Manx

by Greg Curtis

  “Well, is there anything else we should know?” she asked the air around her.

  No sooner had she asked than the air shimmered and a dozen others appeared on the grass not far from her. They'd been hiding behind a curtain of light while the interrogation had been carried out, not wanting the woman to understand how important this was listening. But clearly like her they'd heard enough.

  “Only where she'll be buried so I can dance on her grave,” one of the sorcerers answered Sorsha.

  “Whore-monger!” Lady Marshendale did her best to yell at the man with the glowing blue eyes. But she didn't have the strength and so what came out of her mouth was more of a wheeze. But that didn't stop her continuing to fire insults at him.

  No one bothered answering the woman as she abused them. They just stood there, silently, relearning the truth of their fate once again. And so when Sorsha judged that they'd stood there long enough staring at their last hope being torn apart by the Silver Order, she nodded at the guards and had them lead the prisoner back to her gaol cell. There was nothing more to be done.

  “Someone should tell the shamans of Freda,” the sorcerer announced finally. “Maybe something good can finally come of this. And the Smythe's of course. Though it will mean little to them. Their curse has already been lifted after all.”

  “They will have questions to answer,” a tauran pointed out. “They did after all steal the window.” He paused for a moment, considering. “Four and a half centuries ago.”

  “So we're back where we began?” Sorsha finally asked the group, now that they had their answers. “We maintain a force on the southern border with the spiders realm. But hopefully if we don't provoke them again, they won't attack. And we continue freeing all the prisoners? And do our best to ignore the nobles of the Court? And anyone else from Windhaven!”

  “And we continue disenchanting every damned weapon of the Silver Order we can find. It won't do much, but maybe it'll help a little.”

  Sorsha nodded in agreement. It was the only thing to do. And if it brought them a few more months of life, maybe that was enough.

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Westemere was where the journey ended. Not because they'd freed every prisoner from every Gaol. But because they simply couldn't carry on. Adern couldn't continue.

  The coughing had stopped at least. That was a relief for them all. But in its place had come fever and delirium. Adern had taken to his bed in the inn they were staying at the previous night and not woken up. He'd slipped into some sort of endless sleep. That was bad. Worse was that a man in his mid twenties – not counting the four centuries he'd spent in another realm – looked to be in his seventies. It wasn't just the wrinkles and the papery skin and liver spots. His hair was falling out. The healers were with him now, but they didn't look hopeful. But there was more bad news. The shaman was looking ill as well.

  In fact, of the three of them, only he was looking well. And he was a cripple. Or he had been for most of his life. Now he was recovering, even growing stronger, and they were dying.

  The rest of the party were dying too. But since they weren't using their magic every day to the extent that Larissa and Adern were, the worst of the effects hadn't touched them. But no one knew how much longer that would continue for. Least of all Manx.

  On top of that they weren't even half way through their journey. They'd travelled east from Winstone to the very edge of the realm, then turned north and after maybe fifty leagues turned again and headed back west. Now they were almost due north of where they'd begun – Winstone. In fact it was probably only forty or fifty leagues south of them. He could be home in a matter of hours. But with all the interruptions they'd only emptied out the prisons in nineteen cities. There were likely another thirty to go. He couldn't go home.

  Which meant that now they had to simply sit here and wait until a new walker could be found to take Adern's place. If one could be found who was willing to carry on and fit enough and not heading south to stand watch on the border with the spiders. Manx wasn't hopeful. Which was why he was out in the back garden of the Westemere Boarding House, sitting under an awning, and supposedly drinking tea while the rain sprinkled down around him. What else was there to do?

  Whitey was with him of course, tending to her grooming, and completely oblivious to what was happening. But he doubted she would have cared. They were monkey men after all. Besides, though she did her best to hide it behind a glib tongue, he suspected she didn't understand what death actually was. She thought Adern was just sleeping.

  “So why did you tell me that riddle?” he asked her again. “We needed an answer to the problems with the spell-casters' health.”

  “The Mother taught us that verse.” Whitey looked up at him from the lawn with her bright green eyes. “It seemed like what you needed.” She returned to her grooming, licking at the fur on her belly.

  “But it wasn't,” he told her glumly. “It doesn't help at all.”

  In fact, he thought, it helped no one. The spell-casters wouldn't recover their missing years through it. There might no longer be a war on the southern border, but the spiders might still attack in due course and so had to be watched. And answering the riddle of the Silver Order's place in things, hadn't changed anything. They too were still dying.

  “Oh!” The cat paused in her work, briefly. “The Mother's old. Maybe she gets things wrong.” Then she returned to her grooming.

  “She didn't get it wrong.” Manx corrected her. “She got everything perfectly right. It just doesn't help.” And that was the truth of it. But maybe that meant that there was no help to be found.

