Deeplight

  Hark couldn’t understand how they had ended up in an argument. Belatedly he realized that being rescued from an old woman by a boy half his age might have been a blow to Kly’s pride.

  ‘You people,’ murmured Kly, staring at the shard on the floor. ‘It’s like there’s a bit of Undersea in all of you, waiting to rear up.’

  CHAPTER 26

  When Hark reached the beach at midnight, there was no sign of the usual submersible. Instead he saw a small, single-masted sailing boat in the bay. In it sat a man and a woman, the latter holding a lit scare-lantern, their breath steaming in the cold night air. As he drew closer, he noticed the woman’s sealed nostrils, and recognized the pair as members of Jelt’s new bodyguard. Hark had known that Rigg’s gang would be busy this night, but he hadn’t stopped to wonder who might be picking him up.

  The two of them bowed silently as he climbed into the boat, and the man handed Hark his grey mask. Hark put it on, sensing that this was expected, but the action made him uneasy. He was agreeing to be what they wanted. They didn’t wish to see his nervous, human face.

  They let out the boat’s dull brown sails, and took her out of the bay without a word. Hark sat hunched, watching the sea. He was glad that he did not need to say anything, and yet as the silence dragged on, it wore at his nerves.

  By the time they moored in the little crescent harbour at Wildman’s Hammer, Hark was shivering. The black crags looked higher in the dark. The crash of waves was louder, the eruptions of foam almost luminous. As Hark clambered ashore, he felt his knees trembling a little, and not just from the cold. The whole islet had become a sacred place, filled with icy, malignant mystery.

  It made him feel small, transparent, and judged. This site of dark pilgrimage knew about the betrayal he was planning. It was watching him.

  Hark adjusted his mask, and walked slowly along the familiar path, down the rocky corridor towards the tent. His two companions walked wordlessly behind him, their footsteps crunching on loose rocks. The purple lamplight picked out boulders and rocks jutting from the cliff, but bleached and flattened them.

  On the way to the tent, he encountered three more of Jelt’s bodyguards, standing like statues, their lamps dim and set on the ground at their feet. The purple radiance underlit their faces, making them look even more unnerving than usual. They saw him and instantly readied their weapons. Hark held his lamp aloft so that it fell on his mask, and they relaxed.

  ‘Your resolve shows you worthy,’ Hark said, in what he hoped was an eerily commanding tone, ‘but you should have noticed me sooner.’

  The three armed figures all silently moved aside to let Hark past, then kneeled and touched their foreheads to the naked rock. They had no campfire, Hark noticed, though there was a little pile of firewood nearby and what looked like a pack of provisions. By lamplight it was hard to tell whether they were going blue with cold, but some of them seemed to be shivering.

  He strode silently past them and into the tent. Inside he found to his surprise that only one lamp was lit, and it was turned right down so that its glow was faint as a fading ember.

  ‘Jelt?’ Hark whispered loudly. ‘Are you asleep?’

  ‘No. Of course I’m not.’ The gravelly whisper came back immediately. ‘We’ve got work to do tonight, haven’t we?’

  ‘Then why is it so dark in here? I’m going to turn the lamp up.’

  ‘Leave it,’ Jelt hissed sharply.

  Hark halted, his hand almost touching the lamp. There was menace and urgency in Jelt’s voice.

  ‘Why?’ Hark demanded.

  ‘Light kills your night sight, doesn’t it?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘I want to be able to see in the dark. Just in case I need to.’

  ‘Why would you need to? What do you think is going to come out of the dark? A gang of killer seals?’ Hark kept his tone mocking, but it was unnerving being unable to see Jelt at all. Since the alcove echoed, he couldn’t even be quite sure where the voice was coming from. ‘Is that why your bootlickers don’t have a campfire?’

  ‘It’s not that cold,’ said Jelt.

  ‘Yes it is!’ Hark was getting frightened and annoyed now. ‘It’s freezing, Jelt, and they’re standing outside. They need a fire, Jelt. I need a fire, or something hot to eat, anyway. Don’t try to tell me that’s because I’ve gone soft.’

  ‘Sounds like I don’t need to say it,’ said Jelt with quiet nastiness. ‘You can go and make a fire, if it’ll stop you whining all night, but make sure it’s not too close to the tent. Get them to make some soup while they’re at it.’ It was almost a concession, but as usual Jelt had managed to stop it sounding like one.

