“You thought I did not understand love?” Demitto sounded amused.
“I thought it was very low priority for you.”
“I have been in love,” he protested.
It was Catena’s turn to sound amused. “With your reflection?”
“You mock me. A Hanairean princess broke my heart several years ago and I have never recovered.”
“Was she very beautiful?” Catena sounded wistful.
“Like a princess should be. Blonde hair in long braids, fair skin.”
“What happened?”
“I escorted her to her new husband’s home. And left her there.”
“There has got to be more to the story than that,” Catena scoffed.
He chuckled. “That would be telling.”
“I envy you.”
“You have never been in love?”
“No.” The fire hissed as Catena obviously threw a twig or clump of grass on it. “Never.”
“Catena, now you are breaking my heart.”
“I do not need your pity.”
“It is not pity. Well, all right, maybe a little. Everyone deserves to have some love in their life.”
“I am not saying I am a virgin.” She sounded indignant.
And now he was amused again. “I see.”
Tahir stroked Atavus’s flank, hardly breathing, caught up in what he realised was a courtship ritual, something he had never witnessed before. He had seen the castle guards creep under the kitchen maids’ blanket at night where they slept in the hall, and he thought he knew how babies were made. But he had never seen his father touch his mother other than to hold her hand as they descended from the dais. He had never even seen him kiss her. He had never been party to the rite of seduction, and it made his heart pound and his eyes sting at the same time, as he realised he would never undertake the ritual himself.
“If I wanted a man, I could have him,” Catena said.
Demitto was laughing. “I am certain of that. You are a very determined woman.”
“You are mocking me.”
“No.” Someone shifted on the grass, presumably Demitto. “I would not do that. You fascinate me. You are so strong and self-assured, and yet vulnerable at the same time.”
“I am not weak–”
“Not weak, vulnerable. It is a compliment, Catena. You have the heart of a warrior and the gentleness of a lady. It is a very alluring combination.”
She went quiet for a moment. “Nobody has ever called me alluring before.”
“I am shocked. It was the first word that came to my mind when I saw you.”
She gave a girlish giggle Tahir had never heard her give before. “Stop flattering me.”
“I like flattering you.”
“Demitto… the boy!”
“He is asleep. Do as you are told for once and come here.”
The two of them went quiet, and soon the sounds of lovemaking filled the evening: rustling clothing, hushed whispers, sighs and appreciative murmurs.
Tahir buried his nose in Atavus’s fur, inhaling his deep, doggy scent, taking comfort in his warmth. He wanted to hate Catena for accepting Demitto’s affection, but found he could not. The end of the world was coming, and he was glad they had each other.
Love is love… a precious jewel, and it should be treasured.
He closed eyes, and went back to sleep.
III
They camped that night in what they came to call the Broken Room, all nine of them, Veris and Umbra alike, bound together by misfortune and a rising sense of despair as to what they were going to do now their dreams had been destroyed.
They had built a fire from dry brush and a few larger logs left lying around. From looking at the landscape, it seemed that wood was in short supply, most trees and plants having long since been burned away. Raging fires tore across the countryside, ravaging everything in their paths, and the lakes of lava poured down from the numerous volcanoes, flooding the land with scarlet. But up here, scattered around the Broken Room, odds and ends of wood still remained.
“I do not think the Incendi know of this room,” Geve remarked. “Surely they would have razed it by now.”
Most of them sat in a circle around the fire. Sarra was the only one who had removed herself from the others, and she now lay to one side, lying down, curled up. The fire was for light more than comfort, as the whole place was hot and humid and the flames only made the heat worse. It was almost dark, although the fires lit the sky with a yellowish-grey haze, little different to the day.
“What is to raze?” said Josse. “A few lumps of wood and dried mosses?”
Geve said nothing, turning instead to Sarra. “Would you like something to eat?”
She tried to give him a smile, but could only manage a twitch of her lips. “No, thank you.”
“You should eat,” Comminor said. “You need your strength.”
Several of them glanced at her stomach, and she had to fight not to cover herself with her hands. Not that she could have. In two days it looked as if the baby had grown enough for two months, and if she looked closely she could almost see the bump burgeoning. She swallowed down the fear and looked away.
The rest of them passed around a small amount of dried salamander meat, and they broke off pieces of one of Amabil’s cakes, washing it down with a swig of water. None of them mentioned that their supplies would not last more than a few days.
Geve finished his mouthful, swigged the water and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “So. I think it is probably time you told us what you know.” Sarra saw him look directly at Comminor.
The Chief Select glanced at her, and she pushed herself upright.
“Yes,” she said. “We are all in this together now. We deserve to know.”
He looked into the flames. Then he nodded.
“It is a burden I have carried for a long time. Maybe too long. I am the latest in a long line of Chief Selects, and all those who came before me passed on their knowledge to the next in line. What we call Chief Selects were once called the Nox Aves – the Night Birds. The Nox Aves have been scholars for thousands of years. They were holders of sacred knowledge before the Embers was formed, and they wrote this knowledge down in two volumes of a book they called the Quercetum. I have these books in my rooms in the palace. They contain a history of many things that have happened to this land, which was once called Anguis.”
