To the Dead City

by Alex Bentley

  She sips her tea.

  “Try,” she says. “But it is never that simple. Those that have been drained are never the same. They spend their life longing for the Glyst, praying for it to return. But it does not, and theirs is a life of empty longing. They are, in their own way, no different from the Hollow.”

  “So, Alys, what’s it going to be? The Work? Or the Dead City?”

  Chapter 11

  The Work

  It is three months before El decides I am good enough to accompany her.

  Up to that point, it is daily sword and bow practice. El is a better archer than my father and his equal with a sword. She teaches me unarmed combat techniques and how to use an opponent’s size and strength against them. She teaches me which plants and berries to avoid and which can treat an infected wound or quench a fever. She has two horses—Skep and Rone—and she teaches me to ride the smaller of the two, Skep. I cannot ride well or fast, but I can ride relatively safely.

  Whenever I blunder in my training or fail to follow her instructions to the letter, El snarls, “Were you raised by rocks, girl?” or “A welpa pup has more skill!” or, worst of all, “Are you sure you didn’t die during the Ritual of the Seven Cuts and the Seven Cups? I am certain I am tutoring a corpse!”

  When I do well in my training or surpass expectation, she just nods or, if she is feeling especially generous, says, “Not bad, not bad.”

  I am going through my sword drills when she appears with Skep and Rone. The horses are saddled and ready to ride.

  Noticing my smile, she says, “Don’t get too excited, Alys, we’re just going to go a few miles out. We’ll be back before dusk. The chances of us encountering a Glyster are very slim. I find three or four a year. One year, none. The most in a single year, seven.”

  We’re at the edge of the nameless woodland on the opposite side of which is El’s roundhouse when we hear the whistling of a grefa stone. I look across at El. She shakes her head, patting the pouch on her belt which contains her stone, wrapped in thick welpa leather.

  “Not mine,” she says, looking out across the copse-spotted grasslands that stretch out ahead of us toward the Forest of Leccan. It is a bright day, the sky blue-white, and I can make out the snow and ice that glitters on the peaks of the Beorstehd Mountains.

  A figure emerges from a thicket of pale-yellow gelefed trees, a mile or so out. At this distance, I can’t tell if it is a man, a woman or a child.

  Without saying a word, El sets off toward the figure at a gallop.

  Skep and I follow at a canter. I have set her to gallop only once, two weeks ago, and I found myself in a ditch with a goose egg on my forehead, no air in my lungs and El calling me a cwen, which is an old and very impolite word for a man who is so drunk he has soiled himself.

  El reaches the figure in a minute. It is a boy, I see now, about my age. El dismounts, unshoulders her bow, nocks an arrow, training it on the thicket of gelefed trees. In the time it takes me to catch up, pulling Skep to an awkward staggering halt, three men emerge from the copse. I dismount with little or no grace and retrieve my own bow. As I am nocking an arrow, I glance across at the boy, and see it is a girl. Her hair is short and looks like it has been cut with a stone. There is more grime than skin visible on her face, and she is skinnier than the sickly gelefed trees behind her. I have never seen such fear on someone’s face before.

  “You cannot have him,” says El.

  The men look at each other and laugh. They are Leccans. Gafol would sometimes trade with the people of the forest, usually exchanging field grains for medicinal mushrooms and mosses, or the sweet sap of the red heafa trees. Clad in browns and greens, the Leccans before us are typically broad and tall, each bushy-bearded with long hair pulled up in a leather-bound knot. One carries a bow, another a two-handed battle axe, the last two smaller axes, one in each hand.

  “He is ours,” the bowman says over the whistle of the grefa stone, hanging from a cord around his neck. He has yet to nock an arrow, but his hand hovers above his quiver. “There is coin on his head. A lot of coin. Feeshun pays a pretty price for the blood of Glystgedders.”

  “Drop the bow and go back the way you came,” says El.

  “Don’t be silly, woman,” says the man with two axes, spinning the weapons. “This cannot end well for you. Jump back on your horse and trot off. You are no hunter, and we are not rabbits.”

