‘What are those things?’
Udinaas shook his head. ‘This city was struck by ice, even as it was torn from our world. Clearly, that ice held its own ancient secrets.’
‘Why did you bring us here?’
He rounded on her, struggled to contain his anger, and managed to release it in a long sigh. Then he said, ‘Feather Witch, what was the tile you held in your hand?’
‘One of the Fulcra. Fire.’ She faltered, then resumed. ‘When I saw you, that first time, I lied when I said I saw nothing else. No-one.’
‘You saw her, didn’t you?’
‘Sister Dawn…the flames—’
‘And you saw what she did to me.’
‘Yes.’ A whisper.
Udinaas turned away. ‘Not imagined, then,’ he muttered. ‘Not conjured by my imagination. Not…madness…’
‘It is not fair. You, you’re nothing. An Indebted. A slave. That Wyval was meant for me. Me, Udinaas!’
He flinched from her rage, even as understanding struck him. Forcing a bitter laugh. ‘You summoned it, didn’t you? The Wyval. You wanted its blood, and it had you, and so its poison should have infected you. But it didn’t. Instead, it chose me. If I could, Feather Witch, I’d give it to you. With pleasure—no, that is not true, much as I’d like it to be. Be thankful that blood does not flow in your veins. It is in truth the curse you said it was.’
‘Better to be cursed than—’ She stopped, looked away.
He studied her pale face, and around it the blonde, crinkled hair shivering in the vague, near-lifeless wind. ‘Than what, Feather Witch? A slave born of slaves. Doomed to listen to endless dreams of freedom—a word you do not understand, probably will never understand. The tiles were to be your way out, weren’t they? Not taken in service to your fellow Letherii. But for yourself. You caught a whisper of freedom, didn’t you, deep within those tiles? Or, something you thought was freedom. For what it is worth, Feather Witch, a curse is not freedom. Every path is a trap, a snare, to entangle you in the games of forces beyond all understanding. Those forces probably prefer slaves when they use mortals, since slaves understand intrinsically the nature of the relationship imposed.’
She glared at him. ‘Then why you?’
‘And not you?’ He looked away. ‘Because I wasn’t dreaming of freedom. Perhaps. Before I was a slave, I was Indebted—as you remind me at every opportunity. Debt fashions its own kind of slavery, Feather Witch, within a system designed to ensure few ever escape once those chains have closed round them.’
She lifted her hands and stared at them. ‘Are we truly here? It all seems so real.’
‘I doubt it,’ Udinaas replied.
‘We can’t stay?’
‘In the world of the tiles? You tell me, Feather Witch.’
‘This isn’t the realm of your dreaming, is it?’
He grimaced to hide his amusement at the unintended meaning behind her question. ‘No. I did warn you.’
‘I have been waiting for you to say that. Only not in such a tone of regret.’
‘Expecting anger?’
She nodded.
‘I had plenty of that,’ he admitted. ‘But it went away.’
‘How? How do you make it go away?’
He met her eyes, then simply shook his head. A casual turning away, gaze once more upon the ruins. ‘This destruction, this slaughter. A terrible thing to do.’
‘Maybe they deserved it. Maybe they did something—’
‘Feather Witch, the question of what is deserved should rarely, if ever, be asked. Asking it leads to deadly judgement, and acts of unmitigated evil. Atrocity revisited in the name of justice breeds its own atrocity. We Letherii are cursed enough with righteousness, without inviting yet more.’
‘You live soft, Udinaas, in a very hard world.’
‘I told you I was not without anger.’
‘Which you bleed away, somehow, before it can hurt anyone else.’
‘So I do all the bleeding, do I?’
She nodded. ‘I’m afraid you do, Udinaas.’
He sighed and turned. ‘Let’s go back.’
Side by side, they made their way towards the waiting savages and their village of caves.
‘Would that we could understand them,’ Feather Witch said.
‘Their shaman is dead.’
‘Damn you, Udinaas!’
Into the basin, where something had changed. Four women had appeared, and with them was a young boy. Who was human.
The warrior who had spoken earlier now addressed the boy, and he replied in the same language, then looked over at Udinaas and Feather Witch. He pointed, then, with a frown, said, ‘Letherii.’
