Amelie frowned. “Well we’ll see about that.” She turned to the glass bottles and started checking the handwritten labels. “Jeremy, could you get the morphine from the first-aid box? And a syringe?”
Silence.
“Jeremy! Stop staring and do as I ask!” she barked.
Tasker darted forward and bent over the first-aid box. He flipped the lid off and began riffling frantically through the contents, turning out bandages and packets and bottles. He had almost emptied the box before he found what he was looking for: a tiny bottle and what looked to Naeo like a thin glass tube. It was only then that he looked up.
There were tears in his eyes.
For a moment their gaze met and he smiled tenderly, sadly, but he quickly looked away and busied himself with the syringe and bottle.
Amelie was working at the pestle and mortar now, grinding a mixture of colourful ingredients. She paused, selected another bottle, and added a sprinkling of the grey contents. “I’m making up what we call a poultice,” she said, apparently to them both. “A mixture of black walnut, lavender and some other good ingredients that we use as an application for wounds, infections, that kind of thing. It’s astringent, which means that it might help to draw out the Black.” She looked up and gave Naeo a wide, reassuring smile. “It’ll hopefully give you a bit of relief, if nothing else.”
She added another two powders and ground away at them with practised skill. Finally she picked up a bottle of clear fluid and poured it over the mixture, giving it one last stir.
“There,” she said. “Now, where’s that morphine?” She took the syringe from Tasker, stood up and leaned over Naeo. “OK, there’ll be a quick sting but then you should feel much better.”
And that was exactly what happened. Naeo felt the sharp prick of a needle and then, almost immediately, a wave of warm, wonderful relief spreading through her back. It was miraculous, as though some magical elixir was washing beneath her skin, cleaning her of the Black.
“Better?” asked Amelie, lowering her face.
“Much!” murmured Naeo.
Amelie grinned. “The wonders of poppy flowers,” she said, “with some good chemistry thrown in. And speaking of good medicine, let’s try that poultice.”
Cones of blue-white light carved through the night sky, sweeping the tops of skyscrapers, blazing down wide avenues and dark alleys. The chatter and whine of helicopters was everywhere, competing with the wail of sirens. They were busy and tireless, hornet-like, criss-crossing the vast grid of city blocks, diving into parks, harrying the long lines of traffic. Pilots peered with infrared eyes as their sensors relayed a blur of data; distances were computed, odds were calculated, targets acquired and rejected. A net had fallen over New York City: a net of night vision, rotor blades and chain guns.
And yet in one dark alley in Upper Manhattan, the shadows were moving. They slid between dumpsters, leapt across fire escapes, scuttled along walls. They ran in complete silence and with absolute precision, never breaking their tight formation. Some were larger, bounding on all fours down the floor of the lane, some swung between drainpipes and leapt between sills. Others followed behind, running upright, their large heads thrust forward, giant limbs pounding the tarmac in unison. Some of these carried metal cases, others hastily packed briefcases, while the largest ones had something draped over their shoulders: limp, ungainly forms which were nevertheless carried with ease.
When the figures crossed to the next alley, they briefly passed under amber streetlights. For a moment the burdens were illuminated to reveal arms and legs, hands tied behind backs, some struggling, others still.
On they ran, gliding along the dark veins of Manhattan as though they belonged. They passed in a shadowy blur and a hiss of heaving lungs, leaving as they had arrived: stealthily and quietly, like ghosts. Sometimes they would be seen as they darted across streets or leapt between buildings, but it was a fleeting glimpse – a streak of black, a question rather than a certainty.
And then Central Park opened up before them, the wooded fringes welcoming them into the darkness. It was a sanctuary of deserted dells, lakes and hills. Still they searched the skies for the buzzing beasts that might stray too close, that might spit that metal fire and bring them to a sudden end, like the others. But here they were useless. The park was immense and riddled with places to hide: dense woods and bridges, thick undergrowth and half-lit tunnels.
