by Tim Stead
“Are you my father now?” Felice was angry. How dare this dissembling sneaky alien tell her how to live? And envy? She looked across at the lovers again. “Envy them?” she said.
Alder suddenly broke into a grin, and Felice was disarmed by its openness. “I confess they are an unusually unattractive couple,” he said. They both laughed at this, but a spark of resentment at what he had said would not leave her.
“And what of your world?” she asked, seized by a sudden desire to know. “Is it full of fine wine and attractive lovers?”
“It is very different,” he said. “I have not been back for many years.” He looked so troubled by the memory that Felice felt a stab of pity for him until she remembered what he was.
“Tell me something about it,” she said.
“It is dry. There are no oceans. Once, thousands of years ago, there were, but our sun is changing, and they are gone.”
“How terrible. Does it never rain?”
“It rained once, when I was a child. You would call it a shower, but to us it was a miracle. I have seen rain on many worlds since then, but oceans still seem too big, too profligate. I dislike them.”
She tried to imagine a world without rain, without seas and oceans. She could only conjure an image of the eastern drylands below Yasu, but they were bounded by the ocean. Just sand, she imagined, sand and rock going of forever.
Alder poured the last of the wine into his glass. “I should not have told you that,” he said. “I should not have told you anything.”
“I have learned that consequences may be good or bad irrespective of the first intent. What’s done cannot be undone, and the future will answer our doubts.”
The old man nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It is well spoken.” He emptied the last glass of wine and looked about himself. “We should look around the town again, Ima. See if we can find our fugitive.”
“As you wish.”
They stood and made their way back out into the brightness of the square. Felice squinted again at the few people who were visible. A group of men sat beneath the under-sized Kalla Tree and discussed something. Others walked by. None of them was Raganesh.
“Shall we circle the town?” Felice asked. “If we head to the west and then walk in north south lines we will see every street in quite a short time.”
“Yes,” Alder agreed. “It is a workable strategy.”
They walked west until they came to open ground, a place where dust blew off the stripped land into their eyes. Both of them turned their backs to the wind and they began to follow the agreed pattern. Felice looked carefully down each alley, studied each road, but in each place that they looked there was no sign of Raganesh. At one point they came across a man sitting on a bench outside a whitewashed house, his face covered with a cloth. She exchanged glances with Alder, and then kicked the man’s foot. He jumped up with a start, fear in his eyes, but she saw that it was only the man who had been sleeping in the tavern.
“Forgive me, Aki,” she said to him. “That was clumsy of me.”
“It is no trouble, Ima,” the man said, managing a weak smile. “I was only resting.”
They walked on. Street after street was passed and examined. Once she tipped a hat off a man’s face, and apologised, and she even took them into the Kalla House as they passed it and asked if any prisoners had been brought in the previous day. Alder’s presence assured them of courteous treatment, but the cells were empty, and all was quiet.
Their search ended without success. They stood at the eastern end of the town with all its byways behind them, and nothing but dusty shoes to show for it.
“We cannot search the houses themselves,” she said.
“It is possible, but the fuss would only alert Raganesh to our intent. However, I believe that I was correct in my first surmise. He has gone.”
“It seems so.” Felice still harboured doubts. The look on his face when he gave his true name had been confident, cunning. They had searched as best they could, but if there was a trap it had not been sprung.
“I must tell others,” Alder said. “They must be aware that he is here and what manner of concealment he is using.”
“We go back to the castle?”
“No. I must go at once.”
“I do not understand.”
“That is not necessary, but you must turn away for a moment, and when I have gone you should return to the castle. Travel to Woodside as you had intended.”
“So this search is over?” Felice looked into Alders eyes. Even now she feared some trick, some breaking of his word that she would be safe, but all she saw there was concern.
“For you – you may return to your life. Remember what you have promised, and know that I will be aware if your promise is broken.”
“I will keep my word,” she assured him.
“Now turn away. Do not look again until a full minute has passed.”
She turned away and looked down the alley at the end of which they now stood. She was preoccupied with what was to come next, with Alder’s departure – how? – and with going on to Woodside. For the first time in many days she focussed on the image of Karnack, her brother’s killer.
There was a man at the end of the alley. It was not Raganesh, but she recognised him. It was the sleeping man from the Tavern, the man whose foot she had kicked to see his face in one of the many side streets. As she focussed on him he began to run towards them. He did not have a great distance to run, perhaps thirty yards, but Felice saw the look on his face and she knew. All the right words came back to her.
She remember the look of fear on his face when he had removed the cloth seeing her and Alder standing above him – reasonable in the circumstances perhaps, but it fitted. She remembered Alder saying that the Faer Karan could take a human body, steal it from its owner, but that they were trapped in it until the body died, and she knew that the first body, the one they had been searching for, was dead. This was Raganesh, this new, running man. They had seen him twice and yet not seen what he was.
