The Heretic Land

by Tim Lebbon

  ‘I am not nothing,’ Venden said as he walked. ‘And Aeon chose me.’ The hollow place inside him seemed to churn with potential, and then settled once more.

  He planned his route north to Kellis Faults as a way of occupying his mind, but he had little knowledge to draw from. Already he was in the wilds, further north than most banished to Skythe ever came. He saw amazement in the eyes of the few Skythians who encountered him. There was some fear, but they were also fascinated by him, a reaction refreshing on every new meeting. He had seen some of the same regressed Skythians several times. They knew him and his name, and sometimes he believed they spied upon him. Often they seemed somewhat in awe of him, and if he had been more superstitious he might have thought himself a ghost.

  Perhaps I am, he thought, pushing through a whispering forest. He had been this way many times before, but there was no evidence of his presence here, nor that of his wagon. No flattened ferns trampled by his feet or crushed by the cart’s wheels. No route worn into the landscape by use, even though that use was not frequent. ‘I am not a ghost!’ Venden shouted, and a small flock of sparrs took flight, and something larger scurried in the canopy thirty steps to his left. He smiled, pleased that they agreed and content with his own reality.

  The shadow inside seemed to lean forward and take note. Venden felt the blank space in his soul that did not belong to him swelling and shifting, and the attention from there was harsher than ever before. He glanced around, but the eyes focused on him were not from without. The sense of being watched was something he had carried with him ever since he could remember – it was one of his earliest memories – but at moments like this it made his skin crawl, and gave him reason to run. He halted instead, breathing deeply and squeezing his eyes closed. It’s just another part of me, he thought, as always. Just a part of me I don’t yet know … my older self, waiting to meet me …

  Venden walked on, not a ghost but never quite himself.

  They headed south, away from the sea and deep into a continent where Milian had never set foot during her first life. Bouncing along in the back of one of the wagons, she lay with her eyes closed, trying to cast aside terrible memories. All that time lying asleep in the cave, she had dreamed. And now, awake at last, those dreams had left their taint.

  She opened her eyes, and the woman and child were staring down at her. Milian was taller than average, her features wider, and her skin was paler than most on Alderia. But these people seemed untroubled by her appearance, and perhaps they were unaware that she was Skythian. I wonder if there are even any Skythians left, she thought, shocked at the idea.

  The woman spoke, forming her strange words slowly and deliberately, but still Milian could not understand. She shrugged and shook her head, touching her ears again. The boy giggled and copied her. Milian smiled, touched her nose, and the boy did the same. He shrieked in delight. She sighed, he sighed. She laughed, he laughed, and she found that simple act of laughter illuminated the darkness.

  The shard of Aeon is still within me, but I am whole again. The daemon is long gone. Perhaps the things I did – the things it did – went with it. The shard nestled, piercing her heart and soul and the landscape of her memories, but dormant for a time. Silent.

  The woman started forming some sort of sign language, but Milian shrugged again. She felt her heavy breasts moving beneath the scruffy clothing, and the woman’s disquiet took on new tones. She eyed Milian up and down, and the species of fear in her eyes was obvious. But the last thing on Milian’s mind was fucking.

  They’re not the ones, she thought of the two men steering the wagons. The thought echoed again with the shard’s influence. Never quite dormant, it seemed.

  Later, Milian was woken from an unsettled sleep by cries of delight and children’s laughter. She blinked herself awake and groaned as she worked stiffness from her joints, warmed her muscles by tensing and moving. Whatever strange influence had allowed her to hibernate for so long and emerge alive had not yet driven all signs of age from her body. Only on the outside, perhaps. If they cut her open, she might be grey and dead.

  She crawled across the bedding and clothes strewn around the covered wagon’s interior and pushed open the small wood-framed door. She realised that they had stopped moving, and when she stepped out onto the wide wooden deck at the back of the large vehicle, she understood why.

