Riding alongside the cart, Lessandro Dey is scanning the road ahead for signs of danger, or is he merely taking in the monotony of the slowly passing scenery? There is no way to tell. His mind and his face are unreadable, as always. One thing is certain, though. He is paying little attention to the ordeal of his fellow Guard. Pity is weakness and fertile soil, in which the Dark One sows his harvest.
‘I can help him, you know.’ Though Mykal knows his offer is futile, though the dying man is a sworn enemy, who would certainly not do the same for him were their situations reversed, something in him has to try.
Dey turns and looks down, as Mykal continues. ‘Trent, I mean. He doesn’t have to suffer like that. There are herbs and other remedies to fight the infection in his hand. In the Wood we learn—’
‘Magic!’ The word is a curse, delivered with a loaded combination of scorn and loathing. ‘You might stop his pain, ’Koi, but then he would be as accursed as you. It is written that the minions of the Dark One prey on our weaknesses, to shift us from our purest course.’
‘It is written?’ Mykal sneers, holding the Guard Commander’s gaze. ‘It is written? By whom? Don’t you people have the brains to think for yourselves? Knowledge is just knowledge. It isn’t evil. It isn’t the work of the Dark One! There is no Dark One. He’s a story to scare little children with. The only curse is ignorance!’
Lessandro Dey stares for a moment, considering how to respond. Then he smiles. It is an unaccustomed expression. ‘Waste no concern on the welfare of my men, Esper. In a few days, you will have pain enough to contend with. Then you will wish that his pain was all you were feeling.’ He spurs his mount on, leaving Mykal to stare at his back and the black cloak streaming out behind him.
JORDAN’S STORY
Two days later, Trent was dead.
One minute, he was sitting there, staring blankly at the road ahead; the next he was slumped over the neck of his horse. Only the fact that his hand remained tied to his saddle stopped him from falling to the ground. Dey left his body at the next staging post and instructed them to semaphore for someone to pick it up.
Then we moved on, as if nothing had happened.
We had given up looking for signs of anyone following us. It had been a pretty vain hope from the beginning, but now we were only three or four days out from the Citadel, and I concentrated on not thinking about what might lie in wait for us when we got there.
Eliita’s leg had healed and she could place her weight on it without pain or any particular weakness.
Mykal kept up his vigil, eavesdropping on the black-cloaked Guards, but since the death of their colleague, they had been far less talkative.
Lessandro Dey may not have had any feelings on the subject, but they were clearly disturbed by it. Perhaps, in the callous way Trent’s death had been treated, they caught a glimpse of their own futures, should they be careless or unlucky enough to share his fate.
I was thinking about Erin. For the first time in my life, I had to contemplate never seeing her again and it ate at my resolve like acid. Whatever they might do to us when we got to the Citadel didn’t compare to the sense of loss I was already feeling.
Watching Mykal I wondered if he was feeling the same way. He spent hours staring at the road ahead, lost in thoughts that he didn’t seem inclined to share – any more than I wanted to share mine.
Eliita was quiet most of the time, too. The days of monotony had taken their toll on her as much as any of us. You can’t sustain any emotion – even fear – for that long, without it fading to a vague approximation of itself. The brain isn’t set up to remain permanently scared. It isn’t set up to remain permanently anything. Fear is a survival mechanism, designed to help you escape immediate danger. It’s just too exhausting to be scared for days on end.
So the fear and the tension I’d felt during the early days of the journey had become little more than a muted ache, sitting somewhere around my stomach and even my plans of escape were like a distant dream. The future still loomed dark and dangerous, but there would be plenty of time for fear in the days to come. For now, I had enough to do surviving the boredom and discomfort of the rolling cage.
And thinking how much I missed Erin.
36
Something More
The Village of Broke
Northern Corridor
Fifteen Days’ Journey North of the Woods
January 23, 3384ad
ERIN’S STORY
The village looked pretty much the same as a dozen other small settlements we’d skirted in the days since leaving the WildWood behind.
