Dark Heart (Husk)

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  The voice in the back of his head groaned.

  Dryman smiled the smile of a man who has manoeuvred his adversary to exactly the place he wants him.

  ‘Then it is fortunate you have me with you, for I have encountered supernatural forces before. Somewhat of an expert, in fact. Just listen to me, and all will be well.’

  Now do you see why you must take my advice?

  No. I see why I need advice. Yours may be no better than his. But speak away; I will listen. On one condition. You explain exactly who you are and how you gained access to my head.

  A tickle of sound moved across his mind, as though someone had run a fingernail gently across his skin. A woman’s voice—the woman’s voice—as clear as a mountain stream: That’s the best question you could have asked him.

  Who was that? the other voice asked.

  Duon said nothing, tried to think nothing. He didn’t think the woman and the cynical man would like each other, and he didn’t want them talking together—or worse, fighting each other—in his head.

  ‘Eat your fill,’ Dryman said. ‘Take whatever extra food these fools offer you, and scavenge anything you think will be useful. We’ll soon be on our way north. The real treasure is still some distance away.’

  Dryman patted him on the shoulder, as though Duon had just pleased his master with a new trick, then walked away.

  Finally, Duon thought, I have my mind to myself.

  Not quite, the woman’s voice said. I want to find out who you are, and how you can mind-speak. Are you here, around the fire? If you are, stand up and wave your arms. Then I will make contact with you.

  Not likely, Duon replied, and tried to break his mind away from the contact. He began to sing a children’s nonsense rhyming song in his head.

  But he had so many questions, and could not prevent them forming even as he gave himself to the song he’d learned from his mother. Who was the woman in his mind? Was she the same woman as the one who spoke nonsense syllables and, if so, why could she speak so clearly to him and not to others? And who was the hated cynical man who had been speaking into his mind for months? And why would a mercenary such as Dryman care about the wishes of the Emperor? Above all, how was he, Duon, to get the better of the mercenary and reclaim his rightful place at the head of the remnants of the expedition?

  Duon sat with Torve, rolling slivers of meat into balls and wrapping them in greased paper. He could feel the woman in his mind. She was somewhere out there, close by, moving around the fire, hunting for him. She wanted to examine his secret voices, but he didn’t want even to acknowledge them. He wanted to be left alone.

  ‘Generous of these people to include strangers in their largesse,’ he said to the Omeran.

  ‘How do they know we are strangers?’ Torve said. ‘We might be residents. The town is large enough that people might assume they simply haven’t met us before.’

  ‘Look around you. Have you seen anyone else with skin as dark as mine, let alone yours? And don’t you think our inability to speak fluently with them might be a hint? And our clothes—tattered, odorous and of a fashion completely different from anything any of them are wearing. Enough reasons?’

  Duon reflected on how far he had fallen. Debating with an Omeran! Let alone losing his temper with one. He wasn’t one of those who believed Omerans were only animals, but neither did he hold with treating them as humans. Something unnatural about that. Still, when one of them was the only person who would listen to you, it made him easier to accept.

  ‘These people are grieving over the loss of fellow citizens and loved ones,’ Torve said. ‘They have just been told they may have lost their city. They may still be in danger of attack. How much time do they have to consider the differences between one man and another?’

  ‘You make a good point,’ Duon said. ‘But now, just after having been dispossessed by strangers, is precisely when they are likely to be at their most suspicious.’

  As if conjured by his words, a group of people came towards them. Duon recognised the burly, red-haired man he had spoken to just after they’d arrived in this place; two others had been with him. A dumpy, plain woman and a thin, elegant boy with piercing eyes. They accompanied the man now. Something stirred at the back of Duon’s mind.

  The woman tugged on the boy’s arm. ‘Heeh,’ she said. ‘Hee thum wheeh heeh.’

  She has no tongue. She is the one.

  ‘You’re the fellow I spoke to last evening,’ the burly man said. ‘I’m still curious as to where you are from.’

