“What the fuck is that?”
They were standing beside the car.
“Man, just some dead fool.”
The two men laughed and leaned against the car.
“I can’t believe Montre is dead.”
“That’s fucked up.”
Emil held her breathe and counted the seconds. She reached ten and started again.
And again.
And again.
“Let’s get back to the car, man.”
Their footsteps crunched through the snow as they walked away.
Engines roared and the cars began to move, slowly turning in the deepening snow, headlamps flashing.
Within minutes there was only the sound of the mournful wind and Emil’s pitiful sobs.
Her hand squeaked as she cleared the condensation from the car window and peered out at a stark sky topping an edgy landscape of pure white. Her legs were sticky with dried urine and her clothes reeked. Her stomach growled but she had no appetite for food. Her throat was parched but she wanted nothing to drink. Her single eye roamed the deep snow. It no longer bore grace and beauty. It now looked cold, unforgiving, like Gallen, like her life. He was awake, silently studying his map, tracing a finger across it. She tried to open the car door but it refused the budge. She put her shoulder against it and grunted as she pushed but the snow was banked hard against it. She tried the other door but the metal had been twisted and it would not move an inch.
“I can’t get out.”
The Map Maker folded away his map and tried his own door. He had little success. He eased back in his seat and slammed his boot against the windscreen. It splintered at once, a mess of long spindly lines. He shielded his eyes and kicked again and the glass fractured and sprayed across the front of the car. At once, an icy wind blew in and Emil raised her hood. She clambered into the front seat and out into the snow. She felt his eyes upon her as she stretched. The wind howled. She looked around and saw the road and surrounding landscape was slashed with deep ruts from car tyres. She wondered, fleetingly, if they had captured the person they were hunting.
The Map Maker scrambled from the car, his head lowered, oddly silent, creased with shame that only a dawn light can fetch. She had been oblivious to what he was doing before the cars had arrived. He thrust his hand into his pockets.
“Let’s go,” he said.
He began to trudge along the snow covered road. It took him a few moments to realise she hadn’t moved.
“Emil, come on.”
“I’m going back,” she said.
He wiped a hand over his shiny head.
“No more of this, okay? You know why I need you. There are dangers ahead. I need you to heal me if I get hurt.”
She wasn’t even looking at him.
“I don’t care if you get hurt. I’m never going to heal you.”
“Then I’ll kill you.”
She stared into the dark muzzle, unflinching. Once she would have screamed or tried to run or dropped to her knees and begged for her life but she had seen too much, suffered too many times. Her kin were dead, her village burnt to the ground. She had wandered for a long time, alone, hiding what she was, hiding the gift, finding no refuge, no hope. She let out a long sigh, her breath a white cloud. The gun no longer scared her. He no longer scared her. Reaching Dessan, meeting Mallon, helping at the school, it was the shape of a life she had dreamed of since her family had been murdered.
“I’m going back to Dessan,” she said, simply.
The gunshot shattered the silence. The snow powdered.
“I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
She started walking, knee deep in snow. She heard him come after her and then the gun was pressed against the back of her head.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
There was a blur of movement and a man’s voice snapped, “No, you won’t. Drop the gun. Right now.”
Keeping the weapon pointing at Emil’s head, the Map Maker turned and saw a tall, narrow man, crouched at the roadside, with an automatic rifle levelled at him.
“I got three bullets left in this pistol,” he said. “I reckon you got nothing but air in that thing.”
Suddenly, a shotgun was jammed into his back.
“Do you think mine’s empty as well?” said a woman.
The man edged forward, slowly picking his steps through the deep snow. The Map Maker felt the shotgun press hard into his spine. He shook his head and lowered the pistol. The man snatched it from him. Emil turned to look at the two strangers.
“What do you want?” said the Map Maker.
“With you?” said Cristo, his eyes falling on Emil. “Nothing.”
She shook her head, started walking.
“Hey,” called Cristo.
