“Sopharndi is First,” she said. The people raised their right arms and shouted her name as one. “Sopharndi!”
Traditionally, the celebrations should have started immediately, as supporters of both fighters accepted the result and reaffirmed their commitment to the community they loved. This time, as the echoes died away, an unnatural silence descended on the assembled group. Sopharndi, facing the Elders, had her back to the fire. She wondered, for a fraction of a second, if her killing blow had failed. Then she dismissed it as impossible. She looked at the Elders and those around them. They were all staring at something on the far side of the fire. Something that was moving closer.
Sopharndi spun around to face the threat, whatever it was. Sku’ord’s corpse still lay on the ground. The fire burned strongly. A figure walked around it and came toward her. A few paces away, it stopped.
It was Cley. And he was looking at her. Really looking.
He wasn’t humming.
“Hello, Mother,” said Cley.
23
Seb stood at the edge of the clearing, taking long, steady breaths. It felt good to breathe again, even though he knew it wasn’t real. He had taken great lungfuls of air as he ran across the Parched Lands, his arms pumping, his legs settling into a kind of lazy-looking loping stride which propelled him across the ground at a rate that turned the surroundings into a moonlit blur. The burn he felt in his muscles put a grin on his face as he ran. If this was a simulation, how did reality stake its claim to being any different? All his senses told him that he was here, wherever here was.
Within minutes, the alien body he now inhabited had begun to feel entirely natural to him. By his own estimation, he stood just over four feet tall, his body compact and tightly muscled. His skin was dark and tough, like the skin of an armored avocado. His eyes were closer to those of a cat than a human and sat further apart than a human’s on his hairless skull, giving him a bigger field of vision than he had ever experienced. His hearing seemed better too, but it was hard to know if that was just his imagination, as there was no way to measure it. Before he’d started running, he had easily been able to identify the sounds of small animals, snakes, and lizards scuttling around the mountain, as well as similar noises further away. He had a surprisingly accurate mental picture of the precise direction from which the more distant sounds emanated. His ears were fairly humanoid, just a little more prominent and tapered at the bottom as if Mr. Spock had accidentally placed his auditory organs upside down. But the information they sent resonated in some way in the physical skull itself, giving an almost radar-like picture of his surroundings to add to his vision.
He certainly felt gloriously conscious, and wonderfully, physically alive.
Mentally, the picture was less clear. At the surface level of consciousness, Seb was completely present, but if he probed deeper, where Cley’s memories and unformed personality lay, the picture became more confusing. All of Cley’s history was accessible to Seb, and as he had run toward the distant lights of the Settlement, he had begun to tentatively explore them. The sensation was extremely strange, as the memories now belonged to Seb as much as Cley. Seb felt like he was a curious hybrid of some sort. Bok had led him to believe that he would totally dominate the mind of the creature he inhabited. But Seb found that Cley was far from absent. Although the boy—who had never been able to speak—was not present as an inner voice of any kind, his way of seeing the world nevertheless subtly colored the way Seb saw it. Seb knew he was no longer Seb, at least not here. He was one of the People, a tribe of creatures at a pivotal point in their societal development. He would never be able to achieve what he had come here to do, unless he was, in some sense, Cley, son of Sopharndi, the First.
He stood in the clearing, aware that every single eye was on him, and faced the woman who had birthed this body and cared for it for so many years without a single response. As he looked at Sopharndi’s face, he saw an expression Cley had never seen before. Shock, for one thing - then happiness and hope mixed with disbelief. Sopharndi had never lowered her guard sufficiently to display such naked emotion. Seb watched her take a few hesitant steps toward him before stopping and simply staring.
He looked at the corpse on the ground, the blood around it reflecting the sparks leaping from the fire. He noted the blood congealing on his mother’s claws. He felt a curious calm rather than horror at the scene. This was the traditional way the People settled power struggles. As First, no one came above Sopharndi in the warrior caste. She must have been challenged. She must have prevailed. Even as he accepted the scene as a common one in this society, part of Seb still recoiled at the violence, the waste of life.
Every face was still turned toward him. The Elders had yet to react to the situation. No one had ever expected to see Cley again. To see him now, not only alive and unharmed, but somehow, miraculously able to speak, had silenced everyone.
Laak stepped forward and joined Sopharndi, but came no further. She was Leader. She delivered the law, made judgments. Along with the other Elders, Laak guided her tribe through the seasons, her leadership delivering wisdom, certainty, and continuity. The People lived by their traditions, formed over countless generations, passed on orally through the songs, as well as laws and stories. Every situation could be dealt with according to one tradition or another. Not this situation, though. No song had ever been sung about a Blank finding the power of speech or becoming a functioning member of the tribe. Blanks were pitied, but—these days—they were taken care of. Long gone was the time that they had been left to die, shunned because of their condition. Silmek, the Leader two generations before Laak, had taught that traditions could change. She said the way the People treated the weakest among them was one of the ways they showed they were more than wild beasts. The Singer could be merciful - perhaps the kindness they showed the Blanks would help them earn that mercy. Her edicts had stood from that day until this.