I watched the thin plume of smoke rising from the makeshift chimney of one of the huts. Armin signalled a halt.
– Why here? My question was addressed to Armin, who was staring ahead. It was easy to forget that he was only twelve years old. He never let his guard down or moved without knowing what lay in wait all around him. I guess I should have expected nothing less from a boy who had survived for so long in the hostile environment we were passing through.
– There’s someone I want you to meet, he said, without shifting his gaze from the hut.
Bran shuffled forward, until he was lying beside us in the long grass edging the road.
– Do you notice something odd? he asked, staring at the plume of smoke.
– You mean that he has a fire burning on a day as hot as today? I said.
Even at night, it was so hot that I was having trouble sleeping. The thought of lighting a fire during the heat of the day was beyond comprehension.
– Precisely. Must be like an oven in there.
– Thomas wouldn’t notice, Armin put in, still staring ahead. When he’s working, you could throttle a kitten on his kitchen table and it wouldn’t register.
It wasn’t an image I was comfortable with, but we were all used to Armin’s grasp of metaphor by now. Anything that had the potential to shock was an automatic part of his vocabulary.
– Who is Thomas? Bran asked without any real hope of an answer. Which was another thing we’d learnt about Min. Nothing had an easy answer and if it did, he was rarely interested in sharing it.
This time, however, he was in a more communicative mood.
– He’s an inventor. His family have been inventors and scientists since the time of the Fall – if you believe everything he says, and I have no reason not to. He has a secret cache of books – original Plastisheets – that have been in his family forever.
– Books? Leana frowned. But I thought they were—
– What? Illegal? He looked at her with a mocking smile. Wow! Maybe we should rush over and inform him. That’s why I said they were secret, genius. No one knows about them except immediate family and me. And now you lot. But given your backgrounds, I doubt that you’re likely to run around shouting about them, so I think his secret’s safe.
– Did anyone ever tell you that you have the social skills of a swamp-turtle? Bran grinned as he punched Min on the shoulder.
– You didn’t hire me for my social skills. Armin returned the punch – with interest.
– We didn’t hire you at all, boy.
– No? Wait till you get the bill. Come on. It’ll be dark soon. We can spend the night under cover, for a change.
– With Thomas? Leana again. When it came to Armin, she just didn’t learn.
– No, actually, I think there’s a Guard outpost a few clicks down the road, I thought we might drop in there and request a bed for the night.
Without waiting for a reply, he made his way across the narrow stretch of open land that separated us from the small hut.
The man who answered Min’s knock on the door was in his fifties. His hair was greying at the sides and his stooped shoulders suggested too many hours bent over a workbench.
When he saw Armin, though, he smiled broadly.
‘Min!�
� he said, grasping the boy in a bear hug that threatened to crack ribs. ‘I thought ye’d dropped off’n t’planet.’ His accent was strange, even by Earth standards.
Extricating himself from the man’s attentions, Armin turned to us. We were standing behind him a little uncertainly. ‘Thomas, I’d like you to meet Erin, Bran, Leana, Alek, Reggie and the Lady Sharonne de Vries, of the Fortress de Vries.’
Thomas looked at Sharonne in surprise. ‘A’d ’eard rumours ye’d bin kidnapped.’
‘Slightly exaggerated, I’m afraid,’ Sharonne smiled to put him at ease. ‘But my father is hardly likely to tell people I ran away. Not good for the image to drive away both your children.’
Thomas looked at her a little strangely. Even without reading him, I could tell what he was thinking. Why would anyone leave the privilege and position afforded to a daughter of the Families for any reason short of kidnapping? To a man who lived his entire life from hand to mouth the concept was unthinkable.
I spoke to change the subject. ‘So, Thomas, Armin tells us that you are an inventor.’
