by Tim Lebbon
She remembers arriving, and wonders how much things outside have changed.
Another animal oozes between the rocks; she can smell it, and hear its moist skin flexing and releasing secretions that allow it to slip along. It is somewhere to her right, easing closer. She prises the thing from a narrow crack and brings it to her mouth, cool and slick. Her arm scrapes as she moves, heavy and weighed down.
How long have I been here?
The shard does not steer her or coerce, but it is aware. She can feel it watching, and has the idea that perhaps it has always watched, and kept her alive, and waited for …
Something.
Because it is merely a shard, not the whole. The remnant of a god.
Bon was exhausted. After seven days at sea with poor food, sickness, dirty water and a constant belief that his next breath might be his last, he’d had to swim half a mile to shore through vicious waves, with sea things doing their best to take bites from him. His arms and legs no longer wished to function. His stomach was rumbling from the bread and meat, and he wondered whether Juda had succeeded in poisoning him, intentionally or not.
But the memory of the dreadful murder and mutilation he had seen on the beach drove him on. And after so long fearing the light and courting the dark, the realisation that he desperately wanted to live came as something of a revelation.
Juda led them from the small cave and into a narrow crawlspace that seemed to go on for ever. The oil lamp threw vague illumination, but it birthed shifting shadows that deepened crevasses and exposed the sharp ridges of broken rock, and after a few minutes’ crawling Bon had slashed his left thumb and right knee. Behind him Leki seemed to move soundlessly, a counterpoint to his gasps and struggles. She had grace. She enchanted and frightened him.
‘How far?’ he asked, but Juda did not answer, or did not hear.
‘Just crawl,’ Leki said from behind. ‘I think we can trust him.’
‘You think?’ Bon’s voice was muffled in the enclosed space. He wasn’t sure where he was, or why, and this journey had become something he had never expected.
Juda had every opportunity to kill them, but so far had done his best to save them. So he says, Bon thought. But that image came again – slayer, the man, his guts and severed head.
The route from the cave was barely even a tunnel. A crack in the ground, narrowing and widening, sloping and falling, and at one point it became almost vertical. Juda climbed without pause or comment, and Bon followed, bracing his back against one side and his feet against the other. They climbed for some time, and the thought of what injuries he would sustain should he fall kept his back straight, his legs tense. Leki climbed below him, silent as ever. Whenever he glanced down he saw only her pale face looking up, and he was grateful for her encouraging smile.
Bon lost track of how long they were climbing and crawling. They paused to rest frequently, and it took five stops before he realised that Juda was lost. Their rescuer would sit back against the cave wall with his eyes closed and his hands reaching, grabbing shadows from the air and piling them either side of him. Bon glanced back at Leki, and she merely raised an eyebrow.
The air changed just as Bon noticed the light. The oil lamp had been burning low, but there was a background illumination that seemed to filter down from above. Dusky light was visible through narrow cracks above them, filtering down through spiky plant growth.
‘This is it,’ Juda whispered, and his obvious relief was also loaded with stress. ‘We’re out, we’re away. But I have to see. See if the open brings danger.’
‘How could the slayers know where we’re coming out?’ Leki asked, but Juda seemed to wave away her question, slapping it from the air with his ever-moving hands.
‘I’ll crawl out and see,’ Juda said. ‘They’re not looking for me.’
‘Wait. Don’t move. Don’t cough or fart. Don’t … breathe.’ He nipped out the oil lamp between thumb and forefinger and crawled into the open.
Bon watched him go, and then Leki was beside him, warm and close. Though he had only known her for days, there was a familiarity that he found comforting.
‘He has Outer blood,’ Leki whispered.
‘You’re sure?’ Brought to the continent of Alderia from the countless scattered islands way across the oceans – it was rumoured that some even came from the fabled southern place known at the Heartlands, ten thousand miles distant – Outers were regarded as inferior races, created by the Fade gods for Alderia’s use. As such they were frequently imported into the south of Alderia as cheap labour, and the north as slaves.
