Truthseer

by Jay Aspen

  Fin was searching the undergrowth for a path down into the river valley. ‘Changing pressure of melting ice sheets. It shifted the rock plates and took out a line of bridges across the north of the country.’

  ‘Why the Ice Islands are so inaccessible and safe?’

  ‘That plus barrier winds and frost-damaged roads. Ah, here it is.’ Fin pushed through a stand of green bracken and the others followed her on the steep descent, the rocky path taking its toll on Kit’s progress as the vital energy Jac had shared that morning had almost dissipated.

  Jac watched his progress anxiously. ‘Fin, we need to find an abandoned house so he can rest for a couple of days.’

  Fin narrowed her eyes against sunlight reflecting from the gold and grey cliff face. ‘I heard there’s a monastery or temple somewhere in this valley. I’m hoping I can find it. It would be a good vantage point. We’d see anyone approaching from a distance.’

  They reached the base of the fissure. The river ran swift and deep on their left, flanked by tall outcroppings of smooth rock. Ahead they could see a cluster of stone buildings clinging impossibly to the cliff at half height.

  ‘There’s a path running diagonally upward from the right.’ Fin pointed to an indistinct smudge of shadow above them. I’ll go ahead, see if it’s abandoned or not.’

  ‘Uninhabited...’ Jac scanned uneasily across the swallows-nest of buildings above. ‘Fin, if you’ve just had a feeling there’s someone up there, so have I.’

  ‘Hmm. You’d better come with me as an early warning system.’

  They left Bel and Kit resting in the shadow of the cliff and continued along the path for a few more minutes. Suddenly Fin stopped, listening.

  ‘Someone’s coming,’ She pushed Jac into the trees and drew her bow. They waited in silence until the sound of an approaching horse was unmistakable.

  Horse and rider came slowly into view, both white-haired and elderly, the rider swathed in a long dark grey robe. He reined in and looked around.

  ‘You should be here somewhere? I saw you from the last turn in the path.’ His voice was high and clear, with the faintest soft lilt of an accent.

  Jac stepped forward. ‘Why are you looking for us?’

  ‘Saw you from the courtyard earlier. Someone is hurt, so I brought old Plod to see if we could help.’ He inclined his head in polite greeting. ‘Brother Juniper from the monastery above. Only ten of us now, but we keep the old traditions alive.’

  Jac found herself wondering if his ageing mount had been called Plod even when younger and fitter.

  ‘Thank you. We do need your help.’

  With Kit riding, it took another half hour to reach the scattering of buildings stuck to ledges across the cliff face, linked by a narrow courtyard running along the front. Another grey-robed figure was waiting for them by the gate.

  Juniper waved them forward. ‘This is brother Holly. All who wish to join our order take the names of trees we give back to the earth.’

  Holly led Plod to a stone stable at the far end of the terrace and Juniper took them into a low-ceilinged room with narrow carpeted bench seats around the walls. He brought fennel tea and hard-boiled eggs, curious as to their business in these lonely hills.

  ‘We meet refugees heading north,’ he told them. ‘We try to help, especially with the children. The guides ask us to become part of the escape network. We decline, regretfully. Our duties lie elsewhere. But I sense you are no ordinary refugees?’

  Fin smiled politely. ‘I’ve been a guide myself. I heard rumours of this place, but never made the detour to visit. I see now I missed a wonder of the north.’

  Juniper acknowledged the courtesy. ‘If only all refugees were so well mannered. But you have not explained your business here.’ There was a firmness in his voice beneath the formal exchanges. These were dangerous times. On the way in he had signalled to three other grey-robed figures who now stood guard outside the door.

  Fin cautiously divulged a little more information. ‘We’re heading for the Ice Islands. There’s a patrol hunting us.’

  ‘Why?’ There was still an edge to Juniper’s question.

  ‘Pendrac.’

