‘Let him go!’ Meg screamed.
‘You can save your little brother by coming with us quietly,’ Light explained. ‘Or you can be responsible for the death of everyone you love by being a stupid little girl. Make a choice.’ The stranger produced a dagger and pressed it against Peter’s neck.
Her instinct was to call a spell and kill him, but even a spell wouldn’t be quick enough to stop the man holding Peter from slitting the boy’s throat. She bit her lip and clenched her fists, fighting her instinct, and said, feigning calm, ‘Let Peter go, and my dingo, and I will come.’
Light did not react, but held her gaze until something inside him was satisfied. He ordered, ‘Bind her tightly!’ As a group of soldiers hurried to seize her, he nodded to the man holding Peter, and the boy was released. Peter ran straight to Meg, pushing past the soldiers to reach her first. She squatted and hugged her little brother, but the soldiers pulled him struggling out of her arms and began tying her wrists as Peter was carried back to the house.
Follower Servant supervised her binding. ‘Don’t think we haven’t heard the stories, Lady Amber,’ he said. ‘I guess they are stories, but we’re not stupid enough to trust you.’ She ignored him, staring stonily at the house, into which Seer Light had returned, with the man restraining Sunfire.
When Light emerged, sack in hand, he came straight to her. ‘Where is the rat?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She never came back with me.’
Light muttered an obscenity, and said, ‘I know you’re lying.’ He dropped the sack. ‘It doesn’t matter. Something that Truth once told me has made me curious about your rat, but I don’t need the nuisance of it.’ He spoke to Follower, who issued orders for the small troop to mount, and he directed Follower to gag Meg. He waited until the soldiers lifted her roughly onto horseback, secured her wrist bonds to the saddle pommel and lashed her ankles to the stirrups. ‘You mightn’t be very comfortable, Amber, but it makes me feel better,’ he told her, and went to his horse.
As the troop wheeled to ride into the hills, Meg saw Dawn on the veranda with Peter, and Daryn holding Sunfire back. Her mother was crying and calling her name, and tears poured from Meg’s eyes, but the gag stifled her goodbyes. Follower took her horse’s reins and led it forward. A soldier’s shout made them all turn their heads. From the heart of the village marched a small group of eleven men, bearing swords and pitchforks and shovels and clubs. Meg’s heart sank. At the head of the group were Button Tailor, shuffling quickly on his crutch, and her brother, Daryn. ‘Shall I disperse the poor bastards?’ Follower called to Light.
Light glanced at Meg, before replying, ‘We don’t have time to play soldiers. Ride on. Leave them in our dust.’
Meg’s horse jumped as Follower prodded it, and the troop broke into a gallop, leaving her would-be rescuers stranded and her heart bleeding its sorrow in the rhythm of the hooves.
‘Did you really think you could just go home and forget what you’d done? That you could just expect us to pretend that you didn’t exist? That you weren’t out there, a silent threat that the Queen might one day stir up against us again?’ Light paced before her, silhouetted by the campfire. ‘I know you killed Truth. It wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that it was you who killed his brother before you killed Treasure Overbrook. You are a work of evil, an abomination, everything that is anathema to Jarudha’s holy work. And you expected to be let go?’ He stopped, glaring down on her, his anger palpable in his stance, as if he was about to strike her. Gagged and bound, she could not respond. And if she could, what would she say or do? Caught between anger and misery—wanting revenge and feeling loss—how would she respond? If she wanted to, she could use an unmaking spell to unravel her bonds—but then what? More killing?
Follower Servant appeared in the firelight. He spoke quietly to Seer Light, and the pair walked away from her. Soldiers sat around the fire, talking and eating. She was glad that Light’s tirade was over. The man had hated her from their first day of meeting, hated her for everything she represented, hated her for reasons even she did not know. He’d mentioned Truth’s brother. She hadn’t killed another Seer, had she? The Seers in the Rebel forces at The Whispering Forest were slain by arrows. Then she remembered the Seer who’d chased her above the valley before Wombat and she had joined the army—the man Wombat killed. He was Truth’s brother?