  ‘Did I not say?’ Duon replied, thinking carefully. ‘We’re from south of here.’

  ‘Oh?’ the man said, his deep voice freighted with suspicion. ‘My children’—he indicated the woman and the boy—‘and I are also from the south. From Fossa on the Fisher Coast. I don’t remember seeing you before. Which village is your home?’

  ‘We come from further south than you, I’m sure,’ Duon replied.

  The man’s gaze sharpened. ‘Neherius?’

  You do have a talent for saying the wrong thing, said the cynical voice in Duon’s head. The woman—the burly man’s daughter—immediately put her hands to her temples.

  ‘No, we are strangers from far south of Neherius,’ Duon said, ignoring the voice. ‘Further south than any kingdom you know.’

  He watched out of the corner of his eye as the woman whispered in her brother’s ear, her hands gesticulating all the while. He could hear the sounds she made, they echoed in his mind, not in his ears: Vuh baak mann heehs me shpeek.

  Duon wondered suddenly: Am I the only one who can hear her? Or can she mind-speak with her brother and father? If she can, why is she whispering in her brother’s ear?

  Because she doesn’t want you to hear her, imbecile, said the cynical voice in his head. She doesn’t know you can hear her spoken words through your mind-link.

  Mind-link? Duon thought at the voice. And what do you know about such things that you can put a name to it?

  He dragged his thoughts back to the conversation. ‘Why does where we live matter?’ he asked the red-haired man.

  ‘You should know—ought to know, if you’ve just travelled north—that this land is at war. The Neherians have invaded the Fisher Coast. It appears that Raceme has fallen to them. Now I’d like to know how you found yourself in a city, the name of which you didn’t even know, unaware that there was a war going on.’

  ‘Arathé says the mind-talker is one of these men,’ the man’s son said, interrupting his father. ‘She thinks it’s the man you’re talking to.’

  ‘What’s wrong with your daughter?’ Duon asked. Far too rude, but he was shaken. To have been found so quickly! He didn’t know enough yet about his mind-voices to determine whether they should be kept secret, but he knew he didn’t want this tongueless woman to learn any more about him.

  ‘She had her tongue cut out by the servants of the Undying Man,’ said the burly man. The anger underlying his voice was unmistakable. ‘You’ve heard of the Undying Man, I take it?’

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ Duon answered guardedly. I’ve met him, actually, he thought as he answered. I spent some time in his fortress, a little over two years ago now, as his guest.

  He wasn’t trying to communicate, it was just a memory, but it lay across the forefront of his mind. Of course she picked it up, like a bird spying a shiny thread.

  Did you? Her mind-voice sounded excited. Two years ago? I was in Andratan then.

  A pause. Duon looked at the woman, stared right into her eyes, and saw they were every bit as piercing as those of her brother.

  ‘Whah ihh veay ooh ooh ush?’ she asked. At the same time, her voice lanced through his brain: What did they do to us?

  Then the cynical voice rang out in Duon’s head; and, as it spoke, it was clear to Duon that the girl heard it too. Two of them, afflicted in the same manner. The likely explanation for their ability to mind-speak each other.

  Come north to Andratan and find out.

 
CHAPTER 4

  SECRET ENCOUNTER

  LEFT TO HER OWN devices while Duon and Dryman wasted time talking with the Racemen, Lenares began to wonder why her fellow southerners refused to discuss what had happened to them. She had many questions and seemed the only one willing to examine them. Were the others not interested in how they could have travelled thousands and thousands of paces in a single moment of time? Why were they all consumed by the events in this small place?

  Dryman would hear no questions when he returned. ‘We are leaving soon,’ he said brusquely. ‘We’re going north. Eat as much as you can, collect food, look for discarded shoes and clothes, beg anything you can’t steal. Be ready, or you’ll answer to me.’

