Bloodmind

by Liz Williams

  ‘True. But Sedra comes from a society where such things are normal and she knows that here, they are not. I don’t think Sedra kills without a reason. And those same wild genes are in Khainet, but she doesn’t seem to have the same restraint.’

  Hunan stared at him. ‘Do you think she’s not sane?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you?’

  ‘I’m not even sure what “sane” means.’

  And it was into the ensuring silence that a voice crackled over the receiver, to say that Skinning Knife had been located.

  It was in the heart of Morvern, almost the geographical centre of Sull Forest, that traces of Skadi were found. I wondered whether there was any significance in this. It was impossible to know what was going through Skadi’s head, child of three worlds that she was, and mad besides. Small wonder that she was mad: torn between the conflicting heritages of Mondhile and Darkland and Nhem.

  They’d tracked her down in the usual way.

  She’d killed.

  By the time we got there – Sedra and myself, Eld and Hunan, and the Morrighanu hunting party – she had long gone, but the traces of her remained outside the little cottage. Sedra scented the air like a hound.

  ‘She smells like my sister.’ I thought there was a trace of satisfaction in that remark.

  ‘Can you track her by scent?’ Eld asked, sharply.

  ‘No,’ the Mondhaith woman said. ‘At least, I might be able to do so for a short distance. But if she is as good as you say, she will be able to hide her scent. And depending on how far she is Mondhaith, she will be able to disguise her scent by means of her will.’

  Eld looked as impressed as I felt at that, I am sure.

  As we’d discussed, it wasn’t so much a question of finding Skadi, as taking her alive, and that, the commander said, was why we needed Sedra. Someone who knew how Skadi thought, who could predict what she might do. But I wondered, too, whether Sedra might serve another purpose for the Morrighanu: a new source of Mondhaith genes, perhaps?

  The person who had alerted the Morrighanu to Skadi’s presence was local, a woodsman. He seemed sharp enough: he’d gone to the cottage earlier that afternoon to borrow a tool, heard no one there, and had looked through the window. When he had seen what was inside, he backed away, did not go in, touched nothing, and contacted the Morrighanu. Now he stood at the edges of the clearing, staring at Sedra.

  ‘Vali, Sedra,’ Eld said. ‘Come with me.’

  Inside, it was surprisingly neat, despite the blood. Skadi had not run amok, it seemed. The butchery of the occupants – an elderly man and his wife – had been done with her usual precision: spines filleted and hung from the rafters, along with an arrangement of bones. There was no sign of a struggle; no doubt the pair had gone to their deaths convinced that it was the right thing to do.

  ‘She is a dreamcaller,’ Sedra said. Her accented voice sounded startlingly loud in the blood-stained silence.

  ‘What’s that?’ Eld asked. But I thought I knew.

  ‘Like the feir,’ I said.

  ‘Like some of the feir,’ Sedra corrected me. ‘Someone who can lure other people to their deaths, make them see what isn’t real.’

  ‘How do they do that?’

  ‘It’s a gift. And sometimes they use a dust to enhance it.’

  ‘Narcotics,’ Eld said.

  ‘She wouldn’t have known about that, from Mondhile, though. Would she?’ Unless she had been there, the thought struck me. Or unless she’d simply discovered her ability by trial and error. The feir, and battles that weren’t real. Experiments in Sull. The disappearing laboratory. The broch, with Skadi arriving so conveniently soon, and no trace of real destruction apart from that psychic imprint.

  Eld said, ‘You thought that Mondhile was a little-known backwater world. That the only thing known about it was an incomplete anthropologist’s report. Yet Frey Gundersson knew more about it than you did, it seems, and so did the people who brought Sedra’s sister to Nhem.’

  I looked around the cottage. A neat, clean place, now defiled by death. The bones had been hung in patterns: from certain angles, some of them made the same shapes.

  ‘Sedra,’ I said. ‘What is this?’

  ‘It’s like a hunting lodge.’ She sounded matter-of-fact. ‘We display the bones of the kill.’

  ‘In patterns, yes? What do they mean?’

