by Jaine Fenn
‘He had words with me, and though he did not lie, I knew much remained unsaid,’ said Urien. ‘So much pain could have been averted had you only confided in me!’
‘We could not!’
‘Sais?’ whispered Kerin as he bent down.
‘What is it?’
‘The Escori said only two Consorts passed the final test. Why are there three boxes with amber lights?’
‘Good point,’ he said. ‘Let’s ask.’ He finished the reset first. The Escorai traded criticisms and accusations while Einon looked on. Sais stood up and called out, ‘Who’s in the third box?’
The priests stopped arguing and looked over at him.
‘You said only two Consorts passed the final test. So why three boxes?’
Urien stared at Prysor. ‘It is Lillwen, is it not?’
Prysor nodded.
Poor cow: exploited for sex all her life, then forced to take part in the priest’s deception, and now sent up to orbit to have her mind emptied by the Sidhe who was due to take over as Cariad.
He looked at Kerin. From her expression, she was thinking the same thing. Then her gaze sharpened, and she said quietly, ‘I want to know it all. No matter how bad, I must know the full truth.’
Taken aback, Sais said, ‘You mean - about the Sidhe?’
She nodded.
‘You believe me then?’
Kerin gave a tight, mirthless smile. ‘Tis as they say: Season a lie with the truth and t’will go down easier. These Sidhe told us lies with the truth in, and like cattle being driven to the slaughter, we believed them. They’ - she nodded at the bickering priests - ‘still do. I do not. Tell me everything.’
Where to start? ‘Shit, Kerin, it’s a long and twisted story. They’ve been around for thousands of years. And though they aren’t divine they have got a bit of a god-complex. Goddess-complex rather. They’re all female - that’s one thing your religion has got right. I reckon there really were five of them originally, when they set themselves up as your gods.’
‘And does Melltith exist?’
‘Melltith? That’s . . . the Adversary, isn’t it? No, that’s just . . . that’s part of the lie: something to be frightened of so you’ll love the Skymothers more.’ Sais heard a faint noise. The alarm on the door had stopped when Sefion smashed the panel, so it couldn’t be that.
‘So, the Cursed One is no more than a story . . . Sais, can you hear something?’
‘Yes, I can.’ A deep thrumming was rising through the floor. Sais looked around and, for the first time, up. A circle the size of the carousel had been cut out of the ceiling and replaced with the heavily shielded cover the carousel slotted into for its journey up into orbit.
‘It is time!’ said Prysor. Sais looked over to see the priest drop to his knees.
‘What is happening?’ asked Kerin. ‘What is that sound?’
Prysor had closed his eyes. Urien answered for him, ‘The ascension is announced by a Heavenly song that grows to fill the Tyr.’ Einon made to kneel too, until Urien put out a hand to stop him.
Sais said, ‘I was afraid of that. How long do we have?’
‘Less than the embrace of love, more than a dying breath.’ Prysor spoke with fearful ecstasy.
‘Very helpful,’ muttered Sais.
Kerin turned to him. ‘We must make them tell us which box Damaru is in. We have to get him out!’
‘We can’t. The boxes won’t open until the process has been reversed.’ He’d been assuming they had time to get Damaru, Lillwen and the other Consort out. He’d been assuming a lot of things. He realised he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let Damaru go up to the Sidhe ship, and he couldn’t just wait here until the Sidhe came for him. He stepped off the carousel.
Prysor began to pray. ‘Blessed Mothers, search our hearts, and find us not wanting . . .’
Urien started towards the carousel, calling Einon after him.
Kerin followed Sais around the outside of the array.
He found an unlit box and bent down. With the box powered down, it was just a matter of pressing a button. The lid clicked. He stood, and lifted the bottom of the lid. It rose easily, opening up towards the beanstalk like the petal of a flower.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Kerin.
‘The only tech in here was that control panel Sefion smashed, so I’m not going to be able to send my message from here. Plus, I don’t fancy hanging round waiting for the Sidhe to come down. So I’m going up.’
‘You’re ascending? But - you can’t.’