  The two families stood off to one side, the adult couples holding hands, children dancing and leaping under the multi-coloured sky. There was a river not far away, its gentle movement audible in the background, and it glowed with sunlight as if possessed of a sun itself. The gently undulating landscape was interrupted in a score of places by tall, thin spires, their wider bases supported by heavy buttresses, doorways and window openings shadowing their entire heights. But it was the pinnacles and what danced above them that grasped Milian’s attention, and held it for a long time.

  Rainbows played through the air. Flexing, melding, fading and reforming, sheets of light frolicked from one spire’s top to another, arcing high above with a sound like a giant walking through fallen leaves. The hairs on Milian’s arms and neck stood on end, bristling. She caught her breath and held it, and for a panicked moment a rush of thoughts sickened her: If I breathe that in, if it touches me, if it leaks down from there and drowns me. But the fear was momentary, because the adults and children looked back at her as one, and grinned. The tall man who had first found her shouted something and laughed, and waved a hand at the sky as if fearing she had not seen. But how could she not? Milian stood alone on that wooden deck for a while longer, watching the display and feeling a sadness inside her, stirred and reborn by the certainty that she had no memories this wonderful of Skythe.

  It had been a beautiful place, but much of the beauty evaded her now. Most of those vague, ancient-feeling memories from before the daemon and the shard revolved around something growing dark, or things going wrong.

  The sight inspired tears, and the distortion only made the flailing, sweeping light-show more wonderful. I am truly alive again, she thought, revelling in the wonder. The light and colours dipped down as if to bounce from the spires’ highest points, then streaked up into the sky once more. It was lightning with colour, and lacking the violence.

  Milian examined the closest spire some more, focusing on the openings she could see pocking its surface from the ground all the way up to its highest point. They betrayed no light, and when the colours were right they illuminated part-way inside. There was no sign of anyone standing at the doorways watching the display. Maybe the strange buildings were abandoned or never meant for habitation. Or perhaps the people inside were used to the display, and would not give it a second glance. It shocked Milian that such beauty might be ignored.

  She closed her eyes and the colours still danced.

  The families returned to the wagons, flushed with excitement and chattering amongst themselves. The tall man grinned at Milian, and it was the nervous sideways glance at his wife that betrayed his thoughts. She would have to be careful. She had no wish to cause a problem. They were taking her south, and the shard seemed happy with that direction.

  The slayers were pursuing them, intent on slashing Bon’s throat and spilling his guts to the ground, and the man who had made it his mission to save them might be mad. And yet Bon found that he was enjoying these moments alone with Lechmy Borle.

  ‘Leki,’ Bon said, voice low. ‘Over here. I’ve never seen anything like this.’

  They had worked their way through the half-collapsed doorway, and discovered that there was a set of steps leading down. The cellar was a complex of eight rooms, three of which had been buried by tumbled ceilings. But the others were surprisingly free of damage. Time had imprinted itself in these places – mineral stalactites drooped from the ceilings, pale and delicate, and there were traces of animals’ nests and dens in every room – but considering they were more than six centuries old, most of the rooms were surprisingly well preserved.

  Leki ha
d found the torches, and lit them with her flint. I wonder if the last person to carry this was Skythian, Bon had wondered as she handed him a blazing torch, and the idea was both thrilling and chilling. He could not help wondering what had become of them. Killed by the Kolts, perhaps – those Skythians driven to murderous frenzy by Aeon’s destruction. Such a fate was beyond imagining.

  ‘What have you found?’ Leki asked. She crossed the room, kicking through grit and rubble and uncovering the remains of the intricate tiled floor. There were mosaic designs there, but Bon hadn’t been able to make them out in any detail.

  ‘I think this must have been their Aeon shrine,’ Bon said. He nodded at the wall, and Leki added her light to his. There were gorgeous images in ceramics, their colours as brash and bright as the day they were created, and all of them displayed wondrous scenes of Skythian landscapes, wildlife and plants. The animals were powerful, the plants lush and blooming, and much of what he saw was a mystery to him. There were similar species on Alderia, but others were unknown. They had vanished from the world, but still existed here, a frozen history. Bon’s breath caught and he swallowed, a lump in his throat. ‘This is everything they lost. Everything we took from them.’

