Dark Heart (Husk)

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  A few of the crowd fled; others pushed harder at those lined up in front of them, while some tried their hand at scaling the side of the gate.

  Bregor watched, immobilised by dread, as Noetos turned and walked slowly back towards the whirlwinds of the gods, arms spread wide as though trying to embrace his own destruction. His children—Opuntia’s children, white-faced and red-cheeked—followed him.

  Now this, this was near the top of the list of the most difficult things he had ever done. Not as terrifying as watching his family die, but that had not been a conscious choice. He had struggled then, trying to escape, to interfere. This time he had to make himself walk towards what might well be his own death.

  But not that of his children. They would be safe if they did what he asked.

  If this storm is natural it will kill me. There was no room for doubt in that thought. If, however, the storm turned out to be magical, he had the word of an alchemist—a man at least three parts insane—that the stone he carried would protect him.

  Time to find out.

  He strode forward and stood in the path of the largest funnel.

  Drawn by all three people they were hunting, the fingers of the gods came together in the open space between Suggate and the Money Exchange. Now everyone could see the storm for what it was. Noetos shouted something to his children, then waved at them, and they drew away from him. The vast hand of the gods closed around the Fisher, obscuring him from sight.

  The guttural roar made by the wind thrummed through Bregor like the sound of betrayal. Here, a man made sacrifice for others. This man had led a powerful invader away from his friends, not towards them. How could Bregor not feel guilt, molten, leaden guilt, in his chest as he watched?

  Despite his guilt, he hoped the storm’s wrath would end with the death of the Fisher. He even hoped, for the man’s sake, it happened quickly.

  With a jerk the curtain of cloud rose up into the suddenly lightening sky. A loud rumble shook the ground. The four fingers and dark thumb twitched, elongated, and seemed to grow old and spindly before his eyes. Their attenuated shapes coalesced, then fell from the sky with a sound that was more sigh than crash.

  What has Noetos done?

  The dust and debris took an age to settle.

  Noetos raised the huanu stone as all around him debris battered the ground. Something solid spun out of the nearest finger: a chunk of masonry coming straight towards him, nearly taking off his head. His ears buzzed and popped with the force of the wind, forcing him to swallow. Contrary winds battered at him, and he fell to one knee—his good knee—to brace himself. So a gnat would brace against the shoe about to stamp it out.

  Would his heart burst from his chest before the wind took him? Would the wind kill him, or would he be pierced through with debris, or would it be the fall? Had Gawl felt such terror?

  The nearest finger held back. Two fingers spun forward, flanking the first. But it was the fourth, the most slender finger, that touched him first.

  The tentative blow did nothing more than knock him down, spreading him flat on the ground, which shook. He was on his back, eyes closed. He opened them, and held up the huanu stone. Funnels hovered above him, ready to claim him, plucking at him but seemingly unable to gain purchase. One twitched, as though a spear had been driven into its side. A second reached towards him, then it too began to spasm. As did the next, and the next. With an almost human howl the last whirlwind, the thumb-like wedge, drove towards him like a sword thrust. But, like the others, it broke itself against something—the power in his hand—and lifted, whirling, screaming, contracting, thrashing like a snake severed in two. Then came a sound like the angry hiss of a god’s breath, and the storm collapsed.

  All was quiet for the briefest moment. Then stones, mud, timber and organic things came crashing to the ground all around him. Nothing hit him—it was as though he knelt within an invisible room—but he remained tense nonetheless.

  The crashing ceased. Dust, dirt and leaves drifted to the ground, coating the borders of his invisible room with fine grit. Then the room vanished and the dust and dirt filtered down on top of him.

  ‘Noetos! Fisher!’

  Voices calling for him, hands reaching for him, pulling him to his feet, dusting off his tunic, slapping him on the back. He blinked open mud-caked eyes.

  ‘Is everyone…are there survivors?’ he asked, took a deep sigh of relief, inhaled too much dust and began to cough desperately.

  ‘We are as you see us,’ Bregor told him, and indicated the hundred or more Racemen who had witnessed the death of the storm.

