“Right, and some of those stars support habitable planets, just as the sun of your own world supports life. We have been travelling from world to world for many, many years.”
“I had heard that there were other worlds, out in the void,” Kelos said, “but I hadn’t really believed.”
“Oh, believe, my friend. There are many wonders, out there.” Illiun said. “Alas, we cannot stay on this planet for much longer. The entity is still in pursuit and it’s vital that we repair our engines.”
“Entity?” Bestion said. “What is that?”
“A determined enemy, one we have been fleeing for generations. Yet no matter how far we travel, it still finds us. Coming here, we hoped that we had finally escaped it. However, in the last few days our sensors detected the entity’s approach once again. We prepared the ship for departure, only for our engines to fail. There are minerals on this planet that can help us repair them, but we’re going to have to recover them quickly.”
“We’ll help you,” Silus said. He turned to his companions, who were looking at him in stunned silence. “What? What else are we going to do? The Llothriall is no more, we’re far from home, and something big and angry is heading our way. I say that leaves us with little choice; as far as I can see, Illiun and his people offer us the best hope of survival and of finding our way back to Twilight.”
“As we are new to this planet ourselves, we are still unsure as to the nature of the risks that may lie between us and retrieval of the mineral,” Illiun said.
“Trust me,” Silus said. “We’re quite used to risks.”
He squeezed Katya’s hand and she smiled at him, but there was a deep weariness in her eyes. On her knee, Zac suddenly pointed at his father before letting out a delighted squeal and clapping his hands.
“At least one of us isn’t feeling this overwhelming sense of impending doom,” Katya said, kissing the top of her son’s head.
“Of course,” Illiun said. “Any help that you can give us will be more than gratefully received. Certainly my people are delighted to have you amongst us. Tonight you will avail yourselves of our hospitality. I will provide you with a communication staff in order that you will be able to converse. Come the morning we will have a decision on how to proceed.”
The door opened and one of the silver-eyed men entered. “Please see to it that our guests are well looked after,” Illiun told him.
As they left the ship and headed back into the settlement, Silus looked up at the clear blue sky, wondering what manner of threat it was that this entity posed, and quite how they would escape it when the time came.
Back in the settlement proper, they were guided to one of the larger sand-dwellings, there to be greeted by a familiar face.
The girl grinned as she pushed aside the curtain covering the doorway, her pet scampering past her and weaving itself between their legs, emitting a discordant whine that sounded like no dog they had ever heard.
“Mummy and Daddy said that the strangers were coming,” she said.
Not wanting to be referred to as ‘the strangers’ for the rest of the evening, the crew introduced themselves and ascertained that the girl was called Hannah, which was also the name of her pet.
Once inside, they were introduced to Hannah’s parents — Rosalind and Shalim — who were so similar in appearance that they could have been brother and sister, though no one chose to comment, not wanting to jeopardise the hospitality of their hosts.
Within, the sand house was ordered and comfortable. The structure consisted of five rooms: a kitchen, a living area, two sleeping areas and a latrine. Hannah and her parents shared one of the bedrooms, along with the pet, while the remaining bedroom had been given over to the guests.
Once they were settled, the family asked them to join them for a meal and they sat in the living area, watching as Rosalind roasted root vegetables amongst hot coals.
For a while there was silence, none of the crew really knowing how to make conversation with these people, even with the aid of the translation staff; not that Hannah’s parents were particularly chatty. After being mobbed earlier that day, Silus had expected their hosts to show a little more curiosity.
“Hannah,” Bestion finally said. “Where did your pet come from? I haven’t seen any other animals in the settlement.”
“Hannah comes from another world. The people on the ship wanted her once, but the council decided they had no use for her. Mummy and Daddy said that I could keep her, but I don’t think that this place likes her very much.”
“And have you seen many worlds?”
“Lots and lots. Though not as many as Mummy and Daddy.”
“How long have you been on this world?”
