by Jude Fisher
Alisha’s head came up with a start and the tears stopped abruptly.
‘What are you?’ she cried, jerking her arm out of Katla’s grasp. ‘Tva sulinni es en serker inni . . . sarinni, dothinni.’
‘She is Katla Aransen, my friend from the Northern Isles,’ Saro explained as gently as he could. It seemed the loss of Falo had finally turned her wits. ‘And she is badly hurt.’ He dropped to his knee beside the nomad woman. ‘Alisha, I know you to have great skill with herbs and plants – would you look at her wound?’
The nomad woman turned huge dark eyes upon him. ‘Will you use the eldistan for my son if I do?’
Saro shook his head. ‘No, Alisha,’ he said firmly. ‘You know I cannot.’
She crossed her arms. ‘Then I cannot help you.’
Saro sighed. He looked at Mam. The mercenary leader shrugged. ‘Every moment wasted is a moment wasted,’ she said enigmatically.
‘Come with us, Alisha,’ Saro urged.‘Come away from here. We are going back into the world now. If you stay here, you will die.’
For a moment that sun-blackened face looked sly and thoughtful. Then, ‘I will follow you,’ she said simply. ‘Let me be with my son for a little while longer: I will follow you down.’
They left the nomad woman and carried on down the rocky path, trying not to jounce Katla Aransen too brutally. It was hard going, for although gravity was with them, the light was not. By the time they made it into the steep defiles which gave out into the rambling thorn-filled foothills of the Dragon’s Backbone, they could hardly see anything. The night air wrapped around them, thick with sulphur and the trapped heat of the day.
Once, Saro lost his footing in the scree and Katla hit the ground with a jolt that made her cry out in pain: after that, he took it more slowly, sliding each foot in turn. Rocks skittered away down the slopes, smashing into each other, before fetching up at the bottom with a crash. Saro shuddered. If he weren’t more careful, all three of them would go the same way.
On the ashy lower slopes the fumy air cleared allowing the moonlight to show them easier paths and after that they made better progress.
By the time they reached the parched little oasis where they had left the horses, all three felt dry as bone both inside and out. There Saro and Mam released Katla from her bonds and laid her in the soft sand, then went to fill the waterskins with what little moisture remained in the tiny pool. The horses whickered at the sight of them, as if reassured to see normal human life after the bizarre comings and goings of the past few days. They made a sparse meal of bread that had gone so hard in the hot, dry air that it was impossible to chew unless mixed with the muddy water of the oasis, and a handful of dried fruit. Then Saro refastened Katla’s ties in case she thrashed while she slept, or – more likely – tried to get up and walk; and at last all three fell asleep, side by side in the maram grass.
The next day, Katla was worse. She moaned in her sleep and would not wake properly, and when Saro pressed his hand against her forehead it felt hot and sticky to the touch. He said nothing to Mam, but she could tell by the tight line of his mouth just how worried he was. He scanned the rocky channels leading up the mountain for Alisha Skylark, for if anyone knew best how to tend a fever, it was a nomad healer; but there was no sign of her and eventually he gave up looking.
He spent a long hour trying to rig up some sort of frame whereby they might drag Katla across the desert behind the horses, but when he lay in it and had Mam draw him along to test it out, he felt every small unevenness the ground had to offer as a jolt in the spine which radiated out to jar every other bone in his body and knew that it would never do. Instead, he unwrapped Katla from her bindings, discarded the two swords and had Mam hand her feverish body up to him as he sat astride the nervous bay. Cradling Katla thus, with her head tucked beneath his chin and the feel of her silky hair against his skin, felt like an invasion, but he could see no alternative. Even so, when Mam offered to do the same after several hours of riding, Saro found himself shaking his head. ‘It’s all right,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t mind, though we should perhaps exchange mounts after our next stop to equal out the weight they bear.’