  So Lenares and Torve spent the morning scavenging from people ill able to afford to give anything away. Lenares found herself wanting to remain here, knowing that nothing could be as important as finding and halting the hole in the world (she still thought of it as one hole, though knew it might be two), but Dryman was insistent. He did not care about her feelings and would hear none of her arguments.

  ‘North,’ he said. ‘We must go north. The Emperor demands it.’

  The big hairy red man called Noetos seemed in charge of the local people, even though another man, Captain Cohamma, thought he was. She knew two captains, Duon and Cohamma, and neither was listened to. But the people were prepared to listen to the hairy man, which was odd, because he came from somewhere else. Not as far away as she and her fellow southerners did though. ‘He defied the Fingers of the Gods,’ the women around the cooking fires said to each other. Duon told Dryman what they were saying, and Lenares listened. What fingers of which gods? she wondered, but her thoughts were lost in Duon’s commentary.

  ‘He fought and killed a dozen Neherians with his sword. He stood there and breathed in the whirlwind, sucking it out of the sky. Sunaiya was there, she saw it. He didn’t want us to leave Raceme last night, but Captain Cohamma forced us out. Now the Neherians have control of our city. Who should we listen to? Who cares where he comes from? He wants us to try to retake Raceme—is that a good idea? Haven’t we lost enough already? How can we survive without our homes? Who will bury our dead?’

  Now Lenares watched the women leave the cooking fires and settle down to work. Their men had gone somewhere—Duon said that many of them had gone with Captain Cohamma to scout the city, to see if any of the secret ways were undefended—leaving the women to find food. Fed up with doing nothing, Lenares stood up, stretched her legs and joined them.

  She could not understand their language, but it did not matter. She could see their numbers, interpret their moods, read their fears, their determination to do what had to be done. There was something reassuring about working with these women. Knocking on the doors of huts and begging for food was better than sitting with the captain and the soldier. Taking food to others was better even than spending time with Torve, who seemed afraid to look at her.

  You would hardly know there was anything wrong, reading the faces of these women. For a while Lenares worried that she might have forgotten how to interpret the numbers correctly, but she reminded herself that people were likely to be different in different places. Friendly, not quarrelsome like the cosmographers were. They did not sulk over petty things. They got on and did what needed to be done.

  The women welcomed her as part of their group. They shrugged their shoulders when she indicated she couldn’t talk, and laughed and joked with each other, even though they must have been worried about what had happened to them. Not all of them were like this, though. A few women sat listlessly on the ground, or moved purposelessly from group to group. Perhaps these were the ones who had lost family members. The friendly women took special care over these ones.

  Within a single hour Lenares found herself able to understand much of what the women said. She was delighted. It seemed her numbers had more uses than even she had suspected. She associated the sound of the words the women spoke with particular facial mannerisms, body language and a dozen other clues. I am reading them, Lenares realised. I am hearing their language through my numbers.

  The women were talking about the loss of their city, of course they were. Their husbands and sons were indeed scouting the city, seeing what could be done to take it back. This hill they had camped on was called Shambles Hill, and the small wooden buildings packed about its base were known as the Shambles. It was a poor place, and people who couldn’t afford to live in Raceme proper lived there. These huts were where the women begged most of their food. Some of the women were embarrassed by this: they had thought themselves too good to seek charity from the poor, but in most cases it had been offered freely.

  Lenares found her numbers could not help her talk to them—though she felt confident even that would come in time—but she enjoyed listening. Had such a disaster happened in Talamaq, people would have bickered and fought in their haste to blame each other. This was a much nicer place than Great Golden Talamaq. People in Talamaq did not smile at her like these women did.

  ‘I wonder where this girl is from,’ one of the laughing woman said. ‘She’s a hard worker.’

  ‘I thought she might have been a—’ Lenares didn’t understand the word, but she thought it meant someone not right in the head. ‘She’s not, though. She understands what we’re saying.’

  ‘She looks like an Ikhnal—some of them have skin that light. Definitely someone from the Fisher Coast.’

