by Tim Lebbon
“It must have just started,” Alishia said.
“Will it spread? Should we run?”
Alishia shook her head. “They’re always quite small. It’s probably a hole the size of your fist. Nobody knows where they go, but you can find traces of old ones sometimes, like deep throats at the base of a crater. If we wait here long enough, perhaps we can go and take a look.”
The sight dizzied Trey; so much landscape still and peaceable, and this patch of it moving slowly at the edges, faster further in, blurred into nothing at the very centre. A big bird flew quickly overhead, dipped down at the disturbed earth to look for worms and insects and was sucked in, leaving floating feathers in its wake.
“What was that?” Trey asked, aghast.
“Moor hawk,” Alishia said wondrously. “I’ve never seen one before!”
“Well you won’t see that one again.”
“I wonder if it’s still whole,” she said, and the idea disturbed Trey into silence.
They sat and watched the swallow hole slowly consume everything within its reach. Plants and soil spat themselves skyward with the pressure, only to be caught again by the hole’s influence and pulled down into its maw. And then the clays and rocks below the soil, the noise of their demise echoing across and vibrating through the land, grinding and smashing together, crushing, throwing up dust and shards that were similarly caught and sucked down. A rainbow formed briefly overhead as the air itself started to move, moisture condensing and darkening the spinning ground, small clouds forming high above and spiralling downward. Air breezed past Alishia and Trey, insects and birds fluttering uselessly against their fate. It was as if the hole was trying to suck in the sky.
At the end, with the ground around it stripped to the bedrock and air still condensing in an endless spiral from above, the hole whistled itself into oblivion. It was a hiss of gushing air that Trey recognises from the mines—sometimes breezes would come from and go to nowhere, sources and destinations both mysteries—and it gave him a shiver to realise that these things may be the cause. The hole’s final breath could even now be exploring the underworld, fingering through passageways and caverns untrodden by humanity, blowing dust against things ancient, unknown and unknowable, passing by sleeping or waking Nax, eventually even reaching the stiff body of his dead mother and querying her demise.
“Are we going to see?” he said eventually.
“No. It’s too uncertain. We’ll skirt around it.” Alishia’s initial excitement seemed to have faded to a mild interest, tempered by her realisation of how dangerous this thing could be.
“It’ll be dark soon.”
She nodded. “We need to camp as far away from here as we can. Maybe it hasn’t quite finished.”
They headed south to pass by the swallow hole, finding evidence of its presence as they moved further away: uprooted trees; shredded shrubs; areas of stripped ground where the bedrock peered through. Two hours later, with the sun setting ahead of them and the life moon a waning sliver against its more sinister sister, they spied a fire in the distance.
“Someone else on the plains?” Trey asked nervously. Alishia was the only topsider he had met and strange as she was, at least she had grown familiar. And besides, he owed her for saving his life. But to face others?
“Yes,” she said. “People. We should go to them. They’ll have food and water, and I’m sure they’d trade some for a crumb of your fledge.”
“How can we be sure that they’re friendly?”
Alishia was silent for a long while, staring across the darkening plains at the winking light. “We can’t be sure,” she said. “But there’s a part of me that craves company right now. That swallow hole … I’ve read about them, but actually seeing something like that, something that is proof of the land changing, winding down and giving out on us … I want to be with other people. I need to talk. And besides, they may know a lot more than we do.”
“About what?”
“Magic.” So saying Alishia strode off, heading for the fire, shrugging her backpack higher.
Trey held back. Alishia’s comments about the swallow hole and what it meant had made him think of the Nax mind he had touched on so briefly and terribly. Something had been wrong in there, an understanding that things were amiss and that it had to wake to take action
And now Alishia was talking of magic.
He could only follow, but the nervousness that had informed Trey’s thoughts since Alishia had found him on the hillside pressed in stronger than ever. Given a target, it flowered into something greater.
He shrugged off his shoulder bag, grabbed a thumb of fledge and began to chew as he followed Alishia toward the light.
17
They stopped running several miles beyond Pavisse. The fear was still with Rafe—the image of that demon coming at him, spitting blood, empty eye sockets seeing far more than they should, smelling the taint of something which even Rafe was still barely admitting to—but his body was failing. He could not run forever, however terrified he was. His legs were cramping, he had a stitch in his side that almost bent him double, and Hope the witch had finally stopped trying to drag him. Now, even she was struggling.
“There,” she said, pointing. At the foot of a gentle slope sat a huddle of buildings, smoke rising lazily from a fire before being caught and blown away by the northerly breeze. “We’ll get some horses.”
“A farm won’t just give us horses,” Rafe gasped. He was bent over, hands on his knees, legs shaking and threatening to spill him to the ground. For the hundredth time he looked behind them, fearing a flash of red in the distance.
“I’ll buy them,” she said. “ Farm folk are always open to secrets.”