  ‘Hmm. I thought you probably were. He came this way some years ago. A good man, with dreams of changing many things.’ Juniper paused for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. ‘Patrols don’t bother us up here so stay as long as you need. Come, eat!’ He took out a large tin from the wall cupboard and unwrapped a sealed bag of flat biscuits. ‘These are best with butter and honey. I’ll fetch some from the kitchen.’ He disappeared through the inner door with an agility that belied his years.

  Jac saw Fin relax visibly. A couple of days’ respite was more than they could have hoped for a few hours ago. Juniper returned with a tray of food and laid a bag of herbs on the table in front of Kit.

  ‘These may help with the pain.’

  ‘Are you a medic?’ Fin took the bag and examined the contents with an experienced eye.

  ‘Only part time. And only a few herbs. We don’t get sick up here and refugees mainly need help with injuries. Sadly anyone who got sick already died along the way.’ Juniper passed her a kettle of boiling water to make an infusion.

  Fin busied herself with the meds while the others applied themselves to the food. Jac explored the wall paintings, her curiosity about the cliffside community competing with her appetite.

  ‘Juniper, why is there a monastery here in such a remote place?’

  He pointed to the main mural covering the entire side wall. ‘There were many more once, across the whole country, across the world. You must have heard of Friesel? They called him the Prophet of Fire.’ He pointed to the painted image of a man with flowing white hair and beard, wearing dark grey robes and with a black staff in his raised right hand.

  ‘My grandfather told me about him. He taught people to bury charcoal dust from the stoves we cook on, to help with growing food.’ Jac walked over to the painted wall to look closely at the illustrations, her questions separated by bites of honeyed biscuit. ‘All outlanders do it. I mean, everyone does. There’s no other way to cook is there?’

  Juniper inclined his head a little. ‘Many habits come from religions, my dear. This is but one. Friesel saw that giving carbon back to the earth would end the droughts, floods, crop failures of the damaged weather systems.’

  ‘Gramps said hundreds of new religions started in the chaos as people panicked, searching for something to save them.’

  ‘True. But the Holy Path of Friesel was the only one with a practical discipline. Millions followed it.’ He showed her the illustrations of devotees burying charcoal on their farmland.

  ‘And it worked? I mean, the weather still gets destructive but it’s stable enough to let us harvest and eat.’

  ‘It worked. But other forces...’ Juniper sighed, as if remembering past troubles. ‘Avarit had invested billions to harvest methane escaping from melting permafrost.’

  Fin looked up from her efforts with the infusion. ‘I remember that. End of my time as medic in the resource wars. Just as we thought it was all over, the Avarit faction started another war to get rid of the space sunshade they thought was cooling the planet.’

  It didn’t make sense to Jac. ‘Why?’

  ‘If cooling stopped the methane flow they’d lose their investment. So they shot down the space sunshade. Which incidentally destroyed all the satellites with the debris cascade.’

  Jac frowned, still puzzled. ‘How would that affect all the people religiously burying charcoal?’

  Juniper pointed to the mural again. ‘Destroying the sunshade made no difference. Things went on cooling. When they discovered the Holy Path of Friesel was the cause they mobilized security forces all over the world to arrest devotees and destroy temples.’ He lit a candle in front of the painting of the raids. ‘The New Inquisition was a difficult time. We heard what happened to our brothers and sisters. Avarit killed the priests, but the belief and practices endured in the hea
rts of followers everywhere.’ He fell silent, head bowed to the memory.

  Fin filled in practicalities while stirring a pungent herbal infusion in one of the mugs. ‘I remember some of that. In the end the Avarit advisers pointed out that if they killed everyone they wouldn’t have a market for their products, so they wrote off their investment, shut down the methane project and developed solar and tidal instead.’

  Jac shivered, although the room was warm. ‘Gramps didn’t tell me that part of the story. Seems like even if we achieve a better world, the Resistance leaders might die making it happen.’

  Fin’s eyes focused on her as she spoke. ‘Yes. It may turn out that way but if we work from lieth, the place beyond self, that thought gives us more courage, not less.’

  Jac took a few steps back, as if to distance herself from the very idea. ‘Fin, I got involved in this without the kind of training you’ve all had.’