  ‘I thought it had me, friend.’ Noetos coughed again. ‘Whatever it was.’

  ‘Seems I was wrong to doubt you, Fisher. Your daughter she is, as you said, beyond a doubt; and on her heels, and the heels of your family, are the very portals of death.’

  ‘So it seems,’ Noetos said wearily. ‘Yet these things are connected to Andratan and the Undying Man, I’m sure of it. He is the arch-magician of Bhrudwo, after all. It is he who must account for what has happened here, and elsewhere.’

  ‘So you say. But before this night is over, you and your family need to answer some hard questions. Your willing and not-so-willing followers ought to know what might be in store for them.’

  ‘We may well have a talk together, all of those part of my group,’ Noetos said, sighing in a combination of pain and relief. ‘But first we need to tend the injured, bury the dead and provide for the homeless. Do you not agree?’

  ‘’M’not goin’ back down there,’ one of the bystanders said. ‘Not if them whirlin’ fingers might come back.’

  ‘I’d rather sleep in the Shambles,’ said another. ‘The Neherians could still be hiding in our city.’

  ‘Aye, the Summer Palace is largely intact,’ a grey-haired man added. ‘I saw soldiers heading that way before the fingers came. There may be a force just waiting to sweep down on top of anyone gullible enough to return. Seen enough, anyway, for a story to tell m’grandchildren.’

  No storyteller ever told a story like this one, Noetos reflected. He’d not been offered a single word of thanks. Citizens of cities rescued from the wrath of the gods were grateful to their saviours in the stories he’d been told. Not curmudgeonly complainers. But the grey-haired man, the last to speak, did have a point, however cowardly the motive for presenting it. Noetos had no doubt some of the Neherians had escaped Raceme—they were most likely scattered among the refugees up on the hill behind the city—but surely the majority of the attackers remained within the city walls.

  He cast a wary eye over what remained of Raceme. The Merchants District appeared largely untouched, but large sections of the Artisans, Warehouse, Oligarchs and Justice Districts had been reduced to dust-covered debris. He wondered briefly about the dust, given the torrents of rain that had fallen before the whirlwinds ravaged the city, but of course the interiors of buildings that had then been smashed open, or even drawn up into the sky, had been dry when they were destroyed by the storm. The dust must surely have come from inside the damaged buildings, of which there was a vast number.

  His gaze was drawn to people emerging from some of the ruins, walking with an eerie calm in the direction of Suggate. Noetos grimaced. No doubt they too would express their dissatisfaction with the state of affairs and upbraid their rescuer.

  ‘Fisher, do you not think we ought to see to those on the hill?’ Bregor’s voice sounded hesitant, as though the insensitive fool actually realised his words were provocative.

  Noetos did nothing to hold his anger in check. This was one saviour who would bite back.

  Spinning around, he grabbed at the Hegeoman’s tunic. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I do not. Hundreds of people are likely trapped in the wreckage, but that seems to be of no account to you. Or to these people. What is the matter with everyone?’

  ‘They are afraid,’ Bregor said simply. ‘Afraid of the fingers, afraid of the power directing them. Afraid to return in case the power comes back.�
�� He took a settling breath. ‘Afraid to get too close to those at the centre of the gods’ anger. Do you blame them?’

  Yes. Yes, for you have brought this upon us; you, not I.

  ‘No,’ Noetos said wearily. ‘No. But I will aid anyone who requires it.’

  He turned to the crowd gathered around him—a crowd already bolstered, he suspected, by many returning from the hill south of the city. ‘Those who have it in them to render assistance to those searching for friends and family, make yourself known. We will go down together into the city and save anyone who can be saved.’

  ‘I give your “no” back to you, sir,’ said the grey-haired man. ‘We will go down to the city, those of us who can, but you will not come with us, if you please. We heard how the gods’ fingers searched for you and your brood. No one here wants to be near you when next the finger of god is pointed in your direction. Don’t play the hero. Go away, sir, and leave us alone.’

  Others in the crowd murmured their agreement.

