The Emerald Forge (Pilgrennon's Children)

by Manda Benson

  Fine, we walk.

  GPS told Dana there were no roads nearby. The farmland ended not far away, and the land sloped down towards the ocean. She fancied she could hear the waves breaking upon the distant shore.

  She and the wyvern walked slowly together, following the edge of the thin line of trees dividing the fields, until they crested a low hill. Beyond this the soil became sandy and the scrub turned into dunes of harsh grass, and yet farther spread a grey stretch of beach, and beyond that the sea. More distant along the shore there rose the dome of a nuclear powerstation. The sky had begun to cloud over, and the dome reflected its exact colours.

  They moved down through the sandy paths among the dunes, where insects made their lazy songs and a tiny lizard scuttled out of the way. The beach was deserted and strewn with pebbles of many different sizes. The wyvern stood and looked out to sea, and the view stirred in it a strange emotion it didn’t recognise. A little distance out in the water, in deeper water than the place the waves broke, a raised platform stood on four rusting metal legs. Dark blobby strings of mussels trailed from the legs where the tideline reached, floating and sinking with each wave.

  The wyvern expressed a wish to be on the platform, to have a better view. It was a short distance, and Dana needed to get the wyvern in the air again. Either they had to go back to find Jananin and get help, or she and the wyvern would have to continue to the Emerald Forge alone, and try to defeat Gamma and the men who worked for her unaided.

  The wyvern responded to this with a thought, something along the lines of not wanting to see Gamma again, and that Dana wouldn’t want to either if she had any sense. Dana agreed not to think of it again, at least until the wyvern felt better, and suppressed the fear of Cale being trapped in the Emerald Forge.

  She climbed up onto the wyvern’s shoulders. A test flight, to make sure no permanent harm had been done. The wyvern filled its flight lungs again and ran into a takeoff. It had to turn in to the platform to get its speed and altitude right for landing, and the sea passing beneath on the manoeuvre reminded Dana how much she hated the ocean with its wet, suffocating depths.

  The platform felt unstable, and it wobbled underfoot when the wyvern landed and when Dana dismounted from it. Dana crouched in the centre, liking neither the height nor the dynamic sea below.

  The wyvern stood looking out to sea, and it stretched its head over the edge of the platform and let out a noise — a song — of three notes.

  Dana pressed for an answer as to why it was doing this, but none came, other than for the emotion the wyvern had felt when it had seen the sea.

  A sudden blowing noise came from the sea below the platform. Dana leaned forward cautiously. An unpleasant smell of fish drifted up, and a flat tail appeared, and a back with nostrils in it that blasted out a spray of air and water, and another tail.

  They were dolphins. Now when Dana looked at the wyvern, it began to fall into place. The brain of an intelligent mammal, but not a human, not something that understood language in the way humans understood it. Gamma had made the wyvern from a dolphin.

  You’re one of them.

  The wyvern looked back at her, grateful and regretful and sorrowful all at once, and Dana realised what it meant. “No! Don’t leave me!”

  But Dana had to understand. It needed to be with its own kind. This was where it belonged. She had saved it and it had saved her and now they were equal. It was time for it to go back and claim the life it would have had, had this not been done to it.

  Dana got up on her knees and reached for it, but it turned away from her, and with a farewell thought of appreciation and affection, it dived off the edge and into the water with a force that shook the rickety platform on its spindly legs so hard that Dana threw herself flat on her stomach and gasped, fearful the thing would tip over. The surface closed over the wyvern, just a faint glint of metal visible beneath before it disappeared for good.

  Come back!

  But the wyvern was gone, and Dana could no longer feel its signal. A burning ache filled her eyes and face as she lay there, feeling the tremor of each wave as it passed through the legs of the platform, and her breath broke apart into wracking sobs. Why could she not belong, anywhere? Why did it never work, not with her own kind and not even with others altered to be different as she was?