  The old woman looked taken aback, as though the question of meaning had never occurred to her. ‘There is no meaning. The patterns are ancient, ritualized.’ She thought about it. ‘Maybe they had a meaning once, but not any more. And they are not like these. These are new, as though someone has made them up.’

  ‘What’s bred in the bone,’ Eld said softly.

  ‘So Skadi is behaving like a Mondhaith person,’ I said, ‘but out of context.’

  ‘That can’t be the case, though. Cultural factors aren’t carried genetically.’

  ‘Maybe it isn’t a cultural factor, though. Perhaps it’s something innate. Like birds that dance to attract a mate, or make bowers of leaves and flowers.’

  Eld’s eyebrows rose. ‘You think Skinning Knife’s looking for a mate?’

  ‘What should she want with one of those?’ Sedra said with scorn. ‘She already has all she needs.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I think she’s acting out aspects of Mondhaith behaviour without understanding what she’s doing. Because she does them imperfectly, in a place where they have no real meaning.’ I gestured to the human wreckage around us. ‘Like this. She hunts, she kills, she arranges.’ I shivered as I spoke. It reminded me of Gemaley, of her taloned fingers inside me, of the burnlight in her eyes as she took pleasure in my hurt. Was Sedra like that? I’d said she was sane, but how sane were any of them, by our standards? Could you even apply those standards? Maybe Hunan had been right when she’d said that she didn’t know what sane meant. But we did not have time for a sociological debate.

  ‘One thing’s for sure. We have to find her,’ Eld murmured. He gave me a sharp look. ‘Can I have a word with you outside?’

  Leaving Sedra among the bones, we stepped into thin sunlight and fresh air.

  ‘I’ll be honest with you,’ Eld said. In my experience, whenever someone said that to me, they were about to tell me a lie. ‘Let me play devil’s advocate. I dragged you up here, after all. If it wasn’t for the fact that she’d tried to kill you, and that she killed Idhunn, if it was up to you – would you be inclined to just let her get on with it?’

  ‘What?’ I thought of the two ruined corpses in the cottage behind us, old people, Darklanders maybe, but ones who had never done me any harm. For all I knew, they’d been a pair of retired state torturers, but chances are they were just ordinary people, getting by in this harsh wild land as best they could.

  ‘Morvern is full of ghouls, Vali. We’ve met some of them. The deaths for which Skadi has been responsible are relatively few. There are things up here that have cut a swathe through the north – one more wouldn’t make a lot of difference.’

  ‘You said you were playing devil’s advocate. There has to be a reason why you decided to go after her and why you involved me. You involved me because I’d been to Mondhile. I think you see her as a key,’ I said. ‘Frey saw the Mondhaith – saw Gemaley—’ it was hard to say their names – ‘as a key.’ Why else were the Morrighanu so keen to capture Skadi alive, rather than simply killing her from a distance?

  I could see from his face that I was right. ‘Of course. It’s been there in all our conversations. A key to consciousness. The trip switch, somewhere in her genes. But what makes her special, Vali? Why couldn’t Frey have just concentrated on the selk? We have enough of them captive, after all.’

  ‘I don’t know. The selk are a very long way from human, remember. They’re animals, ones that got engineered to have seasonal consciousness. Maybe they are a key, but Frey couldn’t find it in them and neither can the vitki who are working on them now. The Mondhaith are closer to human and the Nhemish women are
human. Skadi is engineered Mondhaith. Somehow, the key is in that engineering.’ All these beings, with a single thread in common and one thing that would differentiate them. ‘Eld, listen. The Nhemish women don’t control their sentience or its lack. They’re like cattle, and then sometimes the switch gets tripped by tech that came from the Morrighanu and they become conscious beings. The Mondhaith are like another type of animal. When they’re children, they’re wild and feral – wolf kids, if you like. They go back to their homes and something – some piece of ancient tech perhaps – trips them into sentience.’ Had the Morrighanu learned something on Mondhile, something they’d used to create their birds? ‘Then they revert, during the masques or during battle, or if they’re cornered or angered, according to Sedra. But they can’t control it either – at least, not to any significant degree.’ I remembered that town full of people, their sudden brutal transformation. When you come face to face with a person, and there’s no one looking back at you out of their eyes, that’s a shocking thing. ‘Frey thought he could control it but I think he was deluding himself. He thought I could control it, too – enter the animal mind, during what was supposed to be my ingsgaldir.’ My hand crept up at that point, to touch my scarred face. ‘But I can’t either. The selk can’t – it’s a seasonal thing with them. What if Skinning Knife is the anomaly? The one who can control it, trip her own switch? The Morrighanu can’t fully understand the technology that they’ve got, otherwise they’d have done a better job.’