  The Leccan with the battle axe laughs. But the bowman doesn’t. Perhaps he has more sense than his companions. Perhaps it is that El’s arrow is trained on him and one good bowman can recognise another, from their stance, steadiness and the look in their eye.

  “Drop the bow and go back the way you came,” says El.

  “The boy is a danger to us all,” says Two Axes. “Would you bring the Cwalee back to the world?”

  “If you cared about that, the boy would be dead,” says El, keeping her eye on the bowman. “Your talk of coin tells me you are a doubter in such matters.”

  Two Axes smirks.

  “If you loose that arrow, my axe will find you the next second,” he says.

  “A coin says it doesn’t,” I say, training my own arrow on his chest.

  Two Axes gives me the briefest of dismissive glances before looking back at El.

  “You have a child for a bird dog,” he sneers. “I doubt your qualities as a hunter. And as a marksman.”

  “Drop the bow and go back the way you came,” says El. “I will do you the courtesy of giving you the count of three.”

  The axemen laugh. The bowman does not.

  “One,” says El.

  And looses her arrow.

  It strikes the bowman square in the throat, sinking in up to the fletchings. Blood, bright red on this bright day, jets from the wound. He drops his bow and attempts to clutch at the arrow’s shaft, but his fingers scrabble at the empty air. He collapses, face down, his bulk muffling the grefa stone’s whistling.

  Two Axe’s arm snaps back to launch his weapon, and I loose my arrow.

  It strikes his shoulder with a satisfying chuk but he has already thrown his axe. It blurs toward El, but she is already stepping aside while nocking another arrow, and the axe passes her by.

  Battle Axe is charging now, letting out a guttural roar. And Two Axes is preparing to throw his second missile. I nock an arrow, but I don’t know which target El is going to choose. With no time to deliberate or confirm, I sink an arrow into Two Axe’s chest. In almost the same moment, El’s arrow lands an inch south of my own.

  “Ged!” I hear her growl.

  I turn to see her dropping her bow and drawing her sword.

  Battle Axe sweeps at her in a wide arc and she manages, just, to step back from the blow. She jabs at him with her sword, but he is too distant. Already he is bringing the weapon back in a return arc. She dances back from the blade. It misses her by an inch.

  I nock an arrow but El is between me and my target, a deliberate measure on Battle Axe’s part I don’t doubt. String half-pulled, I skip left until I have a clear shot. But Battle Axe sees me and moves to put El between us again.

  “You will tire before me,” he says through a gritted grin. “Both of you.”

  “I am already tired,” says El and, letting her sword drop, she sits down cross-legged in front of the Leccan.

  His feral grin evaporates.

  My arrow finds his gut. It is not a fatal wound, but instinct causes him to drop his axe and attempt to staunch the wound.

  El springs to her feet and puts her sword into his heart.

  The Leccan falls first to his knees then, as El yanks her sword free of his chest, face down in the grass. She wipes the blood from her blade on the fallen man’s back and turns back to face me.

  “Get the boy,” she says, pointing past me with her sword.

  “The girl,” I say, and look back to see she’s fled a good hundred yards toward the road.

  I catch up with her easily. She is tired, malnourished and smaller than me.

&
nbsp; “Stop!” I shout after her. “We will not hurt you. We’re here to help. The people who were after you are dead now.”

  The girl stops and turns to face me but continues backing away.

  “And what do you want me for?” she demands.

  “Nothing,” I say. “We just want to help you.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s what we do. We’re the Harbour. We help Glysters. I’m a Glyster, like you. I can bring the dead back to life. I saved my father.”

  “So? You’re a Glyster. You think Glysters don’t hurt other Glysters?”

  “What’s your Glyst?” I ask. “What’s your gift?”

  “Gift?” she sneers. “You call this a gift.”

