With crumbling slabs of compressed food and a vast supply of dehydrated water tablets, she could survive in the desert for months, but it remained a problem nonetheless. The wilderness was, quite simply, immense, far larger than she’d ever imagined for all the Arcond’s talk of it taking up four-fifths of the country’s land surface. Worse still, it was absolutely featureless. She’d been travelling for almost three days now and every single moment of the journey was the same as every other. Around her stretched the plain of sand, a waterless ocean that reached the horizon in every direction, a mind-numbing expanse of eternal dunes. If the Arcond was right about his ancient ruins, she had spotted none of them. Worse, there was not the slightest sign of nomads.
What if she never found them? What of Henry then?
So far she had been travelling directly north, deep into the heart of the desert. But that had been an arbitrary decision. Madame Cynthia could tell her no more than she had already done. Mr Fogarty was dead: no new visions would be forthcoming, nor any half-forgotten details of his old ones. She was alone, without guidance, and nothing was working out!
The thought was tinged with guilt, something that had been growing in her for days. Perhaps Pyrgus and Madame Cardui had been right all along. Perhaps if she hadn’t interfered, they would have rescued Henry by now and saved the Realm from the plague. Perhaps the future she’d propelled them into held no hope of happy endings. Perhaps she should have minded her own business!
On impulse, she pulled the carriage round so that it was no longer heading due north, but northwest. One direction was as good as any other and so long as the figure pointed, she would be able to find her way out of the desert eventually.
The impulse made no difference. For close on half an hour, she travelled through the endless sands. Blue jerked the carriage round again, more sharply this time. It was a random movement, but a glance at her pointing figure showed she was now travelling due west, towards the setting sun. Travelling west through an unbroken sea of sand.
She thought of stopping to eat something, although she was far from hungry. Madame Cardui had warned her she must eat and, more importantly, drink at regular intervals to ensure she maintained her strength. The trouble was, her compressed food tasted musty and her dehydrated water tablets, while they maintained the fluid balance of her body, did almost nothing for the dry mouth and constant thirst. She decided to eat when the sun finally set, then perhaps press on just a little further before it grew fully dark. She pushed the handle of the carriage listlessly, then caught sight of something on the eastern horizon.
Blue halted the carriage at once. She’d already discovered that mind and eyes played tricks on this cursed wilderness, especially at this time of day when the light was just beginning to fade. All the same, there was something out there and she was fairly sure it wasn’t just another dune. She rummaged in her equipment until she found a glass. (What wouldn’t she have given for a decently spell-driven travelling eye!) The heat haze and the low angle of the sun wouldn’t permit any real resolution, even with optical help, but what she was looking at might have been a low building of some sort, or possibly some temporary structure. Was this one of the ruins the Arcond had talked about? Or could it be a pavilion erected by the nomads? For the first time, she realised she knew almost nothing about these mysterious nomads: how they lived, how they travelled … nothing. Did they have tents and pack animals?
Questions were useless. The only thing she knew was that they avoided contact. But if this really was one of their structures, perhaps she could reach them before they spotted her and ran away. Then, a mischievous voice murmured in her head, she would find out the truth about the cannibalism business.
Blue gently manoeuvred the carriage around, then started it off, slowly, in the direction of the thing on the horizon. She was very aware of the need for caution. If these really were the nomads, she couldn’t just come storming in – she’d have to gain their trust. She had gifts – Madame Cardui had seen to that – but she was aware that gifts alone would never be enough. She was seriously considering abandoning the carriage before she got too close and making the rest of her way on foot. With luck and care, she might even be able to observe the nomads for a little while before committing herself to contact. The more she learned about them the better.
She had scarcely driven for more than ten minutes when a brutal sense of disappointment swept over her. The shape on the horizon, which had looked so like an artificial structure even when examined through the glass, suddenly resolved itself as a well-worn peak, part of a low mountain chain, hardly more than high hills, really, but beyond doubt natural formations.
