To the Dead City

by Alex Bentley

  I’ve been a fool. If I’d stayed with El, this wouldn’t have happened. We should have tried harder to make Ethra stay. We should have chased any notions of going to the Dead City and seeking the Hollow from her silly little head. We should have tied her to a post until she came to her senses. Surely she would have done so sooner or later?

  I remember El saying to Ethra, I can help you. I can take you to a Glyster who can help you control it. If I’d stayed with her, El would doubtless have taken me to someone who could have taught me how to control my Glyst, and I wouldn’t be staring down dumbly at Casmel Durn’s lifeless face. I would know what to do.

  I’m such a gedding fool.

  An ember of anger ignites in my belly. And I remember.

  “I was angry,” I say, turning to Ethra. “I was angry when I did it last time. When I brought my father back.”

  “Angry?” says Ethra.

  “Yes, I—”

  Ethra slaps me so hard across the face, I taste blood.

  “Are you angry now?” she asks, grinning.

  Before I can reply, she slaps me again.

  The ember ignites. I feel its heat rise into my chest, my neck, my face. It surges down my arms to the tips of my fingers.

  I turn back to Casmel, kneel next to him. I move his still-warm hand away from the arrow, then grab the shaft. I grit my teeth, look away and pull. I feel the barb snag. I pull harder. I hear the tearing of flesh. I look back at Casmel. The wound is unreasonably large, and ragged. Fresh blood spills from it. I drop the arrow and put both my hands to the wound.

  There is a hiss. A thick ribbon of steam rises from the wound.

  Casmel’s eyes flicker behind his eyelids.

  And then I am nowhere. I am Nowhere.

  I am in the same blackness in which I found myself after I put my hand to my father’s wound. I try to lift my hands before my eyes and, just as last time, I have no hands to see, no eyes with which to see them. I am bodiless and calm. As before, I have an almost overwhelming desire to stay in this Nowhere, in this place of troublelessness.

  And then there is a ripple.

  The stone has hit the lake.

  And I hear the voice of my mother. Or I imagine I do.

  It is about the Big Things. The Gods.

  And I am back in the woods off the South Road, kneeling next to Casmel. I am there with such an abruptness that I jerk like someone half asleep prodded with a sharp stick.

  I lift my right hand from Casmel’s wound. Steam still hangs in the air before me. I turn and point a bloody finger past Ethra at the tangled form of the ambusher. Keeping my finger trained on the bandit’s corpse, I turn back to Casmel and press my left hand harder against the wound, fingers splayed. I stop breathing. I do not hold my breath. I just stop breathing.

  “It is coming,” says a low, fractured voice behind me.

  I turn and look up at Ethra. She is looking at me, at my hand on Casmel’s wound. She does not appear to have heard the voice.

  “It is coming.” It is the corpse that speaks, though its wide-hanging mouth doesn’t move. “The Gravene.”

  The bandit’s forehead ripples, like Ethra’s when her skin is about to come loose, and then an apple-sized ball of pale pink light rises out of the ripples. The light bobs toward me, and the corpse from which it rose collapses in on itself, as if a whole clew of rotworms have fed on its offal in an instant.

  An inch from my bloody fingertip, the ball of light stops. Again that smell: blackberries and rose petals.

  I stretch my arm a little and touch the light.

  And then I am looking up at the canopy.

  Ethra’s face appears, then Casmel’s, caked in dried blood on the left side, from jaw to temple.

  “I was dead,” he whispers. With the heel of his hand, he wipes tears from his eyes. “I was dead.”

  “Did you ride an Unrim?” asks Ethra, excited. “Did you ride an Unrim to the River of Honey?”

  “There were no Unrim,” he says. “And there was no River of Honey. It was just like here.” He waves an arm about. “Except there was no colour, because everything was covered in tiny grey mushrooms. Even me. And there was no sound. And the woods were filled with skinny people-things, made of smoke except wet and sticky. There were lots of them. They had holes where faces should have been, and I could feel them watching me even though they had no eyes.” He shivers like a frozen child. “I never want to see that place again.”