They were free now, free and in their element, leaping from rock to rock, branch to branch, tearing up turf in a sprint. They were near. They could smell it.
They swarmed through clearings and trees until they reached a place where the ancient rocks of Manhattan erupted from the turf, climbing up towards the sky. There they halted, prowling and panting, breathing deep gasps of the acrid city air.
Only one of their number made the climb – a giant Ghor commander with massive shoulders and a pronounced wolfish mane that rose in black tufts around its ears. Around its neck was a collar of red and gold and beneath one brawny arm it carried a metal case. The steel surface was embossed with the yellow triangle of a warning. Inside the triangle was a black mark surrounded by three black segments.
The mark of a nuclear hazard.
The Ghor commander gave a triumphant huff as it reached the top of the rocky hill and surveyed the scene. All around was the sprawling wilderness of Central Park and along its fringes the giant towers of the city rose like black totems – monuments to mankind’s power. The commander’s eyes traced the glittering lights of these black slabs of stone and a disdainful laugh gurgled in its throat.
“They built the greatest stone circle of them all,” it growled, its mongrel eyes following the ring of skyscrapers, “and they don’t even know it.”
With that it held the metal case aloft, raised its head to the heavens and howled at the swollen moon.
“No matter how great the empire, no matter how many lands it consumes, Kemetis remains at its heart. It is the Motherland.”
SYLAS GAZED OUT OF the archway at the criss-cross of lightning, sharp and bright against the black, billowing clouds.
A storm was coming.
It was gigantic, filling the heavens with a distant rumble, its heavy brow stretching as far as the eye could see. And yet to Sylas, it seemed nothing – incidental – a daub across a painted sky. For him, the turmoil was inside.
He knew it all to be true. He knew it. And that was the most terrifying thing of all.
He was Isia’s blood; and she was his.
It was the family that he so yearned for that made this his destiny. And now he felt sure that this same destiny would break his family apart. How would he ever be able to be with his mother? Why couldn’t he just have a normal life?
He pushed the Samarok away. “But if all this is true, what should I do?”
Isia took his hand. “I know how overwhelming this must be, Sylas, how frustrating, how frightening. I wish I could take the burden away. But I cannot. It was yours to carry before you were even born. You and Naeo must heal the rift between our worlds and, in doing so, end the emptiness in our souls – the doubt that makes us question ourselves and reach for answers in fables and superstitions. You must undo what I have done.”
Sylas felt a great swell of desperation. “But how?” he pleaded. “I think I know what I’m supposed to do, but I still don’t know how!”
Isia smiled in a way that made Sylas feel that she had seen his thoughts before they had entered his mind. “It will not be easy. It is not simply a matter of combining two halves of a whole. You and Naeo must use what you know of each other and of the worlds to forge a new and greater union.”
“But how?” implored Sylas. “HOW?”
“Go to the beginnings of it all,” said Isia calmly. “As all things in Nature, the rift has its roots, and it is in those tender roots that the cleft between our worlds found life. That is where you will find its truth. Go to –” she paused and turned in her seat to look out at the storm howling around th
e terrace – “to the place between the cataracts, to the halls of the Academy of Souls. There you will find the truths that go before me, before Merimaat and the Merisi.” She turned back to the archway distractedly then pulled her blurred eyes back to Sylas. “Go there, and take the Samarok. Learn from it what you can of Merisu and of Merimaat. She came to know more of these truths than any other.”
“I have to actually go to this place?” asked Sylas.
Isia nodded. “It is the motherland, the centre of the Empire. That was where it began, and that is where it must end.”
“The Motherland?” cried Simia. “Kemetis?”
“Yes.”
Simia threw her hands in the air. “That could take weeks – months!”
“Perhaps, though I doubt you have that much time.”
Sylas looked from one to the other. “So where is it, exactly?”
“I think you know the answer to that, Sylas,” said Isia. “In your world it has a different name.”