  ‘She’s with the three men who appeared in the city just after the storm,’ said another woman. ‘They’re definitely not from this part of Bhrudwo. Did you see how dark their skin was?’

  ‘I didn’t like the look of them. One of them had shifty eyes. Do you suppose the girl’s their——’ and she used another word Lenares could not interpret.

  ‘The younger man is nice.’ Lenares supposed the woman was talking about Captain Duon. ‘He has such a friendly face. And did you see the shape of his shoulders? He could——’ another series of words she didn’t understand, accompanied by gestures, ‘with me any time he wanted.’ The women laughed together and Lenares laughed with them.

  And so the talk went. Lenares loved it all. To be included was such a wonderful feeling. She felt now as she had felt the day she appeared at the Emperor’s court.

  So this is happiness.

  ‘Lenares?’

  She turned to see who had placed his hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t touch—oh, Torve. Does Dryman want something? Have you collected enough food?’

  Torve looked embarrassed, as though caught doing something he shouldn’t. ‘Dryman is elsewhere, and I have as much food as we can carry. I came to see you, to talk to you. I thought you might want to talk about what happened to us in Nomansland.’

  ‘I am enjoying myself here,’ she said, more strongly than she intended to. Her happiness had made her forget her previous concern about the hole in the world, she realised; and, because she was honest, she acknowledged to herself she did not want anything to interfere with that happiness. ‘These people do not care whether I have a gift or not. None of them call me a halfwit.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ Torve said gently.

  ‘But you don’t think I am human.’

  ‘I think you’re my Lenares,’ Torve answered. ‘It’s the others who think neither of us are human. You know this.’

  ‘Can we talk here?’ said Lenares, reluctant to leave her new friends, but finding Torve’s gentle speech stirring her, as it always did. My Lenares, he said.

  ‘Wouldn’t you rather talk where we can’t be overheard?’

  She thought about it and found that yes, she would very much like to talk with Torve where no one else could hear them. The warm pink feeling moved from her chest as she thought about it, down it went, until she could feel it…well, in the strangest place. Why there?

  ‘Where do you want us to go?’ she asked, her voice somewhat hoarse.

  ‘Down beyond those trees,’ Torve indicated. ‘We will not be overheard there.�
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  ‘Wait for me there. I think I need to…you know, go.’

  ‘We don’t have long. Dryman will be back soon.’

  Lenares watched him walk away and saw the beauty, the nobility, in his numbers. Honesty, integrity, passion. And a deep sadness, so tightly held it was difficult for her to read. She could pry, but Torve would not like that. And everything about him was held in thrall by something else. Something to do with Dryman and his obedience to the Emperor. Something, she was beginning to realise, she would have to save him from.

  Torve couldn’t name the emotion that had driven him to take Lenares aside. He had no experience that could give the feeling a name, no friend or parent to tell him what he felt was desire. His master had said little of these things, for who would talk of love—of making love—to an animal?

  If he had known what motivated him, he would have resisted it with everything he had. He could not, they could not, never, not that, not while his master still lived. Could not. So, because they could not, he did not consider that they might.

  ‘Lenares?’

  ‘Yes?’

  She sat down beside him on a grassy slope overlooking the sea. The late morning was warm and the air moist; unusual for his desert senses, made stranger still by the absence of the clinging Talamaq dust. The grass fairly wriggled with life, and his ears were entertained by birds chirruping to each other in trees off to their right. The sounds of the others had been left well behind.

  ‘Am I such a disappointment to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said; and the way in which she stated the truth without adornment took his breath away. ‘I wish you could tell me everything, all the truth. You confuse me and hurt me. But you make me feel good too. I want to talk with you all the time.’

  ‘Just talk?’

  Torve’s heart leapt in his chest at his daring words. Talking as the young men and women did behind the curtains at summer feasts in the Talamaq Palace. Where was this taking them? He remembered the House of the Gods and how they had kissed, how they had wandered from room to room holding hands, and in his heart named them the best days of his life.