Bloodmind

by Liz Williams

  Her eyes were closed. Her death hung about her face; visible as a shadow. It would not, I thought, be long. Glyn Apt went to her side and unstrapped the med kit.

  ‘Can you tell what’s wrong with her?’

  ‘It’s pneumonia, or a version of it. I don’t need the med kit to tell me that. Easy enough to cure.’

  ‘Many of the settled people die of it,’ the animal-faced being said, and again it sounded sad. I couldn’t blame it. The Morrighanu must have inadvertently shown it so much, and given it nothing: confining it and its kind to the margins of its own world, just as the selk had been marginalized. And there wasn’t much we could do about it: if we took it to Mus-pell, how would it survive? I didn’t even know how many of its kind the Morrighanu had created. Muspell was swinging into war and Morvern was an unkind land even for its own.

  Glyn Apt had sat down on the side of the bed, a bolder move than I would have been inclined to make. True, Skadi’s relative was old and dying, but she still had sharp teeth and sharp claws, and I’d have put good odds on her having been a warrior. If she came round and discovered an alien bending over her – but Glyn Apt did not hesitate.

  ‘Help me with this,’ she said. I put aside my misgivings and came over, to roll the woman’s sleeve above the elbow and insert a biochip. Glyn Apt muttered a diagnosis into the tabula and after a moment, the chip gleamed beneath the woman’s skin. ‘We’ll leave it to do its work,’ Glyn Apt said. Together, we retreated to the far end of the room, where the animal-faced being stood.

  The story of that day and that night? We watched and waited. Eld came down to join us, saying that the ship was once again nearby. We debated whether to move the old woman to the life-support pod on the ship, and decided against it. At least we knew she was compatible with the ‘still place’ beneath the moor. She moaned and muttered in her sleep, but the tabula made no sense of it and it seemed she was too far gone to remember her own language. Glyn Apt, the data stream stilled, stared at her as if willing her back into life and Eld was for the main part silent, lost in his own thoughts.

  I slept. Towards dawn, I woke, to find the old woman sitting up and watching me. Glyn Apt and Eld were still asleep and there was no sign of the animal-faced being.

  We spoke. And I learned a little about Sedra ai Kharn, who had come out into the world to die.

  THIRTY-ONE

  PLANET: MONDHILE (SEHRA)

  I’d been held prisoner before. Once – a long time after the skirmish on Moon Moor – the warband had run foul of a clan group in Esker Forest. It was a very different type of terrain – ger-wood rather than satinspine, all brown fronds and narcotic pitcher plants – and we’d simply walked into a trap. Next thing I’d known, I was dangling upside down from a branch with roars of derisive laughter echoing in my ears. The enemy clan had let me dangle for a while longer, then cut me down and caught me in a net. Trussed up like a bird for the table, I’d been carried into some local stronghold and locked in the cellar. After that it was the usual story: threats, a bit of half-hearted torture, offers of a ransom, a boring couple of days cooling my heels in the dark, overpowering the jailer, disguise, flight – that sort of thing. It made a good story for a few weeks afterwards and then other things had happened and I’d forgotten about it.

  Now, I was a prisoner again and it all came back to me. The worst thing about it was the tedium, that and not knowing who had got hold of me. If it was a rival clan – and I knew of none in the vicinity of Moon Moor or the immediate mountains, which suggested that they’d taken me some distance away – then they’d get little enough out of my family in the way of a ransom. After all, I’d packed myself off to die, so there was no point in expecting the clan to want me back again. My relative Rhane might agree to it as a point of honour, but why bother? Might as well let them kill me and save myself the trouble. It was unlikely to be the fever that carried me off: I was already feeling better. I drifted in and out of dreams, maybe my own illusions, maybe someone else’s. I know it went on for a long time – I felt the moons turn and spin in the sky, over and over again.

  And if it was the half-humans who had taken me? Well, that was just an unknown quantity. Anyway, whoever it was had me where they wanted me. I was securely bound, and though whenever I came into semi-consciousness I strained and struggled, the bonds did not give even a fraction. It might have been different years ago, when I was young – maybe; but not now, old and weakened by the fever. I should have died with the warband, I thought. This was just embarrassing.