Seb felt the almost unbearable tension grow as he stood opposite Sopharndi and Laak. He knew whatever he said now would never be forgotten by those present. For a moment, he wished he’d spent a little time preparing a speech, rather than running across the desert with a big, stupid grin on his face. Oh, well.
“I have returned from my Journey,” he said. Other than the crackle of the fire, there was no sound. He felt the force of the attention focused on him. He turned his head, slowly taking in everyone gathered around the fire, from infants on their mothers’ laps, to those who had nearly reached the end of their songs.
“I went into the Parched Lands, where nothing grows but the blacktree. I climbed the Last Mountain. In a cave, I fought a skimtail.”
Sopharndi’s head twitched at this as she remembered her own Journey. Seb smiled a little.
“I prevailed, but I did not kill it. I spilled no blood on my Journey.”
At this, Sopharndi’s face clouded, and there were small sounds of confusion from the crowd. How could anyone fight a skimtail without either killing it or dying in the attempt? No one had ever returned from their Journey without spilling another creature’s blood. It wasn’t that it was a necessary part of the ritual, rather a case of survival. No one took water on the Journey, so the blood of snakes or lizards had to provide vital fluids.
Seb walked to the edge of the circle and gently took an empty waterskin from a wide-eyed child who handed it over without a sound. Every eye followed him as he walked back and knelt on the dry earth.
Time to find out if Bok was right about a T’hn’uuth’s abilities inside a Gyeuk Egg. Let’s see if a miracle or two can kickstart a religion.
The sensation Seb felt as he reached out with his Manna was, seemingly, identical to that which he felt in the real world. He willed the dusty soil to become water. The physical process now felt almost as natural as reaching out to pick something up. There was a slight change in his state of consciousness, but it happened seamlessly as he moved his attention to the task. It was the same mental state he entered when writing music, a kind of
letting go in order to allow something to happen. He’d always felt that songs—or, at least, the best phrases in songs—were already out there somewhere, waiting for someone to find them. He just had to train his mind to notice. Manna use was very similar; a letting go of familiar mental processes in order to allow others to become known.
There were gasps of disbelief as a few people noticed what was happening. Seb heard hissed prayers to the Singer as the waterskin swelled. He held up the skin, and the cries of disbelief grew as the water spilled from the opening and ran over his hand and arm, continuing to do so for long enough that it became obvious that more water than the skin could hold had already flowed from it onto the ground. They were witnessing the impossible.
Seb couldn’t help smiling to himself. He was not unaware of a certain irony. He still found his own abilities almost as impossible to comprehend as did the tribe watching him. His power felt completely natural, but that only proved it was easy to get used to pretty much anything, given enough time. To him, the appearance of fresh water from thin air was no less magical than it appeared to the People. He might try to explain it by imagining particles in the atmosphere being somehow changed and reassembled into molecules grouped into two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, but, in truth, it was still a complete and utter mindfuck.
He walked back to the child whose waterskin he had borrowed and returned it. The boy sniffed it cautiously, then—before a nearby male could stop him—upended it and took a long drink. He smiled reassuringly at the adults around him.
Water was held in high regard by the People; in the hot season, the river sometimes dried up to a muddy brown trickle, and the oldest among them remembered their own grandparents’ stories of the terrible drought that wiped out half the tribe.
Over the course of the next minute, there was pandemonium as urgent whispers grew into frightened shouts. Some looked scared, or angry, struggling to accept the impossibility of Cley’s return, his sudden intelligence and the miracle he had just performed - the like of which had been unknown since the earliest songs. Pockets of almost hysterical laughter broke out around the gathered crowd as members of the tribe tried, and failed, to make sense of what was happening.
The Elders recovered first and stepped forward from the crowd, Laak raising her hands for silence. Such a gesture would normally be instantly obeyed, but this time she was ignored. Laak looked around her in dismay at the excitement and panic building around her. Such a heightening of emotions could only lead to trouble. Already, scuffles were breaking out as individuals argued over what this could mean. Those who weren’t fighting among themselves seemed either frozen with fear, staring at Cley, or overcome with a kind of fervor that left them almost mesmerized.
Laak shouted, “People! Listen!” but she could barely hear herself over the noise. She turned to her fellow Elders. Their eyes betrayed almost as much fear and confusion as the crowd around them. For the first time as Leader, Laak felt her control over the tribe slipping away. She was losing them. She looked to her First, but Sopharndi was stock-still, staring at her son, an unreadable expression on her face.
Laak took a deep breath, preparing to shout with all the authority she could muster, but before she could say a word, the ground beneath her feet began to tremble, then shake.
Seb was reaching out with his Manna just as he would have done outside the Gyeuk Egg, hoping that Bok’s promises were correct. Bok had assured him that, as long as he remembered who he really was, he would have limited abilities similar to those he enjoyed outside the simulation.
He wasn’t sure he liked the word limited, though.
He guessed this must be the “little drama” Fypp had promised, saying it would help his cause at the beginning. She obviously had a talent for understatement.