She watched a possum wander along a shadowy branch overhead, and she heard kookaburras chortling in the valley. Light and his men were camping on a ridge a half-day’s ride from Summerbrook, in the northern hills. The ropes had chafed her, but the amber was already healing her sores as she rested. The gag was the most uncomfortable aspect—that, and having to ask soldiers with a series of muffled grunts twice during the afternoon journey to pull down her trousers when she needed to piss. Light was offering her no dignity in her captivity and that only reinforced her fear that his intentions for her were brutal wherever he was taking her.
Her first reaction when she felt pressure against her hip was that a snake had gotten too curious, but as she flinched and glanced down fearfully she saw a rat’s black snout and glittering eyes. Whisper! she projected.
Found, the rat replied. Good. The rat’s nose twitched and she stared at the men eating at the fire. Hungry.
Meg panicked. No. Bad, she communicated to the rat, and Whisper withdrew into the darkness.
A soldier squatted beside Meg with a plate of food. ‘Something to eat. His Eminence thought you might like a little.’ Meg’s mouth watered. She was hungry. The soldier put down the plate and reached for her gag. ‘That will help,’ he said, slipping it down to her neck. ‘But I have to feed you. No hands.’ As the man held the first spoonful to her mouth, there was a shuffle of noise through the camp and everyone stood, including the soldier feeding her. They were looking into the bush, and some were already arming. Light and Follower stood side by side, staring intently. Out of the shadows hobbled a short bag-of-bones figure, leaning heavily on a walking stick made from mallee. Her white hair turned gold in the firelight as she stopped and straightened as much as she could. Meg’s heart leapt at the sight. Emma? Whisper? How?
‘Who are you?’ Light demanded.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?
Light hesitated, scrutinising the old woman. ‘I asked who you are,’ he finally said.
Emma shook her head, as if he had disappointed her. ‘Just poor little Emerald Shipswife. I thought you would remember me. I never forgot you, Day Blackridge.’
Meg wished that she could see Light’s expression. She guessed Emma had used the name that the Seer had before he took his new name as an acolyte and one of Jarudha’s disciples. But she was also shocked, because Emma was the woman that Seer Vale had told her about—the woman he loved—the one woman Potential before Meg. ‘My name is Light,’ the Seer said calmly and deliberately. ‘I’ve never heard of this other name you insist on calling me. You’re old and your brains are addled. I can forgive you for that. What do you want? Food? Company?’
‘I came for the Conduit,’ Emma replied.
Seer Light seemed momentarily perplexed, but he quickly regathered his composure. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. And if I did, I wouldn’t give it to an old Jarudha-forsaken hag who wandered out of the bush like a mad kangaroo. Go about your business and keep out of other people’s.’
‘I came for the Conduit,’ Emma repeated.
‘Alone?’ Light asked mockingly.
‘No.’
Follower barked an order and his soldiers drew their weapons, alert to the surrounding dark bushland. Meg silently cast an unmaking spell and her bonds unravelled. What dangerous game was Emma playing? ‘So where are your supporters?’ Light asked. ‘Did you bring an army, old woman?’
‘I brought what I needed,’ she said. ‘Release Meg, and you can go back to your political machinations and leave our village in peace.’
‘You know I can’t do that,’ Light told her.
; ‘I’m not giving you a choice.’ She raised her right arm. The surrounding bush echoed to the war cries of men, and Light’s soldiers shuffled and circled, feeling vulnerable.
‘You’ve made a very grave error of judgement,’ Light said, flexing the fingers of his left hand. ‘You should have stayed in your little village and kept out of matters that don’t concern you.’
‘My family always concerns me,’ Emma replied.
Light’s hand flashed up and pointed at Emma’s chest. The same instant a tiny black shape leapt from the bush at Light’s throat, and men burst from hiding. Shouts and cries filled the air and metal clanged. Meg jumped to her feet, her guards distracted by the fighting, and ran towards Emma, but a sudden explosion of fire and light blinded her, and she blundered into a soldier. Knocked to the ground, she scrambled along on all fours until she could rise again. Emma was still aiming her walking stick at the space where Light had been standing, but the Seer was crumpled on the ground and Follower Servant was staggering, groaning, his hands wrapped across his face, the dingo Sunfire tearing at his leg. The soldiers were fighting with their attackers, and one was pressing a young man who’d stumbled. Daryn. Her brother. As the soldier went for the killing stab, she loosed an energy bolt that exploded in his ribs. Then she ran to her brother to help him up. ‘You shouldn’t be here!’ she chided.