  And at last I woke, and felt better. I sat up and found myself looking at a ghost. There was suddenly a lot of light – too bright, dazzling. I shut my eyes and turned my head to get away from it. The light was dimmed.

  ‘Is that better?’ someone said, in recognizable Khalti, but with an accent. Her words hummed, like a flight of insects. Slowly, my vision cleared. The ghost was a woman, quite young. She was insubstantial, as all ghosts are. So, I really had died, then.

  ‘I’m dead,’ I replied. I felt quite pleased, despite the bonds. I’d really done it, got it over with, and now I would go on. But there was still the same question: if I was really dead, why did I feel so creaky and old? Maybe my spirit remembered its body and once that memory faded, I’d feel better.

  ‘No,’ the ghost said, patiently. ‘You’re as alive as I am.’ Well, that made a lot of sense. I could see her more clearly now: the light kept adjusting itself. She wore the kind of leather armour that you find to the north, in Harrapath, but much better made, almost without joins. Better humour her, I thought. I was disappointed that it was not the warrior with the ruined jaw who had come to me, but at least this girl looked as though she’d seen action: her face was badly scarred and one eye was puckered up. I approved. I looked forward to hearing her story.

  ‘Who were you? What was your name?’

  ‘My name is Vali. I am from a place called the Reach, on a world called Muspell. You won’t have heard of it.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything to me.’ Must have been from a lot further north, then.

  ‘And your name?’

  ‘Sedra. From the Racewater clan, the ai Kharn, of Ulleet.’

  ‘Were you lost? Or travelling?’

  ‘Neither. I went out to die; it was my time.’

  ‘To die?’ The ghost – Vali – sounded horrified.

  ‘I told you, it was my time. The signs said it and if I’d waited another winter, I would have burdened the clan.’

  ‘A hard thing,’ Vali said. I felt her touch my hand and her skin was surprisingly warm.

  ‘Why? It’s a perfectly normal thing to do.’

  ‘Sedra, if I release you, do you promise not to hurt me? Do you give me your word?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. A word is just a word, not a deed. Vali was a foolish, trusting ghost. I’d be on her as soon as the bonds were off. But then she showed me that she was less foolish than I’d assumed and my respect for her rose.

  ‘I have a weapon,’ she warned. ‘It’ll be trained on you.’

  That made me much less likely to attack her, but not for the reason she might have thought.

  ‘I won’t try anything,’ I said, and a moment later, I felt the bonds twitch and then they were gone. I was free. I sat up.

  I was in a long, low stone chamber that looked as though it had been hacked out of the rock. And I’d been wrong about being taken a long distance. I recognized the stone as the kind that lay under Moon Moor: a crumbly, dusty rock. Here, in this chamber, it had been smoothed into an arched ceiling. It looked old and I wondered if it had been one of the storage places that the ancient families used. I knew I was right that no one lived near Moon Moor these days, but in older times there had been houses in the surrounding forests: I’d seen the ruins during my time with the warband. And of course, there was the place under the ridge, if I hadn’t imagined the whole thing.

  Didn’t look like Eresthahan, though. And I probably wasn’t dead. I didn’t smell like it, anyway.
<
br />   ‘Is there water?’ I asked. ‘I need to wash.’

  Vali was sitting on a kind of fabric chair, a flimsy thing. She was holding something little that caught the light. It did not look much like a weapon to me, but who knew what kind of things ghosts might have?

  ‘Of course,’ she said. Still holding the weapon, she gestured me towards a smaller chamber, also hacked out of the rock, with a pitcher of water in it. She withdrew while I stripped off my clothes and washed and I examined the little chamber closely, but there was no way out of it. The light came from a metal strip in the ceiling, like nothing I had seen before.

  ‘I’ve got spare clothes if you want them,’ Vali called. I hesitated. These were my death clothes, but on the other hand I’d been living in them for the past who-knew-how-long.