“Not long,” Shalim said, joining the conversation. “But there is nothing here for us and soon we will be leaving.”
“Ah, yes,” Bestion said. “That would be because of the entity, wouldn’t it?”
Shalim returned to staring at the glowing coals.
“What sort of world were you born on?” Silus asked.
“Shalim and I were born on the ship,” Rosalind said. “Hannah was born on an ocean planet. We were happy for a while, there, before we had to move on.”
Zac began to struggle on Katya’s lap and she let him down onto the floor, where Hannah showed him a simple game with coloured pebbles. They became utterly absorbed in their play, paying not the least attention to the adult conversation going on around them.
“What about you?” Shalim said. “How did you come to this world? We didn’t see your ship land.”
With occasional interjections from Dunsany and Kelos, Silus told their story, including everything from stealing the Llothriall, to the defeat of the Chadassa, to arriving in the desert on a broken boat.
“It seems to me,” Shalim said, “that your homeworld isn’t a place to which you would want to return.”
“There are things there worth fighting for,” Kelos said. “And it is our home.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of running, Shalim?” Silus said.
“Indeed, but we hope that one day we will have run far enough.”
“I wish I had witnessed some of the sights you’ve seen out there,” Kelos said. “Just think: if we found the right world, we wouldn’t have to return to Twilight. No more Final Faith on our backs. We could start afresh. We don’t have to go home.”
As they talked, the sunset that had been edging into the room faded and then finally died. A sharp wind picked up, howling against the house, although inside they felt not the slightest breeze.
Katya hadn’t even realised that Zac had left them until he tottered back into the room, holding Hannah’s hand.
“Where have you been, wee man?” she said. “Playing with Hannah? Thank you for keeping him entertained, by the way. Are you hungry, Zac?”
“The stars are falling,” he said.
“What’s that, sweetie?”
“Come, see.”
As Katya and Silus got to their feet, Silus thought that he heard a low, deep thud as though something heavy had fallen to the floor in another room.
In the guest room they found Zac and Hannah kneeling on one of the beds, looking out of the window, their faces intermittently illuminated by brilliant flashes of light.
“Dunsany, Kelos… everyone! ” Katya said. “You may want to come and see this.”
Zac had been right; far out in the desert, stars were falling to earth. Most fell beyond the horizon, but a few landed closer to the settlement, throwing up huge plumes of glowing sand.
“My gods!” Dunsany said. “I’ve seen shooting stars before, but nothing like this.”
“Shouldn’t we be heading for the ship?” Kelos said. “I mean, if one of those things hit us…”
“We are quite safe,” Shalim said. “The ship will protect us and the bombardment will soon be over.”
And indeed it was. Silus blinked away the purple blotches swimming across his vision. Where the stars had come down, the
sand glowed rose-red.
“It’s beautiful,” Kelos said.
To the mage, it may have been a wondrous sight, but as Silus watched the glowing sand darken, he’d never felt further from home.
CHAPTER SIX
Emuel felt himself being pulled in all directions at once. At one point his head was somewhere down around his knees, while his eyeballs orbited his right wrist. It felt like he had been disassembled and put back together again a million times. For a moment he found peace, letting go as his constituent parts tumbled away from each other into the void; Emuel wished his left ear well as it slowly somersaulted past him.
There was a sickening moment of disorientation before he rained down to earth, his consciousness pouring back into him like ice-water, making him clench his teeth against the sudden, migraine-inducing cold. All he could do was shiver, his breathing sounding loud and hollow. Emuel dreaded opening his eyes (did he still have eyes?) The repetitive booming sound he could hear must have been his heart, but when he reached out, feeling for it, he touched hot sand.
He rolled onto his back and looked into a cloudless blue sky. The sun had reached its zenith and he squinted against its harsh glare, before shielding his eyes, sitting up and looking around him.