  It began to rain, soaking her hair and clothes and trickling down her neck. Dana raised her face to the sky and let the cool water wash away the heat and tension and stickiness the outburst had left on her face. She put her hand in her pocket to touch Ivor’s watch, and she closed her eyes against the falling rain and tried to visualise his face and the sound of his voice. Sometimes these days she could barely recall either, and she wished so much she had been able to find a half-decent picture or a recording of him speaking, but despite all her searches on the Internet, she never had. Jananin must have used all the influence she had to erase his public record.

  She drew a deep breath. Ivor as an abstract concept wouldn’t come back to her this time, but she could remember the dream she’d had last night and the memory of Ivor as an entire physical presence taking up all of her senses, and she drew support from that memory and the comfort and security that came attached for it. She could just about reach that reassurance everything was going to be all right. Time to stop this, now.

  When Dana opened her eyes and sat up, a figure picked its way among the dunes, a person mounted on a horse, perhaps a policeman? As he drew closer, Dana realised he was looking up at her. He was the air commodore, Rajani, she was sure of it. She recognised his uniform and dark hair. The large black horse he rode wore heavy, technical-looking tack with webbing and straps that reached down its legs.

  As the horse reached the tideline, the man kicked his feet out of the stirrups and swung his leg over the back of the saddle to slide on his stomach over the side of the beast. He turned away from the horse’s shoulder and looked up at Dana. “I think you need to come down.”

  “But I’ll get wet! And I can’t swim!”

  “You look to be quite wet already. And I can swim. I’ve got a certificate in lifesaving.”

  Dana looked over the side of the platform at the sea surface that heaved with each wave trying to escape for shore. “Aren’t there strong currents and things that pull you under and drown you?”

  The man waded into the sea. When the water reached above his waist and he was not far from the place below where Dana perched, he stopped and raised his hands. “No strong currents.” He glanced about himself. “Perhaps a few weak raisins, but that’s all.” The waters heaving around the man made it look as though he was drifting out of control against an amorphous background. A sick salty taste came into Dana’s mouth, the memory of the cold water, stranded on Roareim, the plunge into the sea off Cape Wrath and that icy, penetrating grip freezing her breath in her lungs.

  “I can’t do it.”

  “You can. Sit on the edge and hang your legs over.”

  Dana slowly bent her knee and lowered first one leg and then the other over the edge so she sat there, head aswirl with vertigo. Her fingers gripped the weatherbeaten edge of the platform.

  “Now slide off. I’ll catch you the moment you land in the water.”

  Dana closed her eyes and breathed in and out a few times. After a moment, she heard the man calling up to her again. “Take as long as you need, but please consider, the more you think about it and the more you delay, the bigger a problem it’s going to be.”

  He was right. She couldn’t stay up here indefinitely. This would be so much easier if it wasn’t him, if she hadn’t this unnerving instinct they’d met somewhere before and that there was something more to him, and not in a good way.

  Don’t think about it, just do it.

  Dana straightened her legs and slid off the edge. It was only afterwards that she opened her eyes and allowed herself to think about what she’d done, and to panic. Her feet plunged through the surface and the water rushed up at her face. Immediately, she fe
lt a hand on her shoulder.

  “Gotcha!”

  An arm reached under hers and around her chest, and before she’d worked out what had happened, she was being supported with her head above the water and her legs drifting out as the man towed her back to the shore. Soon, her heels struck sand and stones, and the sea’s grip released her shoulders, and she and the man were wading up, back to the shore, he still holding her arm.

  Dana sat on the stony shore away from the tideline. Her breath was coming very fast and the shock of the cold water and the weight of it on her clothes had left her dizzy. Rajani dropped to one knee in front of her. “It’s not so bad. Try to breathe deeply. You’re taking lots of little short breaths and that’s probably not making you feel very well. You need to breathe slowly, with your stomach.” He spread the fingers of both hands over his diaphragm to demonstrate.

  It took a lot of effort to breathe normally. Dana leaned backwards until her back was flat on the ground with her knees bent and concentrated on breathing with her stomach. From this vantage point, the rain appeared to be easing off, the sky lightening. It was only now she noticed there was a signal...

