Path of Revenge

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  As if summoned by her thoughts, the captain entered the alcove, carrying a large platter of food and a waterskin. Immediately every other thought was submerged by a rush of hunger and thirst.

  ‘Just a little, Lenares,’ Torve cautioned, but his words made no headway against her body’s desires. She heard his warning, would remember it after an afternoon of emptying her stomach amid virulent cramps, but at the time it didn’t touch her. That night she ate and drank more carefully, having learned an important lesson about the limits of her self-control.

  ‘What is this place?’ she whispered to Torve after their evening meal, again served by Captain Duon, as if he were their servant and not their master. ‘Where are the children?’

  ‘They are not here,’ Torve replied, his voice low, not so much a whisper as a melancholic rasp. ‘They have made camp some distance away, and are discussing what they should do with us.’

  ‘Why should they do anything with us?’ Lenares asked. ‘Why not let us go on our way?’ Not that she knew which way they ought to go.

  ‘Because Captain Duon and…and Dryman are here with us. The desert people are afraid of them. Something is wrong in both of them, so the children say.’

  ‘Say? You understand them?’

  ‘No, but they communicate their unease very clearly. When we first arrived they would not go near either man. I do not understand what Duon has done to earn such mistrust.’

  Lenares took a locust from the platter and dipped it in a sweet, sticky fluid. The taste burned itself on her tongue, drawing an astonishing wave of pleasure from her mouth that spread throughout her body.

  ‘Wonderful, are they not,’ Torve whispered. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  ‘They are my ancestors,’ he said, and looked at her, a yearning in his eyes. He wanted her to understand something. ‘They are not Omeran; they are the people we Omerans changed from.’

  ‘How do you know this?’ His words had triggered a cascade of images and numbers in her head.

  ‘They know my Defiance,’ he said, ‘and have shown me from whence it sprang.’

  ‘They do look a little like you, though they are much more handsome.’ Belatedly she realised that her words might hurt him, so she softened them by extending her hand and taking his.

  ‘What were you talking with Dryman about?’ she enquired.

  He jerked involuntarily, as though Lenares had tweaked a string tying him to something. ‘I cannot tell you,’ he whispered. ‘Please do not ask me about him.’

  ‘Why? Why can’t I ask? What is wrong, Torve?’

  ‘Please,’ he begged her. ‘If you press me, I must refuse you.’

  Lenares released his hand and sat back, surprised at the depth of hurt she felt at his words. What could be so secret that he must keep it from her? Her mind swirled with speculation; she could no more stop thinking about it than she could stop breathing. But underneath her mind’s frantic activity lay a newly created hollow place, which, until his words, had been filled with love.

  The only person without a wall erected to keep her out, the one man open to her scrutiny, a good man, not an animal as she once had thought, a man who loved her; but now with a secret. The knowledge that he could not share everything with her meant that, against her wishes, her mind shifted him from the category of one to the category of everyone. He was no longer special.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and reached for her hand. She pulled away from him.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she found herself saying, and the hollowness within her expanded with the words, a hole in her own world.

  The next day the Desert Children, as Torve had taken to calling the tribe, came to visit them. For the occasion they hitched up the sides of the alcove, letting the sun warm the cold marble wall, so the Children could see their guests. Their captives, Lenares thought, though there was nothing to suggest they could not just walk away.

  The Children formed a line, thirty or more strong, then all sat down on their haunches. The three Amaqi sat under the awning. Halfway between the two groups knelt Torve, waiting for whatever was to come. Lenares could see the similarity between him and the Children, could read it in the shape of their eyes, the set of the forehead, the width of the nose, though there were also differences. They had darker skin, finer features, more expressive movements. Indeed, everything they did was a dance. They could well be his ancestors.

  Her mind drifted for a moment, imagining him finding kinship with the Children, deciding to stay with them, bidding her a sad farewell as she, Captain Duon and Dryman headed out into the desert. The thought drenched her in misery. Why can’t I let him have a secret? She did not know the answer, but wished bitterly she did.

  Two of the Children and an adult came forward and mimed horror at Dryman and Captain Duon. Torve did not understand, so she called out from where she sat. He beckoned her forward. She knelt beside him and it felt so right it was all she could do to stop herself bursting into tears.

  The mummers continued their display, and their actions were as clear as if they spoke in the Amaqi tongue. ‘They are frightened of Dryman and the captain,’ she said to Torve. ‘The two men are fruit that looks good on the outside but harbours worms within. They ask us whether these men belong to us and, if not, want to know if they can kill them.’

  A groan came from behind Lenares. ‘Why? What is wrong with me?’ Captain Duon’s question sounded sincere, not an assertion of innocence. ‘Can they tell?’

  ‘Better hope they can’t,’ Dryman said, his voice as relaxed as it ever had been.

  Torve tried to tell the Children that yes, the two men were known to them. After some confusion Lenares was satisfied the message had been understood.

