Bring me some evidence, Jhiral told her as she was leaving. Something solid. I’ll put the army back on a war footing if I have to, but I won’t do it for rumour and conjecture and a few trinkets you once saw in a shop window in Trelayne.
Then give me a reduced force, she’d pleaded. A few hundred. Let me—
No. I’m sorry, Archeth. He did genuinely seem to be. Quite apart from anything else, I need you here. If there is a crisis, I need to be able to point you at it pretty fucking fast, and I can’t do that if you’ve gone haring off to the wrong end of the Empire.
Perhaps he was even right. Degenerate lifestyle aside, he wasn’t a stupid man.
She thought abruptly of Ishgrim’s pale curves, thought about owning them the way Jhiral had, the way he owned the three sleeping girls in his bed now. Owning the belief, no not even that, owning the knowledge that this was flesh you had a right to use like any other purchased thing you might have in the house. Like the flesh of the fruit you kept in the larder, the leather of a jerkin you liked to wear.
Perhaps you’re the stupid one. Archidi. Ever think of that?
She dismounted into the sunlit quiet of the courtyard, beset by her own murmuring, circling thoughts. No sign of the stable boy. Well, he wasn’t the sharpest pin in the box, but still, he should have heard Idrashan’s hooves on the cobbles when she rode in. She glanced sourly towards the stables, felt a spike of krin-driven anger and tamped it back down with great care. You don’t take it out on the servants, Flaradnam had told her when she was about six, and it stuck. She led Idrashan over to the hitching rail by the stables, looped the reins there and went to look for Kefanin.
Found him.
Bloodied and crawling on hands and knees, just inside the main door. He’d heard her come in, was trying to get up. The blood made a darkened, matted mass of his hair on one whole side of his head. It dripped off his face on to the flagstones, spotted them in a line where he’d crawled.
She stopped dead, rigid with shock.
‘Kef? Kef ?’
Kefanin looked up at her, mouth working, making the repeated silent gape of a gaffed fish. She dropped to her knees at his side, gathered him up and got his mouth close to her ear. She felt the blood smear on her cheek.
‘I’m sorry, milady,’ he uttered, voice clicking and breathless, barely audible. ‘We tried to stop them. But they took her.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
For Ringil, the days that followed were like fever dreams from some battlefield injury that wouldn’t heal.
He couldn’t be sure how much of it Seethlaw was inducing for his own purposes and how much was just a levy-standard human reaction to time spent in the Aldrain marches. Either way, it was pretty horrible. Landscapes and interiors he thought were real would suddenly melt without warning, collapse around him like walls of candlewax bowing to the flame; worse still, behind them was a radiance that glimmered coldly like bandlight on distant water, and a sense of exposure to the void that made him want to curl up and cry. Figures came and went who could not possibly be there, stooped close to him and bestowed cryptic fragments of wisdom on him, each with the chilly intimacy of serpents hissing in his ear. Some of them he knew, others brought with them a nightmarish half-familiarity that said he ought to know them, maybe would have known them if his life had only turned out fractionally different. They at any rate affected to know him, and the dream logic of their assumption was the thing he came to dread most, because he was tolerably sure he could feel aspects of himself ebbing away or shifting in response.
If it’s true, Shalak pontificated, one warm spring evening in the garden behind the shop, if it’s really a fact that the Aldrain realms stand outside time, or at least in the shallow surf on time’s shores, then the constraints of time aren’t going to apply to anything that goes on there. You think about that for a moment. Never mind all that old marsh-shit about young men seduced by Aldrain maids into spending a single night with them and going home the next day to find forty years have passed. That’s the least of it. A lack of time pre-supposes a lack of limits on what can happen at any given point as well. You’d be living inside a million different possibilities all at once. Imagine the will it would take to survive that. Your average peasant human is just going to go screaming insane.
You think about that, he repeated, and leaned in close to whisper. Give us a kiss, Gil.
Ringil flinched. Shalak wavered and went away. So did a large chunk of the garden behind him. Flaradnam stepped through the blurry space it left, seated himself opposite as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Thing is, Gil, if I’d taken that attitude at Gallows Gap, where would we be now? I’d never have made it back in one piece.
What attitude? Ringil shook his head numbly, stared back at the seamed anthracite features. You didn’t make it back,’Nam. You never got to Gallows Gap in the first place. You died on the surgeon’s table.
Flaradnam pulled a face, as if he’d just been told a joke in very poor taste. Oh come on. So who led the charge at the Gap, if it wasn’t me?
I did.
You?
Yes! Me! Shouting now. You were fucking dead, ’Nam. We left your body for the lizards.
Gil, what’s the matter with you? You’re not well.
And so on.
‘Do you ever get used to it?’ he asked Seethlaw, across a softly snapping campfire in a forest he didn’t remember walking into. Thick green scent of pine needles mingled with the smoke. He was shivering, but not with cold. ‘How long does it take?’
The dwenda cocked his head. ‘Get used to what?’