For a moment she considered swinging away and heading back into the deep desert – her carriage was fine for relatively flat terrain, but there was no way it could tackle a mountain – then something else caught her eye, nestling in the foothills. This time she was close enough for the glass to show it as a series of squat stone buildings.
Once again Blue stopped the carriage. With her eye to the glass, she examined the structures carefully. This was ancient architecture for sure, but no ruin. Someone lived here, or at least had lived here until recent times. But not the nomads. These were permanent structures, built to last by settled people.
What to do? Madame Cardui had said their best hope was for Blue to make contact with the nomads, but that hadn’t happened so far, and she’d no idea how to make it happen. But if people did live here in the shadow of the mountains, they might have some idea where the nomads could be found, perhaps even advise on how best to approach them.
Blue set the carriage going, aware of the lengthening shadows. Even if no one lived here any more, it would still be a place to stay. Since coming to the desert, she’d slept in the carriage, sheltered from the night wind by the canopy. Each night she’d listened to the sounds of creatures moving after dark – there seemed to be far more life in the desert at night than there ever was during the day. Nothing had attacked her, nothing had even seriously disturbed her, but the sounds made her nervous and vulnerable. She would welcome a solid stone-built wall around her.
But as she drew closer, it became obvious the place was inhabited. Distant figures moved unhurriedly outside and she could see a small strip of cultivated land close to the buildings, someone must have set up an irrigation system to reclaim it from the desert.
Closer still, the figures resolved themselves into green-robed, tonsured individuals, all, without exception, male. She was approaching a monastic community. It occurred to her then that she might not be entirely welcome. There were all-male monasteries in her own country, where the mere glimpse of a woman sent the monks running for cover. But by the time the thought struck her, it was too late. Her clockwork carriage was rolling over an area of stony ground that gave way to a crudely paved road. One of the green-robed figures, a thin, almost wasted, monk whose skin had turned to leather in the desert sun, broke away from his companions to walk towards her.
‘You are welcome, young man,’ he told her gravely. Blue blinked, then remembered she was travelling in disguise.
Fifty-Six
The ground beneath Henry’s feet was rough as he ran; he couldn’t see more than a yard or two ahead. In normal circumstances, he would never have tried to run in a situation like this. In normal circumstances if he had tried he’d have stumbled. But he was encouraged by the howling behind him – and by the speed at which the white shapes were gaining. Henry ran fast.
The faster he ran, the clearer his mind became. He knew he was about to die. There was no way he could outrun the vaettirs, no way he could survive so many of them when they finally caught up. But, oddly, the realisation caused no fear. In fact, the dread he’d felt earlier had been replaced by calm. He found himself thinking about his mother and Charlie and school and his exams. He found himself thinking of Blue and what a mess he’d made of their relationship. He found himself wondering how he’d gone through so much of his life not knowing what he really wanted,
let alone how to get it. It seemed he’d been pushed around by his mother for years and pushed around by circumstances when he wasn’t being pushed around by his mother. He’d spent so much time trying to do the right thing, but mostly what he thought of as the right thing was just the thing that other people wanted him to do. He’d never liked upsetting people, so usually he just went along. He wished Mr Fogarty were still alive. Mr Fogarty had somehow managed to do the right thing without giving a toss about how much that upset other people. Mr Fogarty robbed banks for cripe’s sake, when he thought it was the right thing to do.
Now he was about to die, Henry suspected he might have wasted his entire life.
Except maybe he wasn’t about to die after all. He wasn’t quite sure, but the pursuing vaettirs seemed to be dropping back a little. Maybe they were like cheetahs very fast in short bursts, but not much stamina. If he could just keep up his pace he might outrun them.