Far from minding, he found it comforted him to have Katla so close that he could smell the muted spice of her sweat, feel the way her spine curved into his ribs with every breath she took. At least he knew she was still alive. Besides, if she woke up suddenly, disorientated, she was likely to struggle, and with Mam withdrawn into her grief he trusted only himself to maintain a sufficient vigil to save Katla from what might prove to be a fatal fall. Although, if she woke up with his arms around her, he suspected she might hurl herself from the horse out of sheer fury.
Into the oven of the desert they rode all day and on into the night, for the moon was waxing and shone brightly here where no clouds obscured its face, and it made sense to cover as much ground as they could while conditions were good. As they rode Saro dreamed. His eyes were open and his body was aware of every tiny movement Katla made; but still he dreamed. He dreamed of a house made from boulders of granite, with walls so strong and thick that no one could shake or burn it down. Golden lichen grew on the slates of its roof where jackdaws chattered companionably; bright flowers for which he knew no name bloomed by its door. A rosy light lit the scene, as if the sun were westering, and when in his dream he turned, it was to find Katla Aransen walking up the hill towards him, her red hair falling loose to her waist, her wide mouth stretched in a delighted smile and her hands full of striped fish which she held out to him, as if offering him the bounty of the world. Behind her, small boats bobbed on a tranquil sea; gulls cried overhead.
Tears began to stream down his face.
A little later, Katla moaned and twisted in his grasp, waking him fully, so that he clutched onto her with a reflex which made her cry out.
‘Ssh, Katla, shh. It’s all right. You’re safe.’ As he said it, he wished it so with all his heart.
‘Where are we?’ She opened startled eyes and stared around, bewildered and afraid. ‘I dreamed I was being drawn down into the mountain’s fires with a red sword by my side. I dreamed that the dead kept falling in on top of me, and that I was dead too—’
‘We are riding north through the Bone Quarter. No winds yet: we have been fortunate. We will keep riding while we are able. We need to get you to a place of safety.’
Katla stopped her feeble struggling. ‘You’ve held me all this way?’ she asked, turning so that she could look into his face.
Moonlight silvered Saro’s eyes; moonlight, or tears. He nodded mutely. That she had not immediately flown into a temper was proof enough if he needed it of the poor state she was in. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked gruffly when he had mastered himself sufficiently to speak.
Katla frowned. She closed her eyes. ‘I don’t know. Something hurts, a dull throb like a fist clenching and unclenching deep inside me.’
Saro freed one of his hands and brought it around to feel her forehead. It was burning more than ever, despite the chill of the desert night.
Before noon the next day, having ridden as far as they could without rest, they drew the horses to a halt in the shade of a towering barchan dune. Here, they would be out of the sun till it swung around the shoulder of the dune, which might take some hours: long enough to feed and water the horses and to snatch some sleep.
The animals ate the parched grasses Mam had gathered at the oasis without complaint, though they shuffled their feet and threw their heads up when they were finished.
Having made Katla as comfortable as he could manage, Saro sat down beside her for a while and watched her as she slept. Beneath the thin, finely veined skin, her eyeballs darted back and forth in an agitated manner. Somewhere deep in that lovely skull she was dreaming again, and her dreams were disturbing. Sweat had burst out on her face once more; Saro felt the now-familiar dread grip his chest. Eventually, he could bear to watch over her torments no longer. Curling himself into a ball beside her, he closed his eye
s.
The sound of a horse’s neigh brought him to semiconsciousness. He lay in the shadow of the dune with his eyelids squeezed shut against the light and waited for the sound to repeat itself. When it didn’t, he drifted back into a listless sleep in which it was impossible to stay comfortable for more than a few moments at a time and he dreamed that he could see the bones through Katla’s skin and that the deathstone was glowing at his chest, urging him to use it.
Something touched him, tickling at his neck. He waved a hand at it distractedly and it went away. An insect, he thought sleepily, and turned onto his side.
A few minutes later it came again, brushing his collarbone, just inside the collar of his tunic. This time, more by instinct than judgement, his hand flew up to grasp whatever it was that disturbed his rest. His fingers closed on something hard and thin and determined. Someone yelped. Without letting go, he sat bolt upright.
‘Alisha!’
