high mountain passes. Their horses, four small chestnuts, hardy and deep-chested, seemed capable enough. TeSin watched the animals constantly, tending to their hooves at each stop, and making sure they had sufficient food.
When Will asked why there were no towns in these mountain valleys TeSin shook his head as though he didn’t know, or didn’t want to say. But on the third day they passed a cairn. From the distance, it looked like a pile of gray stones, but as they drew closer, Will realized: not stones. Skulls. His horse shied away as the whisper at the back of the world grew louder.
On the fifth day, they reached the plain. Grass-covered steppes stretched toward distant mountains. He stared at them glumly. “That’s where we’re going?”
The Noyan nodded.
They seemed so far away. Then the clouds parted and the sun gleamed through, sending bright rays toward the snowing peaks. Inexplicably, Will felt a sudden hope. They had far to go, yes, but at least they could see their destination.
TeSin pointed at a low hill, topped with uneven buildings. A town. “We could stop for provisions.”
“Are we growing low?” N’tombe asked.
The SoulNecklace Stories Page 58