by Liz Williams
Poor girl, I thought. What a thing to witness, knowing that your mother had been inside. I remembered virtual-Idhunn: had the real-life correlate, daughter of a Morrighanu, experienced anything like this? I found myself missing Idhunn all over again.
‘Did she say whether the shadow-woman was carrying anything?’
‘She did not.’
Eld drew me aside. ‘It would be useful to go back with them.’
‘Useful or suicidal?’
‘They wouldn’t be returning unless they were reasonably certain that the danger had passed,’ Eld said, but he did not look sure.
‘Are you certain? These Morrighanu seem as crazy as the vitki to me.’
‘Point taken,’ Eld remarked, rather sourly. ‘But as I have said on several occasions of late, if Skadi wanted to find us, she appears able to do so with ease. There is still a rather large issue as to who is pursuing whom.’ He paused. ‘And I must admit, I’m rather curious to see exactly what she’s done.’
‘You knocked me out!’ This came from Glyn Apt, whitelipped and furious, staggering from the ruin.
Eld surveyed her coldly. ‘Of course I did. What did you expect?’
She looked at me. ‘You have my knife. Give it back.’
‘Make me.’
‘Sister!’ One of the Morrighanu on the sledge stepped forward and gripped Glyn Apt by the arm. ‘You’re alive.’
‘I am alive because I ran.’
The goat-eyes flickered and fell. ‘As did we.’
‘There’s no shame in that,’ I said, ‘given what you were facing.’
‘There is always shame,’ Glyn Apt said.
‘We are going back.’ The Morrighanu crouched at the front of the sledge raised her head for the first time and spoke.
‘Of course,’ Glyn Apt said. ‘We have no choice.’
‘Vali?’ Eld was looking at me carefully.
‘All right,’ I agreed. ‘We’ll go back.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
PLANET: NHEM (HUNAN)
I opened my eyes to see a circle of sky: hot and blue-green. The air smelled of steam and for a moment I thought I was back in the bell tower after a night of rain. Then I remembered, with a rush of dismay. But at least I was still alive; I didn’t know whether to be pleased about that or not. I felt clammy and over-warm, and there was a bursting pain in my ankle. Groggily, I raised myself up. I was lying on a little mud beach. Water lapped on its rim and all around rose ochre rock walls. Across the water, I could see a narrow opening, a cave. The flood must have washed me through. There was water at least, but no way out unless I climbed or swam. I was very thirsty, but the water was too muddy to drink. I pulled myself further up onto the beach into a rim of shade, thinking that I was lucky – at least, in the short term – not to have been dashed against the city wall, or washed out into the poisonous sea.
I don’t know how long I lay there. I remember opening my eyes at one point and discovering that the circle of sky above me had turned black and was filled with stars. I stared at it until I fell into it, and when I looked up again, it was washed with a faint pink light like the inside of a shell.
Something was buzzing. Above my head, I saw a large insect, a thing with a short, bulbous body and whirring wings. I swatted at it, thinking it was about to attack me. I’d never seen anything like it before, but I remembered the swarms of stinging flies that used to come in the hottest days in the colony, how much their bite hurt. I still had pinpoint scars on both forearms from those bites and so I batted feebly at the insect. It did not go away. Instead, it grew much larger, coming down through the mouth of the pothole in which I was lying, until I could see the black bristles and the bulging eyes and the flickering wings.
It landed unsteadily on the little beach, tilted at an angle that looked dangerous to me, and someone leaped out. They wore tight clothes, as brown as earth, and a shiny helmet like a beetle’s wing. The helmet was lifted off, and to my surprise revealed Mayest. But Mayest was dead, I reminded myself, and Khainet had killed her, or so I had thought. I struggled to sit up, to drag myself away, but the figure was already striding over to me, saying, ‘Don’t move!’ She knelt by my side. It was not Mayest, I told myself. It could not be. Mayest had had three sisters; perhaps it was one of those, or yet another version of the northerner. There was no sign of any weapon. I peered at her and I could not have told that she was not Mayest herself.
‘Who are you? How did you find me?’