‘The empty box will just carry me up, it won’t put me to sleep. When I get to the top I’ll let myself out, try to find Damaru and - wait, Kerin!’
‘If Damaru is going up, then so am I.’ She ran to the next box and started to batter at the control panel with her palms.
‘No! I’m likely to find a bunch of Sidhe up there. You’ve no idea what they’re like—’
‘Aye, so you will need help. Open this box for me. Please.’ His own box shuddered under his hands.
‘God’s sake, woman! All right.’ He came over and touched a button. The lid clicked and she pushed it up.
Sais went back to his box. He glimpsed Urien examining the panel on the box beyond Kerin’s, Einon at his shoulder. The whole carousel began to shake. Sais called out to Kerin as they climbed in, ‘Pull the lid down and make sure it clicks shut. You’ll be in there for a while, probably a couple of hours. It’ll get cold, and it’ll be pitch dark, but you’ll be fine. These things are designed to keep you safe. Just stay calm.’
‘I will try.’ She grasped the edge of the box.
‘You won’t feel like you’re moving, but you’ll know when we reach the top, because it’ll get light again. At that point, you have to fill your mind with nonsense. Think of nursery rhymes, or stuff from the village. Don’t think of me, or what’s happened today. The Sidhe could pick up what you’re thinking, and we mustn’t let them know there’re two of us.’
He heard Urien say, ‘You swore you would obey without question: now keep your promise!’
Einon stood on the step of the open box, looking in. Urien stood behind him. As he watched, Einon half-climbed, half-fell in. Urien slammed the lid down and stepped back.
With a final shudder, the carousel started to lift.
‘Close the lid now, Kerin!’ called Sais.
He closed his own box, then flopped back on the pillow, dry-mouthed and sweat-moistened. He felt the initial motion of the lifting mechanism - then the cover clicked into place, everything went dark and all sensation of movement ceased as the drive cut in.
Well, he was committed now.
They both - all - were.
He drew a long slow breath. He needed a plan, ideally an exceptionally smart one. He reviewed what he knew. The Setting Sun was a large cargo-hauler with passenger capacity. It would dock with a transfer-station at the geo-sync point along the beanstalk. Given they left this place alone for decades, the Sidhe would want the set-up as low-maintenance as possible, so most likely the transfer-station was just a big pressurised room clamped around the beanstalk, with an irised airlock in the floor to admit the lifting carousel.
When he’d first spotted the Setting Sun, back before he knew it was a Sidhe ship, he’d estimated it would have a crew of six to ten, most likely an extended family, with additional space for up to a dozen passengers. The initial request for aid had come from a male pilot. The appearance of the nondescript, rather scruffy man had driven any thoughts of Sidhe influence out of Sais’s mind, and the man’s convincing air of panic had reeled him right in.
Even now the details of his imprisonment and interrogation remained mercifully vague. He was fairly sure he’d met two different Sidhe - he remembered how his main interrogator had summoned help to batter down the defences Nual had left in his head.
He’d seen a female mute - a wretched-looking creature minimally dressed in drab grey - in the distance when he’d first been led, his will slaved to his captor, through the sh
ip to the holding cell. And - he cringed at the memory - one of the methods the Sidhe had tried to break his mind had been to fill him with lust until he had sex with a mute they’d pushed into his cell. They made him do this twice: the first time they had used a woman; later, when they had a handle on his sexuality, a man. He was pretty sure the female mute was the one who’d later freed him, and it occurred to him that his hesitant treatment of her under the Sidhe’s compulsion might be one reason she’d let him out. Perhaps other Sidhe-glamoured men had used her less gently in the past.
The old myths claimed mutes were human slaves who’d had their voices, their minds and, some said, their souls stolen by the Sidhe. Certainly the two mutes he’d encountered hadn’t spoken, and had reacted more like animals than people. In some ways they reminded him of Damaru. At that thought he felt an elusive idea flit through his subconscious. Something about the Consorts, the way the Cariad dealt with them. Then it was gone. He was too hyped up to chase it.