  Chapter 17

  Foreg, God of Deceits and Disguises

  We reach the outskirts of Awlen in three days, late in the afternoon. We encounter no more bandits en route, and although we see signs of a variety of dangerous creatures—claw marks on trees, nef droppings and the large three-toed print of an ashex—nothing troubles us. Only the terrain slows us down: dense woodland, mud, brambles or a combination of all three.

  We do not speak at all on the first day. Even Casmel. Especially Casmel. On the second day, conversation recommences, but we only speak of trivial things. Nobody mentions the attack, Casmel’s death or subsequent resurrection. But as we see the steeply sloping slate rooftops of Awlen rising over the horizon, Ethra turns to Casmel and says, “Did it hurt? The arrow in your neck.”

  He grins, “It was like being stung by a wasp. A wasp the size of a carthorse.”

  “There’s no mark,” says Ethra. “Not even a little scar. I sat on a boning knife when I was ten and there’s still a fine scar on my bum.”

  I laugh. “We do not need to hear about the distinguishing details of your bum, Ethra.”

  “I was just making a point,” she says.

  “No,” says Casmel. “I think it was the boning knife that made the point.” And he gives a little nod and a wink, as my father does whenever he says something he mistakenly believes is amusing.

  We make camp in a small copse and, as we eat, Casmel attempts to teach us the basics of spedig. It is lost on me. The tiles each depict one of the gods. Some gods are of more value than others, some gods can form alliances with gods in the same hand and some have enmity toward one another and devalue the hand. The best hand, as far as I can make out, is one in which there is a three-way alliance and at least one god that shows enmity toward a god in an opposing player’s hand. Fryth, the God of Peace, and Foreg, the God of Deceits and Disguises, are the most important tiles. Fryth can quench the enmity of other gods, and Foreg can become any tile that is not already in the player’s hand. It strikes me as sad that the most coveted tile in a game of spedig is the most duplicitous.

  Casmel makes sure Lata is well fed, shoulders his bag—containing only his tiles, coin and that strange strip of knotted leather—and says, “Right. Wish me luck!”

  “May Gewith be with you,” says Ethra.

  “And Foreg,” I suppose.

  “If both are with me, the pot is mine.” He puts a hand to his neck, where the arrow struck him. “Although I may have already spent any coin with the face of Gewith stamped upon it.”

  “Let’s hope not,” I say.

  “I will see you at first light, with supplies and a mild hangover.”

  “Do not drink too much,” I say, “it will dull your wits and you will play badly.”

  “A little mead always helps,” he says. “It calms the nerves.”

  “Are you nervous?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he says. “Ever since…” He touches his neck again, where a scar should be but isn’t. “Ever since I saw that grey place, I’ve felt as if something terrible is going to happen. As if something bad is coming.”

  “The Gravene,” I say.

  “What?”

  “It is what the dead bandit said before I drew the light from him. Isn’t it, Ethra?”

  Ethra shrugs. “I heard nothing.”

  “What’s the Gravene?” says Casmel.

  “I don’t know. The slite said it, too. Or something deep within it. ‘It is coming. The Gravene’. I don’t know what it is, but they both said it.”

  “Maybe
it’s a good thing,” says Ethra. “Why does it have to be bad? Maybe it’s a new god come to bring us oatcakes, yellowberry pie and warm honeymilk. Gravene, the God of Sweet Things.”

  “I hope you’re right,” says Casmel, smiling but looking more than a little doubtful. Then he claps his hands. “Right! I’m off.”

  “What if you’re not back by first light?” I ask as he’s turning away.

  “I’ll be here. First light. Don’t go without me. I can’t get the coin I need to clear my father’s debts without you, remember?”

  I nod and watch as he walks from the copse and vanishes into the thickening woodland, heading toward Awlen.

  “Are you sure you didn’t hear the dead bandit speak?” I ask Ethra once Casmel has gone.

  “Not so much as a death rattle. Not even a gurgle.”

  “It is not the God of Sweet Things, the Gravene,” I say, more to myself than anything. “I am sure of that. If it is a god, at all.”

  Ethra yawns and I have to remind myself that she is a child of thirteen.

  “Get some sleep,” I say. “I’ll keep first watch. I’ll wake you when my eyes are too heavy for the task.”

  Four uneventful hours later, my eyelids feel like lead and I prod Ethra.