With his new-found clarity, he realised this made sense. Lorquin might be weird, but he was a decent kid. He’d hardly ask Henry – his Companion – to commit virtual suicide just so he could become a man. There might be risk – people who lived in the desert were used to that – but it probably wasn’t much of a risk, however dangerous it looked. After all, it was Lorquin who had to prove himself a man. For Henry there was probably hardly any risk at all. All he had to do was keep up a steady pace and wait for the vaettirs to get tired and …
The earth convulsed.
Henry lost his stride, then his footing, then his balance. He hurled forward and struck the ground, hard. He was on a mix of rock and desert that hurt his injured leg and filled his mouth with sand, but he hardly noticed either. The ground itself was shaking underneath him and his head resonated to a low, subsonic rumble that was somehow more terrifying than the horde of vaettirs racing after him.
For a moment he remained bewildered, then realised he’d been caught up in an earthquake. He clung to the ground as if in danger of falling and felt it convulse again. He’d never been in an earthquake before, never even known anybody who had, but he remembered reading somewhere that they never lasted very long … fifteen seconds, thirty seconds, something like that. He also thought he’d read that earthquakes weren’t too dangerous if you were outside. It was falling buildings that killed you. All he had to do was lie here and wait. Everything was going to be fine.
Then a vaettir landed on his back, howling.
Henry twisted to try to throw it off when another one arrived, then another and another. He jerked sideways in sudden panic, but the vaettirs were pinning him. He could smell their musty stench, feel their breath on his face and neck. For some reason they hadn’t started to bite or scratch him yet, but it was only a matter of time. More and more kept arriving, more and more fell on top of him. There was no possibility of escape. In a moment they’d begin to tear him limb from limb. Meanwhile it was as much as he could do to catch his breath.
There was a high, blood-chilling scream from somewhere behind him. The weight on his body eased at once; then suddenly he could breathe again. He felt something else roll off him and turned painfully. To his astonishment, the vaettirs were gone, every one. He pushed slowly to his feet. The ground had stopped shaking. The earthquake was over. He was alone in the desert. Distantly he could hear the soft pad-pad of vaettir footsteps, but they were receding, fading into nothing as he listened. Nothing was making sense any more, but he was still alive.
Then he realised it was too good to be true. He’d no idea what had panicked the vaettirs, but there was one of them returning now. He could hear its running steps quite clearly and now he could see a shape looming out of the darkness. Something inside Henry snapped and he felt a rising fury. His hands curled into fists. He’d survived a single vaettir attack before. This time he was ready for the brute.
‘En Ri!’ hissed the vaettir.
Henry blinked. ‘Lorquin! Is that you?’
‘We did it!’ Lorquin called excitedly. He was beside Henry now, grinning.
‘The draugr is dead?’ Henry frowned. He didn’t believe it.
‘I killed him!’ Lorquin said.
Her, Henry thought. The draugr was the vaettir queen. But he stopped himself correcting the boy.
‘You were great, En Ri,’ Lorquin told him. ‘They will sing of you as a wonderful Companion. You lured away the vaettirs more skilfully than any Companion in the history of the world.’
It was probably an exaggeration, but all Henry could think of saying was, ‘The vaettirs are gone.’ Which was true, but he still had no idea why.
‘They must return when the draugr screams,’ Lorquin said, ‘It is always so.’ He grinned at Henry again, ‘I made him scream big, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you did,’ Henry said. For the first time he noticed Lorquin was carrying a stone dagger. The blade showed a dark stain. The kid must have used it to kill the draugr. And he thought Henry would be sung about!
‘Now I am a man!’ exclaimed Lorquin proudly. ‘The gods celebrated my victory – did you feel the earth move?’ He seized Henry’s hand and squeezed it in a curious gesture of affection. Then he sobered. ‘We must go now, En Ri. The vaettirs will create a new draugr, but sometimes they wish to seek us out and take revenge.’
‘Where are we going?’ Henry asked.
‘To join my people,’ Lorquin told him happily.