  Hark stepped outside, and the faint starlight was welcome after the indigo murk of the tent.

  Trying to keep his sinister mystique intact, Hark ordered the bodyguard to make a fire, which they did with alacrity. He ordered them to make a soup, and they hurried to obey, hanging a little pot over the fire and digging out their water flask and provisions. Hark let himself slowly warm by the fire, as wisps of steam licked out of the top of the cooking pot, and the lid started to jump and jiggle. Hark was used to having to wheedle, trick and bargain people into doing what he wanted. It was strange and wonderful to give orders and see them obeyed.

  None of his elaborate plans for adding the cordial were needed. All he needed to do was give the weird followers permission to prostrate themselves while he ‘spoke words of power’ over the soup. He quickly spooned out bowlfuls for himself and Jelt, then poured the sedative into the pot and stirred. All the bodyguards remained motionless until he gave the word.

  ‘Eat,’ he said, ‘so that you may serve us better.’

  Again they obeyed without question. It gave Hark a dangerous glimpse of how easy life would be if he let these people do everything he said. That power had a sour aftertaste, however.

  ‘Soup,’ said Hark bluntly as he re-entered the tent. Jelt’s invisible hands took the bowl from his grasp. Hark sat down and wrapped blankets around himself. He would have to go out and warm up by the campfire now and then, he decided. He just hoped he could do that in an unnerving and mysterious way. ‘Some of those lackeys of yours are new, aren’t they?’

  ‘They guard me in shifts,’ said Jelt. Hark could almost imagine the self-congratulatory shrug.

  ‘How many of them are there now?’

  ‘The ones who come here? About twenty. Including the rest . . . nearly forty, probably.’

  ‘The rest?’ Hark’s instincts tingled with unease. ‘What “rest”? What do they do?’

  ‘Spread the word,’ Jelt rasped laconically. ‘Find things for me. Set things up.’

  Hark ate in silence for a few seconds. The soup burned his tongue, but it had fat prawns and good crabmeat in it, with some spices. Nothing but the best for the healing monsters.

  ‘What are you doing, Jelt?’ he asked at last. ‘You’re up to something new that Rigg doesn’t know about. You’re waiting for me to ask what it is. So I’m asking.’

  ‘You always think too small, too low,’ said Jelt from the blackness. ‘Reaching as high as Rigg gave you a nosebleed. Now we’re rising higher. We’re not going to need her soon, and we’ll be too strong for her to touch us. She hasn’t worked out that Wildman’s Hammer is our base now, not hers. She thinks she’s smarter than us – that’s why she can’t see it.’

  ‘Great,’ said Hark, with false jocularity. ‘You’re the king of Wildman’s Hammer, all six square feet of it. Long may you reign.’

  ‘We’re not going to stop at this flyspeck,’ said Jelt coldly. ‘Or Lady’s Crave either. We’re what the Myriad’s been waiting for.’

  It sounded a lot like Coram’s words in the sub that morning. Hark felt an all too familiar sinking of the heart. This wasn’t a Jelt plan just starting to rumble into motion. This was one with momentum behind it, and a downward slope.

  ‘You really want this, don’t you?’ Hark said. ‘A religion of you, with people knocking their
foreheads on the floor to please you. And you’ve got people “spreading the word”? Jelt – we can’t afford to be famous! You’re wanted everywhere, and I’m indentured!’

  ‘It’s always the fears with you, isn’t it?’ rasped Jelt. ‘This is the chance of a lifetime!’

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ Hark could feel his frustration breaking loose. ‘I can’t talk to you like this. I’m going to turn up the lamp.’

  ‘No!’ hissed Jelt.

  As Hark reached for the lamp, something cold batted his fingers away. Hark pulled back and rubbed his fingers against his chest.

  His skin was stinging, and the thing that had touched him had not felt like a hand.

  CHAPTER 27

  Something had lashed out and struck Hark’s fingers in the dark. Something fast as a whip, but cold, slippery and soft, that stung like an anemone’s caress. There was something sticky clinging to Hark’s hand, and he wanted to run out of the tent to the water’s edge to wash it off.