The nomad woman craned over him, her eyes huge in the dying light of the day, but whether her expression was one of fear or fury at being thwarted in her quest, it was impossible to tell. How could one read an expression on a face worn almost to the bone by exhaustion, privation and hurt, a face dried nearly to leather by the harsh air of desert and volcano? Whatever life was left in her seemed to be reserved deep inside, driven by the obsessive love she felt for her dead son. He pushed her away gently, relaced his tunic. The death-stone glowed against his skin, its wan light picking out the weave of the linen. So that part had been no dream.
‘Please give it to me.’ Her voice was the fragile rasp of a moth’s wing against a lamp. ‘I need it, for Falo.’
What could he say that he had not already said? She was beyond all reasoning. He looked over her shoulder, to find three horses tethered to the long knife Mam had driven deep into the sand where before there had been only two. One of them was bigger, darker and more nobly proportioned than the others. He shivered. How the stallion had survived so long without contact with the stone, he could not imagine. He had been an iron-willed beast at the best of times, a born racer, a determined competitor. The fiery light of his will to survive against every odd glowed like an ember in the pit of the one eye he could see.
Across his back lay a carefully secured bundle. Saro sighed. When Alisha had not appeared while they were at the oasis, he had hoped she was making her final farewell to the boy, but that had clearly not been the way of it. He got up now, jaw set, and stalked over to Night’s Harbinger. The other horses stood at the farthest extent of their tethers to the stallion, their eyes rolling. He did not blame them: such close proximity to the dead was enough to turn the gentlest creature wild.
With shaking fingers, he undid the straps which held Falo’s corpse across the horse’s withers, then he carried the pathetic bundle away into the desert. Alisha wailed and ran after him, only to be met by Mam, a solid wall of muscle. ‘Enough of this,’ said the mercenary leader. ‘We’ll keep the horse till it drops; but the world has taken back your boy and you must let him go.’
Saro buried the tiny body far out in the sands, as deep as he could manage with no better tool than a belt-knife and dagger. He spent a long time gathering whatever rocks he could find and piling them on top of Falo’s corpse. The grave might not withstand the worst sandstorm; but it should hold the boy till they were far enough away that Alisha could not scrabble him up again.
All night the nomad woman raved and wept, and there being no rest to be had while this was the case, they rode till dawn. As time passed she quietened, as if the distance spooling out between mother and son had a direct correlation on her state of mind. By afternoon she seemed withdrawn but less mad, and she slept when they made camp.
The next day, when Saro held his waterskin to Katla’s lips she drank down three mouthfuls, then choked and coughed so violently that she spat up blood. She told him it hurt to breathe. He was aghast, but tried not to show it. He left her propped carefully against his pack and went to find Mam, who shook her head.
‘That’s a bad sign, lad,’ she said, shaking her head sadly. ‘It’ll be an infection that’s spread; or an internal injury making itself known. She’ll not make it out of the desert. Better prepare yourself for that.’
He went off and sat by himself in a steeply carved wadi where the shade was deep and cool and tried to think what to do. They were covering the ground as fast as they could, and still the desert stretched out around them, pitiless and unending, as far as the eye could see in all directions. But the Dragon’s Backbone was sharply etched against the southern horizon and certainly seemed to be diminishing. Surely they would clear the sands in the next day. And if they didn’t, and Katla continued her descent? He knew he could not simply let her die. He had seen Virelai cure with the stone: but could he harness its power to the good? He shut his eyes and tried to fend off the panic that came for him, knowing that he was not strong enough. ‘How I wish you were here, Virelai.’ It was no more than a murmur, but it did not go unheard.
‘Virelai?’
Alisha Skylark stood at the top of the wadi, looking down. In the clear light her eyes were like cut turquoises, pale against the darkness of her face.
‘Is he still alive?’ She asked this with the inquisitiveness of the genuinely curious, her attention riveted on him.
‘Yes,’ said Saro, remembering how close-lipped the sorcerer had been about the woman he had once loved and the circumstances in which they had parted. Now he knew more of that story, he could understand why Virelai had reacted so. ‘Yes, when I left him in Jetra, he was alive and well.’