‘Do you understand me?’ Udinaas asked.
‘Some.’
‘You are Meckros?’
‘Some. Letherii Indebted. Indebted. Mother and father. They fled to live with Meckros. Live free, freedom. In freedom.’
Udinaas gestured towards the ruined city. ‘Your home?’
‘Some.’ He took the hand of one of the women attending him. ‘Here.’
‘What is your name?’
‘Rud Elalle.’
Udinaas glanced at Feather Witch. Rud meant found in the Meckros trade tongue. But, of course, he realized, she would not know that. ‘Found Elalle,’ he said in the traders’ language, ‘can you understand me better?’
The boy’s face brightened. ‘Yes! Good, yes! You are a sailor, like my father was. Yes.’
‘These people rescued you from the city?’
‘Yes. They are Bentract. Or were, whatever that means—do you know?’
He shook his head. ‘Found, were there any other survivors?’
‘No. All dead. Or dying, then dead.’
‘And how did you survive?’
‘I was playing. Then there were terrible noises, and screams, and the street lifted then broke, and my house was gone. I slid towards a big crack that was full of ice fangs. I was going to die. Like everyone else. Then I hit two legs. Standing, she was standing, as if the street was still level.’
‘She?’
‘This is traders’ tongue, isn’t it?’ Feather Witch said. ‘I’m starting to understand it—it’s what you and Hulad use when together.’
‘She was white fire,’ the boy said. ‘Tall, very very tall, and she reached down and picked me up.’ He made a gesture to mime a hand gripping the collar of his weathered shirt. ‘And she said: Oh no he won’t. Then we were walking. In the air. Floating above everything until we all arrived here. And she was swearing. Swearing and swearing.’
‘Did she say anything else, apart from swearing?’
‘She said she worked hard on this beget, and that damned legless bastard wasn’t going to ruin her plans. Not a chance, no, not a chance, and he’ll pay for this. What’s beget mean?’
‘I thought so,’ Feather Witch muttered in Letherii.
No.
‘Remarkable eyes,’ Feather Witch continued. ‘Must be hers. Yours are much darker. Duller. But that mouth…’
No. ‘Found,’ Udinaas managed, ‘how old are you?’
‘I forget.’
‘How old were you before the ice broke the city?’
‘Seven.’
Triumphant, Udinaas spun to face Feather Witch.
‘Seven,’ the boy said again. ‘Seven weeks. Mother kept saying I was growing too fast, so I must be tall for my age.’
Feather Witch’s smile was strangely broken.
The Bentract warrior spoke again.
The boy nodded, and said, ‘Ulshun Pral says he has a question he wants to ask you.’
A numbed reply. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Rae‘d. Veb entara tog‘rudd n‘lan n‘vis thal? List vah olar n‘lan? Ste shabyn?’
‘The women want to know if I will eat them when I get older. They want to know what dragons eat. They want to know if they should be afraid. I don’t know what all that means.’
‘How can they be eaten? They’re—’ Udinaas
stopped. Errant take me, they don’t know they’re dead! ‘Tell them not to worry, Found.’
‘Ki‘bri arasteshabyn bri por‘tol tun logdara kul absi.’
‘Ulshun Pral says they promised her to take care of me until she returns.’
‘Entara tog‘rudd av?’
The boy shook his head and replied in the warrior’s language.
‘What did he ask?’ Udinaas demanded.
‘Ulshun Pral wanted to know if you’re my father. I told him my father’s dead. I told him, no, you aren’t. My father was Araq Elalle. He died.’
In Letherii, Feather Witch said, ‘Tell him, Udinaas.’
‘No. There’s nothing to tell.’
‘You would leave him to that…woman?’
He spun to face her. ‘And what would you have me do? Take him with us? We’re not even here!’
‘T‘un havra‘ad eventara. T‘un veb vol‘raele bri rea han d En‘ev?’
The boy said, ‘Ulshun Pral is understanding you now. Some. He says there are holes and would you like to go there?’
‘Holes?’ Udinaas asked.
Feather Witch snorted. ‘Gates. He means gates. I have been sensing them. There are gates, Udinaas. Powerful ones.’
‘All right,’ Udinaas said to Found.
‘I don’t like that place,’ the boy said. ‘But I will come with you. It’s not far.’