  He didn’t. Instead, he silently wiped his hand on his sleeve and tried to breathe normally. Instinct told him that he was balancing on a knife edge. No sudden moves, then. No sudden screams.

  Nothing wrong – just sitting here with my best friend Jelt. With a posse of his crazy armed worshippers waiting outside. And nobody else on the entire island.

  But if I can keep him talking, I get time to think. He gets time to calm down. And the folks outside have time to get groggy.

  ‘No need to lose your rag,’ Hark said, and marvelled at how natural his voice sounded. Petulant, defensive, but not terrified. ‘Fine, sit in the dark and be mysterious – I don’t care.’ With luck, Jelt wouldn’t guess that Hark had noticed anything. With luck, Jelt couldn’t hear the banging of his friend’s heart.

  Hark had driven himself distracted trying to work out if the god-heart had changed him in some horrific, invisible way. Somehow he had forgotten that Jelt had been in the presence of the relic day in and day out, for weeks. Every strange pulse, every contraction and surge had flooded through Jelt’s body and mind.

  When had Hark last seen Jelt by daylight? It had been nearly a month, he realized. Hark had assumed that while he was away, Jelt probably came out, relaxed, fished, swam, and ate with Rigg’s people. Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps nobody had seen him in daylight for some time . . .

  ‘Your hand is really cold,’ he said, managing to sound conversational but concerned. Scraping his spoon against the bottom of the bowl filled the silence with a comforting small sound. ‘Have you been sleeping without a fire every night? Are you mad? You need to keep warm. You nearly died, remember?’

  Jelt was silent. Had he noticed the slight tremble in Hark’s voice? Could he see Hark’s expression in the dark?

  ‘All right, don’t listen then.’ Hark took a last mouthful of soup and made himself swallow. ‘What I’m saying is, if you’re going to be a cult leader, why not get your creepy slaves to find you somewhere warm? Maybe on the mainland? Your voice sounds . . . like there might be trouble with your lungs. Riser’s Bane, maybe. We came up pretty fast that day.’ He remembered Jelt talking about the way his lungs kept ‘pop-pop-popping’ in response to the god-heart’s pulses. Perhaps they hadn’t just been healing, after all.

  ‘I’m not sick,’ said the voice from the darkness.

  Maybe not. Maybe you’re all better. Better than ever. Improved.

  ‘If you say so,’ said Hark, and then dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘But if you’re not . . . why are you still hugging that relic like you’re drowning and it’s a timber? If you’re better, you don’t need it with you all the time, do you?’ He was in dangerous territory now, he could sense it.

  ‘I know what you’re doing,’ rasped the voice that was so like and unlike Jelt. ‘You want me to leave it with you, don’t you? You think you can wheedle it away from me and then . . . what? Sell it? Throw it in the sea? So you can run away from the best chance we’ll ever get?’

  ‘Jelt.’ Hark slowly let out a breath. ‘You really want the truth? I do want you to get rid of it. Yes, I’m scared for myself! But I’m terrified for you.’ That was as close as he dared to go to admitting what he had felt in the dark. ‘You haven’t seen those priests I deal with every day. Too much goddery . . . it twists you up, Jelt. Let’s just dump the freaky bone-lump and get away from this place! We can find other chances. Jelt, this is me. Hark. Your friend. Your best friend. Listen to me, just this once! I’m begging you!’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said the darkness. ‘I’m not the one who has to give something up. You are.’

  ‘What?’ Hark’s mouth was dry. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You can’t go on like this,’ said the other voice. ‘Toing and froing. Sneaking out to meet us, then running back to Sanctuary again. You said it yourself, didn’t you? Sooner or later, they’ll get wise and send you to the galleys.’

  ‘So what are you saying? That’s it – you don’t need me any more – goodbye?’ Even though the thought hurt, Hark secretly hoped that this was what Jelt meant. He knew that it wasn’t, though.

  ‘You need to give up being the Sanctuary lapdog,’ came the inevitable answer. ‘You need to disappear and never go back. Make them think you’re dead.’

  ‘It won’t work!’ Hark answered too quickly. ‘They always find the runaways! They’ll have my picture up in every dockyard! I can’t wear that mask for the rest of my life!’

  ‘You won’t have to,’ rasped the shadow, ‘if your face doesn’t look like that any more.’