‘Neither should you!’ he retorted. ‘That was impressive!’ He grinned and snatched up the soldier’s sword to re-enter the fray, so Meg turned and conjured two more fiery arrows that brought down soldiers where Daryn was headed. Morale shattered by the ambush and show of magic, the remaining soldiers fled into the bush, abandoning their dead and wounded.
Button emerged from the celebrating villagers, one arm wide in greeting, the other gripping his wooden crutch. Meg laughed and melted into his embrace. ‘You shouldn’t have come.’
‘And lose you again? Not likely.’ He squeezed her and kissed her, until she pushed him back and saw the cuts on his arms and across his cheek. She touched each one, gingerly inspecting it and wiping aside the blood. ‘You shouldn’t be fighting,’ she scolded.
‘I think you’d better come over here,’ Daryn interrupted. ‘It’s Emma.’
Meg and Button followed him, past the semi-charred Seer’s corpse and Follower Servant’s body, to join three men kneeling beside Emma. Whisper sat beside her head, licking the old woman’s ear, and Sunfire stood guard. Emma’s eyes were open and moving, but she was staring blindly. ‘Emma?’ Meg crooned, as she knelt and took the old woman’s hand.
Emma’s wrinkled and tired face melted into deeper smiling creases, and she sighed. ‘I’m glad you’re safe, child,’ she rasped. ‘Light?’
‘Get a torch,’ Button called.
‘Not that,’ Meg told Button. To Emma, she said, ‘He’s dead.’
Emma’s face saddened, and she felt for Meg’s hand. ‘I’m sorry for that.’
‘He would have killed you,’ Meg said, trying to ease the old woman’s guilt.
‘He did kill me,’ Emma said. ‘A long time ago.’
‘What do you mean?’
The old woman coughed and caught her breath. ‘There’s no time now for that. It was too long ago. But I have to speak to you. Alone.’
‘We can talk on the way back.’
Emma shook her head. ‘I’m not going back.’ She lifted her hands from her chest, and under the palms blood oozed. Meg stared in shock, and carefully opened the old woman’s dress to reveal a knife wound. ‘I stopped Light’s magic,’ Emma said, with a grim smile, ‘but I didn’t expect his friend to stab me.’
‘I can heal it,’ Meg said, and put her hands across the wound, but Emma grabbed her wrist.
‘No, Meg. There’s no point. I’ll be dead soon anyway—a few days at most. The Wasting Death is almost over. Don’t waste your Blessing on me. I’ve lived my term.’ Meg tried to protest, but Emma slowly wagged her head until Meg acquiesced. ‘There’s not enough time to argue, girl. I need you to hear me out. I don’t have a lot of time.’
Meg placed the wattle on the earth where she’d buried the soldier more than three years ago. She didn’t know his name—only that he tried to prevent all that had transpired by warning Samuel of Truth’s intentions. Truth had killed him, and killed Samuel in an attempt to steal the amber crystal. Meg reached up to her shoulder to scratch the ear of the rat perched there, and Whisper gratefully lowered her head. The image equivalent for the pleasure expression of Aah formed in Meg’s mind. No one had expected a rat to be the Conduit’s protector. Yet she’d dramatically rescued it from Truth’s grasp twice—once in Samuel’s cave, and once in Port of Joy when Truth kidnapped Meg and Jon. And she’d saved Meg’s life at least as many times again.
Jon. The bittersweet memories swooped like a mousehawk and Meg shivered in the sunshine. Her son would be two years old now…the Queen’s grandson…Treasure’s son. Some days she couldn’t keep his smiling face and tiny hands and fingers and toes from her mind. But the pain, though still present, was losing its keen edge. She ran her left hand across her swollen belly and knew that time would erode her sorrows. Button Tailor had brought love and a new life from within.
She had three graves to visit. This unknown young soldier she promised to honour every year on Alunsday because he’d died just before Alunsday trying to bring hope. Samuel’s grave, by the old cave above the village, she would visit every Erinsday, because he was the single link to the heritage that tied her to the amber crystal. And Emma’s grave she would visit whenever she really needed to talk to someone who would listen without condition to the stirrings in her soul. They had brought the old woman back from the hills for burial in her cottage garden, and Meg made it her duty to tend to the garden, restoring it to a wild beauty she knew the old woman would have appreciated.