He had to hand it to the Sidhe; they had a clever set-up here on . . . whatever the hell this world was called. Assuming it even had a name. They kept the population limited, and afraid, with a balance of promised reward and tangible threat. Periodically dumping a tailored retrovirus into the population didn’t just sift the genetics of their subjects, it allowed the Sidhe to keep the Cariad under their thumb. Being marooned from your people and worshipped as a goddess could go to your head, and there must be a risk that the Sidhe who took on the role of Cariad might decide her personal cult mattered more than the Sidhe’s grand plan. The Cariad had to ascend for the cure to the falling fire. In other words, each time they seeded the atmosphere with the pathogen, the returning Sidhe ship used a slightly different strain, so the current planetary ruler had to go up and get the cure. That would ensure she gave her report and handed over the latest batch of Consorts. If she didn’t, the disease was probably programmed to mutate, maybe even keep infecting people until she didn’t have any worshippers left. On the years when the Sidhe didn’t visit, no doubt the carousel just went up and came down again. After all, the only people who knew whether the Consorts had been unloaded were the Cariad, or her conditioned Escorai.
Sidhe paranoia also explained why the door to the Sanctaith Glan had two locks. The key to the puzzle that opened the door was implanted in the Escorai’s heads by the Cariad. The knowledge would be kept locked away unless she died in office, as had happened this time. In that case the Escorai were programmed to keep things ticking along down here until the replacement arrived. If the conditioned Escorai all died too, or if the Cariad disobeyed her sisters and went her own way, then they had an override. They could probably summon the carousel from orbit then come down via the Sanctaith Glan, descending like goddesses from Heaven without having to land a shuttle and panic the locals. The door was a failsafe: he’d bet it took the DNA of a living Sidhe to open it.
The bitches were certainly thorough. Cold as vacuum, but thorough. They planned carefully and they planned long-term.
His plan, such as it was, was to get himself unloaded onto the Setting Sun with all the other Consorts, then wait until things were quiet, spring the lid on his comabox, let Kerin out - he still wasn’t sure about Einon - and sneak back to the Judas Kiss. Hopefully, now he had his mind back, he could unlock the controls - but even if he just managed to get the coms working, he could get a message out, which was the most important thing.
He’d probably had worse plans in his life. He just couldn’t think of any right now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
As Einon lay in the darkness, Urien’s frantic words echoed around his head: You must discover what lies at the top of the Edefyn Arian. I have to know the truth!
But Einon already knew the answer: the Edefyn Arian led to Heaven, a route permitted only to Consorts - and apparently, the reborn Cariad. Urien must know that a mere priest could not make this journey - yet his Escori doubted, and had sent Einon like some messenger-boy to question the will of Heaven!
Already this day he had witnessed divine miracles: the bridge that sprang from the air to give passage over the chasm, the numbers that manifested upon the wall, this strange box that transported him to the sky. And already this day he had committed a mortal sin. He had shot Sefion, not in panic, but because that Escori had ordered his death. Einon shuddered at the memory of Sefion lying in a pool of blood, his life oozing out of him.
Surely the perpetrator of such an act should be damned to the Abyss . . .
He shoved the crossbow to one side and raised his hands, pressing them against the lid of his prison. He found a recessed handle and tugged it, but nothing happened. Horror rose within him. What if he were in the Abyss now, a plaything for the Accursed One? What if he were already dead, forever separated from the grace of the Mothers by that one fatal mistake? This was unfair - he had done his best! Until his last foolish act of vengeance he had honoured the Skymothers and their precepts in all he did. And his final choice - to disobey his Escori, or to follow him into blasphemy - had been an impossible one.
He hit the cold, hard barrier with his hands, once, twice, thrice, his blows reverberating around the tiny chamber.
‘I tried,’ he cried. ‘I tried to do right. Have mercy on me: I served you as best I could!’
No answer came and he banged harder, the violent action becoming a compulsion, almost an act of devotion in itself. He shouted into the darkness, beseeching the Mothers to hear his prayer, to give him some sign, to show him he was not truly damned.