  Noetos found himself completely unable to reply. Twice in one afternoon he had been pushed away by those he had sacrificed himself for. Pushed over the edge. The hurt he felt at this struck him dumb. The pure, unthinking rejection. He had tried so hard! He had made every choice in the interests of others!

  He swallowed this like he swallowed the hot lump in his throat, coughed once, and spoke. ‘Very well, you have taken the responsibility for this city in your own hands. I wish you well of it, rebuilding a city that, had circumstances been but a little different, had a duke not once refused the Undying Man, I might have ruled.’ He hawked and spat on the ground. ‘I leave you to your chaos and your enemies, your death and coming disease, your hardship and your vulnerability.’

  He turned his back on the districts he’d played in as a child and pushed his way through the silent crowd, who closed ranks behind him. Near the entrance to Suggate he turned and faced them, and the broken city, one final time.

  ‘I shake your dust from my clothes,’ he said, invoking the old curse. ‘May it return to you and choke you.’

  And, indeed, dust rose from his tunic and breeches as he slapped at them. It blew on a faint breeze towards the gathered Racemen, but fell to the ground between Noetos and the crowd.

  Finally he spoke to Bregor, who had taken a few steps towards him. ‘Come or stay, it matters not to me. Stay and grieve for the lost, care for the injured if the townspeople let you, or come with me to find answers from the treacherous mouths of Andratan. Only decide now. If I walk through Suggate alone, alone I will remain.’

  The words hung in the air like a conjuration, and Noetos realised they could land on him like a curse.

  ‘I’ll do my grieving when and where necessary,’ Bregor said flatly. ‘But I will come with you, if you are going north, and for much the same reasons. Answers, Fisher, are what I’m hungry for. You will give me some, your children will give me more, and no doubt I’ll be fed to bursting by those in Andratan before we’re through.’

  ‘Speeches are over then,’ Noetos said as the Hegeoman came towards him.

  And no more was said, either to them or between them, as they turned and walked towards the cavernous southern gate of Raceme, the summer capital of Roudhos-that-was.

  COSMOGRAPHER

  CHAPTER 3

  HUNTERS

  AFTER A STRUGGLE TOWARDS consciousness through what seemed to Lenares like endless layers of feathers, she finally came to herself. For a few moments her mind lay quiet, as though a river that normally ran through her had been dammed. She had never before felt peace—if that was the word for this strange absence.

  She did not much like the sensation.

  One hole in the world. At this thought her mind river began to flow again. One hole—or was it two? She considered this, puzzling over the differences between the hole in the sky that had snatched her and her companions up from the midst of Nomansland and spewed them out again who knew where, and the one she had seen above the dreadful battle in the Valley of the Damned. Troubling notions flowed like uprooted logs along the river of her thoughts, snagging on each other as they went. She wanted the river to flow smoothly, tick tick tick. The jerky, uncertain thoughts made her angry. Tick. Tick tick tick. Tick.

  She wanted this to be resolved. The uncertainty made her feel uncomfortable. One hole or more than one? She would not open her eyes until she had thought this through. Not to see where she was, not even to check if her companions were alive. This is more important. A faint breeze blew something across her cheek. Dust? Powder? A distraction, whatever it was, so she ignored it.

  Lenares was surprised to find herself thinking at all. Why wasn’t she dead? Why hadn’t it killed her? She knew the secret, after all. The hole in the world—one of the holes, perhaps, snag, jerk went the thought—had been forming for months, perhaps years. It had already been well advanced when she discovered it. She was the very first person to notice it. That made her proud. She wasn’t very good at making friends with people, she knew that, but she also knew she was special because she could understand the numbers that made up the world. She could see them in her mind. She—Lenares, and nobody else—could see the hole, the emptiness, small at first but growing bigger, eating at the places where the patterns of numbers (threads, she named them) joined together. Nodes, which were the lives of people, were being attacked by the emptiness she called the hole in the world.

  And no one else saw it! Not any of the acolytes, training to be cosmographers. Not Mahudia, the Chief Cosmographer, head of their order. Not even their great and good Emperor of Elamaq, a man who, when Lenares met him, turned out to be stupid and nasty.

