Nightpeople

by Anthony Eaton

  Eventually she heard a scraping overhead, and the hatch was pulled back. Fresh air and dim firelight cascaded down into the pit and Saria allowed herself a moment of hope.

  ‘Here.’ Slander dropped in a small loaf of hard, gritty bread and a couple of strips of dried meat, then stepped back and slid the hatch into place.

  Alone in the dark, Saria slumped against a wall and chewed, too exhausted to cry.

  Saria!

  As the call poured through her, she realised how long it had been since she’d felt it. Now it came with a power almost ferocious in its intensity.

  Saria!

  From nightwards, it shuddered through the earth. Saria could feel it shouldering its way through living rock in its rush to reach her To reach into her. Abruptly her shivering stopped, the cold abolished as earthwarmth poured from nowhere and everywhere all at once. It filled her black cell and her with it.

  SARIA!

  A last, final surge filled her. Unable to resist, Saria felt herself sliding into it and riding it, drawing power from it, greedily pulling as much of its distant energy into herself as she could. Then the call started to fade.

  ‘No! Stay!’

  But it was gone, and Saria instantly missed it. Its absence yawned like a hole inside her, and even as she felt the residual warmth pulsing through her, she mourned the loss of it and yearned for more.

  Slowly she sank to the floor, leaning the back of her head against one of the earth walls. With a start, she realised that she was no longer cold and that the confinement of the cell no longer bothered her. The darkness seemed to have reversed itself. Instead of making the tiny cell smaller and claustrophobic, it felt as though the walls were stretching away from her, out beyond the edges of the Darklands, to somewhere beyond even her dreams. Effortlessly, she let some of that energy flow back out of her, out into the hard earth around her.

  For a moment it was just like the feeling of reaching out to an animal – that surge and flow of energy through her body. Blood pounded through her, her own heartbeat reverberating in her ears.

  She closed her eyes – or perhaps opened them. The darkness was still and impenetrable.

  Somewhere nearby, outside the hut, the dog stalked through the shadows, listening, always listening, for the summons of its master. But there was something new there. It had its new task, too: the one which vied in its mind with the simple impulse to obey. Saria rode with the dog briefly while it slipped around a corner, even ignoring the impulse to chase a startled rat so as not to take its attention away from the hut …

  On the other side of Olympic, Dreamer Baanti and Slander crouched beside a fire-pit and argued. Only momentarily did Saria brush against them, just long enough for her to feel the pale Dreamer stiffen slightly …

  There was Dariand, walking steadily across the desert, Dreamer Gaardi beside him. His eyes were set on a distant cluster of three vaultlights which gleamed above the daywards horizon.

  ‘Dariand!’ Her whisper drew no response. She turned her attention to the old man walking with him. ‘Dreamer!’

  Dreamer Gaardi stopped for a moment, tilting his head.

  ‘What is it?’ Dariand threw a quizzical glance in Dreamer Gaardi’s direction.

  ‘Dunno.’ Dreamer Gaardi shook his head as though trying to clear his eyesight. ‘I thought for a moment there that I felt … something.’

  ‘Saria?’

  ‘Yeah. Gone now, though.’

  ‘NO! I’m here …’

  But the earthwarmth was growing. It seemed to pour both out of and into her now, and the two men faded into nothingness, while around her the earth was burning; that same intense, almost painful burning she had often sensed in the deepest levels of another creature’s consciousness, the horribly searing sensation which had almost sucked her into the mind of that tiny insect. Now it was even closer, not distant and detached but coursing through the ground and the earth and into her, focusing on her, pouring into her, pulling her down in a fiery embrace and into a place unlike any she’d ever imagined. A place of hard, straight, cold walls. Of silence. Of strange, unforgiving white light. Of bright, strange shapes.

  There were people there. Men, like Dariand, but dressed in robes of bright orange, seamless robes that covered their whole bodies, their hands, their feet. Their heads were hooded, their faces masked behind transparent plates.

  All were busy doing indescribable tasks with devices that glowed and hummed. None paid Saria any attention.