  Eld was watching me narrowly. ‘But why should she want to?’ Then he answered his own question. ‘Because she’s fundamentally mad.’

  ‘Or fundamentally sane, but running on different programming. You could make a case for the whole of Mondhile being psychotic, but I think that’s too simplistic an explanation.’

  Eld glanced around at the quiet forest. A light mist had crept in, and was hanging among the grey trees like a banner. ‘The forensic team’s waiting. Get Sedra, ask her what she thinks, and then we’ll get out of here.’

  I was only too ready to leave. But when I stepped back through that charnel door, to find the Mondhaith warrior and tell her it was time to go, I found the cottage was once more occupied only by the dead.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  PLANET: MUSPELL (SEDRA)

  Vali was right, and that pleased me. I liked to think that she was beginning to understand us a little. And I thought with affection of my unknown niece who, feeling the need for a display of her abilities, had arranged this hunting lodge. A pity she’d chosen people for it, rather than beasts, but the basic principles were there. When we met, and got to know one another, I would teach her better – but then I told myself I was being foolish. Surely they would kill her for this. My sister’s child did not fit in this world; she and I did not belong.

  They had not killed her before now because she was valuable to them: something to study. I had been brought here to help capture her, not kill; with the machines they had, it surely would have been easy enough to track her down. But that could not last, I thought. They might indeed study her for a time, and I might be able to teach them a little about her, but after that she would be put to death. I did not blame them for this, as I stood in the meaty stink of someone else’s blood. Mondhile is a wide world, and an empty one. There’s plenty of room for those who don’t belong to wander its spaces, but in spite of these northern forests, this world was too little to contain a liability such as my niece.

  No, they would have to kill her and I would have to help them.

  I did not feel the same way about the other girl, the one named Khainet. She was not Mondhaith; I could tell that from the first moments of our meeting. She looked a little like my sister maybe, the faintest traces were there, and yet it wasn’t enough. When I looked at her I felt no kinship, no connection, and I did not know why this should be.

  As I was standing there, thinking this through, there was a sound in the rafters. I looked up, and saw an eye. It was yellow and cold, and after a moment it silently withdrew. I was curious to see what it was – an animal? A bird that had got in? – and so, being careful not to disturb blood or bone, I drew a chair across the room and stood on it, to have a closer look.

  The rafters opened out into a wide roof space, easily accessible from below. Now that I was up here, I could see a folding ladder tucked up against the ceiling, able to be drawn down and climbed. I didn’t bother with this, but grasped the rafter and, with some difficulty, hauled myself into the roof space.

  Standing here, I found that it was quiet and hot. The warmth of the stove had risen to fill the ceiling space. A skylight in the roof was open and there before it on the stripped boards I saw a single droplet of blood. There was no sign of the bird, or whatever it was, but the open skylight was letting in a cool draught of fresh air. I took a breath and walked over. At first I thought that the animal was some kind of scavenger that had got in to have a taste of what lay inside, but then it occurred to me that this might be how my niece had left the premises. I looked up at the skylight and there she was – not the sight of her, for the sloping roof was dusted with snow and bare of footprints or tracks, but the scent. I could smell her. She smelled like my sister, impossible to describe or define, entirely individual and herself. It made my eyes burn for a moment and the snowy roof blurred. My sister was dead, I told myself, and I had her child to find.

