by Eric Brown
The forest thinned; great, old trees gave way to shrubs and bushes. Kallis draped an arm around her shoulder and walked her to the edge of the forest. They climbed a high escarpment and looked down across a valley that widened to a broad plain.
She glanced northwards, into the sky. The clouds had cleared, and the Narrowing seemed more sharply defined than before. Was it closer? Was the Narrowing passing along the length of the World-wheel, towards her?
Kallis pointed to a place on a hillside, far to the east. “Look. See there!”
She saw what she thought at first was the dark shadow of a cloud, rushing over the sunlit landscape. Then the shadow changed shape—too rapidly for a cloud—and transformed itself from a long ellipse into an oblate blob. Now it changed direction, flowing down a valley like a viscous fluid.
“What is it?”
“Hornbeast, Onara. A massive herd of hornbeast.” Now she saw real concern etched into his sun- beaten features. “It is as I have told you. They’re leaving their stamping grounds. And not only hornbeast. Other animals too. Everything we hunt. Everything we depend upon to survive. They’re all leaving.” Kallis looked down at her, his expression troubled. “Winter,” he said, experimenting with the unfamiliar word. “You told me that Winter was approaching—that Winter is at the heart of this. Have you found out what a Winter is?”
She avoided his gaze. “I’m sorry. I’ve tried. Scholar Malken won’t answer. He knows something—I know he knows—but he’s keeping the knowledge to himself. ”
Over the years, she was coming to realise, the Scholars had taught her little but the basics of reading and writing. Oh, she had studied the geometry of the World, and had read the epic poems of times past, the plays about the daily life of the ancients—but even in this literature there was a singular lack of genuine enquiry. The origin of humankind’s past, she felt, was a closed book—and she was coming to understand that the future was similarly closed. Even about something as fundamental, and dangerous, as this mysterious Winter, she’d been able to piece together no more than fragments of lore.
“Winter is... I think it’s a period of shadow, of cold. Of darkness.” She paused. “I understood too that it is dangerous, this Winter.”
Kallis snorted. “Dangerous? How can shadow be dangerous? And darkness. I know darkness only when I close my eyes or secure the shutters on my hut. And what is cold? I know what heat is. But how can I imagine cold?” He shook his head. “Life without heat?”
“Kallis, other things have been happening in the manse. Strange things. Three of my friends have disappeared over the past six sleeps. One lesson they were there, and then they were gone. No explanation. Almora... my closest friend. Just gone.”
He glanced at her. “It might have something to do with... ” he gestured at the clouds, the fleeing hornbeasts—“with this? ”
“I don’t know—but maybe. All these strange things at once—maybe they’re connected. Also, Scholars have disappeared. They seem ill, slow and feeble, and then they go.” She tried to remember if Almora had seemed sickly. She had noticed nothing very amiss; perhaps her friend had been quiet, withdrawn. Or perhaps she was being wise after the event.
Kallis said, “The Scholars do know something. I’m convinced of that. We were riding north of here through Jade Valley, two sleeps ago. We saw a plantation, heavily guarded by Scholars. The plants were like nothing I’ve ever seen before—tall, blood-red flowers. We were told to move on. The guards were armed with cross- bows.”
They stood and stared down into the valley.
She wanted to ask him if he had yet made his decision to leave with the Hunters, but the words stuck in her throat. Kallis moved a hand to the small of her back, rubbing the base of her spine in the way he knew she liked. She tried to forget what might lie ahead, and reached up for his lips.
He found a grassy bank where they made love, Kallis as careful and gentle as ever, as if she were a fragile object that might break with rough handling. Even at the height of his passion he was restrained—his gentleness seemingly emphasized by his bulk. For a while her worries were banished, only for them to return tenfold as they lay side by side and stared up at the sunlight streaming down through the tree-tops .