Sylas sank slowly back in his chair. He hardly had to think about it. Everything led him to the answer; it always had, even before he had read of Ramesses in the Samarok. It was in the shape of the buildings, the clothes of the people, the scripts, the symbols, the paintings, the statues. The truth was in the stark, foreboding shadow of the Dirgheon and now – now that he thought to look – it was in the face of Isia: the tone of her skin, the shape of her features.
“Egypt,” he said.
Isia smiled. “Yes. In your world, Kemetis became Egypt, but while the great Egyptian Empire has long since failed, that of Kemetis reigns on and sprawls to the limits of our world. Kemetis is the root of Thoth’s empire and the heart of this tragedy. There you will find the final truths you need to …”
She trailed off and turned towards the archway, a flicker of concern passing over her face. She rose from the table. “Wait here,” she said.
She walked purposefully through the opening and out on to the broad stone platform. The gale caught her gown and her hair rose in wild, dancing trails.
Sylas and Simia looked at one another.
“What’s she doing now?” whispered Simia.
Sylas shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said, watching Isia walking out across the terrace. He looked back at Simia. “How are we supposed to get to Kemetis in time? The song said we only have days, not weeks!”
Simia sighed. “I don’t know.”
For a moment Sylas fingered the Merisi Band, and then he said: “Were you thinking what I was thinking? When she said that stuff about bloodlines and the beginning and the end?”
Simia raised her eyebrows. “Sylas, I never know what you’re thinking.”
“I’m serious, Simsi! Don’t you remember the message?” He lifted the bracelet and tapped it. “The one engraved on this? The one from The Song of Isia?”
She thought for a moment and then her mouth fell open. “‘In blood it began … in blood it must end!’”
Sylas nodded. “It wasn’t a warning, it was about the bloodline,” he said. “The one that starts with Isia—”
“—and ends with you!” said Simia excitedly. “Of course!”
Sylas turned to the Samarok. “The truth was in here all along.” He picked it up and stared at it for a moment, then started stuffing it into his bag. “Come on, we should go and see what’s going on.”
“Sylas …” said Simia, staring at him.
“What?” He turned and saw that she was staring at his neck. He touched it gingerly with his fingertips. “Is it worse?”
Simia broke into a smile. “No, it’s better!”
“Better?”
“Completely and utterly better!”
Sylas pressed at his neck. There was no pain, no raised skin, no nauseating slide of Black beneath the surface. It was as though it had never been there.
Simia leaned in. “When did that happen?”
He tried to think back. He had felt it when they had been climbing the tower and when they had talked to Isia, and he remembered the dull ache when they had sat down at the table, when they had started to eat …
“The fruit!” he exclaimed. “The fruit of the Knowing Tree!”
“How do you know?”
“Because of how it made me feel – I’m sure of it! The Black made my head all cloudy and confused, but the fruit … I felt free, like I could see everything! It was the opposite! The antidote!”
“The anti-what?”
“The antidote – the cure! It must have—”
He was silenced by a sudden pulse of lightning and a deafening clap of thunder. Their eyes snapped to the archway and they saw Isia, far out on the very brink of the terrace. She was at the mercy of the storm, her body buffeted by the gale, her hair flying wildly like dark flames.
And then she turned to them.
Gone was her softness and serenity.
Her face was as pale and hard as stone.
“Behind and between these quiet years there is a silent surge, a gathering storm that will one day engulf our worlds …”
AMELIE SLID THE FINAL safety pin into the bandage. “There, how does that feel?”
“Much, much better,” said Naeo, sitting up on the edge of the bed and flexing her shoulders.
“That’s mostly the morphine. Let’s hope the poultice gets to work before it wears off, but you’ll probably need another dose.”
“OK. Thanks for all this,” replied Naeo.
Amelie sat down next to her on the bed. “Don’t thank me – I feel rather responsible. You’d be all right if I hadn’t squeezed you so hard!”
Naeo smiled. “Don’t worry, it was pretty bad before the hug.”
They both laughed.
Amelie’s eyes played over her face. She seemed captivated. “You know, you have his laugh.”