‘I don’t think he’s pure Outer. But there’s something to him, yes. Have you seen the colour of his eyes?’
‘Piercing green.’
‘Regerran.’
‘I knew a Regerran once,’ Bon said. She had been a thin, striking woman who had worked in a tannery close to where he and his wife used to live. He had tried speaking to her several times in the street but, every time, she had turned away, almost panicked by the unaccustomed contact. It had shamed him then, and it shamed him still, because he had not tried harder. She had been killed in an accident soon before his son had vanished. No one had mourned her.
‘A feeble race,’ Leki said, surprising him. ‘They’re troubled, and never rest. They suffer nightmares that make them violent, dangerous to themselves and others. That’s probably why he’s smoking those cigars – there’ll be a drug in there, settling and calming. Where I come from in Skeptin Lakes, they’re employed to harvest nark eggs from the Chasm Cliffs. They sometimes spend days up on the cliffs, and they tie themselves on when it’s time to sleep.’
‘He said he’d been awake for some time,’ Bon said. He could still smell the scent of the cigar smoke. ‘Do you really see him as feeble?’ The comment had troubled him. Leki’s past was still a mystery, and he could not simply assume that she was here because she had spoken out against the Ald. For all he knew she was like the priest on the ship – a devout whose banishment was for something else entirely.
‘I’m speaking through what I’ve witnessed of other Regerran,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’
Bon fell silent, thinking about what she had said, and what Juda’s heritage might mean. There were still many questions to ask him, but he had no desire to include Juda’s race in any discussion. It was irrelevant. Alderia was behind them now, and with it the prejudices and indoctrinations of the Ald’s way of life. If being banished had done anything for him, surely it would have granted him such freedoms?
They remained close, but not quite touching, until Juda returned. He scrambled down from the narrow entrance, blocking the fading light and panting as if he had been running. He paused close to them, little more than a shadow, and handed them both dry, rumpled clothing.
‘We’re … okay,’ he said. ‘No sign of slayers nearby. Close to Vandemon, but we’ll have to skirt around and head north. We can’t enter the town.’
‘Into the wilds, then?’ Leki asked.
‘Yes. The slayers might expect that, but it’s not likely they’ll follow right away.’
‘Why not?’ Bon asked.
‘Two others they wanted from your ship evaded them.’ His meaning was implicit. While the slayers hunted down the others who had escaped, the three of them could flee.
‘You’ve done this before,’ Leki said. ‘So do you always run with the people you rescue?’
Juda was silent, awkward. His shadows shifted as his hands waved, grasping at the air.
‘Juda?’ Bon asked.
‘We need to go,’ Juda said. He turned and started climbing, and Bon reached out, grabbing his foot.
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing good. Which is why every breath counts.’ Juda sighed, and when he spoke again his voice was shaking. ‘I knew the time would come. The slayers have marked me also. I made contact with a friend in Vandemon, and she told me the slayers have my name and scent. I’m now as much on their list as you.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m fucked.�
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Juda went and they followed. Outside, Bon’s first sight of Vandemon was the flames.
Juda was tired, and he could feel his darker, troubled side starting to fill him out, stretching itself through torso and limbs and taking his shape. Aggravating his part-Regerran blood, this darker echo was dangerous. Though dusk had fallen, he could not let himself succumb to nightmares. They had to escape.
He had slipped into Vandemon only briefly, but in that time he had learned everything he needed to know. Built amongst the ruins of an old Skythian sea port, rough wooden buildings stood between the tumbled walls and rubble piles of homes where no one had lived for six centuries. Even ruined, it was obvious from some of the carved stones and barely visible floor layouts that these old structures had been much grander than those now forming the coastal community of banishees. In the hundred years that Alderia had been shipping its worst criminals to Skythe – from murderers to political exiles – there had been barely any attempts to improve these dwellings. They were built, they fell or became dilapidated, and they were repaired or rebuilt. Patched up and thrown together, they reflected much about the people who lived within them.
