Deeplight

  ‘Don’t lose it, or I’ll kill you!’ hissed the figure. Then it raced away towards the waiting attackers.

  ‘Stop!’ yelled Hark. ‘You can’t! We need to talk to them!’

  It turned out that Jelt didn’t need to talk. He didn’t have to do anything.

  He didn’t have to avoid the embers, his bare feet kicking showers of sparks as he sprinted. He didn’t need light to guide his footing. He didn’t need to run like a person. His legs didn’t need to bend in just the usual ways.

  He didn’t need to draw a blade. Something long lashed out from the direction of his throat, like a pale cord two yards long. It struck a man in the face with a sickly spasm of pale yellow light, so that he reeled away, screaming. Then, as Jelt came within reach of the stranger, he flung out one arm in a sideways slashing motion, and . . .

  . . . and something happened in the dark affray like a black explosion, dark blood detonating almost silently. The man’s torso was falling one way, his legs the other . . .

  Now there was a lot of screaming and yelling, but Hark could only stand where he was and stare.

  There’s only one of him. They’ll cut him down. Hark no longer knew if this was a fear or a hope.

  Those strangers unlucky enough to be at the front hastily drew their knives. They flailed desperately at Jelt, and blundered backwards into their confused comrades. A moment ago they had all looked invincible. Now they were backing in panic from something that leaped, and darted, and slashed. With each slash there came a scream, the sort of scream that nobody gives twice.

  ‘Back to the boats!’ someone yelled, and all of the strangers turned tail and ran. The Jelt-shape leaped on the rearmost enemy, and a moment later a lone head was bouncing soddenly down the path.

  ‘Wait!’ called Hark. ‘Let them go! You don’t need to do that!’

  Jelt didn’t need to chase them. But he did. He chased them as a fox chases chickens in a coop, killing them with a swift, pure pleasure that had nothing to do with need.

  The screams continued, but they grew more distant. The attackers were fleeing back towards their own boats, but they would probably never get there. Their pursuer was faster than them and could see in the dark.

  Hark suddenly felt the god-heart flex in his tight grip. The perforations grated harshly against his fingers. The pulse was like a punch.

  He wondered if it could smell blood, or detect conflict. Perhaps it just sensed that some nearby human bodies were marred in ways it could fix. With nausea, he imagined it ‘mending’ its battered cultists in new and interesting ways, or even glueing together the mangled bodies along the path, and stirring them into misshapen life . . .

  Hark clenched his teeth and glared down at it.

  ‘Oh, scab this!’ he swore under his breath.

  He stuffed the relic in his bag and gritted his teeth. Then he ran past the sprawled, half-stunned cultists and into the limb-strewn darkness of the rocky corridor. His feet slithered, and there were splatters on the stone floor like dark flowers, and there was a smell, and he tried not to think about it, any of it. His foot caught on something, and he went down, one knee and one hand hitting the floor and feeling its slickness.

  Get up. Keep running. Don’t think about the wetness, or the shapes lying on the floor.

  He had to be quick, because if Jelt came back, if it came back . . .

  Hark ran out on to the craggy shore. The distant calls and screams were now coming from the other side of the island. He sprinted for the bodyguards’ boat. He had imagined Selphin escaping on her. It had never occurred to him that he might need to do so.

  There she was, her dull brown sails tethered, and her oars resting neatly in her belly. She was too big for one person, really, but she would have to do. He yanked her moorings loose and leaped aboard, staggering as his feet hit the boards. Using a paddle, he pushed off as hard as he could, then grabbed two oars and started heaving on them.

  Away. Get away. Row out until I’m in the wind, then loose the sails and go somewhere, anywhere, as long as it’s not here.

  He flinched as he heard a long, hoarse cry from the dark island. ‘Hark!’ it called. And then again, ‘Hark!’

  Hark kept rowing, his hands shaking.

  ‘Hark, where are you? It’s safe now. You can come out.’ Another long pause, then the voice called again, more urgently. ‘Hark – come here! Bring it to me! I need it!’