He beamed. ‘A prefers t’ think a mesel’ ’s a student of t’lost Arts. Though p’raps it’s unwise t’mention ’em in t’presence of—’ His glance at Sharonne was lighthearted enough, but I sensed a slight wariness.
Sharonne smiled again. ‘Your secret is safe, Thomas,’ she said, brushing the loose strands of hair from her eyes, in a most un-Family-like gesture. ‘When one leaves a life behind, one leaves it all. May we come inside? I would love to see these inventions that Min has spoken of.’
You had to admire her insight. She managed to place him completely at ease, yet the way she spoke, drew on all the traditional authority of her former life. You can trust me, it said, but you really need to give me the respect I’m due.
And it worked. Thomas stepped back, almost bowing, and invited us into his hut with a sweep of his arm.
Inside, it was as hot as we’d imagined. The metal brazier that smouldered in one corner of the room wasn’t there to heat the space. That was just an unavoidable consequence. It was a miniature forge. Thomas was no blacksmith, but whatever he was working on required him to bring metal to red heat so he could shape it on the heavy anvil that stood nearby among a litter of metalworking tools.
I made a mental note to ask him what he was working on, but for now, we were hungry and thirsty and he was playing host.
‘I ’as s’mutton and a li’l bread – ’n’ a nice pot’a honey,’ he was saying, still deferring to Sharonne. ‘A keeps t’bees out near t’trees, ’nt season’s bin good. But ’m out’n mead ’n’ wine a’m ’fraid. Don’ git much c’mpany nowsaday.’ He smiled and turned towards Armin. ‘’Specially sins’ me li’l frien’ never visits.’
I looked around the sparse interior of the hut. One small bed, a beautifully worked metal table with two chairs and a floor area barely big enough for us all to stand in.
– We can spend the night under cover, for a change? I sent the thought to Armin. I didn’t want the old man to be embarrassed by Min’s unrealistic promise.
Min just smiled, and began laying the table with old plates and chipped cups. He was watching Thomas with a mixture of pride and affection, and I realised why he’d made a point of bringing us here.
This man was the nearest thing the boy had to family, and he was admitting us to the inner sanctum.
I smiled back, picked up a loaf from the small sideboard and carried it to the table. Thomas poured water from a huge pitcher into the row of old cups. It spilt onto the wood, as he ran the lip of the pitcher along the row, but he didn’t seem to care.
Then he opened the honey and poured it generously onto the bread, which he cut into thick slices with a homemade, razor-sharp knife.
It was indeed a ‘good season’. The honey was the best thing I’d tasted since before we left Deucalion.
After we had eaten our fill, Min looked across at me and winked. ‘It’s late, Thom,’ he said, showing a deference I’d not seen in him in the days since we’d first crossed paths. ‘And I promised my friends we could spend the night here with you.’
I was about to object to save Thomas the embarrassment of trying to do the impossible and bed us all down, but he just smiled, as if the request were the most natural thing in the world.
‘An’ d’ya think a’d ’ave’t any other way?’ he said, giving a strange little chuckle, as if they were sharing a private joke. ‘Gi’ me a hand, lad.’
Min twisted a metal flower on the leg at his end of the table and Thomas did the same at the other end. I heard two slight clicks, then they moved to opposite sides of the table and slid it in the direction of the door. As it moved the tiny room revealed its secret – the panel to which the table was attached opened onto a narrow flight of Plascrete stairs, leading down into the dark.
I looked at the others, as I followed Armin down. Thomas waited until we were all inside, then he grasped a handle and slid the panel back into place.
At the foot of the stairs, a second metal door, full-sized, opened onto a huge underground vault, lit at intervals by rows of white-blue glo-lights. Clearly, this was not the work of one man – or even generations of men. This was a major construction dating back before the time of the Fall.