  Mahudia, the Chief Cosmographer, had come to believe her eventually. And then the hole in the world had reached out and taken her, the woman who had been like a mother to Lenares. A lion had killed Mahudia, but Lenares knew the hole had directed it.

  The Emperor had believed her when she told him about the hole in the Garden of Angels, but said he didn’t. Lies to try to get people to do what he wanted. Why did he have to lie? Why did the all-powerful Emperor have to lie? Because he isn’t all-powerful, that’s why.

  Best of all, Torve believed her. More than believed. Torve, the Emperor’s pet, of the despised human-like animal race, an Omeran. A freak, an animal, but one who could not only talk but also reason. Who was as good with numbers as anyone she had ever met, even Mahudia. Not as good as Lenares though, nowhere near. An animal bred for complete, unquestioning obedience to his Emperor, but who had fallen in love with Lenares, even though he knew his Emperor would disapprove.

  She put her arms around herself, hugging her body at the pink feeling that blossomed in her chest when she thought of Torve. Dirty Omeran animal, part of her mind said, but she ignored it. Where was the harm in loving a lovely, smart person like him? Even if he kept secrets.

  Was Torve alive? Had he survived the fall from the hole in the world? Almost she opened her eyes to find out. No. Not until I have thought this through. She clamped her eyes tightly shut, so tight that colours danced behind her eyelids.

  She and Torve could love each other as long as the Emperor didn’t find out. And he wouldn’t. He was back in his palace in Talamaq (no, no, no, said a faint voice in her head, a fearful voice, not a logical voice, so she ignored it) and they were…she didn’t know where they were. Another log in her river, jerk, snag. How could she centre herself if she didn’t know where she was?

  They had left her home months ago, part of the Emperor’s great Northern Expedition, led out of Talamaq by the celebrated Captain Duon, to take possession of the fabulously rich lands of the north, or at least as much as they could bite off with thirty thousand superior southerners and a hundred invincible chariots. But the expedition met with disaster when enemies of Elamaq ambushed and destroyed them in the Valley of the Damned. If it hadn’t been for Captain Duon and Dryman the mysterious soldier, no one would have survived. Because, for reasons Lenares had not yet worked out, the hole in the world had
aided the enemies of Elamaq. The threads of the mighty Elamaq army had been burned out.

  There had been a presence looking out at the world from behind the hole, a dark, ravenous god searching for prey, and Lenares was sure it was the Son. But, ah, here was the confusion. Her numbers told her that the hole itself had been caused by a god being cast out. She had seen the Son, and had—oh bliss—actually met the Daughter, so the missing god must therefore be the Father. The removal of the Father had caused the hole, she was certain of that, but what made her uneasy was her encounters with both the other gods when the hole had come near—the evil Son in the Valley of the Damned and the good Daughter in the House of the Gods. Twice Lenares had met the Daughter in the House of the Gods, but the House had been in different places: first, south of the Marasmos River, and second—just minutes ago, it seemed—in the midst of Nomansland. The four survivors of the Emperor’s army of thousands had been herded into the gods’ own house, into the place of the magical bronze map, where the gods had once gathered to see the world, and there they had been taken up into the hole by the Daughter.

  But if the Daughter had rescued them, why had Lenares been so frightened? If the Daughter had always intended to draw them through the hole in Nomansland, why did she create such chaos? Why hadn’t the Daughter said something to reassure her? Was the answer that neither god had enlarged the hole alone, that both the Son and the Daughter used it when they had the opportunity? Perhaps the Daughter had driven the Son away. Would the exile of a second god make the hole bigger? Or create a new hole?

  Was the Daughter really the nice god?

  Lenares loved questions when they led to answers, and hated them when they did not. She loved answers, and most of all she loved answers only she knew. But so deep was her unease at what had just happened, she would have been happy to hear the answers from anyone. Let someone else be special. How could this have happened? To be led into Nomansland, to be herded like goats into a pen, then thrown away?