‘I am Ettia. I’ve been sent to find you. We have a way of tracking. You’re hurt,’ she said.
‘My ankle . . .’
‘It’s not broken. I think you’ve just sprained it.’ A sharp look. ‘Dehydration, too. You need water.’
After the flash flood, that struck me as very funny. I started to laugh and couldn’t stop. I wheezed myself into weakness and Mayest’s double hauled me upright so that I was leaning on her shoulder. ‘You’ll be fine,’ she assured me, and the words had a hollow ring. I did not know where she was planning to take me, only that nowhere was good for me now. I didn’t know whether or not to tell her about Khainet. If I kept quiet, there was a chance that Khainet might get away – but maybe she was already dead, swept away by the flood that had with such cruel mercy spared me. Yet she was Mayest’s killer, and if I told them that she had fled with me and they found her – I didn’t know what to do and that made me weaker than the pain and thirst. I sagged in my rescuer’s grip and Ettia had to shove me through the door of the flying machine. When I was securely fastened on a little bench, and the flying machine was lurching up from the pothole, I glanced up and saw that my questions were answered. Khainet was strapped to the opposite bench. Her scarred hands were tied, and her red-rimmed eyes were burning above a gag that looked more like a cage. She would not meet my gaze.
The machine flew on, veering over the red-and-ochre of the plateau. My eyes stung with the wind but I could still tell that we were flying north, and soon the green domes of Iznar were hanging on the horizon’s edge.
*
I could not believe that we were heading for Iznar. That would mean that Mayest’s group were in league with the men, and I just could not believe that they would allow women to work alongside them; if anything that Mayest had told me had been true. But as the green domes grew larger against the mountain shadow, everything came rushing back, swift as flash flood: childhood, Father and House Father, the long stupid years, the woman falling, falling onto the baking flagstones, my children. The root cellar and First Joy, lying still and bloody like someone who had crashed down from a great height.
The sudden darkness was hot and stifling, closing down upon me – but then the machine turned and dipped, causing the patchwork farmland to swim up. Part of me still could not believe that I was flying; it didn’t seem possible for women to fly, only to fall. Iznar was behind us now and I was filled with thankfulness. I looked across at Khainet and saw that she had closed her eyes. I could not blame her; I didn’t want to look at those green domes any longer than I had to.
I spoke to Ettia. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Not Iznar. I’m sorry, I should have told you. To the mountains.’
‘Aren’t you afraid, flying so close to the city?’
‘Things have changed. They’ll see me as an enemy, true, but they’ll think I’m from one of the mountain militias.’
I saw a quick, cold grin appear under the rim of the helmet. ‘This is one of their craft, after all. We captured it last year, run it on rock oil.’
‘And Iznar won’t . . . respond?’
‘As I said, things have changed. The Hierolath is dead; all the men are fighting and bickering like a bag full of efreets. We’re not so . . . united ourselves, but the more fragmented they become, the stronger we grow. They might want to shoot down an enemy craft, but ammunition is becoming more scarce. They won’t attack unless I pose a direct threat.’ Again that grin. All the better for us.’
‘You said you were taking us to the mo
untains. Does that mean to the—’ I stumbled over the word, ‘the laboratories?’
I suppose I meant to trap her, but she just said, ‘Yes. To the Stronghold. Don’t entertain thoughts of escaping from it, by the way. You won’t be able to.’
Minutes later, I understood what she meant.
TWENTY-NINE
PLANET: MUSPELL (VALI)
After seeing Idhunn’s body and the man we’d found in the stream, I had a pretty good idea what we would find back at the stronghold of the Morrighanu, and I lived it in full dismayed anticipation during our journey back from the ruin. I didn’t grieve for Glyn Apt’s commander, who had been all too ready to see me dead, but it struck me that I’d seen too much gore and horror these last few years. Maybe I should have chosen a quieter profession. I had only myself to blame.
The memories of death seemed a strange, unwholesome contrast with the eerie forest; the grey trees and glittering frost, the burning sun floating above the branches and the air scented with cold. The only sound was the hissing of the sled runners along the track and the swift patter of the goats’ feet. I could not help thinking of the ripped red ruin awaiting us.
