The journey had been arduous. It was not just the jarring of the hard-packed dust, or the blind stumbles into dried-up creeks or fissures. These things were tolerable. It was the completeness of the dark that most drained the spirit. It was an unnatural darkness; oil-thick, without pigment or shade. There was no moon, no distant star, no glow of a far-flung town or camp. There was no buzz of insects, no song of cicadas, no tinkle of water, no rush of wind. The Barrens was not a place at all. It was an absence. It had been a place once – Naeo remembered all too well when she had lived on the plains of Salsimaine – but that time was gone, and with it the place. There was only one thing for them on the Barrens now, one thing too large, too strong, too powerful to be swept aside. The Circle of Salsimaine. And they could not reach it soon enough.
It felt strange to yearn to reach the place that would take her so far from everything she had ever known, and from her father. How unthinkable to be leaving him behind – leaving him there, in the Dirgheon. And yet she didn’t feel the awful, searing guilt that she had before. Perhaps the conversation with Filimaya had helped, but it was something else too. At some point in the hours of walking she had realised that this was what he would want. He would want it because this was safer for her. More importantly, he would want it because of something he had said to her once. And here, in the endless dark and silence, it came back to her as though she had heard it yesterday.
They had been walking through the wood near their home. She tried not to think how near to that place she might be right now – now it was just another expanse of dust. They had been talking about the tree house they would build together. They had talked about such innocent, unthinking things in those days. And they had a pretend argument about who would be lookout, in their fortress in the trees – pretend, because who would make a finer lookout than a Scryer? And then they had talked about Scrying, and her sadness that the gift had not passed to her (because then surely she would be a better lookout than he). But her father had suddenly become serious, and had taken her by the shoulders and looked at her earnestly.
“I would give it all – all I have seen – to see with your eyes.”
She had laughed. “Why?”
“Because you are the better part of me, and you will see a better world.” His grip had begun to hurt. “You must never look back, Nay-no! Never look back!”
He had said it so fiercely – so much had he meant it – that it made her shiver even now. A better world, Naeo mused. Is this what he could have meant? This strange journey? Or had he just meant that she sees the world differently?
Whatever the truth, she knew he would prefer she was opening her eyes to the wonders of the Other, than trailing back to the horrors of Thoth’s city.
“‘Never look back, Nay-no’,” she murmured.
“If you’re finished talking to yourself,” said Ash suddenly, “you may want to take a look!”
Naeo lifted her eyes and instantly felt a flood of relief. There, high above the plain, was the silver disc of the full moon, muddled with wisps of cloud. When she looked about her, she could see the rolling, featureless surface of the Barrens, marked out in dim shades of silver and grey. Finally they would be able to see their way.
But there was something else. Something on the muddy horizon: bold and distinct. It resembled a collection of broken, decaying teeth, assembled in regimental rows. Some pointed towards the moon, others were capped across their tops, forming an arch.
Naeo drew up sharply. “The Circle of Salsimaine!” she whispered.
She felt a surge of energy, and for the first time in hours warmth flowed through her veins. They picked up their pace, striding out towards their goal. Ash struck up a song once again, and this time she joined him:
“With a hey-ho and an open yawn,
We’ll wander out this morning!
Singing hey-ho to the scarlet dawn,
Among the birds—”
And then they halted and fell silent.
There was a movement out on the Barrens, beyond the stone circle.
It seemed at first like a heat haze, or a trick of the light, but neither were possible: not here on the Barrens. And then, in the heart of the rippling, shimmering motion – lights. Just two at first, blinking feebly. Then another, and then three more. Suddenly there were fifteen, twenty lights strung out across the horizon. Between them, the first shapes appeared: low and hunched and dark. Naeo felt a shiver as she saw them rolling from side to side, heaving and loping. She knew that prowling gait all too well: Ghorhund, running at full sprint, running directly towards the Circle of Salsimaine.
