Legends of Australian Fantasy

by Jack

  ‘Can you help him?’

  ‘No. But I can tell you this: your friend is where he is because of something he did, not something that was done to him. To use the Change one must reach into oneself. Reach too deeply and the Void awaits. I’ve seen many promising young talents overbalance and fall, out of pride, perhaps, or fear of failure. Either way, there’s no coming back. The Void Beneath devours all who enter it. How, exactly, we don’t know; it is a mystery we may never solve. But please don’t take hope from that admission. Every case history points in one direction. Your friend’s body may be perfectly sound, but his mind is gone.’

  Adi stared at Samson Mierlo, certain he was telling her the truth as he understood it. It was, however, an understanding that she couldn’t accept.

  ‘There must be something —’

  ‘The Void Beneath is not a place, Lady Hakamu, that you can enter,’ he said, brusquely cutting her off. ‘It is not a foe that you can challenge. It is nothing — a nothing that takes everything in a person and grinds them back to nothing in turn. Such is the foundation of the world; there are no certainties but this one.’

  Her right hand crushed her left. She was unable to speak.

  ‘I’ll leave you now,’ he said, standing. ‘I’m very sorry for your friend, and for you, since you care for him so deeply. When you are able, Ugo will show you out.’

  She nodded, wanting to offer her thanks but unable to trust her clenched throat to issue anything remotely like a word.

  His crisp footsteps led from the study, deep into the echoing house.

  ‘You will go to Madam Van Haasteren.’

  Adi’s head jerked up. The voice wasn’t Samson Mierlo’s, and she had heard no one else enter the room.

  The man’kin was looking at her.

  ‘Magda Van Haasteren,’ it repeated. ‘The seer.’

  She stood too abruptly. ‘What?’ she asked through a wave of dizziness. ‘Are you talking to me?’

  ‘You will go to her.’

  It froze as the house boy appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Did it just speak?’ he said incredulously, crossing to the plinth and staring hard into the stony eyes. ‘Did it say something to you?’

  She shook her head, unsure why the man’kin wanted to keep its animation a secret hut deciding that she was willing to go along with it in exchange for its help. ‘I didn’t hear anything. Did you?’

  ‘I could’ve sworn ...’ The boy shook his shaved head as he guided her to the front door. ‘That old thing’s been in the family forever. If it ever woke up, the mistress would have a fit.’

  ‘It’s probably for the best, then, that it doesn’t.’

  ‘I guess.’

  Adi could tell that the house boy had already put the mystery from his mind. She had no intention of doing the same.

  * * * *

  Magda Van Haasteren. The name meant nothing to her, but it was known in the city’s underbelly. Within an hour Adi had an address, and even a word or two of warning. For a mere seer, Van Haasteren had a surprisingly dark reputation. The rumours were light on details, though, and quite possibly inspired by envy. It was often the way with the genuinely talented, Adi thought, that they should be downplayed and reviled. Were Samson Mierlo correct in his opinion, it would take all the talent in the world to find Ros and bring him back.

  Before returning to the dark side of the city, Adi returned to the Lost Dolphin to check on the man whose mind she was trying to save. He hadn’t moved beyond breathing or drinking the water dripped into his mouth by the maid. She was bored, Adi could tell, but she would have no respite. The manager assured Adi that the maid would attend Ros faithfully throughout the night, if necessary.

  Adi stood for a moment, staring at the covered form of the man she had promised to take as a husband, so long ago. What had happened to that dream? The charm was in her bag, broken like him. How could either of them have been so careless ?

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t taken risks down the years. She was human, and forgave herself for being so. There had been other young men she’d had feelings for, and even one she had given herself to as a lover — in the desert port town of Lower Light, with complete anonymity. If she was to be anything in life, bride or otherwise, she would do so in the full light of the knowledge available to her.

  A promise was a promise, though. A deal was a deal. That was a philosophy trading Clans took seriously. Her life had been built on it.

  Your friend is where he is because of something he did, Samson Mierlo had told her.

  If Ros ever spoke again, she would ask him what had been so important that he had risked throwing away their life together. She doubted, in the weary heat of the moment, that any answer would be sufficient.

  * * * *

  Back through the constricted streets, back into the filth. Adi was retracing her steps in a very real way, for Van Haasteren’s closet-sized stall was only a handful of blocks from the doss-house where she had found Ros. Where the charm had been broken. At that place, in that moment, everything had gone wrong.

  An unwarranted thought occurred to her then: that if she had arrived one minute earlier, events would have unfolded in a very different way. The charm would have led her truly, and Ros would have greeted her with open arms. Was it so unlikely? The man she had collided with — he had been fleeing the scene as she approached. Could he have had something to do with Ros’s condition? Could he, in fact, have been the one responsible for it?

  She struggled to remember his face. At most she had glimpsed him, for her attention had been almost entirely on the falling charm. Long hair pulled severely back from lean features, crisscrossed with thin lines that weren’t tattoos but might have been scars ...

