Book of Transformations

by Mark Charan Newton

  ‘As if I could forget.’

  ‘We were there for weeks, Verain – it was days here but weeks there. We were kept alive, we were special. They found us more intriguing than average human stock – we knew how to use aspects of their technology and it mystified them.’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘Can’t you remember? You just said you couldn’t forget being in the cages.’

  ‘I remember being in them. That’s all.’ She wondered if she had forced many of the horrors from her mind of her own will, or whether there was something genuinely wrong with her head.

  ‘Our captors comprised of many races, bizarre creatures – much worse than the shell-based life forms we passed on the way in, and only a few of them could communicate with us in anything more than grunts. Some individuals knew our tongue, and our culture was vaguely understood. And we few – we survived. We managed to negotiate. We’re heading back to Villjamur with a message, to visit our rulers and negotiate.’

  ‘What, exactly, are we negotiating?’ she asked, eager now she gleaned some information.

  ‘They wish to enter our lands. They wish to occupy our islands. You must not yet tell the others – I will do this in my own time.’

  Verain gestured to the window. ‘Is that them, out there? Is that their armies?’

  Dartun took a cursory peek, before returning his gaze to her. There was a tenderness to his voice now. ‘Indeed it is.’

  ‘Who are they?’ she breathed.

  ‘They are part of the Akhaioí. Do you remember their war? Those military machines that were constantly droning in the distance?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘They have been seeking access to our world for years, and they will take it by force. But to minimize loss of life, I am to . . . negotiate with the powers in Villjamur. That’s why I have been modified. They’ve given me augmentations so we can travel safely back to Villjamur. I only know half of what I can do. And I’m struggling to cope, if I’m honest.’

  He had never been this candid in all her years of knowing him. His vulnerability touched her. She moved in closer and held his forearm tenderly. For a long while it seemed he had forgotten what to do, but eventually his arms closed in around her.

  *

  The dormitory was vast but minimalist, with little in the way of decoration. The beds were too small so they had to be pushed together in order to be of any use, but, still, this was opulence compared with what they had gone through recently. A night spent under a solid roof was more than a relief.

  The rest of the order dozed off, eventually finding a deep state of rest, but Verain could not sleep at all. She had been thinking long and hard about the consequences of what Dartun had told her earlier. One detail didn’t sit right in her head: why were the other cultists not killed with the rest of the order?

  The army passing on the horizon also prompted her concern. Where exactly was such a large body of beings heading? Images flashed again, of the other world, her intermittent memory teasing: vast columns of troops marching across decimated landscapes. Hideous beings covered in blood.

  She pushed herself up and out of bed. Dressed in thick layers, she headed down to the kitchen, the stairs creaking beneath her cautious, night-blind steps. Clouds had obscured the moons, which left the kitchen quarters in utter darkness. The musky smell of cooked food seemed more prominent as she sensed her way by touch, her eyes gradually adjusting to the oppressing gloom.

  She wanted to make herself a drink, something warm, so after stumbling about for several minutes, she eventually lit the stove and the fire seemed to heighten the blackness at the edges of the room. For a moment she thought she could see eyes looking at her, but it was a decorative metal handle on one of the cupboards. Other items glimmered, thick blades and whisks and ladles.

  She heard something outside. A faint movement, snow crunching underfoot, the rattle of a stifled breath.

  Verain felt afraid and alone. She had no relics with her, so she moved across to the other end of the table, grabbed a massive knife from a rack, shut the door of the iron stove and pressed her back against one of the walls. From here she had a view of two windows either side of the kitchen, one of them being right next to the door. There were no shutters here – just thick, cheap glass.

  Something brushed against the outside of the building: she heard it clearly. Perhaps one of the dogs had escaped? No, this was a much slower noise, like something scraping down the wall.

  Her heart froze.

  Moonlight came, and through the facing window a silhouette was defined. It was . . . human. Yes, definitely human, just standing there a few paces back from the door, in the middle of the street, peering in.