He proceeded to tell them some of its history, and Sarra listened to the fantastical tale with growing shock. Comminor told of a war between the elements, of the superiority of earth, of the rise of water leading to the invasion of the Darkwater Lords, and then the rise of fire, which had brought about the Incendi superiority. He told them of the God Animus who had cried tears that fell to the earth, and how the Pectoris had grown around the tears and become the heart of the Arbor, and how the Arbor had spread Animus’s love to all corners of the land through its roots.
He told them that they now lived in the Third Age of Anguis, and that the Arbor connected not only space but time, and that it could remember its past and see into its future. It had foreseen the rise of the Incendi, and although it could not stop it, it had the power to bring together a triumvirate of events that had occurred in three different Ages to form the Apex – a peak of energy that could ultimately bring about the fall of the element of fire and the rise once again of the element of earth.
The trouble was, Comminor explained, that the writers of the Quercetum knew only of the events of the first two parts of the Apex. They could neither see when the third part would occur, nor what the final outcome would be.
“So do you know when this third part is supposed to happen?” Nele asked.
“No,” said Comminor. “I have no idea.”
“Could it be now?” Betune asked.
Comminor hesitated. He looked across at Sarra. She did not miss the softening of his expression. “Maybe. The growth of Sarra’s child and the strange events that have occurred leading up to
this point suggest that could be the case. But I do not know how this will play out. Or whether it will be successful.”
“So the dreams we have all had,” said Amabil softly, “of the grass and the sky and birds… We were not seeing the future? We were seeing the past?”
Again he hesitated. “I do not have all the answers. Perhaps we were seeing the future, and the land will be returned as it once was. I do not know.”
“But the Arbor,” Betune said in a small voice. “The Arbor is gone.”
Comminor looked out across the barren land. “Yes.”
Sarra caught her breath. She had known, of course, that there was no way the tree could have survived in that desolate landscape. But hearing the words made an ache grow inside her that wouldn’t go away.
“So these Incendi,” said Josse, “they once existed inside the mountains, in the Embers?”
“Certainly in the caves surrounding the Embers,” Comminor replied. “I do not know if they ever lived in the Embers itself. There is no evidence for that, none of their paintings or carvings. And many of our caves we dug out for ourselves. The Embers was made to be isolated and self-sufficient, that is why our forebears created it. We were a pocket of resistance against the Incendi invasion, and were meant to survive to fight back one day.”
“If the Nox Aves knew about the Apex and what was going to happen to the Arbor, why did they not try to stop it?” Amabil looked near to tears.
Comminor ran his hands through his hair – a gesture that Sarra knew meant he was struggling to hide his impatience. “Because the Apex cannot be stopped. It is set in time and space, a fixed event. If the Nox Aves attempted to stop it, it would forever alter the path of time and the way events transpired, and they could not know whether this would mean the Incendi would forever remain in the ascendant. All they could do was let the Arbor guide us in all three ages to come together to try to defeat them when the moment arose.”
They all fell silent, lost in their thoughts as they stared into the flames. Sarra moved to sit with her back against the wall, rubbing her bump tiredly. She closed her eyes, wishing she had never started out on this journey. How foolish she had been, to follow her dreams, to believe her son was going to lead her to the Surface. Well, of course, it could be argued that he had, but none of it had turned out as she had thought it would.
And she had only had dreams of the green and blue land for the last few months. How awful must it be for the other Veris, who had dreamed of the Arbor since childhood? The hope of finding it had sustained them all their lives, and now they had discovered their dreams were like burnt paper, flying away in the wind.
She wished she understood the things Comminor talked about – convergences of time, connections, and the Arbor’s plans for the Incendi, but her brain hurt and she was so tired that everything seemed to merge together, like when she had tried to paint and the wood was wet, and the colours had blended into one. All she could think about was her son, that she had failed him, because what kind of life could she give him in this world?
They would have to go back. The realisation dawned on her slowly. There was no other option – here they had no food, and she had seen no sign of a river in the landscape before it got dark. But if they went back, what would happen to her baby? If it were any other woman, Comminor would demand the pregnancy be terminated, although she was much further along now than when it usually happened. Would he be able to bring himself to kill a newborn baby? Would he be able to bring himself to kill her baby? She had seen the way he looked at her, his expression softening. He loved her. Before he knew about her being part of the Veris, he had promised to treat the child as his own. Had that changed?
What option did she have? If she stayed here, they would both die, her and the baby.
She opened her eyes and looked out across the bleak landscape. Through the darkness, volcanoes spat lava and fires leapt in a brief blaze of light before succumbing to the night again. Small, glowing forms moved across the parched earth, Incendi elementals, scorching everything in their path. The world looked dead, defeated.