  Fin’s gaze softened. ‘Jac, you’re already there. It only needs you to see it for yourself.’

  Juniper was looking critically at Kit. ‘I would say from the way you move, it’s an injury that’s not healing because you are exhausted?’

  Fin smiled. ‘Not such a part-time medic then?’

  ‘Part-time with herbs. I work with the water of the spring. I think it would help our young friend here. I sense you also have this skill?’

  ‘But many years since I could find the right water-source for it.’ Fin’s eyes lit up with anticipation. ‘You actually have one here?’

  ‘Come.’ Juniper led them outside and along to the far end of the sunny terrace. They followed him down a gently descending narrow path that led across the cliff face.

  After a few minutes the path ran into a wider natural terrace of grass and wild flowers where a spring flowed into a pool from a cave in the cliff and then poured over the edge, shrouds of rainbow mist fading into the valley far below. Sunlight reflected on the pool and the roof and walls of the cave in a curtain of flickering green and gold, filling the air with moving liquid light.

  Juniper made a polite bow, hands folded beneath the grey sleeves of his robe.

  ‘There is a larger pool further inside the cave where the stream runs rich with sound. I take my leave now. If you ladies are going to remove your clothing to enter the water, this is no place for a person of monastic orders.’ He turned and walked silently back up the path.

  Jac peered into the cave entrance. ‘Fin, I’ve never done water-healing.’

  Fin was pulling off her boots. ‘We go inside and I’ll show you. Same principle as your psi-neuropulse, but with total immersion instead of only one point contact, it’s far more powerful.’ She folded her clothes at the side of the spring and stepped into the pool, waiting for the others.

  Bel hesitated. ‘Fin, I can’t do this. It means going into second level again––’

  Fin watched her steadily. ‘Yes you can, because otherwise Kit won’t have the strength to cross the barrier and that means he’ll die. I’ll be here with you.’ She pushed Bel inside ahead of her while Jac helped Kit across the slippery rocks underfoot.

  The pool in the cave was, as Juniper said, rich with sound, sunlight streaming in through the entrance and filling the space with the same green-gold rippling light as the outer pool. Fin and Jac lowered Kit slowly to lie in the water and knelt on either side, one hand on each of his wrists and one on each shoulder, facing Bel who knelt at his head, supporting his head on her knees.

  Fin paused to focus. ‘Now, listen to the water. When you go fully into lieth concentration you’ll find the harmonics, the resonating octaves. Then you can sing with them.’

  She closed her eyes for a moment, then began to sing, softly at first, the notes gently rising and falling with the music of the water in rippling chords of sound and light. For a few moments Jac was caught in the sheer beauty of it, unable to do anything but listen entranced, until the awareness of Kit’s hand in hers like a silent prayer for help brought her back to the need for action.

  She slowed her breathing the way her grandfather had trained her, focusing deep into the sound, feeling water and light and sound become clear and resonant until she could see and hear the waves of it as one great harmony. Sound blended with light and seemed to carry her, as if her whole body had dissolved into the cold water and become the psi-wave itself. She was already singing, her voice blending with the sound of Fin and Bel, filling the cave as the sun filled it with light, and then the wave was flowing through her and into Kit and dissolving back into the shimmering water.

  She lost all track of time. It could have been minutes or hours later when she felt Fin’s hand on her arm and came slowly back to base awareness. Her skin had cooled to the temperature of the water and she no longer felt the cold. They must have been in the pool for a while.

  They sat outside, drying wet skin and soaking up the heat of the sun, lizard-like on the warm terrace. Jac suddenly felt incredibly tired. Kit was already asleep, face down on the grass in the dappled shade of a tree.

  ‘Is he all right?’

  Fin put a hand on his neck, checking his body heat. ‘He’s fine. Just catching up on a few days’ lost sleep. This may be our last chance to really rest for a while, so make the most of it.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, then remembered something else.

  ‘Just don’t get sunburned. That’s an inconvenience we can do without right now.’