‘Oh, what do you think? The ghosts, the visitors I’m getting. And don’t tell me you don’t fucking see them.’
Seethlaw nodded, more to himself than to the human he faced. ‘No, you’re correct. I do see them. But not as you do. They are not my alternatives, they mean nothing to me. I see a faint gathering of motion around you, that’s all. Like a fog. It’s always that way with humans.’
‘Yeah, well there’s no fucking fog around you,’ Ringil snapped. ‘How long before I can learn to do that?’
‘Longer than you have, I suspect.’ The dwenda stared into the fire, and its light turned his eyes incandescent. ‘No human has managed it to my knowledge, except maybe ... well, but he was not truly human anyway.’
‘Who wasn’t?’
‘It no longer matters.’ Seethlaw looked up and smiled sadly. ‘You ask how long. In all honesty, I wouldn’t know. I was born to it, we all were. Our young flicker in and out of the grey places from birth.’
Later, they walked in single file along a worn footpath through the trees and up across the shoulder of the hill. Ringil followed the broad-shouldered figure of the dwenda without question, something that seemed wrong to him, but in some oddly shaped way he could not define. A pale but strengthening glow seeped in between the jagged barked trunks, brought the ground underfoot into clearer view, but it never really got light.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked Seethlaw’s back.
‘Where you wanted to go.’ The voice drifted to him over the dwenda’s shoulder. Seethlaw did not turn round or slacken his pace. ‘I’m going to fulfil your obligations for you.’
‘And why would you do that?’
A lewd chuckle that put twinges through Ringil’s sweetly aching groin. ‘You have a short memory, Ringil Angeleyes.’
‘Lucky I’ve got a fucking memory at all,’ Ringil muttered. ‘Place like this.’
And he shivered again.
Back in the garden, there was a grizzled soldier in imperial cavalry rig who said he knew him and talked incessantly about campaigns in the desert Ringil had never been a part of.
Not like we didn’t warn old Ershnar Kal not to quit the outcrops that time, is it? Fucking coast huggers, got no clue how to fight a desert war. Not much surprise the scale faces took them apart before we got back. You remember what they did to Kal’s ribs, the way they left him ?
No, I
don’t. Slightly desperate, because the horrors of a screaming, sun-seared image he had never seen were beginning to trickle into his head. Like I told you, I was never fucking there.
Gave me nightmares for months, that. The imperial seemed to be ignoring his protests. But perhaps he had to, perhaps they all had to, the same way Ringil had to resist each apparition’s false assumptions about him, in order to go on existing at all. Still get it sometimes when it’s a tough summer, still wake up sweating and screaming, dreaming about the scale faces coming up out of the sand all around us. You ever have dreams like that?
The Scaled Folk came from the sea, Ringil told him firmly. They were never in the desert. They came out of the western ocean and we threw them back into it. That’s what I remember, that’s what fucking happened. And I don’t know who the fuck you are either.
Surprised hurt in the soldier’s eyes. Ringil thought of Darby’s face when he offered him the money, thought of how he must have looked when Iscon Kaad skewered him. He dropped his gaze, ashamed.
‘You got to hang on, Gil,’ Grace-of-Heaven said uncomfortably. The unknown soldier was gone, but the garden remained. It’s for the best.’
‘Yeah?’ Ringil slurred. ‘Whose fucking best is that then?’
‘No one wants you hurt.’
‘Fucking trade-up piece of shit. With your house in the Glades.’
‘Oh, I see. That’s reserved for the Eskiaths of this world, is it? I guess I was just supposed to stay colourful for you here in the slums.’
Ringil summoned a defensive sneer. ‘What’s the matter, Grace? You want to be like me? You’re trying way too hard.’
Milacar turned away. Ringil waited for him to dissolve like the soldier, then discovered he wanted him back after all.
‘I’m sorry about Girsh,’ he called. ‘But I think Eril had time to get away. I think he made it.’
Grace-of-Heaven gestured impatiently - fast, angry motion, face still turned away. He would not look back or meet Ringil’s eye.
They came out of the cavernous darkness and picked their way over a litter of massive granite boulders embedded in smooth white sand. Ringil couldn’t tell how long they’d been walking, the garden was the last thing he remembered clearly, and before that, less clearly, the forest path. Now, overhead, the rough, climbing roof of the sea cave they’d just emerged from made a jagged upper frame for his view down the beach to the surf. Above the sea, the night sky showed a handful of stars and--Ringil slammed to a halt. ‘What the fuck is that?’
Seethlaw paused between two boulders, spared a brief sideways glance. ‘That’s the moon.’
Ringil stared at the softly glowing dirty-yellow disc that sat fatly just above the line of the horizon, the darker patches like stains across its radiance.
‘It’s like the sun,’ he murmured. ‘But it’s so old, look at it. Like it’s almost used up. Is that why the light’s so weak here?’
‘No.’
‘Is it the Sky Home the Majak talk about?’
A note of impatience crept into the dwenda’s voice. ‘No, it’s not. Now keep close. This isn’t wholly our territory.’