They strode towards the mouth of one of the larger caves. Passed into the cool darkness, the rough floor sloping upward for twenty or so paces, then beginning to dip again. Into caverns with the walls crowded with painted images in red and yellow ochre, black outlines portraying ancient beasts standing or running, some falling with spears protruding from them. Further in, a smaller cavern with black stick-like efforts on the walls and ceiling, a struggling attempt by the T’lan Imass to paint their own forms. Blooms of red paint outlining ghostly hand-prints. Then the path narrowed and began a gradual ascent once more. Ahead, a vertical fissure from which light spilled inward, a light filled with flowing colours, as if some unearthly flame burned beyond.
They emerged onto an uneven but mostly level sweep of blackened bedrock. Small boulders set end to end formed an avenue of approach from the cave mouth that led them on an inward spiral towards the centre of the clearing. Beyond, the sky shimmered with swirling colours, like shattered rainbows. A cairn of flat stones dominated the centre of the spiral, in the rough, awkward form of a figure standing on two legs made of stacked stones, a single broad one forming the hips, the torso made of three more, the arms each a single projecting, rectangular stone out to the side, the head a single, oblong rock sheathed in lichen. The crude figure stood before a squat tower-like structure with at least twelve sides. The facings were smooth, burnished like the facets of natural crystal. Yet light in countless colours flared beneath each of those surfaces, each plane spiralling inward to a dark hole.
Udinaas could feel a pressure in the air, as of taut forces held in balance. The scene seemed perilously fragile.
‘Vi han onralmashalle. S‘ril k‘ul havra En‘ev. N‘vist‘. Lan‘te.’
‘Ulshun says his people came here with a bonecaster. It was a realm of storms. And beasts, countless beasts coming from those holes. They did not know what they were, but there was much fighting.’
The T’lan Imass warrior spoke again, at length.
‘Their bonecaster realized that the breaches must be sealed, and so she drew upon the power of stone and earth, then rose into her new, eternal body to stand before the wounds. And hold all with stillness. She stands there now and she shall stand there for all time.’
‘Yet her sacrifice has stranded the T’lan Imass here, hasn’t it?’ Udinaas asked.
‘Yes. But Ulshun and his people are content.’
‘Vi truh larpahal. Ranag, bhed, tenag tollarpahal. Kul havra thelar. Kul.’
‘This land is a path, what we would call a road,’ Found said, frowning as he struggled to make sense of Ulshun’s words. ‘Herds migrate, back and forth. They seem to come from nowhere, but they always come.’
Because, like the T’lan Imass themselves, they are ghost memories.
‘The road leads here?’ Feather Witch asked in halting traders’ tongue.
‘Yes,’ Found said.
‘And comes from where?’
‘Epal en. Vol‘sav, thelan.’
The boy sighed, crossed his arms in frustration. ‘Ulshun says we are in an…overflow? Where the road comes from has bled out to claim the road itself. And surround this place. Beyond, there is…nothing. Oblivion. Unrealized.’
‘So we are within a realm?’ Feather Witch asked. ‘Which Hold claims this place?’
‘A evbrox‘l list Tev. Starvald Demelain Tev.’
‘Ulshun is pleased you understand Holds. He is bright-gem-eye. Pleased, and surprised. He calls this Hold Starvald Demelain.’
‘I do not know that name,’ she said, scowling.
The T’lan Imass spoke again, and in the words Udinaas sensed a list. Then more lists, and in hearing the second list, he began to recognize names.
The boy shrugged. ‘T’iam, Kalse, Silannah, Ampelas, Okaros, Karosis, Sorrit, Atrahal, Eloth, Anthras, Kessobahn, Alkend, Karatallid, Korbas…Olar. Eleint. Draconean. Dragons. The Pure Dragons. The place where the road comes from is closed. By the mixed bloods who gathered long ago. Draconus, K’rul, Anomandaris, Osserc, Silchas Ruin, Scabandari, Sheltatha Lore, Sukul Ankhadu and Menandore. It was, he says, Menandore who saved me.’ The boy’s eyes suddenly widened. ‘She didn’t look like a dragon!’
Ulshun spoke.