  ‘Not “us”,’ Leki said. ‘You and I didn’t take anything.’

  ‘The Ald. Leaders of Alderia. Same thing.’

  ‘Six hundred years ago,’ Leki said. ‘You still truly blame a race for actions that old?’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Bon asked, aghast.

  ‘I blame the Ald now for continuing to blame the Skythians for what happened here, yes. But when they used magic back then, they were doing what they thought best. They didn’t know whether Aeon would be benevolent or not.’

  ‘So they killed it,’ Bon said. ‘And faced with the same thing now? Don’t you think the Ald would do exactly what they did then, to protect their Fade?’

  ‘Protect a lie from a lie,’ Leki said. ‘Yes, I suppose they would. That’s what depresses me most, you know. Always has. The fact that everything that happened to this place happened because of one false belief facing off against another.’

  ‘You don’t believe Aeon really appeared.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bon replied, because he didn’t yet want to say yes. But he’d spent years reading forbidden books about the war and its causes, and speaking to academics who had spent their whole lives living a secret. And yes, he did believe that Aeon had appeared, because why else would the Ald back then have launched something so devastating against Skythe, and something with such unpredictable results? They would not have used magic to wipe out a rumour, a faith that had always existed. They would have used it to destroy the root of that faith – Aeon. The appearance of the Skythian god had proved them, and their Fade religion, wrong. And they could not stand for that.

  ‘Certainly is beautiful,’ Leki said softly.

  ‘I wonder who lived here,’ Bon said. ‘Big house.’

  ‘I’d like the time to explore,’ Leki said. ‘But we have to move on. Don’t know what Juda’s up to here, but I’m trusting him less and less. There’s just something about him …’

  ‘Perhaps the fact that he’s mad,’ Bon said.

  Leki smiled. ‘Maybe. But right now, I don’t think we can afford to doubt him. We’ve got to assume those things are still chasing us.’

  ‘And the gas marshes sound like fun,’ Bon said, and something growled.

  A deep, wet growl.

  ‘Oh,’ Leki whispered. ‘Maybe we should have checked all the rooms.’

  ‘Juda,’ Bon whispered, fearing treachery.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Leki said. Something moved in the next room, passing before a fallen length of wall, its bare skin pale yellow with reflected flame. ‘I think bad luck.’

  Bon drew his knife. The blade felt ineffectual in his hand, no weight to it, no heft. He could use it for peeling fruit, but little else.

  ‘If we move slowly …’ he began, but the growl came again, and, it seemed, from a different direction.

  ‘Oh, fucking great,’ Leki said.

  Bon held the flaming torch out towards the room’s doorway and the wide hall beyond. The heavy tree roots that had grown through from above were hung shadows waiting to whip. The shaded lines of protruding blocks flickered back and forth as the flame moved in a slight breeze. Old dead Skythe breathing, he thought, and the idea of the land having a breath chilled him to the core.

  ‘Come on,’ Leki said. ‘Don’t show fear.’

  ‘What? That could be anything out there!’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ she said. She grabbed his hand and, though her palm was slick with sweat, tugged him gently forward, holding the torch before her.

  A shape moved sideways into the archway. Bon thought it was an ape of some kind, like the rawpanzies of the Blane Jungles far to the south of New Kotrugam. Sometimes people kept them as pets, and occasionally they were trained as clowns or servants. But this ape was different. Its body was hairless apart from a thatch between its legs and the long, straggly hair reaching its shoulders from its half-bald head. Its features were human, disturbingly so. And Bon could not help thinking that its keening, clicking voice held something that might have been language.

  It was staring at Leki, and the growl came again.

  ‘Where are you?’ The call came in from the distance, above the cellars in the open ground. Juda.

  ‘Don’t shout,’ Bon said. ‘Don’t startle it. I know what this is.’

  ‘I thought I did too, but …’ Leki said.

  ‘Skythian,’ Bon said. ‘This is what they’ve become.’