  Cautiously, she stepped across the room and flipped down a hatch on the wide door to the building; a rush of cold air followed. Outside, the man was facing her, silent and still, arms by his side – he reminded her of the undead humans that Dartun had reanimated.

  ‘What d’you want?’ she whispered.

  ‘You speak . . . Jamur,’ he stuttered. He stepped forward presenting his hooded face, long stubble and haunted eyes. His accent was heavy on the vowels. ‘You’re not one of them?’ He seemed desperate and breathless.

  ‘One of whom?’

  ‘You . . . know who. Those . . . those things that came here.’ He was freezing, rubbing his arms vigorously and shivering in his thin, ragged clothing.

  ‘No, I’m not one of them,’ she replied.

  Behind him, the street was deserted, but he kept gazing about him, scanning the area.

  ‘How did you survive?’ Verain asked, debating whether to invite him in. ‘We’ve been through several settlements and we never saw a soul.’

  ‘We’ve been hiding in a tavern cellar – seven of us, and we have been surviving with next to nothing. I came out to see if they have gone . . . Where are you from? How did you get to the – ’ he searched for the word in Jamur ‘ – educational facility?’

  ‘We’re cultists.’

  ‘Thank Bohr! I never thought I would be relieved to see a magician.’

  We’re not magicians, she wanted to say, but it seemed pointless. Was she even a cultist without her relics? ‘We’re only passing through,’ she replied. ‘We’ll be gone in the morning.’

  ‘Take us with you,’ the man pleaded.

  From the other side of the house came a sudden raking noise, harsh and staccato. Verain turned to the wall and then back at the man, into his wide brown eyes. Days of dirt and tears and snot had turned his grimace into something entirely primitive, and she could smell fish. ‘Let me in, please.’

  ‘I’m not sure I should. Tell me where you’re staying and we’ll come and find you in the morning. It’s probably safer if you—’

  A stifled wail, the man vanished from the door, thumped on the ground and was dragged around the corner of the house. Moments later she could hear a terrified scream from further along the street.

  Guilty now that she had not let him in, Verain grasped the knife more firmly and hurried in the direction of the man’s wails.

  Moonlight gave an odd texture to the scene, highlighting the snow along the main thoroughfare, though leaving the buildings in utter darkness. Anyone could have been looking out from behind shutters or windows, and she would not have been able to see them.

  A trail cut through the snow, an erratic path of blood. She staggered on and then she saw it, in the doorway of the adjacent building: a creature several feet tall, a glistening, bulbous shell, hunched over the corpse of the man.

  It faced her. She froze, her fear rooting her to the spot.

  ‘Verain!’ Dartun’s voice, from behind. ‘What the hell are you doing out here? You’re too valuable to put yourself in danger like this.’

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the gruesome-looking shell-creature. It was like the others they had seen on their way north.

  ‘Get back to the house,’ Dartun commanded.

  Just then, the thing moved towards
them, abandoning the corpse and leaving it splayed across the steps.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Cirrip,’ Dartun breathed. ‘It’s only a Cirrip.’

  Another flashback: that was their name in the otherworld, these foot-soldiers of the Akhaioí.

  ‘It’s not connected to their hive-mind,’ Dartun said. ‘This stray shouldn’t be out here alone. It should not have killed this man either, it should have taken him back with the others through the Gates.’

  The beast staggered with an awkward yet strangely fluid gait towards the two of them. She could see it clearly now, its hideous claw-hands, the intense musculature beneath the armour, the flaring tendons, the deep black gloss of its skin.

  Dartun moved forwards, cautiously manoeuvring so he stood between Verain and the creature. He tried speaking to it in its own language, something that she found profoundly bizarre, but it was to no avail – the thing lashed out with a claw. Dartun held up his arm to block the blow; the contact producing a brittle crack. At first she thought his arm had broken, but, instead, Dartun was rising from the ground, two feet up, four feet, then above the rooftops, his arms held outstretched for balance, his body slowly rotating on a vertical axis.

