Dark Heart (Husk)

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  Thrown away where? Where were they now? Not the House of the Gods, and not Nomansland. Nowhere in the Elamaq Empire—her nose told her that. She could smell the fresh, sweet scent of water, an abundance of it all around her. She kept her eyes shut, but her nose kept on telling her where they were. She knew where they had to be.

  She opened her eyes.

  ‘Lenares?’

  She looked into the broad, care-lined face of Torve the Omeran. His wide-set eyes gazed at her with concern, then relaxed as he saw hers were open.

  ‘You are alive,’ she said, and smiled.

  ‘So are you.’ His eyes danced with happiness. ‘Do you have any injuries?’

  Lenares shook her head. She so wanted to lean forward and kiss his broad lips, but did not. Not when she did not know where they were.

  He put a hand behind her neck and eased her head up; she braced herself on her elbows. He squatted, bent close and whispered in her ear.

  ‘I’m so happy you are well.’

  ‘Why are you whispering?’

  ‘I don’t want Dryman to hear me.’ His voice was so quiet she could barely hear him.

  ‘Is he alive?’ she whispered back.

  ‘He is,’ Torve sighed. ‘As is Captain Duon. A few bumps and bruises, but otherwise hale.’ He pulled his head away. ‘Do you know where we are? Has your counting been interrupted by our travel in the hole?’

  ‘I have no centre now,’ she said, speaking more to herself than to Torve directly. ‘I’ve lost my count, my connection to Talamaq. I need to find another centre so my numbers work properly.’

  ‘Can you centre yourself on a person?’ he asked her, easing himself back to his feet. The warm pink feeling flared in Lenares’ breast at the obvious longing on his face.

  ‘Only if that person stays constant,’ she said shyly.

  ‘Oh,’ Torve said, and drew further away. ‘That I cannot promise, Lenares, for my life is not my own. I must do whatever my master commands: lie, steal, murder and even worse things. Do you understand? I am not human; he makes me not human.’ He bowed his head and walked a few paces away.

  She closed her eyes. Imagined Torve telling her all the truth. Imagined running her fingers through his tightly curled hair, looking into his beautiful dark eyes. The pink feeling grew until her body buzzed with it.

  ‘Is the girl awake yet?’

  Dryman stood over her, his unreadable face shadowed in the gathering gloom.

  ‘I’m awake,’ Lenares said. ‘And you’re evil.’

  ‘As well we understand each other then,’ Dryman said, laughing shortly. ‘I’m evil, and you’re awake. Though not as awake as you think, fey girl. Not as awake as you will be one day.’

  He did not explain his strange words. Instead he grabbed her wrist and pulled her roughly to her feet. ‘Come, then, girl, use your witchery and tell us where we are.’

  ‘I know where I am,’ she said, snapping at the soldier. ‘I’m standing next to a rude man who touches people without permission. And the rude man and I are standing somewhere in the northlands.’

  ‘If you can’t do better than that, perhaps this expedition can do without its cosmographer.’

  ‘What expedition?’ Lenares spun around, taking in the shadowed, pale shapes of buildings all around them. ‘I do not see our soldiers, Dryman. How will the four of us conquer the northlands? How much treasure can we carry back to Talamaq and the Emperor’s feet?’

  Dryman hissed; then, striking like a snake, he placed his hands either side of her head, as though he was about to kiss her—or eat her.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ Lenares cried.

  ‘You are a fool,’ he whispered, her head between his hands, his mouth close to her ear. His breath smelled strong, of cloves and other spices. When had he eaten spices? ‘For someone thinking herself so clever, you know nothing and see less. You are never going to work it out, so I will tell you. I am using you, girl, as I am using Duon and the Omeran. And I am telling you this now because you will never work out how or why it is happening. I will continue to reveal to you enough truth to defeat me, but, despite this, you will not understand. I will feed on your frustration. I will savour your descent into madness. Not that you have very far to go.’