She had never felt so low. She had really believed she would find the Arbor and the land she had dreamed about over the past few months. Why? She whispered the word as she stroked her belly. Why had she had those visions of her child? Had it all been an amazing creation conjured up by her mind? A tear ran down her cheek. She had been so foolish. Convinced she was special, she had risked the lives of herself and her baby, as well as the other people who had followed her there. Amabil and Betune, trusting Nele, poor Kytte who had died as well as the member of the Umbra who had also hit the rock, and Geve… She bit her lip. Poor Geve. He had once told her he would follow her to the end of the world. Well, now he had, hadn’t he?
A hand touched her face and brushed away the tear and she opened her eyes, expecting to see Geve, surprised to find it was Comminor.
“Do not cry,” he murmured.
Another tear joined the first. “I cannot help it.”
“I tried to stop you,” he said.
“Perhaps you should just have told me the truth,” she snapped.
“And what do you think the truth will do to the people of the Embers?” He bent his head to look at her, and a fire leapt in the distance, highlighting his silver hair with orange. “Do you think it will lift their spirits to know they were driven underground by a creature that roams the land they once stood on? That there is no hope of them ever seeing the sun and the grass again?”
“What about the Apex?” she whispered. “You said it will happen one day.”
“It could be thousands of years in our future. Which is why I and the other Nox Aves who came before me have done our best to keep our people safe until it happens, and that means hiding the truth, and keeping them in the dark, metaphorically as well as literally, until the time comes.”
Sarra closed her eyes. “I am tired.”
“I will leave you to sleep.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, then moved away.
She squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip. That means hiding the truth.
They couldn’t go back. Comminor would not let them return. Because if they did, he ran the risk that one of them would tell the others what they knew, and the truth would be out.
She opened her eyes and watched a fire briefly flare in the distance. And as the flames flickered out, so did the last remnant of hope.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I
Horada crouched low in the semi-darkness and felt Julen slip down the wall to the ground beside her. She knew they should keep running and put as much distance between them and the Incendi as they could, but something was bothering her, and she couldn’t keep it to herself any longer.
“I have something to tell you,” she said to her brother.
“What is it?” He moved the hand that held the flame closer to her so he could see her face. She had been startled by the fact that he could create fire, but after seeing what else the pendants could do, it no longer seemed so shocking.
She took comfort from his deep voice, his reassuring presence, the familiar, strong features of his face. He had ventured alone deep into the mountains to rescue her, had been guided by the Arbor, had frozen the elementals and been part of the connection with the people from the future. She had always felt a kind of awe toward him, but that had now increased a hundredfold with the events of the past few hours.
“It is Orsin,” she said. “When Pyra tried to tempt me to give in, he showed me a vision of my family in trouble – you surrounded by elementals, Mother being chased by a Wulfian lord, and Orsin… I saw Pyra tempting him with visions of earthly pleasures, things Orsin is going to find very difficult to refuse. Julen, I think Pyra has somehow possessed him.”
Julen fell silent for a while. Then he said, “Why? What would the Incendi king possibly want with our brother?”
Horada heard the scorn in his words. “You should not think so little of him,” she scolded.
�
�He is weak and foolish,” Julen snapped. “I should have foreseen this.”
“He is neither weak nor foolish. It is just that he has not yet found his purpose. He misses our father. Although he is his heir, and although our mother has little respect for him too, I think he has her love of adventure and the open road. But he has not been allowed to embrace that. He lives – or has lived up until now anyway – in a time of peace, and so he has not been able to fully hone his talents which, I am sure, lie in the art of war. He was born into the wrong time, and Pyra has taken advantage of his restlessness and lack of direction by appealing to his love of wine and women.”
“Like I said, he is weak.”
“Julen!” She sighed. “Not every man has your inner strength. Orsin needs focus, and he does not have that at the moment.”
“That, my dear, is the understatement of the year.”
She pushed herself to her feet crossly. “Do not be so patronising. Orsin does not have your special talent – he has rarely been made to feel special. Do you think he finds it easy to watch you go off with the Peacemaker to do dangerous missions Arbor-knows-where? He craves that excitement but has nothing apparent to offer.”
He stood next to her. “And neither have the majority of people who lived in Anguis, but they do not defect to the enemy. Orsin is spoilt and he is throwing his rattle out of the bassinet. He is flattered by Pyra’s attention and, as you say, is enjoying feeling special. He does not realise the King is just using him, and that when Pyra is finished, he will chew him up and spit him out and that will be the end of him, if not the end of all of us.”
Horada studied her brother silently, noting his furious features, his lowered voice that held a hint of menace. His use of the word defect told her that he was angry that Orsin had gone over to the other side, and concerned as to what this meant for their cause. She had only been thinking about her brother, but Julen had greater things on his mind. He was old beyond his years, and carried a weight that a young man should not have to convey on his shoulders.
“What do you want to do?” she asked quietly.
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