She turned to Alder to tell him, to warn him, but something strange had happened to the old man. In bright sunlight he stood in shadow, as though the sun could no longer touch him. His eyes were closed and unseeing.
“Alder!” He did not hear her warning cry.
A moment later something heavy crashed into her back and she was knocked forwards onto the old man as he stood in his inexplicable shadows, and everything began to spin. She felt that her innards were being twisted around inside her body, and her head was seized by a terrible vertigo, a spinning sensation that seemed to be in every direction at once. She could not focus, could not see anything, and her head hurt as though it were on fire.
It did not last long. The spinning stopped and the pain went away, but her stomach rebelled. She fell to the ground, still dizzy, and vomited onto the dirt. She threw herself over onto her back and closed her eyes, waiting for everything to come together again. Danger. She remembered the danger. Raganesh had done this to her. She opened her eyes and looked up and around her.
The sky was wrong. It was a different blue, and clouds drifted high above her. There had been no clouds a moment before. She looked again.
The town had gone. There were no houses nearby, only trees, and White Rock itself, the massive stone hill and the fortress that stood above it, all of it was gone.
14. A New World
She forced herself to get to her knees, to think. She looked around and saw first that Alder and Raganesh lay on the ground not far from her. Neither was moving. They were in the middle of a clearing in a forest. A path led away through the undergrowth to the … She did not know the direction. Birds sang in the trees, and a light breeze moved the leaves, which imitated the sound of sea, moving in gusty rushes over her head.
She moved to Alder’s side and felt his neck to see if his heart still beat, before realising that he may not be the same as a man, may not have a vein in his neck. She was reassured when she did find it, a health
y drumming. She shook him, but he did not wake. A low groan made her turn and look. Raganesh was stirring, trying to turn over onto his face, blinking eyes that were not yet focussed.
She could attack him now, but what good would that do? Even if she killed the body it would leave him unharmed, and he might want another shell to hide in, and that might be her. She turned back and shook Alder again.
“Wake up!” she whispered in his ear. “You are in danger!” There was a fluttering in his eyes, but he did not wake.
Raganesh had made it to his knees, and his mind was beginning to work. He looked across at the pair of them and smiled. Just as suddenly his face fell as he looked around him. He began to curse in a language that she did not recognise. He turned on Felice.
“You have no idea where we are, do you?”
She shrugged. “Another world?”
“So you know that much.” He made it to his feet and advanced towards Alder’s prone body. He looked angry, probably because he had been exiled again. She had no idea how long it had taken him to get back to her world after Serhan had exiled all the Faer Karan, but he was clearly not pleased at being cast out again.
Felice put herself between Raganesh and the old man. “He is our only way back,” she said.
“He is your only way back,” he said, and seizing her arm flung her to one side as though she were made of paper. She tumbled to the ground, and rose to her feet again finding herself to be bruised, but otherwise unharmed. Raganesh was kneeling next to Alder, and as she watched he put his hands around the old man’s neck.
She rushed across the space that separated them and flung herself onto the Faer Karani’s back, wrapping an arm around his throat. He was still unsteady, and her weight tipped him to one side, forcing him to release Alder. He seized her and ripped her free, holding her out in front of him like a kitten. He was immensely strong; far stronger than a man his size had any right to be.
“You begin to annoy me,” he said, and threw her.
She sailed through the air, passing between two trees, and landed heavily in a pile of leaf litter. Miraculously she was again unharmed, but as she scrambled to her feet she knew that a third encounter would not be so easily survived. She drew her knife.
Raganesh was again settling himself astride the old man, his hands closing around Alder’s neck. Felice lifted the knife to her lips.
“Pathfinder,” she whispered. “Find me one more thing. Find that man’s heart.”
She drew her arm back and flung the blade with all her strength. Something, perhaps an instinct, told Raganesh that he was in danger, and he half turned to look at her, but it was too late. The blade rushed across the clearing as true as an arrow from a bow and buried itself in the man’s back up to the hilt.
Raganesh screamed and clawed at the hilt, but his fingers could find no purchase, and he fell forwards onto the ground next to Alder. He writhed for a few moments, gasping like a fish drowning in air, his eyes looking towards her. She hated the sight of his suffering, but could not look away. The blood and the pain held her eyes prisoner until he let out a last gasp and slumped down, quite still.
She ran forward to retrieve her knife, but something was gathering, like a mist, above the dead man. This she had expected. She knew that she could not kill him, but had sought to buy time. The Faer Karani was recovering more quickly than she had hoped. She leaped forward and pulled the blade free, all the time waiting for the blow, the fire, the pain that would kill her, wincing against it.
The blow did not come, and she dragged Alder a few feet away from the body.
The thing in the air made a noise like a sigh and began to coalesce into a shape. It was not the shape of a man. Felice knew little of the Faer Karan. All her knowledge was drawn from stories, but she knew that they were shape shifters, and that each had a preferred form, a shape that was home to them. Raganesh was now becoming what he had once been.