  She forced him from her mind. Lichen stars were coming out above as the chimneys fell dark. She hadn’t slept at all since arriving in Ulum the previous day, and it came to her then that she wasn’t thinking as clearly as she ought to. She needed her wits about her when dealing with Magda Van Haasteren — for fear of deception, or further disappointment.

  * * * *

  ‘Come in quickly,’ the seer said when she rapped at the stall’s flimsy portal. ‘There is a chill in the air that gives me the bone-ache.’

  Adi did as she was told. There was no sign above the door, but it matched the description she had received, as did the seer’s disposition. The air was no chillier than normal; the fans that stirred the cavern’s otherwise stagnant air turned with their usual velocity.

  Madam Van Haasteren was a shapeless, slouched woman in a faded blue smock. Her face was heavily lined, with a down-turned mouth, and eyes that glittered in the light of a single, squat candle. One large-knuckled hand rested on a three-legged table to her side; she clutched a stinking cheroot in the other. Her voice was full of oil and gravel, like gears that had broken years ago, but ground on regardless, without respite.

  Adi offered the woman her fake name, and it was accepted with a knowing stare.

  ‘You’re looking for someone,’ the seer said. ‘Such is the state of all who come to me — at their wits ends and desperate, more often than not.’

  ‘I’m no different, to tell the truth. If you can help me, I’ll pay you well.’

  The seer waved at a second stool, more rickety than the first, and instructed her to sit. ‘Give me your hand, girl, and mind your tongue. I don’t do this for money.’

  Adi felt five years old, and fought a sudden, surprising urge to weep. Her mother had died when she was a young girl, and her father had followed ten years later. For a time she had despaired of the attentions of her well-meaning aunts, but now she missed them, and her mother, and everything that family represented. She had left all that behind to come in search of Ros. And gained nothing.

  Leathery old fingers clasped Adi’s left hand and pulled it close. Sharp eyes inspected back and front, and her fingernails too. They were bitten to the quick.

  The seer grimaced. ‘Does he have a name?’

  ‘Sovan,�
�� she said, still unwilling to reveal their identities if the seer hadn’t already guessed them.

  ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘He’s lost,’ Adi began, ‘fallen into the Void Beneath —’

  ‘Not that. Why do you want him back? If he’s gone, why not let him be gone and move on? Is there something special about him that you can’t find in any other man?’

  Adi gaped, feeling slightly scandalised. Something special about Ros? Of course there was! She wouldn’t have come this far if there wasn’t.

  ‘Put it in words, girl. If you can’t define it, maybe it’s not there at all.’

  She tried. Her voice shook as she talked of their first meeting. Ros had run away from home and her family had given him temporary shelter on the road. Adi had been promised to a boy from another Clan, and she had convinced Ros to take her with him when he left. She had trusted him more in that moment than anyone else, for reasons that she now found hard to capture.

  The seer seemed to understand well enough. ‘You’re talking about the spark,’ she said, nodding gravely. ‘When two people meet who are ... not destined or connected, but complementary — yes, that’s the word I’m looking for — when that happens, you get the spark. You feel it with your whole body and in all your thoughts. It’s like a little bit of lightning, and it too can start a fire.’

  Adi stared at the old woman, amazed as much by the passion that suddenly filled her voice as by the aptness of her words.

  ‘There’s more to the story,’ Adi said, thinking of monsters and death and the nightmares she still had, sometimes, ‘but none of that matters now.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. That’s why I don’t need to know where you think he’s gone. What’s important is that he’s not here, or that he doesn’t recognise you, or both. That’s where it begins, but it doesn’t end there. You want him to know you, to be here for you, and you’re afraid that you can’t make that happen. Maybe he’s forgotten who you are. Maybe he doesn’t want to come to you. You can’t read his mind, and he won’t talk to you, so the uncertainty eats at you, eats at your faith in him. That leads to the questions. Did you do the right thing by letting him go? Would things be better or worse now if you had not? What will you do if you can’t get him back? Who changed — him or you? And the most important question of all: do you even want him back any more?’

  Adi felt as though the seer had reached into her chest and clutched her heart in a tight grip. She could only stare at the gnarled hands still holding hers, and hope chat those sharp eyes didn’t see any deeper.

  ‘Answer my question, girl.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Do you want him back?’

  Adi thought of the doubt she had entertained on the way to the seer’s stall. Could anything Ros said now undo the damage that had been done to the faith she had in him? She saw in her mind his lifeless and impotent form. He had once been so strong. Was it his strength that had given her love for him such vitality? Could she love him now in weakness? Was that a weakness of her own, to even ask that question?

  Her breath came in gulps. She barely noticed that she was crying.

  ‘Yes,’ Adi managed. ‘Yes, I do want him back.’