  Hark was cold. He didn’t think he’d ever been so cold. The chill bit his fingers and caught in his throat, but he kept rowing, even though it was hard to breathe. There were so many stars tonight, like a powdered-sugar accident. What was the point of them?

  ‘Ha-a-a-ark!’ The cry was more desperate now. ‘Hurry up, will you? I need it! I’ll die without it!’

  The cry went through him like an arrow. Hark couldn’t see straight. His fingers couldn’t grip the oars properly. The strength had gone out of him, and he couldn’t will himself to make the next pull.

  Killing Jelt. I might be killing Jelt.

  He looked over his shoulder at Wildman’s Hammer, its black mass eating the charcoal sky and stars. With a sick sense of inevitability, he saw that it was slowly moving towards him, like a great predator approaching by stealth. The current was undoing all his efforts. It was carrying him back to Jelt.

  All his life, there had been a current dragging Hark back to Jelt, over and over. He had never been able to fight it. When Jelt needed him, Hark had always, always come running.

  Tightening his grip on the oars again was the hardest thing Hark had ever done. Dragging them through the water felt like murder. But he did it, and did it again, and again, and again, gritting his teeth as the spray chilled his face.

  He rowed until he was far enough from the tiny islet to risk standing and letting out the sail, his fingers fumbling numbly against the lines. Even after Wildman’s Hammer had melted into the night behind him, Hark kept listening for that voice in the wind’s cry. He couldn’t stop shaking, and every lurch of the boat felt like a blow.

  The sea had never looked so black.

  CHAPTER 28

  The god-heart lay in Hark’s pack, still as a stone. Only when he ran the boat aground on one of Nest’s shores, and jumped into the knee-high water, did he feel it give a small pulse. He had grazed his shin on a submerged rock, so perhaps the heart had sensed a chance to fix something.

  Hark waded ashore, stumbling with exhaustion, then pulled the heart out of his pack. He drew his arm back, wanting to fling the heart into the waiting black mouth of the ocean. If he did, though, some visiting scavenger gang would find it, sure as winter. Even if he took the boat out again and hurled the thing overboard, it would wash up on a beach, or be found by the divers searching for salvage.

  Then it would be someone else’s problem. But Hark didn’t want to think about some unwitting person picking it up, then getting unexpectedly altered, or murdered by Jelt for having it.

  ‘I can break you,’ Hark growled, staring down at the ivory-like surface. ‘I can smash you with rocks.’ It looked fragile. If he broke it, though, there was no going back.

  I need it! I’ll die without it! Jelt had shouted.

  Maybe it was just an addiction. Addicts sometimes talked like they were dying. Hark had seen drunks tapping and pleading at the locked door of the tavern, and Old Besh’s customers desperately haggling for a twist of bilesmoke or arrowsnuff. I need it! I need it! they always said.

  Then he remembered the way that Jelt had talked about getting sick every time he was away from the heart. He had said that even at the start, before he started hiding in shadows.

  ‘I don’t understand!’ snarled Hark, glaring at the god-heart, overcome with frustration and tiredness. ‘Why does he still need you? I saved him! Why doesn’t he stay saved, like Coram? And why is he . . .’

  Hark closed his eyes tight, but he couldn’t shut out the pictures in his head. The Jelt-shape leaping and slashing at a dark mass that screamed with human voices . . .
/>
  That thing was Jelt. Hark felt a miserable horror at the memory, but as always there was the tug of their connection. Hark couldn’t destroy the heart if that might condemn Jelt to death. As Hark put it back into his pack, he felt thwarted and depressed, as though he had argued with the relic and lost.

  Hark was nauseous and shaking by the time he reached Sanctuary. The sky was still very dark, with no hint of coming dawn. Clambering up over the roofs took longer than usual, because his knees kept trying to give way.

  Hark was just closing the window behind him when he was caught in a purple light.

  ‘Hey! What are you doing there?’ Two of the night guards were standing at the end of the corridor. Hark hoped they hadn’t seen him climb in.

  ‘I work here!’ he answered quickly. ‘I help look after the priests!’

  ‘Wait, I have seen him around,’ said one of the guards. ‘What are you doing up here, then?’