  Then the earth moved.

  The men stopped, froze, looked at one another in a brief moment of panicked comprehension before the cold walls, which had seemed so hard, so permanent, began to buckle and sway and a harsh wailing filled the air.

  Some of the men started towards a door, but the movement below their feet was too great; the ground rippled and swayed and they were flung about, some into each other, some to the ground, where they clung like insects on the surface of a creek pool.

  Something fell from above: a chunk of roof, then another. One man was pinned screaming under the rubble. Then a large piece slammed into one of the containers, cracking it open, and a clear fluid ran into the room, washing over the men in waves, soaking into their orange robes, which began to peel away from their bodies, tearing large sheets of flesh with them.

  Finally, the floor opened and something dark and thick, like an early morning mist, began to pour from the hole, and after a few seconds there was no more screaming, no more shouting.

  There was nobody left alive to shout.

  And the walls were no longer cold and hard. They grew warmer, and then hot, and then slowly began to melt like water. And the earth began to burn, and finally, curled tightly against herself in the bottom of the pit, Saria slept.

  The call didn’t come again, and time crawled by in silent blackness. Sometimes Slander or Dreamer Baanti would heave the hatchway aside and throw in a little more food and water, but it was impossible to know how long had passed between these rare feedings.

  For a long time Saria tried to fight the urge to relieve herself, but eventually the pressure on her bladder became too great, and she was forced to squat in a corner, the darkness hiding her humiliation.

  So she ate, drank and slept. If there was a pattern she couldn’t sense it, but something in the heat and the visions which the call had brought with it had changed her. With only her own thoughts for company, she drifted in and out of consciousness with little connection between her mind and her body. When she had to, she looked after her body’s needs. She fed its hunger, sipped to slake its thirst, slept to recharge it and squatted to discharge its waste, but most of the time she found herself detached, as though only a single thread tied thoughts and body together. The ache of muscles cramped too long in the confines of the hole stopped bothering her. The stench from the corner was something she was aware of but it made little impact on her. The dull burns around her wrists where the leather bindings had bitten into flesh felt like nothing more than distant pinpricks.

  On the few occasions when she did come back fully into herself, when the pain of her body and the smell of her filth assaulted both her nostrils and her dignity, it was a simple matter to simply relax again, breathe deeply, and after a few moments she’d drift out until only that slender link remained.

  She was awake when the hatchway slid back for perhaps the eighth or ninth time. It seemed like only a few moments since the last feeding, but by now she was used to the way time stretched and contracted itself in the complete blackness, and she looked up, expectantly, readying herself to catch the food that Slander would throw down. Instead, she found herself staring into an unexpected face.

  ‘Saria!’ Dariand didn’t seem at all surprised to find her there. He frowned as the smell from the pit rose up and over him.

  He lowered a hand and Saria stared at it, confused.

  ‘Come on, hurry up,’ he whispered.

  ‘I saw you. You were walking …’ Her thoughts tumbled reluctantly back into some sor
t of order.

  ‘We don’t have time, Saria. Grab my hand, now!’ Dariand threw a worried glance back over his shoulder towards the door.

  ‘I was burning up and I saw you. And Dreamer Gaardi.’

  ‘Night spirits, girl! Grab my bloody hand!’

  The urgency in his voice managed to penetrate the fog of her confusion, and Saria leapt. He pulled her out of the pit easily, dragging her up and over the lip, until she sprawled across the floor of the hut.

  ‘Right, listen! You’ve got to be quiet, okay? I don’t want to hear a sound.’

  She offered a mute nod.

  He heaved the hatch closed and the crate back into place, then, taking her hand and pulling her upright, started to lead her towards the door. After just one step her legs, cramped from days spent constricted, collapsed under her

  ‘Damn.’

  Stretching her out on the dirt floor, he set to a furious rubbing of her calves and ankles. Feeling returned with agonising prickling. With it, the sensation of separation between her mind and her body also gradually ebbed. Slowly she felt the two becoming one again, felt her mind taking charge of her legs and feet, and was suddenly aware of the stickiness and dirt which clung to her.