Then, between them, others began to materialise through the night mists: taller and leaner, moving with a longer, more measured stride, their formation precise and purposeful.
And finally, at the very centre, a shape that dwarfed the others. A solid form with wheels, led by a great entourage of bounding creatures: a feverish churn of life. Riding high in the rear, a tall elegant figure held an arm aloft, wielding an unseen whip, driving the charge.
“Run!” cried Naeo, stepping out in the direction of the stone circle.
Ash hesitated. “Towards them?”
Naeo wheeled about. “What choice do we have? We have to get there first! Run!”
“ What you are not, the rest of you may be.”
TRISTE’S EYES STARED UP at them wildly, searching, imploring.
“Run!” he cried. His teeth were chattering. “I s-see them!”
He strained to sit up as though wanting to flee, but there was nowhere to go but the dark. He settled back as he had many times before, closing his eyes for another few moments of exhausting visions.
Simia could hardly look at him. His head and hands were covered in burns from where he had held the fire, and where he was not burned, his flesh was white and icy, glistening with a cold sweat. The Salve they had applied to his injuries seemed to be doing little to help – it was never very effective on burns, and these burns were so deep, so severe. Gone was Triste’s sombre calm and instead he looked restless, like a frightened child. Even the warmth of the fire seemed of little comfort – if anything, he seemed to be getting worse.
“I did this,” mumbled Simia. Her face was pale and streaked with tears, her expression blank and desperate. Sylas reached out to take her hand, but she pulled it away.
He wanted to console her, but he had to attend to Triste. He leaned over, bringing his face close to the Scryer’s, forcing him to look away from the darkness.
“What can we do, Triste?” he asked softly.
The Scryer seemed to see him for a moment, frowning slightly, but then his eyes drifted back to the darkness. His face crumpled. “I saw them,” he sighed, tears welling in his eyes. “I saw them!”
Sylas shifted again, trying to catch the Scryer’s eye. “Triste! Look at me!” he pleaded. “Tell me what to do!”
The Scryer blinked and looked confused, as though fighting some internal battle. Slowly he seemed to focus.
“Water …” he whispered. “Cold …”
Suddenly they were both in motion. Simia riffled through their bags for their blankets, flinging the contents on the floor in her haste. Sylas fetched his water bottle, threw the stopper to one side and brought it to Triste’s lips. The Scryer drank weakly but thirstily, then nodded his thanks.
As Simia arranged the blankets, Sylas lowered Triste’s head on to a rolled-up tunic and then leaned over him again, stopping him from looking out into the night. Slowly, the Scryer seemed to settle a little, his eyes losing their wild stare, his body relaxing beneath the blankets. And then, with each passing minute, he came back to himself. As the darkness and confusion receded, he seemed to become aware of Sylas for the first time.
“You made it,” he said in a feeble voice.
“Thanks to you.”
Triste coughed and wheezed then glanced around him. “Simia?”
She knelt down next to Sylas, her face strained. “I’m so sorry! This is all my fault!
” The tears started to flow again. “If I hadn’t—”
Triste pulled a hand from beneath the blanket and held it up to her lips. Sylas flinched when he saw how badly burnt it was, livid in the firelight.
“They could have found us anywhere,” said the Scryer. He touched her cheek. “You’re not to blame.”
“But I made us—”
“You kept Sylas safe. That’s all that matters. It was just bad luck.”
Simia tried to take hold of his hand but he winced and drew it away, laying it back on his chest. She looked stricken and helpless, her hand wavering in the air.
Triste fixed her with his doleful eyes. “Will you do something for me?”
“What?”
“Sit with me while I sleep,” he said with a weak smile. “Lie next to me, if you like. Keep me warm.”
Sylas glanced at Simia warily – he knew how she could be when people got too close – but she did not hesitate. With a steady look as though daring him to say anything, she made a pillow of a bundle of clothing and laid down next to Triste. In truth she was not close enough to give him any warmth, but the young Scryer seemed contented, or pretended to be so, for her sake. He shifted his stiff limbs until he was as comfortable as he could be and closed his eyes.