  After more graceful miming, Lenares reported: ‘The Children were willing to offer us shelter, but because the bad men are with us, they must take us to the borders of their lands and see us leave. They say that they nearly decided to kill us all, but the True Man—that’s you, Torve—and the Woman who Sees—me—should be allowed to live. They say that, should we return without the bad men, they would welcome us into their clan and allow us to stay for a time. However, should they encounter the bad men ever again, they will kill them without discussion.’

  ‘If they could,’ Dryman muttered.

  ‘Do they say what is wrong with the two men?’ Torve asked.

  ‘They do not know,’ said Lenares. ‘I think they might be like me. They sense much about a person from their smell, their…taste, but that’s not what they mean. They can tell something is wrong, but not what.’

  ‘I have a question,’ Dryman said, raising his voice. ‘How have these Children survived for so long without being found by the Amaqi?’

  The Children mimed at length. ‘The Amaqi cannot find their nose with their finger,’ Lenares said eventually, and Captain Duon barked a laugh. ‘This is the Children’s land, bountiful and good, and the thick-heads—their name for us—can continue to live in the badlands.’

  ‘Do these Children know they are animals?’ Lenares heard the perverse delight in the question, the desire to wound, but she asked it anyway.

  To her surprise, the adult nodded. ‘Yes! They say they are like the deer and the monkeys and the water buffalo, all children of the…of the giant.’ Her voice tailed off as memories of her dream came crashing back into her mind.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, images pounding her brain. ‘Oh, oh!’

  ‘Lenares? What is wrong?’ Torve hovered close, but she could not spare any of herself to formulate an answer. The memories came fast and hot, their power seizing her muscles and her mind.

  The giant strides the land, scattering stones, creating the desert, the cradle of all life…the children of the giant gather at the waterhole and decide to search for their god…finding the giant, they transform him into their god by their worship…the children quarrel, killing each other, and refuse the god’s help…he makes a daughter and a son out of a woman and a man, but still they refuse to listen�
��his Son and his Daughter betray the god and drive him out of the desert…his absence creates a hole in the world…the Son and the Daughter contend for control…

  She did not realise she had acted out the powerful memories until she heard a rumbling chorus of agreement from the assembled Children. It took her some considerable time to explain to Torve what had happened.

  Dryman growled audibly behind her. ‘From what source did this bastardised legend spring? Is this a belief of these animals here, or is it your own, cosmographer?’

  Something about that last word, about the way Dryman said it, stroked a memory in Lenares’ mind, but she did not have the leisure to pursue it.

  ‘Neither,’ she snapped. ‘It is the truth.’ But, even as she said it she sensed the inadequacy of her assertion. It is a truth, her numbers told her. You have the sum, but there are more than two factors, more than one way of arriving at the correct answer. ‘It is true,’ she corrected herself.

  And it is filled with information, with clues to what is happening in the world. Now all she needed was leisure to examine the memories Dryman’s question had freed. Leisure, and the will to make her mind focus on anything but the frightening hollowness inside her, or the sudden overturning of her belief in one absolute truth. More than one way to get a correct answer? Could a question have two true answers? Or more? She felt…she felt as though she were a building cracking and breaking up in an earthquake. No, more like a building being destroyed and rebuilt.

  Their time with the Desert Children could not be measured in hours or days. Here—wherever here was, exactly—the days seemed to pass differently; not so much at a different speed, Duon reflected, but without any speed at all. It was the difference between sitting on a camel and passing a man on the side of the road, and being that man and watching the camel pass. Like the man by the road, he seemed outside of events. Time passed, the sun rose and set, but without touching him.

  Perhaps it was his preoccupation with propitiation. If the first time he had run from his command, abandoning his expedition to torture and death, had scarred him, his second enforced abandonment left him numb. For all his despair about his venal behaviour, he had not struggled when Dryman drew him away to the secret portal of the Desert Children. False, his despair had been, a façade intended to ease his own conscience.

  He did not intend to make the same mistake again. This time he would not rely on a feeling to achieve redemption; he would serve those that remained. He carried water for them, tidied and prepared their dwelling, helped with the meal preparations and whatever else he could find to do. Guilt would not just be something he felt, it would become what he was.

  But, he was forced to admit, a selfish motive lay even at the heart of this selfless behaviour. He needed a focus, anything, to stop himself going mad. Gradually Duon was being taken over by the voice in his head, the scornful voice that mocked his every effort to do the right thing. In his most lucid moments, he worried that he was breaking in two. Frighteningly, the voice in his head reassured him that he was not.

  Duon tried talking to Dryman. The Children had identified both him and the soldier as ‘bad men’, suggesting they could see his fractured mind. Perhaps Dryman suffered from something similar? But Dryman dashed this hopeful idea. ‘I am completely sound of mind,’ the soldier said in a tone of clipped assertion. ‘These desert anachronisms have labelled us, no doubt, because we ran from our army.’ He shrugged, as if such betrayal were of no account.

  ‘How did you know about the existence of the portal in the desert?’

  Something hard rose in the man’s eyes. ‘I am not entirely talentless,’ he said. ‘You are trained to find new paths and explore them; I am trained to find a different kind of path and exploit it. Rather than subjecting me to interrogation, you would do better to ask yourself this: where will we go once these desert mice have done with us?’