  Dana sat up and turned to face the source. It was the black horse with the high-tech armour Rajani had been riding. Dana examined it, expecting the signal to come from some gadget the horse was wearing, but no, this was a living signal that came from a brain modified by Jananin’s synapse, the same as Cale and Peter, and Gamma and the wyvern...

  She shuffled away from the man as he turned to her, an expression of incomprehension dawning on his face. “Who are you? Where are you taking me?” she demanded.

  “My name’s Rajesh Rajani. I’m an air commodore in the service of the Meritocracy.” The man pointed at the symbol on the breast of his jacket, a golden figure of old-fashioned scales. “I’m taking you to Jananin Blake.”

  “How do I know that? How do I know you’re not a double agent, that you aren’t spying on the Meritocracy for the Emerald Forge?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The horse! That’s what they do at the Emerald Forge! They graft cybernetic implants into animals’ brains!” Dana chanced a glance away from him to check what the horse was doing. She broadcast a signal of hate and anger, and it pawed at the ground and tossed its head with a snort, eyes flashing.

  Rajani held up his hand. “Please don’t do that. This horse was developed by the Meritocracy for military situations. She doesn’t feel fear, and that means anything that does agitate her is going to turn her to fight and not flight. Please, you mustn’t make signals to try to upset her.”

  Dana got to her feet and pointed at him. “You know I can make signals!” she shouted. “You wouldn’t know that unless you were in league with Gamma!”

  “Gamma?” He frowned.

  Dana took another step back. “You think I’m stupid.” She turned and searched the dunes; where should she run to? And what chance did she stand when he had a horse, even an electronic horse she could affect, and perhaps weapons, that she may not be able to affect?

  “Wait.” Rajani began to undo the fastenings on the front of his jacket. “I wear the Meritocracy’s badge because I work for the Meritocracy, but there’s another badge I wear closer.”

  Dana took another step away, unsure what he was about to do and at a loss at what she could do to prevent it. Behind him, the horse paced up and down at the edge of the tide’s reach.

  Rajani shrugged so his jacket came loose from his shoulders and slid down to his elbows. Underneath it, he was wearing a plain white vest. He turned, hands restricted awkwardly by the sleeves, to display something on the skin of his upper right arm... something etched into the skin... a tattoo. The lines of black ink were not immediately discernible against his brown skin. It took a moment for Dana to work out the trunk of a tree, with symmetrical geometric branches, and in the fork in the centre of the tree, a bird, an owl...

  Immediately as it dawned on her what the symbol meant, she remembered when she’d heard the name Rajesh before, and where exactly it was she remembered seeing him before. When they’d been travelling through London just before the Information Terrorism attack, Jananin had used her mobile phone to call someone she addressed as Rajesh. He’d helped them pass unnoticed into London, and he’d been in the hangar at Cape Wrath. She couldn’t remember clearly, but he might even have been the pilot who had flown the helicopter that had saved her and Jananin from the sea that day.

  “Now do you understand?”

  After Rajesh had stared at Dana and Dana hadn’t answered, he shrugged his jacket back onto his shoulders and began refastening it.

  “You can ask me any questions you like, but please don’t try to interfere with my horse again. If you do that, it’s dangerous to both of us.”

  She didn’t know what to say. Dana wasn’t supposed to talk about Pilgrennon’s experiments or Jananin’s involvement. The symbol on Rajesh’s arm meant he knew this information and had been sworn to secrecy, trusted to keep the information safe by Jananin herself. When she had contacted Osric, she had known he was safe because of this sigil, and she’d understood it would be permitted for her to mention these things to him, because she was doing it in order to pass necessary information to Jananin. Did Rajesh’s possession of the same sigil mean she could speak openly to him? And what should she ask? Dana turned away from him and sat down again. “I’m making a... a Spitfire.”

  “A Spitfire?”

  Dana glanced back at the look of incredulity on his face. “Sorry. It’s kind of a code. It’s a kind of aeroplane you can get Airfix models for. I mean I just need a bit of time to think.”

  “I know it’s a kind of aeroplane,” said Rajesh proudly. “I flew one once!”

  Dana turned around fully. “You flew a Supermarine Spitfire?”