Found nodded. ‘All right. He says you should be able to pass through from here. He looks forward to seeing you again. They will prepare a feast for you. Tenag calf. You are coming back, aren’t you?’
‘If we can,’ Feather Witch said, then switched to Letherii. ‘Aren’t we, Udinaas?’
He scowled. ‘How would I know?’
‘Be gracious.’
‘To you or them?’
‘Both. But especially to your son.’
He didn’t want to hear any of this, and chose to study the faceted tower instead. Not a single path, then, but multiple doorways. At least twelve. Twelve other worlds, then? What would they be like? What kind of creatures populated them? Demons. And perhaps that was all the word ‘demon’ meant. Some creature torn from its own realm. Bound like a slave by a new master who cared nothing for its life, its well-being, who would simply use it like any other tool. Until made useless, whereupon it would be discarded.
But I am tired of sympathy. Of feeling it, at least. I’d welcome receiving it, if only to salve all this self-pity. Be gracious, she said. A little rich, coming from her. He looked back down at the boy. My son. No, just my seed. She took nothing else, needed nothing else. It was the Wyval blood that drew her, it must have been. Nothing else. Not my son. My seed.
Growing too fast. Was that the trait of dragons? No wonder the T’lan Imass women were frightened. He sighed, then said, ‘Found, thank you. And our thanks as well to Ulshun Pral. We look forward to a feast of Tenag calf.’ He faced Feather Witch. ‘Can you choose the proper path?’
‘Our flesh will draw us back,’ she replied. ‘Come, we have no idea how much time has passed in our world.’ She took him by the hand and led him past the stone figure. ‘Dream worlds. Imagine what we might see, were we able to choose…’
‘They’re not dream worlds, Feather Witch. They’re real. In those places, we are the ghosts.’
She snorted, but said nothing.
Udinaas turned for a final glance back. The boy, Found, get of a slave and a draconic-blooded woman, raised by neither. And at his side this rudely fashioned savage who believed he still lived. Believed he was flesh and blood, a hunter and leader with appetites, desires, a future to stride into. Udinaas could not decide which of the two was the more pathetic. Seeing them, as he did now, they both broke his heart, and there seemed no way to distinguish between the two. As if grief had flavo
urs.
He swung round. ‘All right, take us back.’
Her hand tightened on his, and she drew him forward. He watched her stride into the wall of flaring light. Then followed.
Atri-Preda Yan Tovis, called Twilight by those soldiers under her command who possessed in their ancestry the blood of the long-vanished indigenous fishers of Fent Reach—for that was what her name meant—stood on the massive wall skirting the North Coast Tower, and looked out upon the waters of Nepah Sea. Behind her, a broad, raised road exited from the base of the watchtower and cut a straight path south through two leagues of old forest, then a third of a league of farmland, to end at the crossroads directly before the Inland Gate of the fortified city of Fent Reach.
That was a road she was about to take. In haste.
Beside her, the local Finadd, a willow-thin, haunted man whose skin seemed almost bloodless, cleared his throat for the third time in the last dozen heartbeats.
‘All right, Finadd,’ Twilight said.
The man sighed, a sound of unabashed relief. ‘I will assemble the squads, Atri-Preda.’
‘In a moment. You’ve still a choice to make.’
‘Atri-Preda?’
‘By your estimate, how many Edur ships are we looking at?’
The Finadd squinted northward. ‘Eight, nine hundred of their raiders, I would judge. Merude, Den-Ratha, Beneda. Those oversized transports—I’ve not seen those before. Five hundred?’
‘Those transports are modelled on our own,’ Twilight said. ‘And ours hold five hundred soldiers each, one full supply ship in every five. Assuming the same ratio here. Four hundred transports packed with Edur warriors. That’s two hundred thousand. Those raiders carry eighty to a hundred. Assume a hundred. Thus, ninety thousand. The force about to land on the strand below is, therefore, almost three hundred thousand.’
‘Yes, Atri-Preda.’
‘Five thousand Edur landed outside First Maiden Fort this morning. The skeleton garrison saddled every horse they had left and are riding hard for Fent Reach. Where I have my garrison.’
‘We can conclude,’ the Finadd said, ‘that this represents the main force of the Edur fleet, the main force, indeed, of the entire people and their suicidal invasion.’
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