Sylas stood up and moved a little closer to the fire. He had almost forgotten how cold and numb he felt, and it was good to be nearer to the glowing embers. He sat down as close as he dared, letting the fire do its work on his aching limbs, then he stared out into the darkness.
He tried not to listen for voices, but they seemed to have gone. Perhaps they had somehow managed to elude the Kraven in the marshes, amid all the confusion and Triste’s strange, magical fire. Or perhaps – his eyes drifted across to his companions – perhaps they had taken all they needed from Triste.
The Scryer looked peaceful now, lying on his back, breathing slowly and deeply, but Sylas remembered their first sight of him entering the camp. He had looked half dead: gaunt and pale, whispering wild words in a tongue Sylas did not understand. He shuddered as he remembered his own encounter: the raking sensation as they had drawn themselves out of him, leaving less than they had found. And perhaps because of that sense that they had taken part of him away, he found himself even keener to understand. What were they? Where did they come from? Why were they here?
He glanced at Simia, wondering if he might disturb her, but she was asleep now, lying on her side, facing away from Triste but nestled close, so that her back was tight up against him. And then, even as he watched, she turned over and unconsciously threw an arm across the Scryer’s chest.
Sylas smiled and looked away. And then something glinted in the corner of his eye, something among the things that Simia had scattered in her hunt for the blankets. It was the Samarok, the gems on its cover winking by the light of the flames. He fetched it, dusted it down and took his place by the embers.
He opened it at a random page and started to turn through the entries, his eyes tracing the handwritten runes, now accustomed to their shape and form, reading them with ease. But after he had scoured four pages, he bit his lip and frowned. This wasn’t going to be easy. He knew that the Ravel Runes should be able to take him quickly to any mention of the Kraven, but he first had to find a reference to them. He rubbed his cheek, deep in thought. Or did he? Paiscion had only taken moments to find those lines from ‘The Song of Isia’ – had he really just chanced across them? And then he remembered. He remembered those final moments in the Den of Scribes, when Fathray had shown him the true power of Ravel Runes: their power to connect meanings, not just words.
He turned the next page and the next, until something caught his eye and then he began to read:
“… how many generations now dead and gone have passed their lives in ignorance of this singular and simple truth …”
Part of him wanted to read on, but instead his gaze rested on a single word, the word ‘dead’. Then he turned his thoughts back to the marshes, when the Kraven had attacked, when he had first felt their deathly touch. Even as he called all this to mind, the runes began to move: the delicate tendrils turning and stretching, the coils unravelling. Within moments the entire page was writhing, its neat lines of Ravel Runes unfurling into a new entry. As it became still, his eyes travelled back along the new line and he began to read:
“… and who knows what such things might tell us about the dead – about spirits and ghosts and superstitions that have long tested the boundaries of our imagination …”
With a tingle of excitement he rested his eyes on ‘spirits and ghosts’ and once again, he cast his mind back to his encounter with the Kraven. The runes responded more quickly this time, their loops and coils unravelling in an instant. The entire page blurred and then settled to a new entry.
He smiled to himself: he was getting better at this.
“… though my rational mind tells me it cannot be so, it seems clear to me now that the mythical things we have come to know as ghosts and wraiths and spirits, are the very same deathly creatures that the Suhl and the Gherothians call the Kraven.”
He raised his eyes and for a moment stared out into the darkness. It felt like a world of secrets was opening itself to him. He steeled himself and dropped his eyes to the page.
“Here in this world, like all supernatural things, these ghosts have found their full and true form. They are as much a part of this world as the Suhl, or Essenfayle, or Thoth’s creatures, or the Three Ways; and just as things of magic and folklore flourish in the endless possibilities of this world, so do the Kraven.”
Sylas felt the chill returning to his limbs and he threw another bundle of wood on to the fire. He shuffled a little closer and carried on reading.