  ‘Give me what you have,’ I told her, and she threw through a tunic and trousers. I’d keep my old cloak: that showed enough willing to the dead, I thought. I dressed and went back out.

  ‘So,’ I said. I might be slow on the uptake, but I wanted to make sure. ‘This isn’t Eresthahan. I’m not dead.’

  And neither was the ghost. She’d done something while I was washing, something that made her very real. I could feel her connection to the world now; she was earthed.

  ‘You’re real,’ I said.

  ‘What you sense in me is something called the seith. It’s a kind of . . . well, never mind. Yes, I am real. But I’m not from here.’

  ‘You told me. Another world.’ That was as may be. I thought of the moons, the sparks that could sometimes be seen travelling across them, the cities that were said to lie in peaceful ruin on their surfaces; and the stories about folk from other planets. I’d never really believed, even so. Ghosts were real, everyone knew that. But people from the stars? Even so, I’d lived long enough to realize that I didn’t know everything.

  ‘I want to talk to you about your world,’ Vali-the-ghost said. ‘I’ve been here before, you see. I know a little about it, about how you live your lives.’ She paused. ‘And I want to talk to you about a relative of yours.’

  I stared at her blankly. ‘A relative?’

  ‘I know this is surprising,’ Vali continued, ‘but I have good reason for asking. We’ve done . . . some tests. The relative in question was your sister. You probably don’t remember her.’

  ‘Oh yes I do,’ I said. I felt as though my life had come full circle: from my sister, and back to her again. ‘It’s true that we don’t remember much about our childhoods, but I remember her. On Moon Moor.’

  ‘That’s here, isn’t it? The big stretch of scrub – I don’t know the name for the plants.’

  ‘The black moorland that smells of spice, yes. We lived here when we were children, in burrows. Then, one night, she was taken away by spirits.’ I told Vali the story. When I’d finished, she was frowning.

  ‘Sedra. What if I told you that your sister did not die?

  That she was abducted, by people from another planet, a world called Muspell? Taken in order to be . . . understood.’

  ‘Understood? How?’

  ‘Your people are not like other humans. As children, you don’t possess self-awareness. That only happens in adolescence, when you go back to your birthplace and your consciousness is triggered by a network of ancient technology.’

  ‘Tech—’ I did not recognize the word.

  ‘Machines,’ Vali said, but I didn’t understand that either.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Vali sighed. ‘All right. I’ll try to explain it a bit better. The women of a world called Nhem were changed by the men of their society. They were bred to be like animals, without self-awareness – like you are in the bloodmind, but without the violent instincts. Those women of Nhem were helped by women from my world, the Morrighanu, who tried to find an answer to their plight. They came across records relating to Mondhile and they thought there might be an answer here, because of the bloodmind. They thought if they studied it, they could understand better what the men of Nhem had done and then they could reverse it. There is a species on my world, the selk, who also undergo a similar process, but they were too far from human to provide any real answers at that point. So the Morrighanu came here and they found a Mondhaith child and took her away, back to Nhem. Your sister never became properly self-aware.’

  ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  I bowed my head, but only for a moment. At least I’d be seeing her soon.

  ‘You ought to know that she had a child. A daughter.’

  ‘A daughter?’ I smiled. ‘I’d like to meet her.’

  ‘Well,’ Vali said and she did not look so happy. ‘I’m not so sure that you would.’

  I stood on Moon Moor, looking out across the black heath. The lowest horn of Embar was touching the line of the horizon and Elowen was already up, trailed by its attendant star, the Hunter. The lowest moon was washed with rose light, the last of the day’s sun. Vali-the-ghost came to stand by me as I stared at the sunset.

  ‘This is a beautiful world, this Mondhile of yours.’

  ‘You said you’d been here before.’ I still found it difficult to accept that she was from another planet, even though I had now met some of her companions. It was easier to see her as coming from another clan. ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘It was south of here, but not far south. Still cold. Those mountains look a little familiar. I consulted my—’ I looked at a map I have, and I think this is the northern end of them, seen from the other side. Thick forests . . . a tree with black bark and red leaves.’