Fifty-Seven
The Abbot was a large, muscular man with a shaven head and drooping moustache. He looked more like a bandit leader than a monk and Blue liked him at once. But she found it difficult to tear her eyes away from his companion, a tiny, wrinkled individual in a grubby yellow robe. ‘This is the Purlisa,’ the Abbot said, using an archaic term that Blue vaguely remembered meant ‘Treasure’ or ‘Precious One’.
It was clearly an honorific of some sort, so she bowed. ‘I am Sluce Ragetus,’ she told him, choosing one of the old aliases she used when she travelled as a man.
‘We’ve been expecting you,’ the Purlisa said, his eyes twinkling. He glanced at the Abbot. ‘Haven’t we, Jamides?’
The Abbot snorted.
‘That’s very surprising,’ Blue told the Purlisa. She smiled slightly. (It was difficult not to smile at the little Treasure.) ‘Until just a very short while ago I’d no idea I was coming here myself.’
‘Strange are the workings of Fate,’ the Purlisa remarked cheerfully. ‘Isn’t that right, Jamides?’
Abbot Jamides snorted again. To Blue he said, ‘The Precious One forecast the coming of a hero who would rid us of a particular problem we face. I believed the omens were against it. Now he wants to crow.’
‘Ah, we can all make mistakes, Jamides.’ The twinkling eyes closed in a long, slow blink as the cheery grin widened. ‘Although some of us make more than others.’
The last thing she needed was to be drawn into the problems of the monastery, ‘I’m hardly a hero,’ Blue said quietly. They were in the Abbot’s personal quarters, a sparsely furnished cell that overlooked a patch of garden. She’d been offered food and drink, but it had yet to appear.
‘Sometimes people are not what they seem,’ the Purlisa remarked. ‘Or what they think they are.’ He smiled at her. ‘Perhaps you are not what you seem, Sluce Ragetus?’
There was something in his tone that rang warning bells. She forced an easy smile, ‘I can assure you, Purlisa –’
But Jamides, the Abbot, interrupted her. ‘I grant it was clever of you to disguise yourself as a man,’ he said.
‘So much less trouble in a monastery,’ the Purlisa twinkled.
The Abbot looked through the window with an expression of distaste. ‘Difficult for the monks when there’s a woman about.’ He nodded sagely, then added, ‘The younger monks.’
‘They have erotic thoughts,’ the Purlisa explained.
The Abbot looked back at her sternly. ‘All the time.’
‘Distracting,’ said the Purlisa. He looked at her fondly and added, ‘From their religious duties.’
> ‘Lord Abbot – ’ Blue began, wondering what on earth she was going to say.
But the Abbot waved her words away unspoken and his expression softened. ‘You need have no worries about us, of course. As Abbot I am too disciplined for erotic thoughts and the Purlisa is too old.’
‘Almost,’ the Purlisa said.
The Abbot looked at him quickly and frowned.
The Purlisa blinked benignly. ‘She’s very pretty underneath the spells.’
‘Ah,’ Blue said. She had the feeling she was in serious trouble, but it was all she could do not to laugh. ‘About the spells …’
The Purlisa pursed his lips and waved a warning finger. ‘Forbidden here in Buthner. Absolutely, positively illegal. Hideously strict penalties: some might even say barbaric. And nowhere is magic more blasphemous than in a monastery.’ He smiled cheerfully again. ‘Still, I expect you didn’t know.’
The Abbot looked at her fondly. ‘And you have saved us so much trouble with the younger monks …’
‘I imagine we could overlook it,’ said the Purlisa.
‘I imagine we could overlook it,’ echoed the Abbot.
They both beamed at her.
‘How did you know?’ Blue asked. She’d taken a chance with the spells largely because Madame Cardui claimed they were espionage grade and entirely undetectable.
‘The Purlisa is a mystic,’ said the Abbot.
The Purlisa flickered his hands spookily. ‘I see beneath appearances,’ he said in a sepulchral voice. He smiled, then sobered. ‘For example, I see there is a worry in your heart.’
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