  Her face begins to ripple. It is as if a breeze has got under her flesh. The ripples are slight to begin with but, within a few seconds, they are becoming increasingly pronounced and are accompanied by a sound I can only think of as fish-gutting. I hear hooves approaching behind me, but I can’t bring myself to turn, to look away from the girl and her rippling flesh. But her flesh doesn’t so much ripple now as undulate. It is stretching and lifting away from her skull. Her mouth, eyes and nostrils are just holes. I notice then that this undulating and lifting isn’t limited to the girl’s face. It’s happening to her neck, her hands. And then the sheet that her flesh has become is yanked upwards above her head by some invisible hand. It hangs in the air, arms and legs billowing even though there is little wind in evidence. What it leaves behind is red and wet. Its eyes are wide and round, its teeth bared and white. It is a display of perfect butchery but clothed in ragged trousers and a tatty tunic.

  The billowing flesh sheet swoops down and hovers in front of me at an arm’s length. I stagger back two steps but somehow find the resolve to retreat no further. The slack mouth opens and, impossibly, a voice emerges, wispy but intelligible.

  “You call this a gift?”

  The red, wet figure falls to its knees and begins to weep, its head in its hands.

  “If so,” the sheet continues, “it is a cruel gift. And I do not want it.”

  From behind me, El says, “Then do not use it.”

  “Do you not think I would control it if I could? This… separation occurs when I am asleep, when I am frightened, if I laugh too much, if I cry. It happens when it will. I can make it happen, but I can’t make it not happen.”

  “I can help you,” says El. “I can take you to a Glyster who can help you control it.”

  “I don’t want to control it. I don’t want it at all. What good am I, save for frightening children on Wealdnight? I am looking for the Dead City, Utlath as was. There are things there, Glystleeches, that some call the Hollow. They will take this thing away from me. They will make me rid of it.”

  The skin sheet jerks up and away. As it does so, the weeping red thing stands. The sheet descends, then it slithers over its erstwhile frame, making wet, slapping sounds. In just a few seconds, it is as if frame and flesh had never been separated.

  The girl turns and walks away.

  “We can take you to the Dead City, if that is what you want,” I say.

  “Alys!” El snaps.

  I turn and look at her.

  “What?” I ask. “We can. Can’t we?”

  “We cannot,” she says.

  “But you said I could choose to go there if I wished. It was a choice between the Work and the Dead City. I chose the Work, but there was a choice.”

  “There was a choice,” says El, handing me Skep’s reins. “But I did not say I would take you.” She climbs up onto Rone. “And I will not take the boy.”

  “Girl,” I say.

  “Does it matter whether I am a girl or a boy? I am skin and bone and all the stuff in between. That is all. I am Ethra Kell. And I do not need you to take me to the Dead City. I will find my own way.”

  “No,” says El. “You will die long before you reach Utlath. You are hunted. Who is this Feeshun?”

  “I don’t know. I know only what you heard just now. That he pays money for Glyster blood.”

  “See?” says El, looking to me, then back to Ethra Kell. “There are dangers even I don’t know of, and I know of many dangers to a Glyster such as yourself. How old are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says.

  “How old?”

  “Thirteen,” she says.

  “Ethra,” says El, her voice suddenly soft. “You will die.”

  “I would rather that,” says Ethra. She slams the flat of her hand to her chest. “I would rather that than this.”

  “It is a gift,” says El. “You might not know it yet, but it is a gift, this thing you can do.”

  “How can it be? How can the ability to skin oneself be a gift? It’s a joke. The gods are making sport with me. I am the work of drunken Seros or Gewith in his foolish aspect. You will not change my mind.”

  Ethra turns and strides away.

  El looks at me and shrugs. There is pain and sadness in her expression.

  “The girl will die,” she says.

  “Not if we go with her. Not if we protect her.”

  “We cannot,” says El. Then, “I will not.”

  “Will not?”

  “I will not escort a Glyster to the Dead City and have this blessing sucked from them.”

  “But she will die. You said so. She is only thirteen!”

  “Nevertheless, I will not help her. Not in that way. In every other way, yes. But not to squander the Glyst.”

  “And what if I had chosen to go to the Dead City? What then?”