The new arrivals who had made it to shore and not been marked for execution by the slayers were already being integrated into Vandemon. There were those who sought to welcome new prisoners, and who did their best to reach them before some of the town’s less benevolent characters – the pimps who went for the women, and slave drivers who lured with promises of buried treasures in the wilds to the north. If the prisoners could be warned then they might avoid both.
Juda had gone to visit his friend Bindy at Bindy’s Tavern, and from the moment he’d entered he had known that something was wrong. Usually pleased to see him, she had been uneasy and twitchy, glancing more at the door than at him as if waiting for someone else to arrive. And moments into their conversation he had asked the question, and her silence provided his answer. Slayers?
Juda was now known and marked, and his time in Vandemon was over.
He had always known that this moment would come, and for some time he had been awaiting it. After each prison ship arrival and the resulting executions, the slayers would retreat to their holes along the coast where the cliffs were tumbled and worn from erosion and, perhaps, some ancient cataclysm. They made their dens there, and no one ventured close. But Juda had known that he was destined to be hunted by these inhuman killers one day. Seeking the sparse dregs of magic still in the land – and attempting to rescue those who might be able to guide him to them, knowingly or not – was inevitably going to make him a marked man in the end. Gathering information, such as the names of banishees and the reasons why certain ones were marked for death, was always dangerous. Bon Ugane’s name and crime had come to Juda at a cost.
Sometimes Juda recognised the desperation in his actions, and the unlikeliness of success. But he had nothing else left to live for. And there was always a chance.
He was not sad to leave Vandemon, because Bon Ugane and Leki might be the people he had been seeking for so long. Bon’s crime had been studying Skythe and the war’s ambiguous history, after all. But he could not yet let them know. He did not wish to frighten them away. His needs and aims, he knew, could be perceived as arcane to some, and mad to most.
‘What are all the fires?’ Bon asked behind him.
‘Warding off the spirits of dead Skythians,’ Juda said. ‘They set fires in the ruins of old Skythe buildings the four nights of full moon each month.’ He shivered. The flames always provoked a chill in him.
Bon laughed. ‘Spirits!’
Juda paused, squatted beside a thick tree. The light from the settlement played shadows with the tree’s branches, dancing them across the ground either side of the trunk.
‘What do you know about spirits?’ he asked, perhaps too harshly. As ever in the presence of new arrivals, he found that he was developing some sort of pride about Skythe and his place here. It was inexplicable and surprising, but he treasured the feeling.
‘Only that the dead don’t trouble the living,’ Bon said.
‘Maybe not where you come from,’ Juda said. ‘Here, they dance, and you’d better hope they don’t want to dance with you.’ He headed off, leading away from the coastal village in a curving route that would take them inland along the shoulder of a mountain. They followed their own dancing shadows.
‘You believe in these spirits?’ Leki asked behind him.
‘Do you believe in the sea?’ Juda asked. ‘The air? The land?’
‘That they exist, yes. But I have no need to decorate them with make-believe.’
‘And that’s how I believe in the spirits,’ Juda said. ‘They are there, without doubt. No need to deform reality into a myth.’
‘Why try to scare them away?’ Bon asked from behind Leki. They were moving slowly, cautiously, and Bon’s were the heaviest footsteps.
‘Nobody wants angry spirits living amongst them,’ Juda said.
‘Why are they angry?’ Bon asked.
‘Because they’re dead, and we’re living on their land. Now, enough with the fucking questions. Stay quiet.’
He led them across the steep mountainside, following a gentler path that would not be too treacherous in the dark. Each time he blinked it was darker still, and he could feel that other self inside stretched almost to fill his extremes. He did not have long, but he had to concentrate, and move them away as far as he could before camping down. The slayers still had other targets to track and kill, but it was possible they would find them quickly.