The ground was spotted with blood and Emuel immediately checked himself, but he wasn’t wounded. Various pieces of equipment were scattered across the sand — bent weapons, crushed water flasks, torn clothing — and when Emuel picked up a shield he found that there was still an arm attached to it. Rings bedecked the fingers of the pale hand; it seemed it had belonged to one of the lieutenants from the Order of the Swords of Dawn.
“Hello?” Emuel called. “Anyone?”
But it soon became obvious that he was the only one here; a fact that he confirmed for himself by climbing a shallow rise and seeing that he was surrounded on all sides by desert.
Was this really Twilight? Looking up and seeing a sky without Kerberos, he didn’t think so.
Emuel tried to remember what had happened.
The ritual had been closed to all but the highest-ranking members of the Final Faith — not even Querilous Fitch had been invited to witness the performance — and had been conducted in a monastery high in the Drakengrat mountains. Emuel’s heart sank when he saw the location, for he had often come here on retreat, to meditate and pray in the beautiful gardens. But there was now no sign of the order of silent monks who had lived here, and the gardens had been allowed to run riot, swallowing the small chapels that dotted the grounds.
Emuel had been unnerved to discover that the sorcery that was to be performed during the ritual had never before been attempted, but Katherine Makennon herself had assured them that she had tasked the ritual to a sorcerer more powerful even than Brother Sequilious.
Albrecht Wolf looked to be old enough to be the great-grandfather of the previous Anointed Lord. He tottered up to the altar on two canes, dragging his right foot behind him. When he placed his apparatus before him, his right hand shook so badly that he knocked over a chalice, spilling a stinking tarry substance that slowly dripped down the stone. No one rushed to help him, and Makennon did not seem in the least perturbed by his infirmity; indeed, she treated Albrecht with the greatest of reverence, and Emuel thought that he could even sense fear when she talked with him. Once Albrecht had prepared his apparatus, the Anointed Lord knelt before him and kissed the ring on his right index finger before leaving the temple with her retinue.
Albrecht looked up at those now gathered before the altar with cataract-clouded eyes, and though his vision was obscured, Emuel could feel the old man’s gaze searing into his. Ignacio stood beside Emuel, dressed in the garb of a footsoldier of the Order of the Swords of Dawn. He didn’t once look at the eunuch or register his presence. Something had been done to him, Emuel wasn’t sure what, but there was nothing left of the man he had once known. Flanking them were two dozen soldiers of the Swords, led by two lieutenants. Emuel was of the opinion that this wouldn’t be nearly enough to apprehend Silus and the crew of the Llothriall, but kept this thought to himself.
Albrecht refilled the chalice and then stepped around the altar, offering its contents to one of the lieutenants. The man gagged on the first sip, but Albrecht kept a hand on his shoulder as he forced the foul liquor down. On the last swallow, sweat poured down the lieutenant’s brow and his face visibly paled.
The cup was re-filled and passed to the second lieutenant, who drank deeply and quickly. He dropped the chalice and his shoulders hitched, but he managed not to vomit.
Next Albrecht lifted a plank of wood from the altar and, painted upon it, Emuel saw one word: Llothriall. Albrecht burned this relic of the broken ship, inhaling the smoke and uttering something in a foreign tongue between wracking coughs.
As far as sorcery went, Emuel had witnessed more impressive rituals, and as the old man bent double in the grip of another coughing fit, he wondered whether Albrecht would die before the ceremony could be completed. Then, as he straightened up, put his right arm on the altar and a knife to his wrist, Emuel realised, with a shudder, that the sorcerer was going to die regardless, that the ritual wouldbe completed.
Albrecht pressed down with the knife, but he had to saw the blade back and forth before his flesh gave way. Even when it parted there was no immediate trickle of blood. The only sound in the temple was the sorcerer’s ragged breathing, as he sought to sever an artery.
Finally, the blade did its job and a crimson thread worked its way down Albrecht’s wrist. He worked the knife and the thread became a trickle, the trickle a flood, and a great scarlet sheet poured down the face of the altar. Despite the life flowing from him, Albrecht still stood, holding the gazes of the men and women before him.