“What?” she flared, waving her arms. “What do you want? Because that’s it, isn’t it? You want something. You all want something. Take, take, take. I’m just a thing to you, that’s all I am, a fucking one-eyed thing. Shoot me then, I don’t care anymore.” She slapped the side of her head. “This isn’t living anyway. Trying to find some crazy place that doesn’t exist. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of all of you. If Stone was here he’d kill the fucking lot of you.”
“Well, he’s not here, is he?” said the Map Maker, quietly. “He’s still being the hero killing Collectors.”
Cristo and Dani exchanged glances.
“Where are you both from?” asked Dani.
“Why?” said Emil. “What the fuck does it matter where I’m from?”
“You know of the Collectors?” said Cristo.
“Yes,” said Emil.
“Who is Stone?” asked Dani.
Emil looked around at the desolate terrain, dull and brown yesterday, clean and crisp today.
“He’s my friend,” she said. “He risked his life for village called Dessan.”
“We’re from Dessan,” said Cristo, lowering his rifle.
“Cristo was a victim of the Centon,” said Dani, finger easing from the shotgun trigger. “He was taken to the prison.”
“What prison?” said the Map Maker, scratching his head.
A haunted look flitted over Cristo’s face. He stamped his feet against the cold.
“Tamnica,” said Dani. “That’s where they take them.”
“I was given a purple ribbon,” said Emil. “They put me in a wagon but Stone fought the Collectors. He freed us all.”
“I’m Dani,” said the woman, pointing her gun away from them. “This is my partner, Cristo.”
The four of them stood in the middle of the snow covered road, surrounded by streaky tyre tracks.
There was silence until Emil said, “What do you want?”
Cristo took a deep breath.
“We’ve been following you. I know this must sound stupid but there are stories that a scarred, one-eyed woman has special gifts and can heal pain – is it true?”
Emil nodded.
“My partner has terrible pain,” said Cristo, his voice gentle, no longer commanding or angry. “It’s getting worse. The cold doesn’t help. We don’t know what to do.”
Dani passed Cristo the shotgun and flexed her hands. “The pain is always there. It’s so intense. I can barely hold things now. Even holding the shotgun was hurting me. Can you help?”
Emil looked at the woman, guessing she was ten years older, maybe more, it was hard to discern. She looked into her eyes and saw a woman who was alive, vibrant, making choices in the world, in her life, fighting the avalanche Gallen tipped in your direction. This woman was in pain and was asking for her help. What was the point of her gift – and it truly was a gift – if she turned her back on her? It wasn’t their fault the Map Maker had taken her from Dessan.
“Please?”
Emil clasped Dani’s hands. The woman flinched as her slim fingers touched her skin.
“Will this hurt?”
“No.”
“Can you …?”
Dani stopped as she saw the scarred girl c
lose her single eye. She felt a tingling and realised it was the wind. Her heart began to beat fast. She was aware of Cristo and the bald headed man watching intently. There was a dragging sensation through her body, through her hands, through the tips of her fingers. Her chest was rising rapidly. Sweat popped onto her forehead. She could feel it running down her arms. The thumping of her heartbeat was inside her head. Still the one-eyed girl gripped her hands, tighter now. Waves surged through her body. And then it snapped away, like the release of a giant elastic band. She stumbled forward, trembling, panting. The girl opened her eye and smiled at her.
Dani stared down at her hands. She clenched them, watched her knuckles whiten. She uncoiled her fingers, splayed them wide.
“Dani?” said Cristo.
She nodded, speechless, tears in her eyes.
“Thank you,” said Cristo, aiming his rifle at the Map Maker. “He kidnapped you, didn’t he? Do you want him dead?”
His finger went to the trigger.
“No,” said Emil. “I don’t want that.” She looked at him. “He doesn’t get this world. All he dreams of is putting everything back in place.” She shook her head, disdainfully. “He’s taken me miles from the only place I found happiness and what for? To travel to a place that isn’t even real. I don’t want you to kill him. I feel sorry for him.”
“Ennpithia is real,” said the Map Maker.
Cristo’s finger eased from the trigger. He lowered his weapon.