Around the clearing, the People fell to the ground, scrabbling to hold on to those around them in a desperate attempt to stay upright. Earthquakes were rare, but not completely unknown. Songs told of entire settlements being destroyed by them. The tribe wailed with fear in anticipation of destruction and death.
The noise of the shaking earth was louder than the screams of the crowd. It was a fearful sound, as if the Land itself was crying out, rock grinding against rock, deep below their feet, as though a giant was grinding its teeth. Great cracks were heard as trees split at their roots and fell in the forests. Sparks leaped high from the fire and flew into the sky.
Then, slowly at first, the quake began to subside, the ground no longer feeling as if it were about to break apart, but still rolling and tipping. The roaring sound diminished in volume steadily. After about a minute, it was just a steady rumble, the ground now vibrating rather than shaking.
Seb had watched the response to his return escalate into panic and violence. He knew this moment would be pivotal in his quest to turn Cley’s tribe toward a new approach to religion - one that would encompass all aspects of their lives. He had to inspire, not terrify.
Now that he was here, Bok’s warnings about losing himself in the simulation seemed almost understated. There was no hint of artificiality about the scene around him, and the emotion of the people was raw, unfeigned and utterly compelling.
“People!”
Seb stretched his arms above his head, just as Laak had done; but this time, everyone turned toward him and listened. He began to lower his arms and, as he did so, the rumbling diminished still further, as did the noise of the crowd. By the time his arms reached his sides, there was silence, broken only by the whimpering of a child.
Seb looked in the direction of the sound, and saw a male cradling a child, trying to soothe it. It was a small female, and Seb could see its arm had been broken during the earthquake. He walked toward the pair, and saw the male’s face freeze with confusion and fear as he got closer. Seb said nothing, but slowly squatted in front of them, keeping his movements slow and unthreatening.
When he reached toward the crying child, the male flinched and held her closer, producing a small scream as the broken bone moved. Seb held his outstretched hand still until the male relaxed a little, then very slowly placed his hand on the damaged limb. The crying ceased immediately and, a few seconds later, the child moved her arm back and forth with an amazed smile on her face. The male, and those around him, saw clearly what had happened, and Seb had no doubt that the story would spread quickly.
He stood and moved back to the center of the clearing, the fire now beginning to subside behind him.
Seb knew that he would be walking a tightrope from this moment on. He had to preserve his sense of who he was internally, but to lead these people, he couldn’t be Seb Varden. To bring them along with him, he had to be Cley. But a Cley the People had never imagined possible.
Sopharndi’s son took a few steps forward, his face calm, relaxed and peaceful despite the violence of the past few minutes. No one knew whether he had caused the earthquake, but no one was in any doubt that he had quelled it. A Blank who could speak, a Blank who could subdue Nature. Around the clearing, individuals remembered occasions when they had been dismissive, unkind, or even cruel to the youth who now stood before them. They felt fear wriggle into their guts, at the thought of how a being of such power might repay their thoughtless acts.
He smiled, then spoke, in a voice which carried easily, and yet seemed as intimate as a lover’s whisper.
“Since the Singer first came to Aleiteh, the People have waited for her to Sing again. Our bards sing the old songs, and we live by the laws inspired by them. Now, our long wait is over.”
They looked at Cley’s open expression, his eyes soft, his brow unfurrowed by anger, and they dared to hope that he might have forgotten, or even forgiven, their transgressions. All present knew everything had changed. They waited for his final words and—when they had heard them—they returned to their dwellings in shock and confusion, but also with hope and a sense of a larger purpose unfurling within, and around, them.
Cley’s words were these:
“The Last Song i
s begun. I am the Last Song.”
24
Innisfarne
Seb looked warily at the expression on Mee’s face. She was sober. After her first couple of spliffs, Mee had decided Seb’s story was too fucked up to listen to stoned.
“How long had you been away for at this point?”
Seb moved over to the window and looked out into the snow. Great fat flakes were still slowly falling, giving the impression that the entire Keep was slowly rising into the sky, drifting upward to some far off land in the clouds.
He tried to answer, but his throat felt constricted. He remembered the moment he had discovered how long he had been away. For a second, he felt the same sense of a spiraling nothingness, a mental retreat from the truth.
Seb turned and looked at Mee and Joni. After traveling unimaginable distances, meeting other World Walkers who had evolved from a variety of alien species, and spending time on a simulated planet constructed by an artificially intelligent hive mind, it was this seemingly commonplace scene of domesticity that was threatening to undo him. The feelings swelling within him were so profound and deep-rooted that he could find no way to even begin to express them.
He raised shaking hands to his face, unsurprised to find tears on his cheeks again.
Mee got up and came to him, taking his hands in hers and looking into his eyes.
“Don’t answer that. I want to say something.”
Joni stirred behind her.
“Um, do you two need some privacy? Because I could, you know…?”
Mee continued to look into Seb’s eyes. Seb Varden, immortal and beyond the limitations of his species, felt utterly powerless when he looked at this woman. He tried to speak, but she put a finger on his lips.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 108