  “How long ago did she teach you this verse?” he asked, suddenly curious.

  “Don't know,” the cat replied. “When I was very young. A kitten. Just coming into my true adorableness. So maybe a week?” She paused to think. “Or a thousand years?” She looked up at him curiously. “Does it matter?”

  “I don't know.” Somehow he doubted it did. But still it would have been more use if cats could tell time. Or knew their numbers. Whitey really did not actually know how old she was. She lived in a world where time passed as it did for everyone else, but one in which she really only lived in the present. The past was gone, she remembered only some of it – the bits she wanted to – and she didn't even know what the future was. Not really.

  It must be nice to be like that he thought. Never really remembering your pain or regrets. Never worrying about what was to come. On the other hand the endless, unrelenting need to keep her belly full had to be a pain.

  “But Adern's still dying. So are the others.”

  “But he'll wake up. So what does it matter?”

  She was telling the truth, Manx realised. She thought he was just sleeping. And maybe that was a good thing. He decided against correcting her.

  “They really are foolish creatures,” Larissa announced as she came out. “Best not to talk to.”

  “Cow!” Whitey snapped at her. “And not the good kind either! Not the kind with cream!”

  “Any news?” Manx asked, hoping to distract the pair of them before they ended up in another of their endless arguments.

  “Adern's still sleeping. The healers say he will wake, but not for a while and then he'll be weak. Too weak to continue. Sorsha and the others are searching for a replacement.”

  “For you too, I hope,” he replied. “You can't carry on either.”

  “Yes!” Whitey yelled in triumph. “Fresh monkey faces to serve me and the old cow gone!”

  “I'll be alright for a little longer.”

  “No. You won't be,” Manx told her firmly. This wasn't the time to be subtle or polite. “You're looking tired too. And the more effort you expend, the closer things come to the end. There are other walkers and other shamans.”

  “And other Smythes?” She arched an eye at him.

  “I don't know anymore. If what Sorsha told you is true, than they're in part responsible for this. And they stole this window from the Fred
ans. They're not going to be welcome among either your people or them. In fact I think they'll go into hiding.” That was what he'd do after all if the world wanted to kill him. Like it or not, he suspected, he was going to be the only Smythe they would get, and so he was in this until the end.

  “You know, I think my toes are particularly good today,” Whitey suddenly announced having finished cleaning her paws and finding the result satisfactory as she inspected them. “Very sharp claws. What do you think?” She raised a paw for him to inspect.

  “They're fine,” he answered her without looking. “Just fine.”

  “Fine?!” Her eyes narrowed and her voice rose with indignation. “Is that all you can say?! They're adorable!”

  “Ignore her,” Larissa told him tiredly. “She can't help being so foolish. Her brains the size of a peanut.”

  “Better than a flapping mouth the size of a barn!” Whitey retorted.

  Manx was about to tell both of them to be quiet. He was trying to relax. When a sudden thought occurred to him.

  “Whitey, you're sure you were a kitten when the Mother taught you this verse?” And while he didn't know how old the cat was, she had to be at least a year or more.

  “Yes! It was a wonderful time for me. I was just starting to grow, and my tail was so small. But I knew even then it would become magnificent. I used to play with it all the time. So did the others – they were jealous. I had to tell them off all the time.”

  “That's nice,” Manx interrupted her. The cat could go on all day about how wonderful she had been. And he simply didn't want to hear that. Not again. “But it was a long time before you met me?”

  “Yes.” She threw him a dirty look. There was nothing she liked more than talking about herself. And nothing she hated more than being stopped from doing it.

  “Shaman,” he turned to Larissa, “I'm going to need to borrow the glider.”

  “You need to go somewhere? Where?”

  “Killmorn Estate of course. I have to see a window.”

  “But why?” Larissa asked. “The curse has already been lifted.”

  “Because a goddess, the Goddess of Wild Majesty –,” he heard the objection rising in Whitey's throat even as he said it, “– and the Mother of Cats, foretold our situation.”

  “No she foretold your situation,” Larissa objected.

  “In part. But she also knew about the spiders and the Silver Order's revolution gone wrong. And for some reason she wanted your people to know about that. And about the stolen window.”

  “What?” The shaman looked at him in confusion.

  “She gave the verse to Whitey here when she was just a kitten –,” he stared at the cat and hastily corrected himself “– an adorable kitten with a fluffy tail!”

  “But that was before your people started escaping the prison. The only people who could have heard the verse then, who could speak to cats, were the Smythes. And apart from me and I assume a few assassins, none of them could speak to cats either. Their magic was locked away by a curse as well. So why make the cats learn a verse no one could ever hear from them?”