“What do you know of Ennpithia?”
Before he could answer, Dani pointed towards the town in the south. Thick smoke was belching into the sky.
“Maizans.”
“Let’s go,” said Cristo. “Both of you. We have a truck.” He saw the reluctance from them. “Stay on this road and you die.”
--- Seventeen ---
Cracks.
He saw a carpet of white, dotted with footprints and unbroken lines from wheeled handcarts. He stared up at the empty cage, suspended from the battlements, creaking in the icy wind. Stone knew Justine was dead. His heart burned. He struggled for breath. Curled in the corner, naked, bruised, shivering, he rubbed his skin and closed his eyes. He stood in sunlight, on the bridge at Dessan, far from this dismal, oppressive place, water gushing beneath him, Justine by his side. He did not love her. He did not understand the deep bond of love. It had been cleansed from his body in childhood, like a finger and thumb extinguishing a candle. He only knew that a warm sensation touched him when she was there and a cold one when she was not. Was that love? He had no idea. Her cared for her, he knew that to be true. He cared for Emil, too, but in a much different way, a way that confused him even more than his feelings for Justine. He wondered if she was forging ahead with her life, finding the happiness she deserved. Magic Girl. Even such a thought could not bring the flicker of a smile to his stoic face.
Hungry, dehydrated, he was suddenly afraid of dying. He had never feared death. Until now. He had spent his entire life hunting one man, living with death on his shoulder, gladly willing to accept it once his thirst for vengeance had been sated. Death had never scared him. His life had splashed with death since the age of eight. Once more, his childhood crawled into his thoughts, bathed him in the horror of the past. His father, mother and sister had fallen beneath the sword of a soldier, the clatter of hooves on rocky ground, a red and black uniform, the sweep of the long blade, the terrible screams that saw him clamp his hands over his ears and shriek for it to stop, tears streaming down his sun bleached face. He had fled as they were hacked to pieces. The order had been given to eradicate the wastelands of settlements and villages near the great city of the Southern Desert and his people had bore the wrath of a power-mad Chancellor. The man leading the extermination had seen enough bloodshed and defied his orders, allowing for some of the children to be spared. Stone and a small group had fled into the mountains, only to eventually turn on each other, as starvation became reality. He had limped away from the bodies, dazed and bloodied, silent and alone.
The man who killed his family was dead but his death had not ended the nightmares as he had hoped. Yet it had opened a door, one he never knew existed, a door that revealed what life could be, fleeting glimpses of a peace, a calm, a quiet. Here, he was helpless, stricken with fear for the lives of the people imprisoned with him, and the doorway seemed too far to reach. Faces flashed into his mind, churning over and over. He wanted them beyond these walls. He wanted them to see the trees again. He wanted them to feel the peace, the calm, the quiet … but he was going to die in here, he wanted to die in here.
He was fed once a day but the Cuvar who slid his food through a hatch in the cell door would urinate over it first. He would tip the contents into a bucket in the corner. He could not remember the last time he had eaten. And then he glimpsed the truck again, through the cracks in the wall, out there in the courtyard, with the wooden tailgate and the green tarpaulin and the consignment of canisters of bio-fuel, the black energy, and he counted the nights it remained, and realised, in those agonised moments of beatings and black outs that there was a pattern, a routine, and where there was a pattern, where there was a routine, he knew there was an opportunity.
Shrunken in the blackness, he drew on every ounce of strength left in his body and crawled over the grubby stone floor.
He would not let them die.
He clenched his fingers into a fist and beat slowly against the cell door, muttering the words, over and over again.
“I will obey. Tell the Thinker he has my obedience. I will obey. Tell the Thinker I will obey.”
In the days that followed, a new Cuvar handed him his food. It was no longer swimming in urine. He ate, shovelling it into his mouth, washing it down with a cup of water, thanking the man who brought it to him. He began counting the days. He watched the snow thin, melt. It piled up around the courtyard, hard looking lumps, dirty and grimy. The sun touched the rusted bars of the cage. It was still empty. The beatings had stopped. His food was untouched. One morning, he heard a rattle of keys and the cell door opened wide. He scurried into the corner, shielding his eyes from the bright light. Something was tossed onto the floor and then the door was closed and locked.