  ‘Get your hands off me,’ Lenares snarled, batting them away. Real fear churned within her, fear just like she had felt in the House of the Gods. He touched me! He didn’t ask if he could! And what a touch! How could his hands be hot and cold at the same time? It was almost as though—as though Dryman was a shell, within which…something…Numbers flickered in front of her mind’s eye but fled before she could bring them into focus.

  ‘What has happened to this city?’

  Captain Duon stood beside Dryman. He had a deep bruise under one eye and dust all through his hair. Lenares turned to him, a rebuke on her lips, angry he had interrupted her thoughts. Dryman turned also, his mouth open, ready to speak. Under the heat of their combined gaze, Duon backed away.

  ‘Well,’ he said, sounding aggrieved, ‘I thought someone would be interested in where we have ended up.’

  ‘The far more important question is—’ Dryman began.

  His words were finished by Lenares: ‘Who brought us here?’

  Dryman and Lenares stared at each other like two cats disputing territory.

  ‘Nevertheless, take a look around you,’ Duon said. ‘Something has happened here.’

  Lenares stepped away from Dryman. One, said a quiet voice in her mind. One what? she wondered for a moment; then realised she had begun counting her steps. Oh.

  At first glance the city seemed similar in style to the parts of Talamaq she had seen. Pale stone buildings, wide streets, open spaces. But the streets of Talamaq were much tidier than those of this city. Why would the citizens allow so much rubbish to pile up?

  Rubble, not rubbish, she realised. I see what Duon sees. And, as she saw it, her numbers began to assemble themselves into some sort of pattern. The numbers lay in trails over the city like a nest of snakes. Something—a number of somethings—had swept through this city, knocking down buildings, mostly wooden structures— who would build a house out of wood?—scattering them either side of their passage.

  She followed the pattern backwards through space and time. Five snakes, their trails crossing each other as they worked their way across the city. Follow them backwards. Buildings reassembled themselves. People came back to life. The snakes shrank, slow, and withdrew from the ground, up, up into what?

  Her numbers spun around each other, grew dark, smelled of water. Thunder rolled, lightning flashed. And, in the midst of the chaos unleashed on this city, a hole, an absence of numbers.

  The hole in the world. The same hole Lenares and the others came through.

  This is what the hole does, she thought as she looked upon the devastated city. It eats threads and nodes. People die. The purpose of their deeds is lost. The world unravels.

  We are all going to be destroyed.

  But what is the hole doing here? Then another thought: Are there stories other than ours? Threads we know nothing about?

  And a final thought. Tell Dryman nothing.

  Duon licked his lips. Dryman the mercenary soldier made him nervous. The circumstances that had led to the man taking command were unclear, as were the reasons why they had continued northward after the Valley of the Damned. If he was honest, his fear of Dryman had assumed a significance out of proportion to the actual danger the man presented. It seemed unlikely the soldier could out-duel Duon with a sword. Dryman had looked competent—a little flashy, actually—during the fighting at the Valley of the Damned, but Duon could hold his own on the practice ground.

  There was something about Dryman, though, that defied analysis. Everyone felt it. The strange cosmographer girl could not figure him out, and the Omeran seemed to be in his thrall. Weak minds, both. But even Dryman had not been able to find a way through the glamour that had fallen upon them in Nomansland. Nor, for all his arrogance, had
he kept them from being taken up by what the cosmographer called a ‘hole’ and deposited here.

  Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to.

  Lenares knew something about where they were and what had happened here, Duon believed. But her caution around Dryman kept her mouth closed. She had said, though, that they were in the northlands. That made no more sense than any other idea, but nor did it make less sense, so it would do as a working assumption.

  They stood in the middle of a wide but empty street. Whatever catastrophe had wrecked the city had also driven the inhabitants either indoors or out of the city entirely; he’d seen one or two people down towards the harbour, and even now he could see indistinct movement in the gloom. Something about the city tugged at his memory: he had been here during his exploration, as late as last year perhaps, he was sure of it. Wide streets, a small but serviceable harbour, an imposing palace looming above the water. Hadn’t there been a monument of some kind near the palace? He craned his neck. Though where they stood gave them a good view over the city, he could see no monument. Perhaps he was wrong.

  A boy came scurrying down the road, eyes streaming with tears.