  ‘Will they let us go?’

  ‘They will not be able to stop us.’

  ‘But they have magic. If a child is a sorcerer, what might their adults be capable of?’

  ‘They have no reason to harm us. You fuss like an old woman. Are you sure the voice you say you’re hearing isn’t that of your mother?’

  Duon gave up. ‘Keep your secrets, then. But I wish you had left me with the rest of the expedition.’

  ‘You are a fool,’ Dryman said, the last word overlaid exactly by the voice in Duon’s head, a duet of condemnation. Fool.

  The soldier continued his assault on Duon’s illusions. ‘I take with me every tool I need. You are a tool. You are here because I need you to take me where I want to go. A man like you, Captain, cannot afford for a moment to think he is in charge of his life. Others rule you and they always will. Tie yourself in moral knots if you must, but others are responsible for the direction you have taken. How can a mere tool be held to account for what skilled hands make it do?’

  The man’s words reverberated in Duon’s skull. They tempted him to surrender, to allow others to use him as they would. Worse, they told him that he had already done so by choosing to serve. He had made himself a tool, a functionary with no responsibility.

  He made his way back to the alcove, his mind a tangle of severed threads. How quickly his life had been rendered meaningless, how cruelly his future had been taken out of his hands. From the heady heights of favouritism with a gracious, generous Emperor to the depths of his discussion with the boorish Dryman.

  You are layered in self-deception, said the voice in his head, or perhaps it was his own thought. He was beginning to lose the ability to tell. When the onion is fully peeled, what will remain?

  Torve’s secret tormented him like the sun. That was what it was like: as though a second sun had been set in the desert sky. It burned away at his Defiance. If it were possible for anything to undo thousands of years of breeding, this was it. He could feel it draining him of integrity.

  Worse, he could see its effect on Lenares. She knew he was keeping something from her; he knew she would not be able to bear it. He would lose her, had most likely already lost her, and his joy at discovering her unexpected love had began to evaporate.

  Worst of all was what was to come. No one could save him from it, not Captain Duon, not the Desert Children, not even Lenares. They would all suffer because of what Torve would be compelled to do.

  They had already begun to suffer.

  Next morning the Children assembled in front of the alcove, ready to see the Amaqi on their way. They asked Torve to remain, and indicated that Lenares could also stay, but of course such a thing had been rendered impossible. Torve could no more remain here, much as he wished to penetrate the mystery of their survival in the desert heart of Elamaq, than he could turn aside his heritage of obedience. He did not pass their invitation on to Lenares.

  There seemed some unease amongst the Desert Children, a constant agitated turning of heads and movement of limbs, where in previous gatherings there had been calmness. A child came scampering towards the gathering, running almost on all fours, his face pale and cheeks streaked with tears. The Children listened as the child spoke, then a woman cried out and a man shouted in something between rage and agony. The man took a stride towards where Torve and the Amaqi sat, then visibly restrained himself. Two other Children, a man and a woman, walked after the crying child, who, after shaking his head a few times, relented and led them away in the direction Torve expected, back along the path the child had come from.

  He knew what this was about. How could he not? It had stained his soul.

  A few minutes later—they must have used their spit-and-stick sorcery—the Children returned, the woman holding something small and bloody in her arms. The dead child looked like a burst fruit. As she laid the body down on the stony ground between the two groups an absolute silence fell, interrupted only when one of the child’s limbs flopped from its chest and dislodged a stone. An eerie moment, giving the impression, despite appearances, that the body was alive.

  But it
could not be. Not after what had been done to it.

  Torve risked a glance at Dryman. The man regarded the scene before him with what looked like indifference, his arms folded, feet apart.

  They watched as the Children argued amongst themselves. One of the youths was sent away, and returned with an armful of palm fronds. With these the Children honoured the dead girl—Torve knew the corpse for a girl, though its gender was no longer discernible—by layering them on the body. The Children came from the left and the right, each bearing a frond, and every one stared at the Amaqi after placing their offering on the child’s remnants.

  ‘Who did this?’ Lenares whispered. But from the incredulous look on her face it was clear she guessed who had been involved.

  The sun burned away in the sweating sky, towering above them in what seemed to Torve like judgment. The second sun, much closer and far more powerful, threatened to consume his soul.

  The numbers crackled through Lenares’ head like lightning; she had no way of stopping them. She wished she could hold them back, dam them like the Amaqi had done to the Marasmos River, withhold the knowledge they watered her with. If only there was some trick of forgetfulness she could play, a way of convincing her mind to ignore the numbers and concentrate only on what the others could see. A child, torn apart by some kind of wild animal.

  The truth…oh, it was the truth. A wild animal had torn the child apart. She could read it in her beloved’s face, the face of an animal, a killer. He—it—knew. His face was frightened, appalled, but not surprised. And that Dryman, he had something to do with it too. There was a connection between them. But Lenares could not read the soldier; it was as though he wore a false face, a mask. She could not see his true face, it was hidden from her somehow. A mystery; perhaps the most important mystery of this journey filled with mysteries.