  As he rubbed, Dariand took in the heavy bruising on her wrists and the dark circles under her eyes.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘I think so.’

  He hesitated a moment, as though weighing up possibilities.

  ‘Okay. Come on. If you can’t keep going then tell me and I’ll carry you.’

  She followed him into the alleyways of Olympic. It was night and Saria stopped and breathed the wonderfully crisp air. Even through the narrow gaps between the roofs the vaultlights sparkled, and the nightvault had never seemed so immense.

  Dariand led her through silent alleyways, sticking always to the shadows and stopping a couple of times to listen. Saria followed, still slightly dazed, revelling in the fresh night air.

  Finally they slipped between two houses and stood facing the edge of the township. Before them was a wide gap of empty land and then the dried, thorny barrier.

  ‘Shhh.’ Dariand held a finger to his lips, and to her surprise sat down in the deeply shadowed overhang of the roof. Wordlessly, she lowered herself down beside him.

  A few minutes later voices floated through the night and two men approached from the left, patrolling along the inside of the fence in measured, easy paces, deep in conversation and paying no attention to the still shadows of the town. They walked past Dariand and Saria without a sidewards glance, and as soon as they had followed the curve of the fence out of sight, Dariand was on his feet again.

  ‘We’ve got a bit of time now before they get back. They’ve had extra blokes on patrol since you got here.’ As he spoke, he led her across to the fence, which was at least twice his height, then slowly along it until he spotted a small pale thread knotted to a branch close to the ground.

  ‘Here,’ he grunted, carefully taking hold of the branch. ‘Stand back.’

  Dariand hauled on the stick and to her surprise a narrow section of the fence slid easily out, leaving a thin gap in the fence.

  ‘Go through and head straight out. Keep going till you meet Gan, right?’ There was no room for argument in his voice.

  ‘You’re not coming?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head and his face took on an expression as hard as stone. ‘I’ve got things to do here. Now go.’ He shoved her into the gap.

  She slipped through in a second, and when she looked back, Dariand was pulling the section of fence back into place.

  Saria fled into the desert, as fast as she could manage.

  Away from the town, she stopped to catch her breath and to look into the nightvault. The vaultlights continued their slow revolution above, bathing the land in a dim light. Behind her, the town was silent.

  Suddenly the reality of her escape started to sink in. Already the days spent confined in darkness seemed more like a terribly vivid dream than something real. Abruptly her legs started trembling and her vision blurred. She breathed deeply to calm herself before staggering forward over a slight rise and down into a valley on the other side. There was no sign of Gan – whoever he was. Only empty land and vault-lit darkness.

  Her vision blurred again, the ground caught at her feet and she pitched forward.

  When she came to, she was aware first of the movement then the smell. The now-familiar roll and pitch of a camel below her, the smell of her own filth on her clothes. Opening her eyes, Saria found herself staring straight down at the ground passing below as the camel loped along. She was strapped across its shoulders, dangling on either side of the beast, just in front of its hump. She struggled against the straps.

  ‘So, you’re awake.’ The old woman’s voice startled her, and brought with it a wave of despair. ‘Hold on.’

  A moment later the camel stopped and lowered itself to the ground. The woman unstrapped the ropes that had bound Saria across its back.

  ‘Had to make sure you stayed on. Couldn’t have you slipping away again, eh?’

  ‘Are you taking me back to Olympic?’

  Bitterness rose in the back of Saria’s throat. To have come so close to escaping, only to be caught again.

  ‘Olympic? Don’t be a fool, girl. Why would I take you back there when Dariand’s just spent ten days looking for you?’

  The words took a moment to sink in.

  ‘You, you’re … Gan?’

  ‘Who were you expectin’?’

  ‘I … Dariand didn’t say.’