  “Yes. The one I really want to fly is the Lancaster. There’s only one left in flying condition left in the country, and they’re understandably very selective about how often it can fly and who can pilot it.”

  “B I PA474?”

  “Yes. I used to have all the Airfix kits as well, when I was about your age. You know on the Spitfire? Is the landing gear still so bloody awkward to stick on?”

  “Yes!” Dana exclaimed, and both of them burst out laughing. It would have been very easy to forget about things and talk about Airfix and World War II planes, but more pressing matters needed to be dealt with. Something did come to mind, although not the sort of topic she expected Rajesh to be thinking. She hadn’t realised how thirsty she was. “Can I have a drink of water, please?”

  “Of course.” Rajesh went back to his horse and withdrew a plastic water bottle from a pouch at the front of the saddle. He handed Dana the bottle and sat down on the shore. “I’m under orders to rendezvous with Jananin once I find you, but I’m not going to try to make you go under duress, or for any other reason than you want to do it.”

  Dana swallowed water and sat down again. “You know Blake? How much do you know?” She took another swig and thought back to a long time ago. “That picture of the owl in the tree. Rupert Osric had it as well. Jananin said it was a sort of code.” Dana hesitated. “Do you know about Ivor?”

  Rajesh dark eyes met Dana’s and he nodded discreetly, as though whatever oath he’d taken made even speaking that name an act of blasphemy.

  “Do you know anything... about what happened? At Cape Wrath?”

  Rajesh exhaled forcefully and leaned his elbows on his knees. “I think you know as much as I do on that. I was there. I saw, probably, less than what you saw.”

  “What about last night, when you brought me in? Was there anyone else there?”

  “A nurse, I believe. I had to go back out, so there could have been someone else.”

  She hadn’t dared bring it up with Jananin, but some instinct told her this person would react differently, although it was still hard to risk it. “I thought I saw, I mean, I think it was a dream, but, I thought I saw my father. Ivor.”
/>   Rajesh glanced at her, and back at the pebbles littering the beach.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I believe you. If your father was with you last night, it’s because you needed him. It doesn’t matter if he wasn’t corporeal, if he was in a dream, or you saw him as a spirit, or an hallucination. People who die do stay with us who remember them, whether you believe that they remain in spirit form, or they go to an afterlife, or they simply persist as memories that serve as psychological support for us.”

  “So you’re saying that Ivor’s still with me, even though he’s dead, and that’s why I saw him in the dream?”

  “Indubitably he’s still with you. His influence has shaped part of who you are. Something like that always leaves a mark. You wouldn’t be here, the same person you are today, had you not known him. You have the memories you made with him to guide you. Our memories and the people who have influenced us make us ourselves.”

  “Is that a religion or something?”

  Rajesh smiled. “Philosophy, perhaps. I suppose I am culturally a Hindu, although my parents looked upon it as meaningful teaching stories and not something deadly serious.”

  Dana could remember very vaguely doing something about Hinduism at school, although they had taught about that many different religions that she tended to mix them up. She wasn’t sure if Hinduism was the religion where men wore turbans and didn’t cut their hair. “What do Hindus think?”

  “There are lots of different versions of Hinduism, but in the version I grew up with, there are three central gods: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Creator, preserver, destroyer.”

  “So the creator’s the one who made the Universe, and the destroyer’s like, the baddy?”

  “You’re probably thinking along the lines of the three Abrahamic religions. They all have a similar origin in the Middle East and teach of a god who embodies everything positive, and often an antigod who embodies everything negative. Hinduism is one of the Dharmic religions that come from India. There aren’t any villains, just gods with good and bad inside them like everyone. Destruction is a necessary part of reality, as much so as preservation and creation, and without all three of them in harmony no progress can be made.” Rajesh contemplated the stones before him for a moment, picking one up and examining it. “Very soon after I met Jananin, it was clear to me she was one to follow Shiva’s path. It was so strong in her, I suppose I made the error of automatically assuming any child of hers would be the same.” Rajesh paused, studying Dana’s face cautiously like a big jungle cat gauging a pounce. “But now I meet you, I think you may be more like Vishnu.”