  Hark knew that he must look sweaty, shaky and out of breath. Perhaps this could be turned to his advantage.

  ‘I’m hot,’ he said, a little tremulously. ‘I . . . don’t feel right. I was looking for somewhere cool.’

  ‘Hot?’ The first guard drew closer, holding up his lantern. ‘You look like death. We’d better put you in a quarantine room. I’ll let Kly know.’

  Hark was led to a dusty little chamber where the straw mattress was flattened and mouldy. He collapsed on it and didn’t care. Very soon he slid into an uneasy dream, in which a silent bell rang again and again, vibrating his bones. Eventually its thrum grew gentler, until it became the purr of a gigantic cat.

  Hark was allowed to sleep late. When he awoke, he no longer felt weak or shaky. Perhaps the god-heart had given him a little burst of healing to win him over, like a stray dog grovelling and whimpering to be allowed near a campfire.

  It was mid-afternoon before Hark was allowed out of quarantine. There was a gruelling interview with Kly, who didn’t believe that Hark had suddenly come down with a convenient fever, and then just as conveniently shaken it off in a single night.

  ‘I thought I’d be calling you in today to praise you,’ said the foreman at last, sounding tired rather than angry. It was the nearest he had come to mentioning the Moonmaid incident. ‘Then this happens. Understand, I can’t let you play fast and loose, or I’d be betraying the people that trust me. I don’t know where you went last night, or what you took that left you looking so sick and sweaty, but this can’t happen again. I don’t want to know how you paid for whatever it was. If you stole anything, find a way to put it back before I notice it’s gone.’

  He held up a hand to silence Hark’s protests, and left.

  Kly’s patience and discretion had been eked out one more time, but Hark guessed that they were probably at their limits. ‘This is your last warning’ was something people might say several times, but there was always a last last warning, and Hark thought he might have reached it. It had a different sound, something you could feel in your bones.

  Hark splashed water on his face and got ready for work. He wrapped the heart in a sling of cloth and tucked it under his robes so it hung down beneath one arm, hidden by the loose folds of fabric.

  He still didn’t know much about it. He didn’t know whether it had its own thoughts, feelings or schemes. He didn’t know why it was still alive, thirty years after the death of the gods.

  But Quest might.

  Deep down, Hark had been wanting to bring the god-heart to Quest for a while. The old man was slowly dying, and Hark wasn’t ready for Quest to die. He didn’t know how it had happened, but their conversations had become necessary to him. The medicines at Sanctuary couldn’t cure lungs mangled by Riser’s Bane, but perhaps the god-heart could.

  As he entered the halls of Sanctuary, the smells, dim light and gentle hum of conversation was almost comforting. Stealthily, all these things had become, if not home, at least homely. He had started to feel safe there.

  ‘Where’s Quest?’ he asked.

  ‘In the infirmary for lebineck oil and hot stones.’

  This was worrying news. Treatments like lebineck-oil rubs and pressure from hot stones were what you tried when the usual medicines weren’t working. That was something to ask Quest about when he emerged from the treatment room.

  Hark was picking up some empty bowls from the floor when he felt the god-heart stir against his side. It was the smallest throb, but one of the bowls slipped from his fingers and clattered on to the floor. He picked it up and grinned ruefully at those who had been startled by the noise.

  Most people returned their attention to whatever they had been doing before. A tiny, half-blind female priest called Seamist, however, continued staring at him. When he carried the bowls to the kitchens, he realized that she was slowly hobbling after him, her misty eyes fixed on him.

  She had been close enough to notice the throb. Hark kept walking, hoping that she would get distracted.

  The second pulse came about a minute later, just as he was passing Moonmaid in the corridor. She halted in her tracks and slowly turned to look at him. In a nearby chamber he saw Wailwind struggling out of his chair, staring around him with a fearful alertness. Hark paced away from them as nonchalantly as he could and ducked into a cupboard, trying not to panic.

  Why now? Hark wanted to ask the heart. Why are you beating now? He could already guess. He had brought it to a place of sickness, frail bones, failing eyes and dimming memories.