  The Cirrip, still on the ground, began to click and hiss, craning its head as it watched Dartun proceed ever higher and then – like a bolt of lightning trailing purple light – Dartun dropped to the ground feet first and drove his boot into the head of the creature.

  A jet of blood spurted out of the Cirrip’s eyes, and it toppled backwards to the ground, its face imploded. Dartun tumbled forwards over its spasming form.

  ‘Your knife, Verain,’ he demanded, regaining his poise.

  She stumbled over to offer the blade. Dartun took it, and slit its throat.

  ‘It must have broken free from their pack,’ Dartun said, quite calmly, wiping the blade in the snow. ‘They possess a connected sentience. They tend to swarm.’

  ‘How could you talk to it?’

  ‘Something I gleaned from their world,’ he replied sharply.

  ‘The army is marching down to raid another island, isn’t it?’ Verain gestured to the alien corpse. ‘These things are going to continue until they wipe out every city on the continent, aren’t they?’

  ‘Which is why it’s vital we get to Villjamur so that we may establish a more peaceful resolution.’

  ‘You could always fly there,’ she suggested, ‘given this apparent new ability.’

  ‘I didn’t even know I could until recently. I wonder how far I can go?’ He paused momentarily and scanned her face. ‘No, I must ensure you’re all protected.’

  He trudged through the snow to the remains of the man who the Cirrip had been toying with moments earlier. Verain followed him.

  ‘He’s dead, all right,’ Dartun announced.

  The man’s body was broken in two, his torso no longer fully connected to his legs. Bones jutted from the open wounds.

  ‘He told me there were more people in a cellar under the tavern,’ Verain said. ‘He was looking to see if we could help them.’

  Dartun shook his head. ‘The best thing for them to do is stay in that cellar.’

  ‘But we can take them with us – escort them to another island.’

  ‘We haven’t got the time,’ Dartun replied.

  ‘At least help them to a boat—’

  ‘We haven’t got the time,’ Dartun repeated forcefully, and she knew when to stop.

  She understood that they needed to get to Villjamur as quickly as possible but regretted that this necessitated leaving these innocents to fend for themselves. She only hoped that Dartun knew of some way to stop the ongoing bloodshed. Otherwise, she feared, this was just the beginning.

  TWENTY-SIX

  For hours the next day, the Knights sat in their lounge area, in silence, uncertain of whether they should go back onto the streets. They had received no instructions. Instead they gazed at the black pall of smoke hanging over the city: vast funeral pyres, carrying away the souls of the deceased; this was the limit of respect the Cavesiders had received from the authorities.

  Exhaustion filtered through every fibre in Lan’s body. She stretched out across the floor beside the fire, into which Vuldon was gazing intently, prodding it now and then with a poker. Tane emitted the odd sigh, but was otherwise sprawled forwards across the table like a drunk. They avoided eye contact with one another. ‘It could have been worse . . .’ Tane finally offered, but a grunt from Vuldon terminated that conversation.

  Lan felt immense guilt over what had happened but tried to find a logical explanation for why it had occurred. ‘They targeted the Emperor’s new trading area with violence – true. But this was a peaceful protest. Maybe the anarchists are just an extreme faction of the Cavesiders, but the majority want a more peaceful solution?’

  ‘It would explain the military’s heavy-handedness,’ Tane agreed. ‘They probably expected the worst after the events in the iren.’

  ‘And those bombs the soldiers were throwing,’ Vuldon suggested, ‘they were either to control the crowd or to incite violence. The cynic in me needs no persuading, I’ll say that much.’

  ‘I can’t believe they turned on our own people,’ Lan breathed. ‘It’s inhuman.’

  ‘It’s politics,’ Vuldon muttered. ‘No matter who’s in charge of this damn city, it’s always the same. Things going on behind the scenes. You can bet right now that—’

  A polite knock on the door and Feror entered the room.