  “You better take over,” I say.

  She tries to go back to sleep, but I snatch away her blanket and, grumbling incessantly, she takes my place.

  I fall asleep so quickly it is as if I’ve been struck with a sap.

  I dream of smoke. It is bitter and fragrant: pipegrass smoke. The smoke clears, and I see I am in a tavern. I can smell ale and mead and the sweat of men. It is noisy. There is music playing—sner strings and a bolla drum—and people laughing and arguing.

  I look down and see my hands are not my own. They are holding spedig tiles.

  I am Casmel. I am seeing through his eyes, hearing through his ears, smelling through his nose. He secures the tiles in one hand, tipping them toward himself—myself—and lifts a stone mug. He takes a drink. I smell it before I taste it. It smells of yeast, herbs and, to my mind, dirt. It tastes of all those things, but mostly of wet charcoal. He places the mug down and looks at the tiles again. I see his hand includes Foreg, the God of Deceits and Disguises. A good tile.

  Will this happen with everyone I resurrect? Will I visit them in my dreams? Is that another part of my particular Glyst? I’m not sure I wish for it. What if I see something I do not wish to see? Like when I walked in on my mother and father because I had an earache, and they were ‘wrestling’, or so they told me. I notice, however, that it is different with Casmel. I have access to his senses, but not to his thoughts and feelings. With my father, I could feel his fear and understand his troubles. If this were my father playing spedig, I would know if his was a good hand or a loser’s hand. I would know if the drink had shrunk his brain. With Casmel, I only know what he sees, hears, smells and tastes. I feel an itch on his shin—my shin?—and I feel him dismiss it with a rub of his heel.

  I am suddenly very aware of every inch of his skin. Of its tightness to his lean frame. I feel his tongue lick his lips. I want to wake up and be out of his body. But, at the same time, I want to linger.

  He looks up at the player opposite.

  And what he sees, what I see, near stops my heart.

  It is Slek Mydra.

  He is holding no tiles. In front of him on the table is his sword. It is a Sceada’s sword. A horrible thing. It is short and wide. If you are foolish enough to mock the length of a Sceada’s blade, they will say “It need only be as long as a man’s chest is deep” and then they will likely kill you. There are barbs along the top of the blade. The Sceada call these ‘gut-thorns’. When the blade is withdrawn from its unfortunate victim, the gut-thorns snag on the entrails and viscera, dragging them out to steam in the air. There are symbols etched into the blade I do not recognise, and the grip is bound in the same blood-red leather as its owner’s armour. The haft’s pommel is a knot of iron bristling with spikes.

  “So,” says Mydra in that soft, calm, almost soothing voice of his, that somehow cuts through the laughter and shouting, the sner strings and the bolla drum. “Tell me what you know.”

  Casmel places his tiles face-down on the table. I notice that his hands are trembling just a little.

  “They are in a clearing, on the edge of town,” he says. “If someone would be so kind as to bring me a sheet of whitebark and a blackstick, I can draw you a map. But let me see the coin first.”

  I awake with a violent jolt.

  For a moment I think it was just a dream, a nightmare. Casmel would never do such a thing. But then I realise I know almost nothing about him. What’s more, the smell of the tavern lingers in my nostrils and I can still taste the wet-charcoal tang of the ale. And then I remember the last thing he said to me before he left:

  I can’t get the coin I need to clear my father’s debts without you, remember?

  It wasn’t a dream. It was real. Casmel has betrayed us.

  “Ethra?”

  She sits on the outer edge of the camp, leaning back against a tree, head lolling, fast asleep.

  “Ethra!”

  Her head snaps back, her eyes wide.

  “I’m not asleep,” she says. “I’m not. I wasn’t. I’m wide awake.” She sees the look of panic on my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Casmel has betrayed us.” I say. “He’s sold our whereabouts to Slek Mydra.”

  “What? He wouldn’t. Who’s Slek Mydra? How do you know?” She rubs sleep from bleary eyes as she speaks.

  “I saw through his eyes. It appears I can do that with someone I’ve resurrected.”

  “You saw through Cass’s eyes?”