None came.
Eventually his arms grew tired and he dropped his hands onto his chest. His hoarse shouts subsided.
Kerin made herself breath slowly, taking comfort in the rhythm of the air rushing into and out of her body. She ran her hands over herself in the darkness, flinching when she felt the damp spots on her skirt - Sefion’s blood. But it was still her body, even if it was confined in this strange box and on the way up to Heaven—
But there was no Heaven. Her breathing sped up. If I die today, this is the end. There is nothing beyond death.
Perhaps not - but even if that was true, Sais had survived this truth. And anyway, she had no intention of dying in this box, or up amongst the Sidhe. She had to save Damaru.
Though she knew in her soul it was futile, she tried to pray, but the words were meaningless sounds in the confining darkness. Sais had told her to use nursery rhymes to stop the Sidhe sensing the truth - but that was all her petitions to Heaven had ever been. Prayers she had spoken more times than she could remember, believing they would be heard - they were just empty words.
She had been deceived. Everyone she knew, save Sais himself, had been deceived. Their whole lives were lies, manipulated by heartless outsiders who cared nothing for the people they kept in ignorance, who stole their children for their own vile purposes—
She lost the last of her fear and found anger.
Sais didn’t mean to fall asleep, but he’d had very little rest in the last two days, and he was in no immediate danger. His body overrode his brain.
He awoke confused, in semi-darkness. His hand touched wood. Crossbow. As memory came crashing back he realised light was trickling through the observation window over his head. They must have reached the top of the beanstalk.
No need to panic: he would just lie here until the coast was clear, with his mind blank, not putting out any sort of mental signature. Just wait, thinking of nothing, until his chance came to get out. Stay calm. Remember to breathe.
He found himself squinting out of the observation window. He couldn’t see much; this place wasn’t very well-lit for a cargo-hold - but he wasn’t in the ship’s hold yet; he was still in the transfer-station, which probably didn’t have its own lights. He needed to wait for them to unload the box onto the Setting Sun.
Except they wouldn’t unload his box, would they?
Fuck it! His plan was a dud - he, Kerin and Einon were in inactive boxes. Why would the Sidhe bother to remove them from the ca
rousel when they thought they were empty? On top of that - and this was ironic! - Kerin needn’t have come at all; the journey up the beanstalk would have taken long enough that the boxes belonging to Damaru, Lillwen and the other Consort would be inactive as well!
Sais decided his only chance was to make his move after the Sidhe had replaced the full boxes with empty ones for the next crop, and before the carousel headed back down, ready to return to the Tyr at sunset on Sul Esgyniad.
He listened for external sounds, but these comaboxes would probably survive being dumped into vacuum; he wasn’t surprised he couldn’t hear anything outside. There was no reason for anyone to come close, so perhaps he could risk popping the lid. He pulled the emergency release, wincing at the deafening click. He kept hold of the handle, not letting the box open more than a crack. His ears popped as fresh, warm air flowed in through the gap round the lid. He tensed, murmuring nonsense, waiting for a Sidhe to wrench up the lid.
No one did. He heard noises, hard to identify at first: a clunk and a bang, then what might be footsteps. After a while the sounds died away.
Sais pushed the lid open. As he sat up he thought he heard the sound of running feet.
He was looking from the unlit transfer-station through open cargo-doors into a large and well-lit ship’s hold. Comaboxes - presumably those with Consorts in - were laid out in a line across the centre of the hold. There were more stacked against the far wall.
Suddenly a figure darted into the light. Sais recognised that silhouette: Damaru. He must have opened his box at the top and freaked out. As Sais watched, the boy reached the line of unloaded comaboxes, hesitated for a moment, then broke to the left.
Sais jumped out of his box and ran forward on a surge of adrenalin. He skidded to a halt as another figure, a man in a short grey tunic, ran across the hold: one of the Sidhe’s mutes, chasing Damaru. When Damaru reached the far end of the comabox wall he pelted round the corner, further into the cargo-hold, with the mute close on his heels.