From a branch above her head dangled a cluster of sunfly pods. The pods were only partly formed—small, open balls of webbing, suffused with sunlight—and inside them larvae could be seen, patiently building. Idly she watched the tiny motion, lost in the detail of it. One larva was proceeding more slowly than the rest; its pod was barely half completed. She pointed this out to Kallis.
He smiled. “That one doesn’t want to be a sunfly,” he said. “Perhaps he likes being a larva.”
“Or perhaps it’s the change he’s scared of. Nobody likes change, I suppose.”
The silence stretched, and she knew what he was thinking.
“Kallis...”
“Mmmm?”
“What you said before, about leaving...?”
He sighed. “The Hunters must go. Our prey have fled south, and so we’re going after them, into the mountains.” He mussed her hair. “We are Hunters. We can’t live on sweetcorn alone, Onara.”
“But how can you outrun Winter?”
He frowned. “I don’t know. But what else can we do? Where else could we run? The Edges?”
“The Edges?” she repeated, startled. The Edges were invisible mountains—it was said—at the east and west borders of the World, bad-lands inhabited by strange beasts, madmen and the Foe. She had heard many horror stories of the Edges, most no doubt apocryphal, designed to scare children, warn off adventurous adolescents from ever straying. But if only a tenth of the tales were true...
“They say no one ever returns from the Edges.”
Drily, he said, “You’re supposed to be a Scholar’s apprentice. Do you know anyone who’s actually been there, Onara?” When she failed to reply, he went on, “There are other tales. The Hunters have legends, stories, about warriors who trek for days through the bad-lands, who discover wondrous lands beyond, and bountiful hunting grounds. Who knows what the truth is?”
He took her hand. “Come with me, Onara. Leave behind your studies. You said yourself you have grown to hate the manse.”
“You won’t be coming back?”
“Who knows what we’ll be doing? If this Winter is as dangerous as you make out... Onara, I want you with me.”
“I don’t know! I need time to think. So many strange things are happening. For so long my life has been ordered, regulated. And now everything is changed.”
“I’ll be leaving at the first hour two sleeps from now,” Kallis said in a voice heavy with ultimatum. “I’ll meet you in the glade.”
~
It was the hour before the breakfast call. Onara lay on her pallet in the shuttered darkness, unable to sleep. She would be tired during lessons, and this would be remarked upon by the Scholars, but she no longer feared reprimand. Events had carried her past the point where she regarded the rules and petty laws of the manse as sacrosanct. Great changes were imminent, whether she left with Kallis or not. She touched the choker at her neck and considered the future.
The next time I rise, she thought, I must decide whether to leave with Kallis.
She settled early to her work. She sat alone in a long cloister, working through a volume of gaudy legends. She was soon bored; she’d studied this material several times before, and was now supposed to commit it to memory. Like so many lessons of late, she thought. I’m learning nothing.
A breath of hot wind blew through the cloister and riffled the leaves of the tome on her desk–
“Onara!”
She jumped.
Sch. Malken was beside the desk, smiling down at her. “My brightest pupil, Onara—a talent wasted in this age.” He seemed to be talking to himself; he appeared impatient, disturbed. Sch. Malken was tall, with a full head of dark hair brushed back from a high forehead. He wore the traditional white robes of the Scholar. Many girls
envied Onara her tutor, and could not understand her indifference to him.
Now his eyes were on her, deep, searching—they held a hunger she had come to recognise, though it disturbed her .
“Enough of these books. Come with me, Onara. I’ve something new to show you. The truth.”
It was as if he’d been reading her thoughts. She stared at him, astonished.
~
Sch. Malken escorted her to the stables, where he selected a hornbeast. At his gesture, she climbed aboard the broad saddle behind him. They left the manse and moved slowly into the hills which bordered the Vale to the west, and then through a narrow pass and beyond, into a region Onara had never visited before.