  Hark was aware of the narrow slit of half-light that was the opening of the tent. He could leap for that if he had to. But whatever sat in the tent with him was fast, he knew that now.

  ‘We can change your face,’ continued his companion. ‘Cut it up, move it around a bit, heal it. Nobody’ll recognize you after that. We can change your voice. Slit your tongue, cut your throat, heal them up. They’ll work just fine. They just won’t be the same.’

  ‘I’d look Marked.’ Hark’s voice sounded tight and panicky, and he couldn’t help putting up one hand to protect his throat. ‘I wouldn’t be able to walk about in daylight without people staring and noticing me. Think about it, Jelt. I couldn’t buy stuff, or spy, or make deals, or run cons.’

  ‘You won’t need to do all of that any more,’ said the Jelt-shadow. ‘We got other people for the daylight stuff now.’

  ‘I don’t want that, Jelt!’ erupted Hark. ‘Why would I want you to fillet my face so I have to hide in shadows forever? I like my face. I like my voice. They’re mine. If you want to sit in a dark hole for the rest of your life, I can’t stop you. But leave me out of it!’

  But even as he spoke, realization was dawning, like a strengthening of his night sight. Jelt wouldn’t let him go. Once again, Hark had committed the unforgivable sin of having something Jelt didn’t. If Jelt could no longer walk down a street in daylight . . . then neither would Hark.

  ‘You always say no,’ answered his friend. ‘But you’ll thank me for it later.’

  Jelt wasn’t asking permission. The realization hit Hark like a brick. He opened his mouth to protest, but there was no breath in his lungs.

  In that moment of silence, there came a tumult of yells from outside and the whistle of slingshots.

  ‘What the scourge—’ rasped the Jelt-shadow.

  ‘I’ll go!’ gasped Hark, and scrambled out of the tent into the firelit night. For a moment he only felt grateful for the excuse to leave.

  That moment ended quickly. The bodyguards were in disarray, crouching and shielding their faces as stones whistled down towards them. Beyond them he could hear rapid footsteps, then he saw a torrent of dark figures running in with weapons raised – belaying pins, knuckledusters, coshes of thick rope.

  The bodyguards who had seemed so intimidating jerked, reeled and twisted as they took blow after blow. They moved too slowly and groggily to dodge. Their swings missed. Their clumsy blades struck sparks off the cliff. Hark�
�s drug had been all too effective.

  The campfire was kicked apart, the embers quickly dulling in the damp breeze and losing their light. Bodyguard after bodyguard was knocked to the ground, their weapons kicked from their grasp. Warning boots were placed against the backs of their necks to keep them down.

  Hark darted behind a boulder. Nothing would persuade him to run back into the tent. There was no obvious escape route. The ‘shrine’ had been placed somewhere with only one easy approach so it could be defended. On either side rose steep walls of rock, difficult to climb quickly in the dark.

  There seemed to be about a dozen attackers, their faces muffled with scarves. Well organized. Good boots. Good knives in their belts too, though for some reason they hadn’t drawn them. To judge by the sounds, the fight was now over. Hark held his breath and stayed in hiding.

  ‘Hey!’ shouted an unfamiliar male voice. ‘We know you’re in there, boy. Be smart and come out. We’re only here for the relic.’

  The relic? How do they know there’s a relic?

  Hark stayed still and silent. If they were calling for someone to come out of the tent, they probably hadn’t spotted him ducking behind his rock.

  ‘Just hand it over and we’ll go. Then you can get on with your sing-song.’

  Hark saw a glimmer of desperate hope. Perhaps these enemies were the answer to his problems. He couldn’t force Jelt to part with the god-heart, but they probably could. They’d take it by force if necessary. Surely he could make Jelt see that fighting them was useless.

  ‘We’re willing to talk!’ he called out quickly, standing up. ‘Just don’t hurt any—’

  That was as far as his negotiation went, because something exploded from the front of the tent with a sound of ripping canvas.

  The figure was of Jelt’s height. It turned to him, and he was glad that the light of the dying fire was behind it, so that he could not see its face – only two pools of paleness where its eyes should be. It grabbed his wrist in a cold, slick grip, and slapped something round and hard into his hand. Hark recognized the god-heart from its weight and pitted surface.