Breathing hard, Stone reached out. His fingers touched trousers, a shirt and a pair of sandals.
Alba was in Snug’s bedroom when Floran came to the house. His housekeeper let the man in and called up the stairs to her master.
He stroked Snug’s cold and empty bed, and took one final look around the room. Through the years, before Laia had given birth, he had worked with the Gatherers. He had been handed the post by his father but he had remonstrated with him. Driving through the land scooping up new prisoners was a waste of his talents. His brain throbbed with ideas, new ways to hone efficiency within the prison. His father had told him, sternly, that one day Tamnica would be his and he would need the respect of the Warden and the Cuvars or end up in a cell. So Alba had joined the Gatherers and, though he was loathed to admit it, his father had been right.
Beyond the walls of Tamnica, bouncing along empty roads, he found a new world or, to be precise, jumbled pieces of an old one. Many of the men and women they captured carried little - some rations, a few makeshift weapons - but now and then he would stumble upon an item clearly from another time in Gallen’s history; a storybook, an infant’s toy, a piece of technology that he did not yet understand. His collection of historical items grew and when Snug came screaming into the world he showered his only son with gifts from a time known only in stories and whispers. He thought back to the final days he had travelled with the Gatherers as his father had grown ill, red blotches appearing on his skin, burning with fever, delirious. He passed the day Alba found the gallery, tracking narrow lanes in the western hills, close to the sea, unearthing a village of ruined buildings with bullet raked brickwork. He saw the rusted hulks of large vehicles with turrets and huge cannons – later learning, from a book, that they had been army tanks – and then his men uncovered a collapsed ba
sement, choked with dust and rubble and filled with a number of sealed crates containing stunning treasures.
“Outside,” he said to Floran.
The weasel faced man trotted back into the crisp morning air, the wind whipping in off the sea. Alba picked his steps through the overgrown grass, avoiding the corner where the ashes of his family were scattered. The house stood in the shadow of the prison. There were times when the house suffocated him. There were times when his heart felt as if it would explode with pain. There were times when he considered allowing the sea to take him for ever.
“Well?”
“He has been back in the cell block for ten days now. There has been no trouble with any prisoners or Cuvars.”
Alba nodded and thrust his hands into his pockets.
“And his work?”
“He’s better suited working with the blacksmith. He is doing everything he is asked to do.”
“Is he bluffing?”
Floran scratched his chin.
“I don’t know. He could be, sir. I really don’t know. I keep asking him about escaping but he has this distant look when you talk to him now. It’s as if he can no longer hear me. He looks broken to me.”
“I’m just pleased the violence has stopped.”
“He met with his women the other day. In the barn. The Cuvars gave them five minutes.” Floran grinned. “Suppose that’s all you need after being locked in isolation that long.”
Alba ignored his lurid comment.
“Take a message to the Collectors. I want the levy raised to five. Le Sen and Agen will carry the burden since Dessan continue to refuse us.”
Floran did not answer him.
“Well?
“The Collectors have not returned, sir. There have been no deliveries. They are overdue.”
After rations, Conrad sought out Stone, sat in his usual spot at the back of the cell block. Someone coughed. A yelling voice told him to shut up. One prisoner bumped into another, quickly apologised, but then a brawl ensued. Normally, the throwing of punches brought a baying crowd but the men were listless, hardly anyone even watched. Conrad eased down next to Stone, studying the man’s scarred face. He tried to think of something to say but his mind was blank. Stone had said nothing of his experience in isolation or what had led him there. Conrad knew only that he had been taken to see the Thinker but that had been a long time ago now. In truth, Stone had said nothing to anyone since returning from isolation, except for one brief conversation with Julen.
The Wasteland Soldier, Book 2, Escape From Tamnica (TWS) Page 21