The farm was small, suffering as much as any from poor yield by the land. Its outbuildings were in disrepair, one of them leaning over so much that its timber columns had snapped, little more that habit preventing it from tumbling to the ground. There were several other open sheds and barns, all of them bleached by the sun and none of them full. Produce must be rare, such were the denuded stocks. From inside one of the smaller buildings came screeches and screams, rats fighting over some unfortunate victim. The farmhouse itself, a long, low, single storey affair, was adorned with animal heads in varying states of decomposition. Most of them were old, little more than bare skulls hanging onto shreds of leathery skin. But one or two were relatively new, blood dried but still evident in trails down the wall, eyes glassy where they had not been pecked out by birds. It was an old practise, displaying the heads of slaughtered predators, but it showed that life on this farm was not easy. There were at least forty heads nails to the wall beneath the eaves: giant rats; the slab-shaped head of a ground snake; a sabre-toothed dog, its teeth painted bright red; and other creatures, some of which Rafe did not even recognise.
A herd of cows lumbered around a field nearby, chewing at grass that would eventually poison them, udders hanging slack and dry. One of them was mothering a calf, but it was a weak, diseased-looking thing, its red coat faded almost to white from lack of sustenance. A few sheebok wandered across the farm yard, lapping water from a small pond. They bleated and butted each other with shorn horns.
The farm wolf watched them walk in across the fields, eyes glittering and pelt rich and full. Some were eating well, at least. It remained stationary until Rafe and Hope passed the first of the outbuildings, and then it let out a short, loud bark.
From their left came the sound of something heavy stamping and shifting in an enclosed barn. Hope glanced at Rafe and nodded. “Horses,” she said.
Rafe felt strangely at home. Trengborne had been a whole farming community, a hundred times larger than this place and far more advanced, and yet the smells and sights and sounds were the same: sheebok dung; a rack of tools in the farmyard; the background grunts and grumble of farm animals eating and drinking and sleeping. On closer inspection he saw that the sheebok all had eye-rot, and he wanted to find a redspit plant to shred and put in their water. Bu
t he guessed that the farmer knew his work, however bad a state his herds were in. Rafe’s interference would not be appreciated.
Rafe heard a harsh whisper from out of sight. Running footsteps echoed behind one of the buildings. From behind the house more frantic whispers, the metallic sound of weapons clinking together, a hissed curse.
“Stand still, boy,” Hope said when they reached the centre of the yard. The wolf stood by the door to the farmhouse, watching them, busy tail high. “They’ll likely challenge us, but let me do the talking.”
“But I’m a farmer, I’ll know—”
“You’re from a village, not a farm like this. These people will be used to fighting off bandits and tumblers, not sitting around nursing furbats.”
Rafe felt slighted but he did as Hope said, standing still, arms held out from his sides to show that he was hiding no weapons.
The call came from their left.
“Who are you? What do you want?” The woman stepped out from behind the farmhouse, and as she strode into the yard the wolf stepped along by her side.
“My name’s Hope, and I want to buy two horses from you. This here is Rafe.”
“You’re a witch.” The woman had stopped a few paces from them, staring mostly at Hope and the tattoos illustrating her skin.
“Yes, a witch. I’ve got some trades I’d like to offer, if you’ve a mind.”
Rafe looked the woman over. She was quite young, not much older than him, but she had evidently had a hard life. Every second of it was etched into her face. There sewere scars across her chin and throat from some old accident or attack, and her eyes held no fear, only defiance.
“We have only three horses, so why should we give you two?”
“Because of what I can offer,” Hope said. She went to slip the bag from her shoulder and a man stepped from behind a shed to their right, levelling an over and under crossbow at them. He could kill them both within a heartbeat.
“I want no fight with you,” Hope said quietly.
“Looks like you’ve had enough of fighting for a while,” the man said, but the aim of his crossbow never wavered. Rafe could not tell whether he was tired or scared or bored.
“We’re running from a fight, if that’s what you mean. Forgive my appearance; I usually make more of an effort if I’m to meet new people.”
“Your hair’s a mess,” the woman said, and Rafe was sure he saw a blink of humour in her eyes.
“I lost my comb,” Hope said. The woman smiled.
“Running from a fight, eh?” the man asked. “Maybe you’re not much to fear then.”
“No, we’re not,” Hope said.
“Do you bring the fight to us?” another woman asked, appearing from inside the farmhouse. She held a longbow, arrow strung and ready to loose. She was much older than the first woman—her mother?—and even from this distance Rafe could see that something terrible had happened to her; her face was a mass of pale scar tissue, knotted and badly healed.
“Not if we can make a deal good and quick,” the witch said. “Then we’ll be on our way.”
“What if we can’t make a deal?” the younger woman said, glancing at Rafe for the first time. He realised that she was much more frightened than she was willing to show.
“Then we will still be on our way,” Hope said. “Though we’d appreciate some food and water. We have a long way to go.”
“Are you being pursued?” the man asked.
“I don’t know.”
He stared at them along the length of his crossbow, eyes flickering from Hope to Rafe, back again. “I believe you,” he said. “So, this is how it happens. The boy comes to me. Witch, you deal with Josie. And when we’re all finished, everything goes back to normal.”
“That’s fine,” Hope said. Rafe stared at her—they want me as guarantee!—but she merely looked at him and nodded. Rafe turned to the farmer, tried to meet his eyes and see the intent there, but he was inscrutable.