  The shaman stared at him, puzzled.

  “She didn't. If I've got this right, she knew what had happened four hundred years ago. Ao was there after all, watching it unfold. She knew that the Silver Order were really vampyres, and that they'd started injecting themselves with spider venom to boost their power. And she knew that from that mistake the spiders would start growing to enormous numbers, while the vampyres would die out. She is the one who grants magical gifts after all.”

  “That was bad. For her as well as us. Gods from what we are told, require followers. And we could end up living in a world without magic and without followers who could hear her and do her bidding.”

  “But what could she do about it? Little. Her shamans were locked away along with the druids, and the Smythes were either complicit in the crime or powerless. Her cats had no one to speak to. Meanwhile Freda who had had a way of speaking her will to her followers even without her shamans, had lost her window and so no longer could.”

  “As the years passed she saw that King Willhelm and his ancestors had become ineffectual figureheads and the Court with all their political power couldn't make a decision. She also probably saw that the dimensional prisons were failing, and that sooner or later your people would break free. And that when they did it would be a disaster. And all the while the spiders were growing in numbers. The world could well fall to them and none of the gods would have any followers at all.”

  “But all she had were the cats. So she gave them a message. One that spelled out clearly what had happened. That laid out clearly where the blame lied and what the risks were. And she waited for either a Smythe to break free of the curse and not be complicit in the crime and hear the message, or – more likely – the shamans and the druids to be released and start asking questions of the cats.”

  “Alright.” The shaman nodded, but she still looked confused. And even Whitey was staring at Manx as if he was speaking nonsense. “That makes sense.”

  “But what doesn't,” Manx pointed out, “was why she included the bit about the window and the flame. And worded the line in such a way as to make you think it was about yourselves and your magic held apart from you.”

  “The only way that does make sense is if she wanted you to read that line the wrong way and investigate as only the desperate could.” He took a deep breath. “That message was never meant for me. I'm just a nobody with a cat who happened to hear it.”

  And didn't that hurt?! Not that he knew the message hadn't been meant for him after all, but that he'd been too stupid to realise it. It was the oldest mistake in the book. Every book. People heard a prophecy and believed it was about them. But they almost never were. That verse had always been for the shamans and the druids. Even if it turned out it was about his family.

  “An adorable cat!” Whitey interrupted his self pity.

  “Fine! An adorable cat!” He shook his head and then carried on. “I think that window is important in some way that we don't yet understand. Maybe not to me or my family. Certainly not to those Smythes in league with the Silver Order. But to everything else.”

  “You would be told that line, investigate, and learn about the window. And maybe that would be a gut punch when you realised that it was my family's magic that was being held apart from them. But that didn't matter. Freda's shamans would hear it, and then regardless of anything else, they would rescue it. Then Freda could speak to her followers.”

  “Ao wants that window returned to Freda's followers. And then maybe, the Goddess of Knowledge can tell you what you need to know.”

  It was only a theory, based on nothing more than a line in a verse that shouldn't be there. And yet somewhere deep in his bones, Manx knew he was right.

  “Monkeys!” Whitey commented unexpectedly. “So tricky and yet always chattering about things of no importance. Now tell me about my paws or I'll start scratching!”

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Killmorn Estate wasn't what Manx had expected it to be. Not that he'd really known what to expect. But somehow he'd imagined a great house sitting on hundreds of acres of verdant grasslands and hundreds of servants. And maybe once it had been that. But those days had been long ago.

  Now the great house was one step above a crumbling ruin. A very small step. The stone walls had been patched and repatched over the centuries until there was little left of the original stone. The roof had been re-tiled and then covered with bitumen laden canvas sheets where the new tiles clearly hadn't been up to the task of keeping the rain out. Half the windows had broken and the glass had been replaced with wooden planks. And as for the servants, they were very few and far between. Their uniforms had seen better days too. And the outbuildings, the stables and sheds and gardeners cottages, were little more than piles of rubble.

  But in its prime, Manx thought, this must have been a truly magnificent place. And there were still touches of that greatn
ess remaining. The elegant spires poking out along the roof, even if all the copper had turned turquoise. It even had a magnificent cupola in the centre of the roof, on which one of the spires stood. The arches above the grand windows of the ground floor. The fluted columns that framed the front terrace and supported the balcony above it and the curved marble stairways that lead up to that terrace. And of course the size. This was a building larger than any he'd ever seen. All for one family.

  Manx had to wonder what had happened. It likely had something to do with the chains of ownership. Currently the Killmorn estate was owned by Lord Penny Farthington of Killmorn, one of the gentlemen on the terrace he assumed that was deep in conversation with the shamans of Freda. Obviously the estate had changed hands a number of times.