  “The Scur’s eyes, yes,” I say. I don’t want to call him by name anymore, do not want to think of him as Casmel Durn, brief ally. “I could see through my father’s eyes after I brought him back from the Fields of Wealm.”

  “But Cass wouldn’t. You gave his life back to him.”

  “He cares about nothing but coin,” I say. “I wonder if his father has gambling debts, at all. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that was a fiction to draw sympathy, so we would let down our guard and trust him.”

  I begin collecting our things together. After a minute’s grumbling, Ethra helps me.

  “Who’s Slek Mydra?” she asks.

  “A Sceada, captured in battle. He won his freedom in the Trial of Suswylt. The Jarl calls him ‘Brother’ now. He has been sent to find me. To kill me.”

  “A Sceada?” says Ethra, her face slackening with fear. “I have heard of the men of Scead. Brutes. They take joy in killing.”

  “What you’ve heard is true, and more and worse besides.”

  Ethra gathers her things at a quicker pace, and we are done in ten minutes.

  “Do we leave Lata behind?” Ethra asks, as she climbs up behind me onto Skep. “What use is a second horse when I cannot ride?”

  “No, she comes with us. She is too good-hearted for the Scur. Besides, he will have enough coin to buy himself a new horse.” I set Skep in motion. Lata follows. “I hope his new mare kicks him in the head.”

  “I hope it, too,” says Ethra. “Gedhearted pig.” Then, a warble of nervousness in her voice. “Should we be travelling in the dark? Shouldn’t we wait for first light?”

  “And risk the Sceada finding us?”

  Ethra actually shivers then and, for a moment, her skin loosens and looks like it is about to detach itself. But she makes her hands into fists, lets out a small angry sound and her flesh tightens.

  “Let’s go,” she says with an air of impatience that suggests I was the one who raised concerns about travelling in the dark, that I’m the one who’s afraid.

  Of course, I am concerned. I am afraid. But I’m more afraid of Slek Mydra.

  Then another fear strikes me so hard it forces a sharp intake of breath.

  “What’s wrong?” says Ethra.

  “My father,” I say. “The Scur told Mydra
where we are, but he must also have confirmed who we are. Who I am.”

  “Oh,” says Ethra.

  I pull Skep to a halt.

  I don’t know what to do. Should I ride back to Gafol, warn my father? But what of Ethra? Perhaps we could ride back to El and ask her to warn my father, then continue on to the Dead City. My heart is drumming and my head is swirling with terrible thoughts and countless what-ifs and should-Is. I feel suddenly lightheaded. My hands tighten about Skep’s reins. I am sure I am going to fall.

  I take a breath.

  Fear is in the lungs, I hear El saying. It is not in the head or the heart, no matter how much it seems to be. It is in the lungs. It is in the breath. When you are afraid, breathe slowly through the nose. Take the air down deep into your lungs until it feels like it sits on top of your belly. Then let it out through your mouth, like you are blowing out a candle.

  The dizziness passes, and my heartbeat slows. My thoughts stop tripping over one another, separating out and becoming clearer.

  “We ride on,” I say, forgetting that Ethra has no idea why I stopped Skep in the first place or what that sharp intake of breath was about. “The Sceada will follow us. And as long as he is following us, he can’t report back to the Jarl.”

  It’s possible he could send someone back with a message, but I don’t think so. The Sceada are single-minded. Mydra’s every fibre will be devoted to finding me. Killing me. Honouring the Jarl. My father is safer if we keep moving forward.

  Even if we are not.

  Chapter 18

  Swallowed by the Night

  We have been travelling for an hour with what I estimate to be another hour to go before the darkness begins to lift, when I hear something in the pitch-clotted woods off to our left.

  It is the sound of someone—or something—that does not want to be heard.

  It is not the sound of an animal, not just an animal, anyway. It is the sound of a predator. My father has taught me the difference. An animal makes haphazard sounds, little clusters of sound. There might be brief pauses between those sounds but, on the whole, one sound follows another: a skitter of leaves, then another skitter of leaves, then the swish of a branch. When a predator makes a sound, such as I have just heard (the click of a snapping twig), that sound sits alone, as if the thing that has made it has become suddenly very still. It will be a full minute at least until it makes another sound. And that sound may be the last we hear.