As if she had read my thoughts, Glyn Apt murmured from where she sat behind me on the sled, The Red War Raven.’
‘What did you say?’
But it was Eld who replied. ‘She is their patron, a goddess from Earth, from very ancient times. She was the deity of battle.’
‘How appropriate.’
‘Not to mention the Birds of Rhiannon,’ Eld continued. ‘Like the hugin and munin of the vitki.’
‘You take a lot from myth,’ I said.
‘What else is there, at the end of the day? You have to make meaning in this world and we kept our heritage. The vitki and the Morrighanu alike are good at that. Don’t the Skald do the same thing? Aren’t you known as a witch clan?’
‘Perhaps.’ It was my turn to be defensive. ‘It depends who you talk to.’
Glyn Apt’s blue eyes glinted. ‘You in the Skald, do you believe in gods?’
‘We believe in the forces of nature, but we don’t deify them.’ I was quite happy to engage in a theological debate, given what I believed to be waiting for us. ‘However, we believe that the forces known as gods may, over time, accumulate a kind of separate existence in the minds of generations of humans.’
‘A weak answer,’ one of the Morrighanu said from the front of the sled, in her deep voice. ‘Gods exist or they do not.’
I saw Eld smile. ‘You believe, then?’
There was a fanatical glint in the goat-eyes. ‘The goddess walks Morvern in many guises. How can one not believe?’ But as the woman spoke, I was watching Glyn Apt’s face and I did not think that she looked as certain as her colleague. Or perhaps it was just the dataflow, weaker now. I wondered whether she needed to be in range of a particular signal. Her birds still occasionally flickered about her head, but their white wings were as translucent as ghosts.
‘And this . . . assailant, from whom you fled. Is she a facet of the goddess, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps.’ The woman’s face was sombre.
‘You really believe that?’ I was genuinely curious.
‘Why should it matter to you what I believe?’ the Morrighanu said impatiently. It was a fair enough point. But now we were almost at the broch. The Morrighanu who held the reins slowed the goats down to a silent, stealthy walk. At the end of the track we halted, leaving the sled concealed behind an outcrop of rock. The three Morrighanu swarmed upward, vanishing with alarming speed up the rock face. Glyn Apt shouldered her way past me and sidled to look into the clearing that housed the broch. I followed, peering past her. All was quiet. The entrance to the broch stood open, outlined with frost. A faint mist hung in the air before it, fragile as a veil, and it struck me that this was indeed so, that the mist represented the veil said in legend to hang between the worlds, and that those within the broch were already in the afterlife of our ancestors and could be glimpsed there, if only we had the courage to step into the clearing.
Moments later the silence was split by a shriek. Glyn Apt jerked back, nearly hitting me in the face, but the noise was soon explained when one of the Morrighanu descended the rock face at speed, carrying a small form. The girl who had hidden in the thorn thicket – perhaps eight or nine years old, face shining white with terror, mouth agape, eyes staring at nothing. Then, to my ashamed relief, she was out of sight as the Morrighanu carried her to the sledge. I looked back to find Glyn Apt gone. She and the remaining two goat-women were sprinting across the clearing and into the broch. Instinctively, and stupidly, I started after her but Eld drew me back.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘You don’t owe them any loyalty, do you, just because they’re women? They were quite willing to serve both of us up on a platter at a banquet of war yesterday. If Skadi’s still in there, better the Morrighanu find her than we do.’
‘This is very true,’ I agreed. ‘So, we wait?’
‘And see what comes out. If anything.’
But the only thing that came out of the broch was, to my relief, Glyn Apt herself. She motioned to us to approach. ‘It’s clear.’
‘How bad is it?’ Eld asked as we neared the entrance to the broch. Glyn Apt’s pale face was composed.
‘Come and see for yourselves, vitki, Skald.’