She sat down, her legs swinging over the edge of the channel’s wall. ‘I loved him, you know.’
‘And he you. I am sure you will meet again.’
She shook her head. ‘He hates me now.’ She paused. ‘And fears me, too. I used the deathstone on him, you know. Brought him back again.’
‘He was dead?’ Saro was horrified.
She nodded, her gaze hooded. ‘His story was already strange beyond measure, but I could not bear to see him like that, with his beautiful eyes all filmed over and the blood caked in his hair. He did not thank me for raising him.’
‘When I last saw him, he healed me,’ Saro told her. ‘My hands and feet were mostly gone, I was dying of my own putrefaction and despair, and he healed me. A golden light came out of him: he looked as if he were brimming over with it.’
She smiled, and the wizened face was suddenly transformed so that for a moment he could see a glimpse of her old beauty there. Perhaps sustenance and rest and distance from the madness behind them would restore it; perhaps it would restore them all. Except Katla.
As if she read his mind Alisha said suddenly, ‘The girl with the red hair, she is dying, is she not?’
Saro nodded miserably.‘I don’t seem to be able to do anything for her.’ He met her eyes. ‘And I will not use the stone.’
She held his gaze steadily. ‘I know,’ she said softly. ‘It is a terrible object, and it turns a weak hand to terrible deeds. But I am ready now to do the thing you asked of me. On the mountain.’
‘You will look at her wound?’
She spread her hands. ‘I do not have much with me, except my knowledge and a few simples I rescued from . . .’ She bit her lip.
With vivid clarity, Saro remembered the contents of the wagons strewn across the river plain, beside the torn and bleeding bodies left by the militia.
‘I am not sure they will be enough.’
But Saro was already on his feet.
Unwinding the last bandage from Katla’s abdomen, Alisha let out a great pent-up breath. The skin around the wound was livid and raised with heat. Closer in it was yellow and sticky and blood had dried black beneath the strange film of skin which covered the worst area, where the exposed gut could be seen purple and convoluted beneath. It was beginning to stink.
She listened to Katla’s heart and found a staccato beat. Her head came up from the girl’s ribcage quickly and her expres
sion was pained. ‘Not natural,’ she said softly. ‘Not natural at all.’ She didn’t expand on this, and when Saro asked her what she meant she waved him away. ‘Boil me some water,’ she ordered. ‘Just a little. Boil it, then let it cool a while, and bring it to me then.’
He did as he was told, glad to have a simple task to take his mind off what he wished he had not seen.
When he returned, she had taken a few things from her pack: a mortar and pestle, some packets of linen tied with grass stems, a long pewter spoon. She sorted through the parcels, sniffing each in turn till she found the one she wanted, and this she opened up with careful fingers. Inside lay a bundle of dead plants, desiccated so that they crumbled at her touch. They looked like mint, Saro thought, his hope failing suddenly.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Common prunella,’ she told him, which meant less than nothing. ‘The nomads call it self-heal. Canny soldiers carry it with them to war: it is well known for helping the body to heal inner wounds. If I give it to her as a syrup it will cleanse the foulness out of her, and if I dress the surface with a paste of it, that will help, too. Once the infection’s dealt with, her fever should break of its own accord. Then there’s the goat’s rue.’
That sounded unpleasant. Saro watched her work, grinding the herb to a paste with a little of the water, then adding some berries from her pack. When the syrup was ready, she got him to sit Katla up, and while Mam held her head like a vice, spooned the liquid down. Saro held Katla’s nose and mouth closed till it was gone and she could not cough it up. The rest was cooled and applied to the wound. Alisha got Mam to bandage the girl up, claiming her own weakness. ‘I’ll never get them tight enough,’ she said. ‘And now I must address the lungs.’
She smelled her way through her simples again, looking dissatisfied. She opened one bundle, only to discard it with a muttered, ‘Too dry,’ and took up another with a sigh. ‘Harshweed,’ she told a curious Saro. ‘It is not what I’d choose, but the mullein’s gone to dust.’