  32

  The first rays of morning sun had just reached the monastery courtyard as Jac finished packing the dried food Juniper had given them, squashed on top of their minimal equipment and supplies.

  Juniper was waiting for them. ‘Come, I will show you the path upriver while my brothers are busy with their devotions.’

  They stepped aside to let the line of grey-robed figures file though the entrance gate and start the long descent to the valley floor to complete their obligatory charcoal-burying ritual of the morning. Juniper led the way along the terrace to the path that descended past the cave with its pool and then dropped in switchbacks to the base of the cliff further upriver.

  ‘The refugees who came here would use a rope-bridge to cross, but it washed out in the storms a few weeks ago. We haven’t repaired it yet. If you follow the river towards its source you can cross near the main road. Most people walk across the frost damaged section of the road.’

  Fin shook her head. ‘I don’t think that will work for us. Military patrols have that whole area of moorland staked out. Is there another way?’

  Juniper thought for a moment. ‘There should be a section smooth enough to swim across before you get to the road. Then head west into the mountains, cross the barrier by one of the passes. Easier to remain hidden than on the open moorland. May your God protect you.’ He gave his customary polite bow and turned back the way he had come.

  The path followed the east bank of the river, twisting between rocks and clumps of gorse and heather. The grey brothers must have used it regularly for something and after half an hour it became clear what that something was. A line of beehives parked carefully in a rocky alcove.

  The river valley was wider here with meadows of wild flowers dotted between the trees, but the river was still rough and swollen with snow melt and the recent rain. The path quickly degenerated into little more than a chaotic scramble between boulders and brambles and their progress slowed. Kit was moving more easily now but Jac knew he couldn’t swim such a savage current until he had a few more days to regain his strength.

  And we don’t have a few more days. Soon as the enforcers fail to find us on the moorland they’ll spread out and start watching all the passes. We have to cross soon.

  Dusk came upon them suddenly on the thickly wooded valley floor and the dim light made it harder to judge the best route between the boulders. The river seemed unrelenting in its reluctance to offer a smooth stretch they could swim.

  Bel returned from scouting ahead. ‘There’s a building just around the next corner under the trees. Not really a ho
use, more a ramshackle sort of hut. There’s a faint light there. We should be careful. Juniper would have told us if anyone he knew lived here.’

  Fin peered ahead into the shadows. ‘I don’t think the grey brothers come further upriver than the beehives. Too much scrambling for no purpose.’

  ‘The path goes right past the door so we need to move quickly if we want to avoid the hut or we’ll never get through the brambles in the dark.’ Bel headed for the riverbank.

  There was a little more light here and a few less brambles. Jac followed Bel, jumping down the muddy slope to a narrow path just above the water. After a few awkward moves the bank flattened into a shingle beach upon which lay a small boat. Closer inspection revealed it was harnessed to a line high above the river, stretched between two trees.

  ‘Maybe used for crossing, or maybe for fishing when the water is less wild.’ Jac could see that the boat, although beaten and weathered, had been repaired enough to float.

  Bel had her hand on the frayed piece of rope that tethered the dilapidated craft to a tree trunk. ‘How should we do this? Borrow it, return it, and I’ll swim the river and rejoin you? Or go to the hut and ask, and risk the inhabitants not being friendly?’

  A pile of dirty rags emerged from the shadows between the rocks. ‘And why shouldn’t I be friendly? Mad Sam likes everyone, except enemies! Which ones are you?’ The dull light caught on a bearded face with staring eyes and a mop of tangled dark hair. Sam carefully draped his fishing line over a branch, his eyes never leaving their faces. Jac figured he must have fallen asleep while fishing until their voices had woken him.

  ‘Can we borrow your boat?’ she asked cautiously. ‘We’ll bring it back.’

  ‘Oh yes, bring it back. Of course you say that. And if you don’t? Mad Sam can’t swim. No boat, no fish, no food. I think you’re enemies.’ He reached into the pocket of his ragged coat and pulled out a clumsy-looking handgun. ‘Two rounds, one for the captain and one for Sam.’