We followed her down the turf passage. My senses were flinched, waiting for horror: the stench of blood and torn flesh, the sights of bodies snatched wantonly apart. But in the command chamber, and the cells, and the interrogation chamber beyond it, there was nothing to be seen. The place was clean, empty and quiet, as though everyone who had been there on the previous day, the whole humming hive, had simply packed up and gone.
‘Where are they all?’ Glyn Apt whispered. Her eyes were wide. But now it was Eld’s turn to grow pale and lean back shakily against the wall.
‘Vali,’ he said, and it was then that I unfurled my senses, reached out with the seith and felt what he felt.
It was pure destruction, sheer violence, as though it was still going on around us, an unceasing pageant of horror. It was all sensation, unaccompanied by imagery, running down my nerves and neurons, filling me with the knowledge that I was being slaughtered and also with a cold, alien joy in the slaughter itself. Skinning Knife was in my head, all at once, overwhelming, and with a great effort I shut the seith off. The psychic shrieking stopped. I found that I had fallen to my knees and that my hands were clamped over my ears.
‘So it was with me,’ Glyn Apt said, ‘when we stepped in here earlier.’ She reached down a hand and pulled me up.
‘She’s trying to blind us,’ Eld said, ‘so that we’re limited to the physical senses, to technology. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel that either is likely to get us very far.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I told him. ‘I’m used to being blind.’
Together with the Morrighanu, we made a thorough search of the broch, but found nothing. One of the women, whose names I still did not know despite repeated requests, went back to speak with the traumatized child and learned that she had run out in the first minutes of the attack. She could not say what she had seen, but the Morrighanu felt it from her, and it had been killing, sure enough.
‘And yet there is no sign of anything,’ Eld said in frustration. ‘No blood, no bones. Nothing.’
‘Well, she can’t have conducted her slaughter and then spent the rest of the night mopping the floor. She left Idhunn’s body, after all. And that corpse we found. There must be DNA traces, at least.’
‘I’ve done multiple scans. I can’t find any physical evidence at all, apart from the usual – shed skin cells and hair. But there’s no trace of blood. This is impossible.’
It struck me now that the leaving of Idhunn’s body and the other man’s might have been intentional, rather than the result of disturbed flight. A calling sign, a warning. Whereas maybe this had been business as usual.
‘I can hear something,’
Glyn Apt said suddenly.
We listened, but all I was aware of was silence. I didn’t dare use the seith again, and open myself up to that beyond-sense shrieking. Eld, too, was looking at the Morrighanu strangely.
‘What can you hear?’
‘I don’t know.’ Glyn Apt frowned. But I realized she was right. It was not so much that I could hear something, however, as feel it. It seemed to be travelling up through the floor and down through the walls at the same time, and it made me first queasy, then nauseous. Eld and the Morrighanu were glancing around them in alarm.
‘Is it an earthquake?’ Eld asked.
‘Not here, surely. We’ve never—’ Glyn Apt shook her head furiously, like someone who has wasps in her hair. ‘We have to get out. Now.’
And once more we fled from the broch, coming out into the silent morning. But the tremor, or whatever it was, that had so displaced us inside the broch was no longer in evidence in the clearing. Here, all was peaceful. When we had reached the shelter of the rocks, we looked back. But the broch had gone.
‘That’s impossible,’ Glyn Apt echoed. The rocks extended down to the floor of the clearing in an unbroken seam. There was no sign of the broch.
‘Where is it?’ Glyn Apt said, raw-voiced. ‘Where has it gone?’
Someone, somewhere, must be having a good laugh at our expense, I thought. We searched the clearing, but there was no sign that anything of human construction had ever been there. Glyn Apt stood to one side, speaking rapidly and anxiously into a hand-held communicator. The private channel had, she confessed, been linked in with the broch, and now that, too, was gone.
‘There is nothing but static.’ Glyn Apt sat glumly down on a nearby rock.
‘But you can get through on the hand-held?’
‘Yes. High command is sending a wing.’
‘Not for us, it isn’t,’ Eld said.
Glyn Apt was staring at me absently and I knew what she was thinking. I crouched down in front of her and looked up into her pale, pouchy face. With the dataflow gone, she seemed to have aged overnight and I could not say that I was surprised.