  ‘Pardon me,’ Duon said, an arm outstretched, stopping the lad in his tracks. ‘Can you tell me what town this is?’

  The boy jabbered something and tried to pull away from Duon’s grasp. A northerner tongue, no doubt of it.

  ‘Slow, please,’ said the captain, struggling to recall the generic northern tongue he’d learned. ‘Do you understand me?’

  ‘How can I (something) understand you when you don’t talk (something)?’ The boy screwed up his face, evaded Duon’s grasp and sprinted up the street towards a gate in the city wall.

  A crowd stood by the gate, and as Duon began to walk towards them, one bent down to listen to the boy, who pointed at him. There was shouting, then movement behind the crowd, and a burly, red-haired man forced his way through, clearly attracted by the hubbub.

  ‘A good evening to you all,’ Duon thought he said, was sure he said, as he approached. ‘Can you tell me the name of this city?’

  The boy held on to the skirts of what was probably his sister; surely she was too young to be his mother. She had tears in her eyes and dirt streaked her face. Near her stood another woman, much plainer, wearing a dirty, shapeless robe similar to that of a Talamaq palace servant. Two men flanked her. The younger, a handsome man with piercing eyes, had a hand on the plain girl’s shoulder. The older was the burly red-haired man who had made his way through the crowd. The man stood now with his arms folded, as though waiting for an explanation, though he looked disinclined to believe any explanation he was given.

  ‘Boy says you are a stranger,’ the burly man said as Duon drew up to the crowd by the gate. Suggate—he remembered the name. He’d remember the name of the city soon. ‘Can’t speak the language, odd dark skin, he said. His mother is afraid you are Neherian, though you certainly don’t look like a Neherian to me. What are you then? What are your companions? And where did you come from?’

  ‘Do you regularly take instruction from boys?’ Duon said. He hoped he’d got the word for ‘instruction’ right; it would rather spoil the effect if he hadn’t. As he spoke he couldn’t help reflecting on the strangeness of this. He and the remnants of the expedition had travelled north magically across the world, had survived the ravages of Nomansland, only to exchange words with some local buffoon.

  The man’s face went red, and the boy laughed: clearly Duon had not chosen the right word. He’d been expecting to have months to practise his Bhrudwan common tongue as they made their way north towards Jasweyah, but they seemed to have bypassed the mountain kingdom altogether.

  ‘Your pardon, sir. I am indeed a stranger here, and not practised in your tongue. Could you please tell me the name of this town?’

  ‘You’re wandering around in the ruins of the fairest city on the Fisher Coast, and you don’t know where you are? Are you entirely a fool?’

  ‘The fairest city on the Fisher Coast? Then this is Aneheri?’

  ‘Aneheri?’

  The man’s face, already red, turned crimson, and his hand went to his side as though reaching for a blade. The younger man said something in low tones.

  ‘Aye,’ the red man responded, nodding. ‘Can’t blame a fool for his ignorance, but there are questions raised here, to be answered at a less urgent time. This is Raceme, friend, not the gutter-born, Alkuon-cursed Neherian nest named by you. Now, man, gather your companions and leave the city. Night is falling and the decision has been made to vacate Raceme; it is too dangerous to remain here says Captain Cohamma, apparently, and we want to prevent looting. We were on our way out but were called back by the boy’s mother here, suspicious of strangers. Seems we were needed, after all. Now get your friends and follow us.’

  Duon opened his mouth to respond, questions forming as he prepared to speak, but the red man beat him to it.

  ‘Are you deaf, or were my words too difficult for you? Go, fetch your friends and come with us out of the city. Do it now, or be prepared to defend yourself.’

  Putting aside his surprise, it was all Duon could do not to laugh. Defend himself? Surely this man was no swordsman; he’d seldom seen anyone with such an obvious lack of grace. The fool didn’t even have a sword on his hip. The younger man had a blade, though, and the look, but he wasn’t the one doing the threatening.

  Something else had occurred to him during the exchange: no one else in his party understood the northern language. Dryman would have to depend on him. Duon could tell the soldier whatever he wanted. Finally, a situation where his experience would count. Where he might be able to remake some meaning from the wreckage of this expedition.