He stood twelve feet high, and he looked as though he wore a horses head upon a bear’s body, but the fur was dark green, and everywhere it was interrupted by golden scales which cut paths through the thick green fur in stripes and patches all over the head and body. The head and body both looked wrong, as though badly drawn. The head was too flat and the body too thin. The eyes were gold without feature, as though drops of molten metal had been poured into the eye sockets, and the mouth was full of teeth, the like of which she had only ever seen in predatory fish; long and sharp.
Raganesh raised himself up, and then seemed to wilt again, as though burned by the sun. He cursed.
“This is a weak place,” he said, as though to himself, and turning to Felice he added, “now I will kill you for what you have done.”
“You will do nothing, Faykin.” She turned and saw with great relief that Alder was rising to his feet. He still looked dazed, but she was amazed to see that his hand held a sword, and it was a weapon the like of which she had never seen. The blade was white, like the moon, and red and green lights played up and down it like flames. She heard Raganesh cry out, and was astonished to see him cringe before the blade, then turn and flee down the path away from the clearing at great speed. Almost at once the blade vanished from the old man’s hand, dissipating like smoke into the air.
“We must follow,” Alder said, but when he tried to walk forwards he staggered to one side, and Felice caught him, prevented him from falling.
“You are in no condition to chase,” she said. “Did you see how fast he ran?”
“But we will lose him…”
“Not while I have this,” she said, showing him the blade still marked with blood. She was surprised when he flinched from the sight of it.
“It is an abomination,” he said, his eyes still fixed on the feathered metal.
She drew the knife away, stung by his reaction, cleaned the blade and sheathed it quickly. “Why do you say that?”
“It imprisons the sacred dead,” Alder said. “It prevents unification.”
“Again, I do not understand you.”
“I will explain it to you later, but now we must follow Raganesh. Can that thing find him?”
“I have faith that it can.”
“We must use it then, but first there are precautions.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is not your world, Felice Caledon, and the people here are not like your people. They look different, they think differently, and they believe different things. I will change our appearance with a glamour, but you will be unable to understand anything that is said because their language is different. You must speak only to me. Do not try to interfere in anything that you see going on around you, for you may cause grave offence by so doing. Do you understand?”
“I do. Am I likely to be inclined to interfere?”
“I would imagine so,” Alder smiled. “It seems you are the interfering type,” he said.
“Lucky for you,” she replied.
“I will not forget your courage,” he said, turning serious eyes upon her. “Your mistakes have been the mistakes of youth, but your spirit has been faultless.”
“I am happy that you think so, Aki,” she said, executing a little, mocking bow. “Now shall we chase the beast?”
He nodded, and Felice drew the knife again, laying it once more upon her hand so that it balanced. She touched it with a finger and it spun a couple of lazy circles.
“Pathfinder,” she said. “Show me the path to the Faer Karani known as Raganesh.”
The blade spun again and pointed to the track down which he had fled moments before. Alder snorted.
“Nothing we didn’t know,” he said.
She ignored him and led the way down the path. Almost as soon as they had left the clearing it was lost to view, and they wound through a green, crowded world, bustling with sound and movement. The path was barely wide enough for one person, and so Alder followed in her wake.
“Is it not a beautiful place, a fine day?” she asked.
“We have no water,”
he replied. “We have no food, too, nor do we have extra clothing for the cold of night, but it is water that will worry us first.”
“You do like to pick the seeds out of your jam, don’t you?” she said.
“I am a realist. We must solve these problems.”
“You are Ekloi. Take us to a water world, take us home, take me to my fathers house and you will have all the clothes, water and food that you can carry.”
“You are merciless,” he said, allowing himself a smile.
They walked on, the path ploughing steadily through the woodland, until they came to a stream where they both drank their fill, much to Felice’s amusement. Alder would not meet her eyes until they had sat down to rest for a moment.
“I have been thinking,” he said. “And I have concluded that it would be prudent to tell you more about this place.”
“I would like that.”
“What you like is unimportant,” Alder said, climbing onto his dignity a little. When he attempted to sound authoritative he became pompous, which amused Felice, but she kept a straight face. “This can be a dangerous place. There are more people here, and more land. Most of your world is ocean, but most of this one is land, and the land is thronged with people. There are hundreds of millions here, and their towns will seem great cities to you, as big as Samara, bigger perhaps.”
“I can cope with crowds,” she said.
“Do not interrupt!” he commanded. “The most important things are yet to come.” He was silent for a while, and she began to think that he was sulking, was about to ask him to continue when he began. “It is hard for me to put some things into words that you will understand,” he said. “The people here believe in gods.”
“Gods?”
“Yes.”
“What are gods?”
He frowned. “Many things. Sometimes they are a hammer to beat down the poor. Sometimes they are an ideal, a crystallization of all that is best in a race. Sometimes they are explanations for things not understood. Very rarely they are real beings, but those that are called gods never consider themselves to be such.”