  The forest grew very close to the house here and I knew how she had left – straight through the treetops. Her scent hung in the air like a promise: she was not long gone. I meant to call to Eld and Vali. I meant to tell them where I was going, but I could not see them down below and the trace of her scent was fading. So I went after it, through the skylight and into the branches.

  I climbed down one of the long ashy trunks, holding my breath. I could hear the tree singing to itself, the sap snaking through trunk and branches, driven deep and sluggish by the winter cold but starting at last to stir.

  Among the trees, it was as though the clearing and the cottage had never existed. The faint sounds of Eld’s and Vali’s voices, and the humming of their vehicle, were abruptly cut off, as though they had been swallowed. I felt immediately more at home, away from people, in the company of the world and one of my own kind. Almost. I could still smell her but the scent was fading fast, more quickly than it should have done, and that confirmed to me that she had other talents besides the summoning of dreams. But so did I. I masked my own scent just in case, reaching inward, making adjustments. I had not told Vali that I could do this. Some knowledge you do not share. You do not know how it might be used against you. Vali was not my enemy, but I did not think of her as my friend either. She was my ally, and allegiances can change.

  There was a little patch where the scent seemed to be concentrated – I looked down. There was a single drop of blood lying on the snow, staining it pink and only just starting to sink in. She had been hurt, somehow. She was bleeding – unless it was her time to bleed, but Vali had mentioned that the women here did something to prevent that. Perhaps my niece had chosen a more natural way – but I went down on one knee and smelled the blood. From a vein, not from the womb. It smelled thinner, less rich.

  I found it hard to believe that one of her victims had managed to wound her. Vali had said that she moved with speed and stealth, and they had been old. Perhaps she had cut herself on something; snagged skin on the rough rafters. But that seemed clumsy and I didn’t think she was like that – then again, maybe I was idealizing her, my dead sister’s child, my sister grown and come again. Old and foolish, now I should start thinking more like the warrior I had been and less like a doting aunt.

  And that meant that the blood might be deliberate. A lure.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  PLANET: MUSPELL (VALI)

  A flicker of movement, a beat of wings. Glyn Apt’s head jerked up.

  ‘Something’s in the woods.’

  We ran, weapons up, senses screaming. Within minutes, we were surrounded by the great trees,
the soft grey mass of their leaves concealing the sky. I had never been anywhere so oppressive, not even on the little pod that had first taken me to Mondhile.

  We pressed on through the cloudy leaves, churning snow beneath our boots, leaving tracks that were so obvious I was sure that someone would not be far behind. Yet no one came. It was as though the world, the galaxy, had contracted down to this forest, that the only light there was came filtered through this soft grey foliage, that the only air was filled with snow and cold and silence. Glyn Apt and the Morrighanu moved like ghosts through the trees.

  It was a shock when the trees thinned out to reveal a river lying between narrow banks and frozen solid. It gleamed in the faint light, like metal. Along its banks were tall thin plants, each with a fuzzy woollen head. They were frozen, too, tassels of ice. One of the goat-eyed Morrighanu started to run towards the river and just as I was about to call her back, Skadi dropped from the trees.

  She might have looked ordinary, standing still: tall and angular and pale-haired, dressed in shadow grey. One moment she seemed naked, the next, not. I could not tell what she was wearing. She was smiling, and in that smile I could see Sedra: it was more like an animal’s grin.

  ‘Well, now,’ she said, and her voice wasn’t at all human, though I can’t say how. She sounded like an animal, taught to speak. Then her face grew still and remote, as though she was listening for something that I could not hear. She reached out her hand and beckoned to one of the goat-eyed Morrighanu.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘don’t,’ but it was as though my words had been swallowed by the cold. I tried to speak again and couldn’t: she had locked my lips together, some bleak and bloody piece of magic, I could not help but think. The goat-girl tottered forward.

  ‘Sister,’ Skadi said, when the Morrighanu was within reach, and then she gave a casual swipe and the goat-girl fell. She did not make a sound. The blood from her throat fountained out over the snow and was taken by it, absorbed quickly as though the cold was drinking it in. I stood stone still, sealed into the world. Skinning Knife was standing in front of me, all at once; I had not even seen her move.