  ‘I know where you mean. Do you know people there?’

  ‘I met a . . . family. They lived on a black line of energy.’ She was looking at me sidelong, staring at me to see how I might take this.

  ‘A black line? You’d have done better to avoid them, then.’

  Vali gave a short laugh like a bark. ‘You can say that again. They were wild – at least, one of them was. A killer.’

  ‘People who live in such places enjoy killing,’ I said. ‘For no good reason. They’ll go to war, but not with any goal in mind, or to protect their lands or clan. They like to see shed blood. What happened to that family you met?’

  ‘The girl – the killer – she died. A young man whom she’d taken prisoner killed her.’

  I approved. ‘Good.’

  She laughed again. ‘You’re a violent people, you Mondhaith.’ She did not sound as though we disappointed her.

  ‘I suppose so.’ I’d never really thought of it like that before.

  I still did not know what to make of that story. Vali had told me more of it and I had spent most of the day turning it over in my mind, trying to see how I felt about it. My sister, stolen away to another world. Her child, bred from her without a man (and where was the fun in that?), and trained to be a warrior. And not any warrior, but a kind of ultimate killer. That was a strange idea: we all do the best we can and some of us are better than others, but there is no need to think that any one person could or should be better than everyone else. It did not seem realistic to me. I liked to think of my sister’s child, a daughter, alive and well and with such skills, but I wasn’t sure about the use to which she was putting them. It sounded too much like the people who lived on the black line to me. But perhaps my niece had some goal in mind that Vali-the-ghost did not understand, or had misunderstood. After all, she’d said that she wasn’t like us. With a great effort, I tried to imagine how it must be for my niece, raised in a place that could not understand her. It must be like someone from the inner lands, who is snatched by island raiders and put to work on a ship. All at sea, not understanding anything properly.

  ‘Tell me about your place,’ I said to Vali. ‘What is it like? Is it like the moon, or like here?’

  And so she told me. Her story took us into the night and halfway through we went back down the hidden steps to the old store, to avoid the biting moths and the creeping frost. The ghost had
brought some kind of liquor with her, a fiery stuff, almost as good as the one that my own clan made. Then, after many stories and when the bottle was half down, she told me that if I really wanted to see what her world was like, I should come and see for myself.

  And this is what I did. Perhaps it hadn’t been my destiny to die out here after all.

  When I saw the thing that was to take me to my niece, however, I nearly told Vali to forget the whole idea; I’d stay where I was and end my days on Moon Moor. I’d like to say that I was brave, and happy to travel above the surface of the world with no more care than if I set foot on a ship bound for an island in sight. But the truth was that it horrified me. The thing in which we were to travel looked like the insect that had carried my sister away: multi-legged, with a humming body and a strange smell. Vali told me that it was a Morrighanu ship, and she told me, too, a little about the Morrighanu’s counterparts, the vitki and valkyrie. They did not worry me. I’d met people like them in the warrior clans, the feir who live too close to animals and mimic their ways in war; and in the south, the clever people in the political assemblies who are as bad, but in a different way. Perhaps, from what Vali said, I might have something to fear from the vitki, but I was dead already, or may as well have been. And from the sound of it, I thought with an odd burst of pride, it seemed that they had something to fear from me, or at least from my niece.

  In the end it was curiosity as much as anything that made me step through the door of the insect, and allow Vali to bind my hands to the arms of my chair. Had she not done so herself, there was no way I would have allowed this, death-seeking or no death-seeking. The insect responded to the speech of the warrior Glyn Apt; she did not need her hands. It was most obedient. Vali said that they could give me medicine which would make me unconscious, but I wasn’t having any of that, either . . . until the plunge and roar as Moon Moor fell away beneath me, perhaps forever, and the mountains spun up and then down until they were as small as patterns in the snow and I saw my world as a ball. I did not beg her for the medicine then, but I did say through gritted teeth that it might be easier for her if I slept, and did not pester her with questions when she was busy. To her credit, Vali did not smile, but touched something cold and then hot to the bare skin of my wrist, and that was that. When I next woke up, we were flying through night.