“Really?”
“Just the same,” she said. For a moment she stared, but then she seemed to realise what she was doing and drew her eyes away. “A nice thought, isn’t it? That we might share our laugh with our Glimmer?”
“I suppose,” said Naeo.
Amelie hesitated, and then asked, “Do you share a lot with Sylas? I mean, do you feel connected?”
Naeo looked away and shrugged. “Sometimes. Usually when I’m asleep, in my dreams.”
“Really?” asked Amelie, leaning forward. “That was how it was for me. The voice I heard – it was always in my sleep.” She paused, hoping that Naeo would say more.
But Naeo was quiet. It felt so strange to be talking about Sylas. She hated talking about these things anyway, but this was Sylas’s mother, desperate to know about her son. How was Naeo supposed to explain this stuff without saying the wrong thing? Without somehow getting in the way? She just wanted to change the subject. She thought for a moment, then pointed to the first-aid box and glass bottles. “So … are you a doctor?”
“Yes … yes, I am,” said Amelie, taking a moment to collect her thoughts, “but not the kind you’re thinking of. I’m a botanist.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a kind of doctor of plants and flowers.”
Naeo was astonished. “You treat … flowers?”
Amelie gave a hoot of laughter. “Not exactly! I study them.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what science is all about: we look for the truth of things.”
“Oh,” said Naeo dubiously. “Why? What use is that?”
Amelie’s jaw fell open. “What use? How do you think we know how to make morphine out of poppies? Or that poultice on your back? How do you think I grew the plants in the first place?”
Naeo straightened. “I didn’t mean that science isn’t useful, I just don’t get how studying things is useful.”
“But science and study are one and the same thing!” protested Amelie. “The word science means knowledge. We are only able to do all these wonderful things with medicines and machines and technology by studying how things are made, and what makes them the way they are, and how
they are connected to other things.”
Naeo frowned as she thought about this. “I guess. It’s just that we’re so different,” she explained. “With Essenfayle we feel natural things – the connections between them. We don’t have to study them.”
“And that’s why you don’t understand them.”
Naeo bristled. “But we do understand them. That’s how we communicate. We don’t ask Nature to do what it couldn’t do itself. We understand it.”
“If you say so,” said Amelie, curtly. “And yet I’m told that it was magic that shattered our worlds in the first place.”
Their eyes met and for a moment both seemed ready for an argument. But then Amelie broke into a smile, her face beautiful once again.
“Sorry,” she said, raising her hand to her mouth. “It’s just that you look like him when you’re angry.”
Naeo pursed her lips, still irritated. “I do?”
Amelie nodded. “That thing you do with your eyebrows,” she said, spellbound. “And your eyes …”
“You’re not going to hug me again, are you?”
They both laughed.
Amelie reached out and took Naeo’s hand. “Sorry, I don’t want to argue.”
“Me neither,” said Naeo. They sat quietly for some moments, listening to the sound of the stream.
Suddenly a loud fizz and whistle made them both look up. To their astonishment, something small and golden shot in a high arc over the bushes and saplings, leaving behind a trail of blue smoke. There was a loud tinkle as it struck the dome, leaving a small, irregular hole in the glass.
They looked at one another.
“What was that?” asked Naeo.
Amelie frowned. “I have no—”
And then a tall, athletic figure burst from a clump of bushes on the ridge, running in the direction of the object. Just as he began to descend, he caught a foot on a root, pitched forward and tumbled over and over down the bank in a jumble of blonde hair and flailing limbs.
Naeo cleared her throat. “That’s Ash,” she said. “I’m afraid he’s with me.”
The winds howled across the Barrens and sang through the stones of Salsimaine, buffeting the rises and screaming through the ditches. When they came to the fire pit, they hit the earthen ring and spiralled up into the dark skies. The flames leapt and danced, but Simia’s pit was just deep enough – the walls just high enough – and the fire was not snuffed out.
Circles of Stone Page 33