The men who’d pursued the Conduit were dead. From the latest ballads of travelling minstrels and stories brought in by Saltsack Carter, the Queen and her Seers believed that Lady Amber was dead after the weird battle at Whiterocks Bluff, and that was how the people of Summerbrook intended for it to remain. Truth’s violent visit revealed the danger of outsiders knowing Meg’s true identity. The people of Summerbrook held a public gathering in Archer’s Inn and promised Meg and Button Tailor that they would keep her secret, and so ensure everyone’s safety.
Meg watched the lithe golden dingo padding between the mallee trees. Sunfire was home and he was happy hunting for game across the bushland. She breathed in the strong scent of eucalypt and listened to the magpies warbling in the trees. Yellow and white and pink and blue and violet blossom and flowers adorned the hillsides. Summerbrook was beautiful, and it was where she belonged.
APPENDIX
A BRIEF HISTORY OF WESTERN SHESS
The title of Shess for the vast western regions first appeared on cartographers’ documents during the seven-century reign of the Ashuak Empire, when Emperor Haarva began his expansionist crusade, and the Ashuak word ‘Shess’, meaning ‘foreign ones’, referred to a conglomerate of tribal factions with diverse cultures and languages. Despite disharmony and constant factional fighting between the many tribes, the great Ashuak armies failed to control the land they invaded. Instead, they learned that a disunited enemy was more troublesome than a united one because they were constantly harassed and confronted by new tribal groups who did not accept that the defeat of their neighbours also signified Ashuak rule over them. During the period of the Ashuak Empire, individuals sometimes tried to unite tribal groups against the common enemy. The concept of nationalism never superseded parochial tribalism, but the Ashuak principles of expansion and imperial rule took root, and after the Empire collapsed the strongest tribes in the north and west gradually dominated their neighbours to establish fledgling kingdoms.
Western Shess first took shape under the warrior chieftain Bigaxe Royal, a veteran of several battles with the Ashuak invaders. Bigaxe declared himself king of his region, demanding that his neighbouring tribal leaders recognis
e his sovereignty, and ruthlessly enforced his leadership over the many dissenters. Curiously, Bigaxe retained the Ashuak name for the region, probably because the only existent maps of the land were Ashuak in origin.
Royal successors settled their capital at Port of Joy and extended dominion further north and east during three centuries of Royal control, but rival kingdoms in the north in mountainous countryside eventually halted expansion. To the south, fierce tribal resistance, reminiscent of the war against the Ashuak invaders, stopped the kingdom from growing larger.
Although a patriarchal lineage, the death of King Godson Royal from illness shortly after the death of both his sons in battle left his only remaining child, his daughter Sunset, to succeed to the throne. Queen Sunset Royal defied numerous political manoeuvres to prevent her succession and assassination attempts once in power to successfully rule for twenty-seven years, before her son, Future Royal, began to fight for the throne, backed by religious rebels.
RELIGION
Religion is split between the ancient shamanistic forms with a multiplicity of spirits informing their followers, and the spreading monotheistic Jarudhaism imported from the eastern lands.
Jarudhaism is a corruption of the faiths originally started in the old eastern empires and kingdoms, a blend of Hohdaism and Jaru, along with some of the teachings of the philosopher Alwyn, called Alun in the Shessian sect, as well as aspects of the shamanistic beliefs of the earlier Shess tribes. In its simplistic form, Jarudha is the one god who created the world and all of the people, and who has set down his laws for life through a series of great books collectively called The Word. The Word’s origins can be traced back to the Hohdan priests of the Ashuak Empire and a text called Jaru’s Gift that arose from earlier works written by Jaru philosophers, but subsequently The Word has been expanded to encompass at least fifteen known philosophical and religious works. Followers of Jarudha believe that Jarudha’s hand guides the affairs of the world, and that Jarudhan disciples only act according to His Will. They also believe that the world is corrupt and sinful, and that the time is approaching when Jarudha’s disciples will rise and assert dominion over the unfaithful who will be converted or destroyed.
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