  ‘Seen any Neherians?’

  ‘There was one a while ago, or so one of the women claimed. No sign of him now.’

  ‘What’s to stop them sneaking back into the city now the storm’s over? Taking by stealth what they couldn’t take by force?’

  ‘The woman makes a good point, master. Why have we abandoned the city?’

  Voices washed over Duon as he lay near one of the many fires set on the hill. Weary from days of flight and the shock of finding himself suddenly somewhere else, he’d followed like a dutiful animal when Dryman decided they would join the exodus from the city. Even Lenares hadn’t questioned the decision. Now he awaited events. Darkness had set in, a rich cloak of comfort unlike the cold starlight of the south, and under that cloak the survivors of Raceme lit fires, fed themselves with whatever they could find, and took stock. Listening to the many fragments of conversation gave Duon the chance to learn much of what had taken place here, and he was somewhat discomfited to find similarities with events to the south. Invasions, ambushes, storms, destruction and flight.

  Despite his interest, however, he listened with only one ear. Another voice commanded his attention. Duon recognised it as emerging from the same place his previous delusional voice had come from: a small, cold place in the back of his head. But this sounded nothing like the previous voice, which had been an evil, taunting thing. Instead, this voice sounded gentle, sorrowful somehow, even though it seemed not to be forming words.

  Dih heh huh huh?

  A question, it sounded like, though he did not understand it. What could be happening to him? Some mental reversion to babyhood? But would a baby be able to analyse its own thinking?

  On and on the voice went, speaking seldom and slowly, and Duon sensed that, despite its incomprehensibility, it directed a conversation. As he listened, a group of two men and a woman came to the southerners’ fire and gave them a basket with freshly cooked meat inside. The southerners fell upon it ravenously. But still the one-sided conversation of meaningless sounds carried on in Duon’s head.

  Meh poh miw tew fah fah.

  Pause.

  Maah. Peh faw amomah.

  Long pause.

  Had the woman—he was almost certain it was a woman’s voice—had she ceased? You, woman, are you still there? h
e thought at the voice.

  An immediate response, but not directed at him. Shh. Shum wum wish nin. Wish nin meeh shpeek.

  Pause.

  Then, in Duon’s mind, as clear as his own voice: I hear your thoughts, stranger. I will hunt for you, and then we will talk. You may have the answers I need.

  Duon put a hand to his mouth, as though he could prevent his thoughts escaping. She won’t hear me if I don’t direct my thoughts at her, he told himself. She made no reply that night, nor did she speak further, so perhaps he was right.

  Morning brought a cold wind. Lenares wrapped her tattered clothes about her skinny limbs, but still felt she had never been so cold. ‘Just a sea breeze,’ Captain Duon had said to her, as though such impossibly bitter temperatures were commonplace. Perhaps they are, this far north, she thought, horrified, though her numbers told her that this was no colder than a Talamaq winter’s night. For the first time she wanted the adventure to end. She didn’t care whether she solved the mystery of the hole in the world; it could eat everyone up for all she cared. Just let her be home, warm and safe with the other cosmographers.

  But the other cosmographers are not at home, she admitted. They were dead. Mahudia in the belly of a lion; Rouza and Palain, ashes on the hot desert wind. She was the only one left. There was no real home to go to.

  With that thought, the part of her mind still hoping to reclaim her centredness, the Talamaq base for all her numbers, finally relinquished its unconscious effort. Lenares felt it as a sudden dizziness, and for a moment the entire world went blank.

  A mere moment, but it seemed to last forever. Not just blind, but stripped of all sensation, Lenares spun in the centre of the hole in the world. This is what it is like to be dead, she thought. Here I am with Mahudia and Rouza and Palain and all the others, and I can’t see them or feel them or hear them or touch them or hug them or be angry at them or hear them tell me how special I am, and oh, oh, please, I don’t want to be dead, I like life too much. I could be touching Mahudia right now and I would never know. I could be crying or screaming and I can’t tell.