‘What do you ...’ Ringil’s voice faded out.
There were figures in the surf.
At first he thought they might be statues or just approximately human-looking rocks for all the movement they showed. But then they did move, and Ringil felt a cool gust of fear up his spine at the sudden change. They were some twenty yards distant, and the light was uncertain, but he thought they had breasts, huge luminous eyes and circular lamprey-like mouths.
‘Might help if I had a weapon,’ he hissed at Seethlaw’s back.
‘You do,’ said the dwenda absently. ‘Your sword is on your back and that grubby little reptile tooth you’re so handy with is in your belt. Much good they’ll do you if this goes bad.’
Ringil clapped a hand to his shoulder, found the strap of his scabbard hung there, the pommel of the Ravensfriend in place and within reach. He would have sworn only moments ago that he had not felt the weight.
‘Don’t touch it.’ There was a taut warning in Seethlaw’s tone. ‘Just smile at the akyia, stay away from the water’s edge and keep on walking. Chances are they’ll leave us alone.’
He led the way out around a tumbled pile of granite blocks. The smooth pale sand was soggy underfoot now, and the surf was closer. The figures in the water shifted about, and one or two of them disappeared beneath the waves, but otherwise they seemed content simply to watch their visitors go past.
‘They’re not armed,’ Ringil pointed out.
‘No, they’re not. They don’t need to be.’
Along the gently shelving beach, in and out among the half-buried boulders and tilted blocks of stone. Light from the feebly glowing phantom sun made the rocks into black silhouettes against the sand. Now Ringil saw that the - he groped for the name Seethlaw had given them - the akyia were keeping pace, diving beneath the surface in sequence, a handful at a time, coming up twenty or thirty yards further along and waiting for the rest of their companions to catch up. A chittering, sucking noise seemed to come and go faintly on the wind, gusting between the sound of the waves.
Seethlaw stopped and cocked his head to listen. Ringil thought a smile touched the corners of his mouth.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘They’re talking about you.’
‘Yeah, right.’
Now their path apparently took them away from the shoreline again. The cavernous overhang of the sea cave had given way to sections where the cliffs above had collapsed altogether into mounds of gigantic rubble. Seethlaw led him in among it all, up through a narrow ravine between drunkenly angled blocks each the size of an upended imperial coach. They began to climb away from the sea. Ringil touched his hand briefly to the pommel of the Ravensfriend again.
‘When did you give me the sword back?’
‘You’ve had it from the start. You just weren’t aware of the fact. It’s a simple enough trick. That one, I could teach you.’
‘I’ve been carrying this thing all along? Even in the forest, when we camped?’
Seethlaw looked back at him, mouth quirked again. ‘We haven’t reached the forest yet.’
Ringil felt the strength run out of his legs like water. The rock wall to his left seemed suddenly to be toppling over on him.
‘Then ...’
‘Shut up!’
Seethlaw had locked to a halt in the narrow space ahead of him, one closed fist raised, point-man style, for silence and stillness. Very gently, without moving any other part of his body, he nodded upward. Ringil followed the direction of his gaze, and stopped breathing.
Fuck.
One of the akyia had not, it seemed, been content to stay in the ocean and watch them leave. It crouched on top of the right-hand block, two yards over their heads, poised lizard-like on arms splayed wide. Powerful-looking hands curled like claws into the fissures and features of the granite.
Ringil’s hand flew to the pommel of the Ravensfriend. The akyia’s head tilted, lamp-like eyes fixed on the movement.
‘I said don’t fucking touch that!’
For the first time since he’d known the dwenda, Ringil thought he heard genuine fear in Seethlaw’s mellifluous voice. He dropped his hand back to his side. The akyia shifted its head again, met his eyes directly. It felt like a physical blow.
‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ said Seethlaw, very softly. ‘Don’t move, don’t do anything sudden at all.’
Ringil swallowed and remembered to breathe. Held the creature’s gaze, stared at it while his mind stumbled after comparisons.
The akyia looked like a harbour-end pimp’s nightmare of womanhood. Like something dreamed into being from the fumes of one too many flandrijn pipes and the constant, stealthy background slap of water against the pilings under the wharf. It was long-haired and full-breasted, pale skinned in the light from the worn-out sun, and smoothly muscled from a lifetime in the water. But the hai
r straggled back from a skull built out of angles to make you scream. The eyes were the size of clenched fists, and for all that Ringil sensed a ferocious intelligence in their stare, they were set in sockets that had more in common with the skull of a lizard than anything human. Thickly ridged cheekbones forced them back and up, separating the upper features from a chinless lower face that seemed wholly prehensile, and currently held the circular lamprey mouth aimed at the intruders like another massive eye.
It raised itself on the angle of the rock, scuttled down a couple of feet so it was hanging almost upside down on the wall above them. Ringil watched in fascination as two long, fin-fronded limbs coiled about in dark silhouette behind its head. He could hear them rasping as they sought purchase on the top of the block.
The Steel Remains (Gollancz) Page 35