  ‘No,’ Leki said, an exhalation of shock and sadness rather than denial.

  ‘Keep your hands fisted,’ Bon said. The Skythian was staring at Leki. ‘Try not to blink. I don’t think it knows quite what you are.’

  Bon edged slowly towards the Skythian, fascinated and shocked. Such human traits in something that looked almost animal. It swayed slightly where it stood, glancing back and forth between him and Leki, and he knew not to underestimate it. People he’d spoken to had different ideas of what had become of the denuded Skythian race, and in reality there was no way to say what might happen here. Some stories told of primitive herbivores who haunted their ruined centres of population like the shadows of their dead, brilliant ancestors. Others told of savages, and cannibals. To get out of this alive, Bon had to assume the worst.

  Juda called again, more urgently. The Skythian glanced back and up towards the stairs leading to the surface. And in that glance Bon saw the first hint of intelligence.

  Of scheming.

  ‘Leki, get ready to run for the steps,’ he muttered, as more shapes appeared out of the dark room behind the first. Four, then six. Most of these were naked as well, but a couple wore rough garments around their loins, and they all carried basic weapons – rocks, spears, blades.

  The first Skythian said something in its rattling, deep voice, and though Bon had studied Old Skythian in its written forms, he could not identify any of this language. Their tongue had changed as much as their appearance. He could smell the stink of them, animal and unwashed. They stalked rather than stood, eyes glittering with basic hunger, primeval fear. Civilisation was no longer here, and Bon felt a surge of sadness for these people and their ancestors. Who might you have been? he thought, looking at the first shape. If things had been different, what might you have done? The man growled at Bon, baring his teeth, crouching down as if unsettled by the scrutiny.

  ‘Bon! Leki! We have to move, now!’ Juda sounded more urgent than ever, an edge of panic to his voice that ignited panic in Bon.

  ‘Bon …?’

  ‘When I say run—’ Bon began, and then the first Skythian sprang at Leki. She let out a cry and Bon stepped sideways, knocking the leaping shape to one side. The impact was hard, the weight of the skinny thing surprising, and as it sprawled to the ground in a riot of waving limbs its companions started screeching and yelling,
high-pitched ululations that hurt Bon’s ears.

  Shaken, he went to pick up the torch he’d dropped, but the fallen Skythian was quicker. It dragged the torch across the gritty floor and lifted it, waving it back and forth to excite the shadows. The others screeched even more, edging forward, back again, constantly on the verge of leaping into the fray.

  Bon knew that if they all came at once, he and Leki would fall beneath them. They might well be a sad echo of what they once were, but they also intended to do him and Leki harm.

  Leki stepped forward and waved her knife, slashing at the air in the hope that it would warn them back.

  ‘Bon? Bon Ugane?’ Juda’s voice was closer, but none of the Skythians seemed to notice. Why use my second name? Bon thought.

  Another shape came forward – a woman, thin and wasted – and hacked at the air with her clawed hands, mimicking Leki’s movement.

  ‘To the steps!’ Bon said. ‘You go first, backwards, keep the knife ready.’

  ‘Here!’ She threw him her torch and started backing along the hallway to the steps. Bon caught the flaming stick and heaved it back and forth, the flame roaring quietly as it burned the darkness. The Skythians backed away, but there was no fear in their eyes. Bon wasn’t certain what he saw there. Not intelligence. But … a curiosity, and perhaps a desperation to know who and what he and Leki were.

  The woman waved her hands again, then reached into her wild hair and withdrew two writhing shapes. She flung them at Bon, and he was so surprised that he backed away and lost his footing, slumping against the hallway’s rough wall and feeling age-old plasterwork crumbling beneath his back.

  ‘Snakes!’ Juda shouted, and from the corner of his eye Bon saw their guide halfway down the steps.

  Bon thrust the torch out and one of the slinky shadows hissed to an end in the flame. Another struck his leg and he kicked it away, waiting for the bite, expecting the cool flush of pain as venom melted his veins and assaulted his organs. But no pain came, and as he found his feet the woman was already reaching into her hair for more.