As the blood flowed from the foot of the altar and washed across the flagstones towards them, Emuel wondered just how much of the stuff this dried husk of a human sorcerer could contain. It lapped up against their boots, the coppery stench of it making his eyes water as it surrounded them in a widening pool, quickly spreading to all corners of the temple. When the tide reached Emuel’s ankles, the warm blood began to seep through his britches. He looked behind him to the temple doors, wondering whether he could escape before the Swords could cut him down. The blood quickly rose to his waist and something within the crimson flood brushed up against his thighs. Looking down, Emuel realised that there were things swimming in the scarlet pool. Beside him, he saw something black and scaled curl around Ignacio’s wrists. His friend didn’t blink, didn’t make a sound as he was pulled beneath the surface. Nobody else seemed to notice Ignacio’s passing. In fact, nobody but Emuel was reacting at all to the horror that surrounded them.
Another member of the Swords was dragged under, and another. Soon Emuel was the only person, besides Albrecht, left standing. The blood had reached his chest by this point and Emuel realised that even if the creatures didn’t get him, he would surely drown.
The room swayed. Below the surface of the blood, Emuel could see pale lights, bobbing like lanterns; he thought that they looked like faces. So enraptured was he by their glow that he didn’t react when the blood finally closed over his head. When he took his first breath, letting the warm liquid pour into him, the lights danced around him like a multitude of stars, and he was torn apart.
Clearly the ritual had been a failure. Not only were the Llothriall and her crew nowhere in the immediate vicinity, but now most of Emuel’s companions lay dead on the sand, while the rest had seemingly vanished into thin air.
As far as he could see, he had two options: he could remain where he was and wait for his supplies to run out, or he could strike out into the desert and hope that there was more to this place than an endless expanse of sand.
Emuel chose the latter option, gathering up what little usable equipment he could scavenge from the detritus that surrounded him. Most of the weapons were bent or warped, but he did manage to find a serviceable sword. More importantly, he found two intact water flasks and enoug
h trail rations to last three days. Securing these about his person, he set out, heading away from the sun. He realised that he might die amongst the dunes, but the thought of staying where he was and just waiting for death to find him didn’t appeal.
The sound of the wind amongst the dunes reminded Emuel of the song of the Stone Seers — the great canticle that had kept the city of Morat afloat — and he added his own voice to the song, the harmony lifting his spirits a little, making him feel somewhat less alone. It wasn’t the desert itself that Emuel found the most daunting, however, it was the seemingly infinite sky that hung above him. Without Kerberos, he felt exposed, open to whatever lay beyond that deep cyan expanse. When he found himself stumbling across the head of a dune and momentarily losing his footing, he was terrified that he would fall into the sky and just keep on falling.
Once the sun began to set, Emuel rested. He ate a strip of dried mool and watched the colour of the landscape change. The wind dropped and the song of the dunes died. Emuel had never experienced such silence. Without the soft glow of Kerberos to relieve the night, he could barely see his hand before his face. The temperature fell and he could hear things stirring in the sand. He dared not move, but when no strange creatures came for him, he pulled his cloak tighter about his shoulders and settled back, staring into the heavens.
He wondered whether any of the points of light above him was a god, like Kerberos. Maybe all of them were gods, and the Final Faith — indeed, every religion on the peninsula — was wrong about humanity and its place in the universe. Emuel supposed he should have felt despair at this thought but, strangely, he didn’t.
Swift lines of light drew themselves across the heavens. Emuel had seen shooting stars before, but never in such multitude. He found their silent brilliance moving and sent up a prayer of thanks to whatever might be out there.
With a terrific roar, a flaming ball of rock arced over him and fell to the earth, not more than a mile from where he lay. Emuel sat up to see a glittering plume of sand raining back down to earth from the impact site. He looked up, nervously watching for any more burning rocks falling from the sky, but all was as it had been before.
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