And the slayers did not tire. Did not stop. Juda had to lead the others to a place where they might lose their pursuers, and that was still a day’s hike.
‘Where are you taking us?’ Bon asked after they had been walking for some time.
‘Somewhere safe.’
‘From the slayers, or you?’ Leki asked.
Juda glanced back. Even in the moonlight he could see her expression.
‘Whatever you think you know about me, I’m fine for a little longer,’ he said, grinning. ‘Important to go further. Up there, over the ridge, there’s a place on the other side where we’ll be safe for the night.’
‘And from there?’ Bon asked.
‘That’s for tomorrow,’ Juda said. ‘We live day by day on Skythe.’
They crested the ridge in silence and, descending into the shadowed valley beyond, Juda felt the nightmares closing.
‘Tie me …’ he said, slipping to his knees on the shale. He pointed downhill at the small wooden shelter built within a copse of trees. ‘In there … tie me … keep watch.’
‘And if a slayer comes?’ Bon asked.
‘Won’t,’ Juda said, and his voice felt like someone else’s.
He grasped a handful of sharp stones in his fist and squeezed, trying to hold back the night.
Where in the name of all the fake gods have I been sent? Bon wondered, and their saviour raged and strained against his ropes.
‘I thought you said Regerrans sleepwalked?’ Bon said.
‘Well,’ Leki said, but she had no answer. She shrugged. ‘Nightmares, too.’ She seemed as confused as him. They sat close together as they had in the prison ship’s hold, but this time the storm was inside with them.
They had carried Juda the final distance to the rough shelter he had indicated, and even then he had been twitching and hissing like a captured serpent. After tying him as instructed they had sat back, waiting to see what would happen. They did not have to wait very long. The hissing continued, spittle and blood frothing at his mouth, and then he started rolling and writhing against the bindings. His movements appeared agonised rather than strong, flesh bulging where he forced against the ropes, and his constant shifting and hissing reminded Bon of the terrible sound and movement of the sea surging against the ship.
‘This is no simple Regerran sleep,’ Leki said a little later. ‘What do you think’s wrong with him?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ Bon sa
id. ‘Seems half-mad when he’s awake; why should he be any different asleep?’
‘He could give us away.’
Bon had been keeping intermittent watch, but the valley was in darkness, and anyone or anything wishing to creep in would do so without him seeing. They had already discussed leaving Juda here and going on alone, but neither relished the idea. He had saved them, he seemed to know where they were going, and for now they both wanted to stay with him. Until we know more, Leki had said. And Bon already believed there was so much more for Juda to tell them.
‘Did he really put himself in danger to save us?’ Bon asked.
‘I think he was in danger before,’ Leki said. ‘And he seems …’
‘Eager,’ Bon finished for her. ‘He’s done this before.’
‘But why?’ Leki asked. ‘What does he want?’
‘Maybe we’ll find out tomorrow.’ Bon sat close to Leki, pressing against her and feeling her warmth through the jacket Juda had brought for him. She had talked of not decorating the sea and air with make-believe, and those words to Juda betrayed more than she had to Bon. ‘You’re no slave to anything the Ald tell us,’ he said.
‘Did you even once believe I was?’
Bon chuckled, and it felt good. That surprised him. Could laughter really find a place against such darkness, when a madman writhed before them? But perhaps that was the best reason for laughter.
‘What were your plans when you got here?’ he asked.
‘Plans?’ She shrugged, glancing away. ‘I made none. They tore me from my family, my home, my life. I taught in Skeptin Lakes, history and philosophy. Taught everything they told me to teach, mostly, but there were always moments when some of what I believe found its way in. By accident, usually. I wasn’t stupid. Knew what I’d do to myself if I made it too obvious.’ She drifted away, perhaps disconcerted by how much she had said in so little time. Her bitterness did not surprise Bon, but her uncertainty unsettled him. He liked the strong Leki.