The land here was flat and parched, devoid of water and life. She had the impression of great antiquity; the sunlight was like a solid thing, embedding her in this ancient, dead landscape. Yellow dust rose up in great clouds around the hooves of the patient hornbeast, so that Onara was forced to wrap a scarf across her mouth. Her head was filled with the stink of the weary, aged ’beast as it toiled through the pitiless light.
“Where are we going, Scholar Malken?”
He raised his hand in a gesture advising silence and patience.
They followed a path into a widening valley, and at the far end Onara made out a squat, stone- built structure. As they approached, she saw that young Scholars armed with bows guarded the building .
Sch. Malken climbed from the ’beast and helped Onara down. She paused before the building. It had appeared small from a distance, but now it loomed over her, dark and imposing, like the structures she had seen in drawings and paintings in old history books.
The Scholar took her hand and, under the gaze of the guard, escorted her into a shadowy vestibule. Torchlight illuminated a flight of narrow stone steps, descending below ground level. They walked carefully down the steps and stood before a blank stone wall.
Then, as if driven by magic, a section of the wall swung open, and a bright light emanated from the room, illuminating its contents.
Onara could only stare.
A table and two chairs, formed of a white, stone-like material as if extruded from the floor itself, occupied the centre of the room. Sch. Malken gestured Onara inside. Her sandalled feet slapped on the cool surface of the white stone.
On the table stood two goblets.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“It was built by our distant ancestors. We do not know its original purpose.” Sch. Malken gestured towards the goblets. “Please, join me. Drink the wine.”
He lifted a goblet, smiled at her and drank. With both hands—the goblet was large and heavy—Onara lifted the blood-red liquid to her lips and sipped. It was sweet and as thick as syrup .
As the liquid reached her belly, she felt a bubble of coldness swell out through her system. It was a hard, unpleasant feeling—as if she had been invaded. She put the goblet down and stared at the dregs of the drink.
“What is it?”
“Poppy wine. That’s all.” He smiled at her. “Onara, I have watched you grow wise enough to understand that there are mysteries beyond your studies. Now, you are ready to learn more. You must have many questions.”
At last, she though. But she wondered why he had invited her here—why now, suddenly, he was prepared to be open with her. What did he want with her?
“What is the Narrowing?” she blurted. “And Winter? One day I overheard two Scholars discussing Winter...”
“Understand that although we hold ancient wisdom, Onara, some of the mysteries of our World are beyond even our understanding. We know that every thirty generations a Winter consumes the land–”
“Then Winter is real?”
“Oh, yes, my dear. It is a period without sunlight for thirty generations, a time so cold that nothing will survive on the land. The Narrowing presages this Winter, and the Scholars make preparations–”
“The Scholars come down here,” Onara interrupted. “Here, our people can survive the Winter?”
Her tutor inclined his head. “Just so. Now come, this way.” He gestured towards a white wall, and as he approached a door-shaped section of it swung open .
Onara followed her tutor into the second, much larger chamber. This one was empty, but for a painting which almost covered one wall.
Onara quailed.
“Go ahead,” Malken said. “Study it. It’s only an image. It can’t hurt you.”
Onara approached the image—and discovered that it was not a painting at all. The detail was too fine, too realistic. It was as if a scene from life had been frozen, chiselled into a block, and set into the wall. She could not detect how it had been manufactured.
The picture showed a single, immense beast. Bipedal, it had thick legs and powerful, longer- than-normal arms; and its chest and head were grossly swollen. Its face was a mask of hard blue chitin, and it leered down at Onara with black eyes. It was almost human—a travesty of the human form, but close enough for its horror to be all the greater.
She recognised the beast from a thousand legends. This was the Foe: as terrible as any childhood nightmare, but made real by this extraordinary depiction.
She heard Sch. Malken’s voice, rational, reassuring. “Our World is a fortress,” he said. “A fortress of light. And beyond the fortress roam beasts like this. The Foe.”
“But what is this monster? Where does it come from? How–”
He placed a finger on her lips, silencing her. “In the remote past, we fought such demons. We won—or survived, at any rate—but at a terrible cost .