  ‘That’s a brave answer,’ said the seer, ‘after all that see-sawing. The cloth you’re cut from is strong as well as fine. Remember that, when you need to — because although I can help you, the cost will be high.’

  Adi found herself released from the old woman’s tight grip, and she sat back, blinking. The single candle flame, which seemed to have become much brighter in recent minutes, dimmed now, casting thick shadows across the dingy cubicle. Someone in a hovel nearby was shouting, but she couldn’t make out the words.

  Adi wiped the tears from her cheeks and breathed deeply of the smoky air.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘I’m not talking about money, girl.’

  The seer gestured with her right hand at a wall hanging that might once have been quality work. Ill-served in its lifetime by smoke and neglect, it barely warranted a second glance, but for the significance it had now been given. Faded thread picked out the figure of a Stone Mage in full armour, his iron plates painted ochre with ceremonial rust. The figure stirred slightly, as though someone had moved behind him.

  ‘The understanding you seek lies through that curtain.’

  Adi stood, and shivered, feeling the chill the seer had complained of earlier.

  ‘All right,’ she said, telling herself to see it through. She had faced worse fears and survived. ‘Thank you.’

  The old woman shook her head. She had slouched down even further on her stool, so she sat splay-legged, like a man, and stared despondently at the muddy ember of her cheroot. ‘No need, Adi. No need.’

  Adi was halfway through the curtain before she realised that the old woman had used her real name. By then, it was entirely too late to turn back.

  * * * *

  ROSLIN OF GEHEB

  The young woman ducked into an alleyway. Ros shouted at her to wait, and when she did not do so he set off in immediate pursuit. He had caught only a glimpse of her, but he was certain this time that it was her, the woman he sought. There was no mistaking that long, thick hair, bound up in whirls and streams — or her rich, dark skin, against which the colourful fabric of her dress stood out so vividly — or the confidence in her walk and the almost capricious glance she cast over her shoulder as she vanished from sight.

  By the time he reached the corner, the alleyway was empty. He ran ten steps along it, checking doors and fences as he went. They were secure. A clutch of women appeared from the nearest intersection, and he hurried to them, studying their faces carefully in turn. All of them were strangers. The side roads were clear too.

  He turned in circles at the crossroad, unsure which way to go. That was the fourth time he had lost her in an hour. He was running out of both options and patience. Everything she asked him to do he had done, so why was she still playing games? What did she want from him?

  ‘Don’t do this, Adi,’ he called to the winding streets and the indifferent crowds. ‘I came for you like I promised. Show yourself, please!’

  A flock of sparrows danced under Ulum’s buttressed ceilings, casting shadows from the light-chimneys that came and went, came and went.

  With fists tightly clenched, Ros lowered his head and returned to the doss-house alone.

  * * * *

  He had been in Ulum a week, asking around after Clan Sabatino at Adi’s usual haunts, guided by his memories of her letters and little else. Civilisation seemed a strange thing to him now. Five years with Master Pukje had left him accustomed to empty spaces, rigid routines, and arcane forces. The ebb and flow of ordinary people confounded him. Sometimes he felt that they spoke an entirely different language, one he might never be able to understand.

  He did learn that Adi’s Clan was on its way back from a long, north-western haul, and, to his regret, that Adi’s father had died a year ago. Ulick Sabatino had been a bluff, honourable man, who had placed his faith in Ros under extraordinary circumstances. That Ros had saved his daughter’s life hadn’t hurt, of course, but it took more than that to earn a permanent place at the Clan’s table. Marriage was the only sure-fire way, and even then it could be withdrawn.

  That Adi supposedly wasn’t in Ulum surprised Ros, for his gut told him she was close. His gut had led him to the city from the depths of the desert, and he trusted it still. Persistence would prove the attempt worthwhile, he was sure. The veil of strangeness surrounding him would part before him, and reveal the one he sought.

  He only hoped success would come soon, for his material means were limited. In the desert, he could survive for years unaided, but here he needed money, or a job, or some other means to support himself. The trials of a mad dragon were not recognised in the city as a valid qualification for anything — and besides, Ros was reluctant to reveal his true name. The power of his reputation had almost entrapped him once before. That wasn’t a road he
wanted to follow again.

  * * * *

  For several days he did nothing but walk the streets, trusting not only his instincts but the paths he carved out through the city over the course of time — ornate, sprawling charms for the finding of lost things, the binding of hearts, the uncovering of secrets. He left cryptic messages employing aliases they had assumed in their youth, requesting rendezvous, return messages, or signs ranging from the subtle to the overt. He visited and revisited each location, but never once did Adi leave a response. His messages went unread, or at least unanswered.

  He searched the face of every woman he passed, hoping for a flicker of familiarity.

  He searched his own face in his shaving mirror, wondering what she would think of him when they met. There was no denying that he had changed. Sometimes, catching his reflection in a window or a doorway, he barely recognised the man he had become. But was he more or less handsome ? Would she think the cost of his training too high?