  ‘Not now,’ Vuldon told him.

  Feror seemed not to notice, walking in distractedly without so much as a glance in their direction – he seemed a completely different man from his usual, cheery self. Nervously he began asking questions, the usual, but this time his voice was monotonous, as if he was reading badly from a script.

  Vuldon muttered ‘Fucksake’ and gently steered him from the room. ‘Not now, old guy. We’re not in the mood.’ The cultist gave him a defeated look and quietly closed the door behind him.

  ‘What do you think was that all about?’ Lan asked.

  ‘Who gives a shit?’ Vuldon replied. ‘We’ve bigger things to worry about.’

  ‘Where is Fulcrom?’ Tane asked.

  ‘Maybe I should go and find him,’ Lan offered, pushing herself upright.

  Tane snorted a gentle laugh. ‘Maybe you should.’

  *

  He wasn’t at home, so she walked to the Inquisition headquarters, giving no displays of her power, no signs of her abilities to step out across the air. She pulled her thick woollen cloak so tight that her Knights uniform – and its symbol – could not be seen. She was used to being despised for what she was, but after witnessing such overwhelming hatred when she thought she represented something good . . . that was different. Being a Knight had given her something on which she could construct a more positive existence. Having it called into question was difficult.

  Taking two steps at a time, she headed into the Inquisition headquarters. A couple of officers tried to halt her as she entered the building then, on noticing who she was, allowed her through.

  Continuing down the corridor, she examined the office doors for Fulcrom’s name. Finding it, she knocked on his door repeatedly but there was no answer. Why can’t he be here?

  As she was about to turn, he opened the door. ‘Lan, I didn’t want to answer but I thought I heard . . .’

  She entered the office and noticed the bags under his eyes, the set frown. ‘You look worried. What is it?’

  ‘I’ve had a hell of a night.’ Fulcrom sighed and picked up a note from his desk. ‘And I found this on my return. It claims to be from Shalev, saying that she wants revenge on the Knights for scuppering her plans. It’s probably nothing. We get threats here all the time.’

  ‘She may be a bitch,’ Lan said with a sigh, ‘but she may have a point.’

  Fulcrom looked at her with surprise. ‘I heard the opening of the iren was . . . eventful. You saved the Emperor. E
veryone is impressed. You’re the talk of the town again.’

  His words of praise pleased her because they were coming from him, but the content of what he said did little to raise her spirits. While he perched on the edge of his desk, Lan paced, her hands brushing her hair, relating the events of the iren to him, then the attack on the citizens.

  His face darkened. ‘That’s not what I heard,’ he said. ‘I was told by the senior officers that there was a minor, violent uprising from the caves, but the military managed to stop those responsible with,’ he paused, and stressed the final part as if it had been read from a statement, ‘minimal loss of innocent life.’

  Lan couldn’t believe that such crap was being spread. ‘I wouldn’t call it minimal loss,’ she said. ‘That isn’t how it happened. That isn’t what we saw.’

  *

  The city walls of Villjamur were no place for a stroll, but the long grey platforms, nestled behind crenellations, were at least somewhere where they could be alone and talk without being overheard.

  On one side was the refugee camp, more sparsely populated than when she had arrived, and on the other archers of the city guarding the walls. She looked at them and shivered, remembering the flights of arrows loosed upon the people. She explained what had taken place, and what the Knights suspected. Fulcrom said nothing, merely allowing her to relate her story. She could see his mind working, weighing up the information, assessing where it fitted in with the bigger picture.

  After she had finished, he told her there was nothing they could do. There would be an official statement, and that would be the one that was recorded, issued, discussed, and already trickling through to the future.

  ‘I’m too tired to be angry,’ Lan said. ‘But just so you know, if I had the energy, I would scream.’

  At that point she gazed across at the refugees – those who had been abandoned by those inside the walls. Including herself, she thought guiltily. A raw wind rolled in, deep and chilling, settling ice further into the city.