“But because here the Kraven walk the earth like men, because they are as much a feature of the night as the stars or the moon, they can be known. They can be studied and understood. And this brings me to my most astonishing discovery: the discovery that they have their roots in the division of our worlds, and perhaps in the Glimmer Myth itself.”
Sylas’s fingers were quivering now, partly from cold and partly excitement.
“The Kraven speak with varied voices, they behave in different ways, but one thing is common to them all: they gather in places of violence, places where lives have been torn away. Indeed, the truth of the Kraven is reminiscent of our own ghost stories: tales of murder victims haunting those who killed them, of dead soldiers roaming the battlefields upon which they fell. And so we must ask ourselves, what if all our superstitions about ghosts are founded on a truth? What if the Kraven are part of our world as well as this? What if our own ghosts – however rare, however diminished and misunderstood – are real? After all, it makes a certain kind of sense that the two worlds should be twinned in death as well as in life. And so, as the guardians of the Glimmer Myth, we must ask, does the Myth help us to understand not only how we are in life, but also in death? Surely it must. If we all, each of us, have our twin, our Glimmer in the other world, living as we live, what happens when one part dies an unnatural death – suddenly, violently – and yet the other remains alive?”
Sylas had stopped breathing.
“The answer, I believe, is the Kraven.”
“Why do we so doubt ourselves? Why do we seek comfort as we do from priests and soothsayers and clerics? I have begun to wonder if the answer lies somewhere between the worlds …”
THEY RAN AND STUMBLED and fell and cursed and ran again. They ran until their chests heaved and their muscles burned, until their vision narrowed to a tunnel and all they could see in that tunnel was the Circle of Salsimaine.
They still had not been seen, shrouded as they were in the darkness of the Barrens, and now they were drawing near. But so was the approaching host. The creatures were beyond the stones, picked out by pinprick torchlight: the glint of harnesses, the glow of fangs, the bounding lope of their charge. Around fifty Ghorhund devoured the last stretch to the stones followed by at least the same numbe
r of Ghor. But in this dim moonlight Naeo doubted her eyes, because many moved with a lithe and supple sprint that barely disturbed the dust. Their motion was ranging and cat-like, light and nimble: they hardly seemed to be Ghor at all.
“It’s going to be close,” panted Ash, wiping dust from his eyes. “I’ll have to distract them while you … you do whatever it is you’re going to do.”
“Whatever that might be,” grunted Naeo.
Ash slowed his run.
“What do you mean?”
“Just that I’m not sure what I’m going to do,” gasped Naeo. “I don’t know … how the stones work, exactly.”
Ash threw his arms wide. “What?”
“Well it’s not as though anyone told me!” snapped Naeo. “Filimaya said I’d know and I believed her!”
“And now you think you can’t do it?”
“What do you want from me? I’ll do my best, just buy me a bit of time!”
Ash looked at her darkly and then out at the approaching creatures.
“Good thing the future of our world doesn’t rest on a half-baked scheme and a kid who doesn’t know what she’s doing!”
Naeo threw her eyes in the air and ran on.
Ash watched Naeo’s slender form disappear into the darkness, then his eyes shifted to the imposing stones of Salsimaine, now just a short sprint away. He pressed his hands together in a mock prayer. “This place will be the death of me,” he sighed.
He peeled off to his right and spurred his tired limbs to another dash. He skirted a deep fissure wide of the stones and near to the greatest number of the enemy. When he thought he had run far enough, he chose a wide part of the crevice and jumped down into its shadow, dropping as far as his waist. Then he went to work.
He pulled his pack from his back and thrashed through its contents until he found his water bottle, then he laid it at his feet and shaped the loose dust around it so that it stood upright. He pulled the stopper out and took several paces backwards and squatted down. Already he could hear the low thunder of the approaching Ghorhund and the dry walls around him were shuddering and bleeding wisps of dust into the air. He only had a few more moments.
Circles of Stone Page 14