  “Then you would have gone alone, and all my prayers would have been with you.”

  I turn around and see that Ethra is almost at the tree line.

  “Wait! Ethra! I am coming with you! I am coming with you to the Dead City.”

  “What?” says El. I hear her climb down from her horse and she grabs my shoulders. She tries to turn me to face her, but I keep my back to her.

  Ethra has stopped now and is looking back at me.

  “My mind is made up, El.”

  “No, Alys. You must rethink this. It is wrong. And it is too dangerous.”

  “It will be less dangerous for her if I am with her. The Freewood would have been dangerous for my father had I not been with him. He would be dead if I had not been with him. Not just because of my Glyst, but because I was his extra eyes and ears, a second blade. My mind is made up, El. It is made up and will not be changed.”

  Even as I hear the determination, the certainty, in my own voice, fear makes a nest in my belly, just as somewhere under the abandoned bridge on the edge of Gafol a straggis wasp has made a nest with the hair it pilfered from my scalp.

  For the longest time, El doesn’t speak. Then she says, “We will go back to my roundhouse—”

  “No.”

  “We will go back to my roundhouse, you and Ethra and I—”

  “No.”

  “We will go back to my roundhouse, you and Ethra and I, and we will prepare for your journey to the Dead City.”

  Chapter 12

  The Road Widens

  El moves our empty bowls and plates to the hearth and lays a map out on the table. It is a map of our land, of Abegan. It is shaped like a raindrop, Abegan, or like a dewdrop or a teardrop, depending on the poet or drunkard who is describing it at the time. To me, it has always been shaped as the swanstone pendant my mother used to wear. The swanstone is said to symbolise grace and strength in the face of adversity.

  The map is old, brown and brittle, and El handles it with great care.

  “This is the Dead City, Utlath as was.” Her voice is flat, devoid of any enthusiasm.

  She points to the coast at the bottom-right of the map, not quite where the droplet is fattest. Just beneath that, where it begins to thin again. The Dead City is represented by a drawing of three tall towers spiralling round one another like snakes in a nest. Off the coast, a little out to sea, is a drawing of a half-submerged creature that looks like a shark wit
h the arms of a man.

  “And here we are.” El traces her finger back diagonally until it is high on the opposite side of the teardrop, not quite as far out to the coast as a picture of a headless fish that I assume represents Brim. “It will take you six days if you make good progress, only travelling by day. Do not go by night. Stick to the South Road for three days. Then, at Awlen,” she taps a finger on a picture of a market tent near the middle of the map, “head east, along the Fisher Road. It will take you a further two days to get to Leax by the Eeffenn Sea. Follow the Coast Road south from Leax and you will arrive at the Dead City.” She taps the intertwining towers again.

  “Stick to the roads. Keep your ears tuned for the whistling of grefa stones. The South Road and the Fisher Road are both busy routes. And that’s good. It’s easier to be inconspicuous in crowds. Most people will be too busy trying to get to wherever they’re going to take the least bit of interest in you. If anyone enquires as to your business, say you are going to Leax because you have heard there is work in the fish markets and you are good with a fleshing knife. It is a reasonable explanation, and mention of your skill with a blade may make those with dubious intentions think twice.

  “I will give you enough supplies that you will not have to hunt or cook. If it gets cold at night, move around or keep close for warmth. Do not light a fire. Do nothing to draw attention to yourselves. Do not linger in any villages or towns along the way. People travelling ask few questions, but settlers are nosey and prone to gossip. You will need to memorise the aspects of the map pertinent to your journey. Spend an hour doing so, then get some sleep. You will need to leave at first light.”

  “Why can’t we just take the map?” asks Ethra.

  “Because it isn’t mine to give. Besides, your journey is straightforward. At least from a directional point of view.”

  “And what about when we get to the Dead City?” I ask. “How do we find the Hollow?”

  El shrugs. “I have no idea. I have only ever travelled as far as Leax. But I doubt you will have to look for the Hollow. I suspect the Hollow will find you.”