“Once, Onara, we inhabited the full length of the World. Now we exist in scattered groups of Scholars, Farmers and Hunters. For generations the World sustains us, in reasonable comfort—but then, to survive the Winters, we must resort to—ah—extreme measures.”
He moved towards the far wall, and passed through another miraculous doorway. Onara followed. They stood on the threshold of the largest chamber yet, a long, low room receding in perspective. White cots the shape of sunfly-larva pods lined the walls on either side.
Onara stood in the entrance, reluctant to step forward. Ahead of her, Sch. Malken turned and held out a hand. “Come, there is no need to be afraid.”
She took his hand and joined him by the first pod. Her stomach turned. The body in the pod was stiffened and bloated, its skin a sickly shade of blue. Its transformation, however, did not prevent her recognition.
“Scholar Greer!” Greer had been Almora’s personal tutor...
Sch. Malken drew her towards the next pod. Onara had to force herself to follow him, for she knew what she would find.
Sure enough, Almora lay in the pod, as blue and bloated as her tutor. She was curled up—almost like a child, Onara thought; and yet Almora’s limbs were twisted, her blue face distorted, her mouth stretched wide as if in a frozen scream.
“Is she dead? ”
Sch. Malken shook his head. “Merely... sleeping. This is encystment, not death. After Winter, when the sunlight returns, Almora and the others will wake and rebuild society.”
Onara stared down the length of the chamber. She quickly calculated that approximately a thousand pods occupied the walls.
A thousand? The Farmers, the Hunters—why, there must be ten times as many people in the Vale! “But what of all the others?”
He stood before her, tall, authoritative, his voice gentle. “I am afraid that many will perish as the temperatures drop and ice covers the Vale.”
She stared at him. “Some will be left to die?” she asked, incredulous.
“That is the way it has always been.”
“But that’s...” She was shaking her head at the enormity of what he had said. “That’s barbaric.” She tried to order her thoughts, marshal pertinent questions. She was aware of his eyes on her, ambiguous, calculating.
“Why was the World built like this, so every Winter so many would perish?”
He stared down at her. “The World was not built
by humans,” he told her. “And so it was not built for humans. Aeons ago, humans came from other suns in great ships. We found this artifact, this World, deserted. Its builders had long since left, for reasons we do not know. We made the World our home. We battled with the Foe. Over the generations, we lost the ability to travel beyond the World—maybe during the war.” He lay a hand on Onara’s shoulder. “Long ago, to combat Winter, we developed the means to harvest and prepare the wine of the poppy. Once sealed within this tomb, we will sleep through the Winter like generations of Scholars before us. And when the sunlight returns...”
She stared at him. “We...?” Onara felt the blood drain from her face. I have already drunk the wine, she thought. Already...
“I must become like her, like Almora?”
“As Scholars, our pods are reserved. It will be a new World, Onara.” His hand was heavy on her shoulder. “You and I—together in a cleansed, new World.”
~
A fierce wind battered the shutters of the dormitory.
Onara could not sleep. She lay on her pallet and considered all that had happened to her, the choice she had to make. Sch. Malken had promised her salvation from the certain death that awaited if she remained in the Vale, but the images of Almora and Greer returned to her, blue and bloated, and all she could feel was horror.
Onara thought about Kallis and the others left to die—but perhaps Sch. Malken was wrong. Perhaps there was some way to survive on the surface ?
Besides—she discovered with wonder, when she looked into her heart—she would rather die with her lover than live the rest of her life with Sch. Malken.
When all the apprentices were asleep, Onara slipped from the dormitory for the last time.
~
She reached the glade in the forest. The dell did not seem the welcoming place she had come to know; the light from above was harsh, the tree-tops stirred by the wind. Kallis was waiting for her, arms folded. His face was set, his eyes troubled; she thought she saw love in his expression, and certainly tenderness, but also a determination that frightened her.