  ‘Don’t trust anyone, girl. That’s a good rule to remember if you’re goin’ to go wanderin’ around the Darklands on your own. You never know who’s on your side and who’s not. I been helpin’ Dreamer Wanji out for a long time now, but I don’t like too many people knowin’ about it.’ The old woman made a face that might have been either a glare or a smile. ‘Now, get back up on your camel. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before that mob in Olympic wake up and find you missin’.’

  Obediently Saria clambered back onto the camel and the animal tilted to its feet. Gan climbed onto another beast a few metres away.

  ‘Now … Hup!’ She turned to Saria. ‘We can make better time now you’re awake. Hold on.’

  She flicked her own camel’s rump with her switch, and the beast launched into a slow, loping run, Saria’s following. The motion was different from walking; more jerky, less rolling and smooth. Saria grabbed and clung to the halter to keep her balance.

  The two creatures ran until the first hints of dawn coloured the horizon behind and Saria realised they’d been heading steadily nightwards.

  ‘Are we going to Woormra?’

  ‘Eventually,’ Gan replied. ‘Got a stop to make first.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘’Cause if we go straight there now, we’ll have Slander and Dreamer Baanti and their mob breathing down our necks in no time at all. Dreamer Wanji and Dariand both reckon we’d be best to hole up for a while somewhere, and let the storm blow over.’

  ‘What storm?’

  ‘You, girl. Now that Slander knows the truth about you, there’ll be no stopping him. Word’s out in the Darklands that you’re alive and that means that everyone between here an’ the Darkedge is gonna want a piece of you. Now keep your trap shut for a bit an’ concentrate on your riding.’

  Nothing more was said until the sun was well up, when, with a start, Gan reigned in her mount and climbed to the ground, untying the leader that bound Saria’s beast to her own and throwing it up to the girl.

  ‘Time you learned to do this for yourself.’

  She showed Saria how to use the halter to steer and stop the camel and to get it moving again with a couple of sharp jabs from her heels. At least, that was the theory. The more she tried to get it to go where she wanted, the less inclined the enormous beast seemed to do so.

  ‘Don’t try to force your will on it, girl,’ Gan snapped, exasperated, as the camel emi
tted another long groan of protest. ‘You gotta work with a camel. You try an’ fight him and you’ll just make him mad, right.’

  For a second Saria tried to reach into the beast, but its restless shuffling under her was too distracting to allow her to properly find its consciousness.

  ‘Eh! Pay attention, girl.’ Gan tapped Saria lightly on the leg with the thin switch of wood that she used to drive the camels. ‘You can’t go off daydreaming like that.’ The old woman shook her head. ‘Come on, let’s get you down and we’ll carry on with this some other time.’

  Gan clicked her tongue, and obediently Saria’s camel knelt on the sand, allowing her to dismount.

  ‘We’re not riding?’

  ‘Not for this last bit. Now, come on.’ They led their two animals down a small rocky slope and into a sandy, shaded creek bed. The sand was soft and cool under Saria’s feet, and as the day grew brighter the trees cast pools of shade over them. They followed the dried-out watercourse and the banks grew steeper and higher until they found themselves in the bottom of a gorge, winding along in the shadow of the walls.

  ‘Here.’ They rounded a bend and a pool of dark water filled the bottom of the valley, trees and bushes thick around its edges. Smelling the water, the camels grew agitated, and Gan nodded to Saria.

  ‘Let ‘im go.’

  The two animals ran straight to the water’s edge and gulped noisy mouthfuls.

  ‘Now, girl, you need to get in there yourself. Stink like a bag of camel dung, you do.’

  The stench of the pit still clung to her clothes and skin, and gratefully Saria waded in, still clothed. Then she undressed and lay back in the shallows, watching the two camels sucking down water.

  By the time Saria had rubbed herself and her clothes down and climbed out, Gan had unloaded the contents of a bag onto the ground below a nearby tree. Saria hung her clothing across a low shrub to dry. Something heavy in the pocket of her robe caught her attention. She fished out the flat rock she’d picked up out in the plains and was turning it over thoughtfully in her hand when the old woman called.