As if he were reading my thoughts, Thomas turned to gauge my reaction. ‘Dates back ’fore t’Dark Age,’ he said. ‘Prob’ly a secrit stor’ge vault f’r one’t Lost Families. M’ family’s lived ’ere last few cent’ries off ’n’ on. Afore tha’ who knows?’
Who knows?
It wasn’t the history that interested me at that moment, or even the massive size of the place. It was the vast collection of contraptions, spreading out around us in all directions. Inventions that we could only guess the purpose of. And the endless rows of carefully ordered books. Originals and copies, protected and preserved by the cool dry air of the vault.
I looked at the door more closely. This was no product of a lonely inventor’s primitive metallurgy. This was a meticulously crafted creation, light-years beyond the technology of this post-Fall world. The door was designed to hermetically seal the space; to keep the contents dry and protect them from any atmospheric variations. Thomas waited for the others to file in, then he secured the entrance, sealing out any heat that might seep down from the room above. This was the unconscious habit of centuries, reinforced from generation to generation down one remarkable family line.
We wandered speechless through the space, stopping here and there to examine the inventions – amazing combinations of wires and struts and gears, lenses and prisms, lifelike sculptures and paintings that seemed almost to breathe in their three-dimensional depth. Occasionally, one of us would ask a question about a device or one of the artworks and Thomas would begin a long detailed and surprisingly lucid explanation of its age and purpose, the techniques required to make it and how long the job had taken.
The room was his heritage and his passion and it affected me even more profoundly than the Archive had. Here was knowledge kept safe for a time when mankind might drag itself out of the mud and despair to rebuild civilisation. Here was a repository of knowledge, smaller than, but just as important as the one so recently lost.
But here, under the floor of Thomas’s tiny hut, there was something more. Something that spoke of the creative genius of the human spirit and a stubborn refusal to give in.
How many generations had given their being to the creation of these wonderful, eccentric machines, these amazing works of art? How many lives had found their fulfilment here in this chaotic paradise of invention?
Min turned a winding handle and inside the skeletal framework of a woven-metal globe, a coiled spring tightened. Then he shifted a lever and the mechanism began to whir and rotate. Above the sphere, metal rods, welded at right angles, shifted and circled. Attached to the end of each horizontal rod was a small sphere. Some of the circling sphe
res were smaller than others; some had tiny rods and spheres moving in tiny orbits around them.
I watched as the mechanism wound down, then it dawned on me what I had seen. ‘It’s the solar system,’ I said. I recognised the configuration from the holographic charts we had studied in preparation for our expedition. ‘You’ve created a working model of your entire planetary system.’
‘Not me,’ he replied. ‘Tha’s three ’undred fift’ four years ol’.’
‘And it still works?’ Bran put in, watching the last tiny movements die away.
‘We’s repaired ’t more’n a few times ovr’t cent’ries.’ As he spoke, Thomas caressed the smooth metal. ‘Got t’book model’s made from, if’d like t’see ’t.’
And so it went. By the time we were shown to our beds in a large space at the far end of the huge room, we had spent two or three hours wandering through the marvels of the place, barely scratching the surface of the wonders it contained.
As Thomas and Armin began drawing the shades over the glo-lamps, to give us some dark, I felt exhaustion overtaking me. My eyes slid shut and I remember nothing else until morning, when we were woken by Min shaking us none-too-gently to inform us that breakfast was ready upstairs.
Rubbing my eyes, and trying to straighten my hair with the palms of my hands, I made my way up into the tiny hut above.
37
Opening Gambit
The Citadel
Berra
Central Region
January 24, 3384ad
MYKAL
The Citadel is huge. It is taller than any other building in the city, but it is not its height that impresses – many of the derelict towers in old Bourne are far taller. It’s the bulk that steals your breath. The Citadel is solid, like a monolith, and the area it covers makes it like a city within a city and the remembered grandeur of the de Vries Fortress seems suddenly far less grand. Which is to be expected, Mykal thinks, given the difference in stature and power between the Hartmans and the other Families.
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