There was a sudden rush of sound in Rafe’s head, so loud and clear that he looked around to see where it came from. He knew straight away that it was personal to him—none of the others in that farmyard were aware of it—and he knew what it was. When he looked down at his feet the land spoke to him. The voices and smells and sensations calmed him, like his mother’s bedtime soothing when he was having a nightmare or his father’s hand on his shoulder as they harvested another diseased crop, telling him things were all right. And although he still did not know the language, he knew the tones well enough.
He looked up at the farmer and smiled, and as he walked toward the man who aimed a crossbow at his face, Rafe wondered if this was the first real dreg of magic. I’ve been told that things are fine, he thought. I’m being looked after.
“Stop there, turn around, kneel down,” the farmer said, not unkindly. “Don’t move, boy, and everything will be fine. I’ve no wish to hurt either of you. I do wonder what you’re doing with a witch, though.”
Rafe did as the farmer instructed. “She’s looking after me,” he said. “My parents are dead.” He felt the cool kiss of metal on the back of his neck.
“Sorry to hear that, boy.” The farmer fell quiet, watching the trade between Hope and Josie.
Hope opened her shoulder bag slowly and pulled out a jar, a wallet of some unidentifiable material, and a small book. “I want two horses,” she said. “I know how precious these animals are to you, but right now they’re worth more to us. As such, not only will I pay you enough tellans for you to ride into Pavisse and buy two more horses as soon as the mood takes you, I’ll also recompense you with a trade. One of these three could be yours, over and above the going rate, which is …?”
“A thousand,” Josie said quickly.
Hope smiled. “Seems fair.” She pointed at the jar. “Heart of skull raven. It never corrupts. It drains bad dreams, sucks up nightmares, gives you easy sleep—”
“Don’t taunt us with fake magic, witch!” Josie hissed. Rafe stiffened, felt the farmer stretch forward and press the sharp bolt into the base of his skull.
“I don’t taunt you at all,” Hope said. “I know there’s no magic, and I don’t pretend otherwise. Where’s the use in that? The skull raven’s heart isn’t magic, it’s a resource, just like your crops or your sheebok. And what it does is a process. Just as you plant your seeds and water them and watch them grow, so this incorruptible thing will shrink your nightmares. Application to your head while you sleep, that’s all it takes. Don’t ask me how, I simply know that it works. That’s what the name witch implies: not magic, but knowledge. Few people alive know the things I know, and that makes me a good witch.”
Josie stared at Hope, glanced down at the three items set on the ground between them. Though she was trying to exude distrust, Rafe could sense the hope within her. The hope that her this trade would work, and that her struggling family would come out with something precious and worthwhile.
“What about this?”
Hope picked up the strange wallet, tattoos pulling her face into awe. “This is something I’ve never opened. I don’t know what’s in it. I’m scared to open it, because it once belonged to a Sleeping God. This wallet has not been unravelled since before magic fled this land, and its owner is still alive somewhere, awaiting magic’s return. There could be anything in here. Anything.”
Josie stared at the wallet for a few second, and then glanced quickly toward Rafe and the man standing behind him.
“Ah, but this,” Hope said, pointing at the book. “This is surely what you need. In here—”
“This really belonged to a Sleeping God?” Josie asked, pointing at the wallet.
Hope paused, then nodded. “Yes. Although I’m sure they’re not really gods. And for all I know it could be empty.”
Josie stared in awe at the wallet as Hope picked up the book. Rafe already knew what the witch would be giving away, and he thought she did too. Nevertheless she opened the book and flipped its thick pages.
“This is a
Book of Ways. It was written by Rosen Am Tellington, one of the great mapmakers, long before the Cataclysmic War. It charts the land of Noreela from north to south, east to west, with only a few obvious areas left blank. Back then, there was more certainty in things: a path did not change from one year to the next; mountains remained in place; swamps did not dry out, and deserts did not become lakes.”
“So what’s the point in that now?” Josie asked. “The world’s changing, and magic’s gone. And we’re only farmers. Why do I need a map of New Shanti when I’ll never be within five hundred miles of it?”
“Tellington was a visionary,” Hope said. “She knew that things would change, and so she thought around things as well as through them. She mapped out hidden routes that have long vanished into myth, and which only now exist in her books. And there are few enough of them. In here you will learn of underground paths through the Widow’s Peaks, for instance, not fifty miles from here. You can read of how to get from Noreela City to Long Marrakash without passing across the ground in between.”
“Magic!” Josie scoffed.
“Some, yes, and that’s inevitable. But as I said, Tellington was a visionary, and she knew that even magic may not last forever. In here are hidden Ways. Who knows when you might need them?”
“We’ll take that,” Josie said, pointing at the Sleeping God’s wallet.
Hope sat back on her heels and frowned. “Are you sure? Don’t you have nightmares? Doesn’t the skull raven’s brain—”
“We’ll take the wallet,” Josie said. She looked up at the man behind Rafe. “We’re taking the wallet,” she said to him.
“Yes,” the man agreed.
Hope looked around at the man, Rafe, the woman with the longbow. Rafe thought for a moment that she was going to snatch up the wallet and run. Her face creased and the tattoos twisted, doubt holding her tense.