  It pulsed again, and Hark flinched. There were slow steps outside. The door of the cupboard rattled, first tentatively then furiously. Other steps were approaching now, some plodding, some dragging. Hark felt a rising bubble of panic. He was cornered, and becoming more so by the moment.

  Hark took a deep breath and burst out of the cupboard. He had to push past Moonmaid, dodging as she made a snatch at his arm, then ducked around Seamist and Wailwind a few yards behind her.

  Halfstar was standing in a doorway as Hark sprinted past. As the heart pulsed again, Halfstar’s gaze became glassy, and his mouth dropped open, letting out a thin, breathy noise. He reached out one hand and clutched loosely at the air.

  ‘You came back,’ he whispered, his voice hollow with hope and a sort of despair. ‘Why did you go?’ he called after Hark’s retreating figure. ‘I have been waiting so long . . .’

  Another pulse. Call-of-the-Air flung her door open, her long grey hair wild, a bandage unfurling from one leg. She stared at Hark, and past him, and all around, as if looking for something that she needed and feared to find.

  ‘Where is it?’ she screamed.

  Hark did not stop to answer. He kept running down corridor after corridor, hearing wails and hoarse cries behind him. He had to find somewhere to hide, away from everyone else.

  They’re old, he told himself as he fled. They’re confused. They’re harmless. I just can’t afford to get caught up in a fuss, that’s all. People might start asking questions, and then someone might notice the heart . . .

  That was not why he was running, however. It was the desperation on the old priests’ faces that filled him with panic and pity. It was like finding yourself surrounded by starving people and suddenly realizing that you were made of bread.

  He ran past the baths chamber, hearing a splash like someone hastily struggling out of the water. He didn’t look back, in case wet and naked figures were hobbling in his wake.

  As he sprinted into a quieter corridor, he smelt woodsmoke and the bitter-sap smell of lebineck oil. Of course – Quest was being treated with oil and hot stones. Hark hadn’t intended to interrupt the old man’s treatment, but he was changing his mind quickly. After all, the treatment room could be secured for privacy.

  Kly looked up in surprise as Hark barrelled into the room. Quest was lying on a table nearby in only some loose white trousers. His bare back was glossy and golden with oil, a few polished black stones placed down his spine. Most of the light came from the little furnace set in the wall, its chimney disappearing into
the ceiling.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Kly asked quickly. ‘Where’s all that yelling coming from?’

  Hark was startled to find Kly there, but recovered quickly

  ‘I don’t know what started it,’ he lied. ‘But Moonmaid just lunged for me, and now a lot of the others are getting excitable. I thought I’d better come and find you.’

  ‘Don’t tell me Moonmaid’s found something sharp again!’ Kly groaned.

  ‘I didn’t see her holding anything.’ Hark fidgeted, wondering if he was imagining the sound of slow footsteps approaching outside. ‘But I don’t know.’

  Kly hesitated, glancing at his patient.

  ‘I can take care of things here,’ Hark said quickly. ‘I’ve done the rocks before.’

  ‘Fine,’ muttered Kly, shaking his head. ‘I’ll go and deal with Moonmaid.’

  As soon as Kly was out of the room, Hark bolted the door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Quest, peering through a tangle of oil-beaded hair. ‘What’s going on out there?’ There was now no mistaking the sounds of steps and murmurs outside. The door briefly rattled, then footsteps receded a little. Hark could hear the sounds of other doors being opened, furniture scraping. The blind, blundering search had moved away, but not far.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Hark. ‘I just . . . I wanted to talk to you privately. You don’t need to get up!’

  It was too late. Quest had pushed himself up to a sitting position, letting the coin-sized stones slide off his back with a clatter.

  ‘Never mind those,’ the old priest said wryly. ‘The stones aren’t unpleasant, but they don’t do any good. The staff just put them on me because they want me to feel better about things. And I let them so that they can feel better about things. A harmless lie on both sides.’

  ‘I’ve got something better than hot stones,’ Hark said. Here it was, the moment of trust, and he didn’t feel ready for it. Quest might betray him. He might even start staggering towards the heart like the other priests, in a glazed and feverish trance. Apprehensively, Hark reached into the hidden sling and pulled out the heart.