Relics--The Folded Land

by Tim Lebbon

  Between her and Sammi stood Mallian, and she had never seen him looking so fearsome, so furious. Past the fallen tree, Grace rushed toward them all.

  Mallian glanced at her, growling. He looked past her at Lilou and Vince, his expression melting into one of pure hate.

  Then he twisted and faced the fairy, hands turning into claws. He roared, and his anger filled the sky.

  Sammi was past him now, skirting around so that she remained out of reach, and Angela stopped and held her arms wide, welcoming in her lost niece and hugging her tight.

  “We have to run,” Angela said.

  “All the way home,” the girl said.

  They turned and headed back toward the doorway. Lilou and Vince were there, watching, and as she caught Vince’s eye he gave her a strange smile.

  “Run and don’t look back,” he said as they passed, but of course that meant Angela had to look back. Even as Lilou grabbed her beneath the arm and urged her faster toward the portal. Even as something about it began to change—the shimmers settled, the size of it dwindled, and the sense of it being a fluid, hollow place began to fall away.

  She looked back and knew that Vince wasn’t coming with her. Her fiancé, her lover, was walking toward Mallian as the Nephilim took three huge strides toward them. He was coming for Sammi, for Lilou, and for her, perhaps to exact revenge while he still could, or maybe he thought he might still salvage something from his doomed efforts.

  Maybe he thought they had been stupid enough to bring the relic Vince had taken.

  “Faster!” Lilou said.

  “But Vince—”

  “Jump!” The nymph pulled her and Sammi as she leapt at the doorway, and as they entered Angela had her final glimpse of him.

  The Nephilim was twice his size and ten times as furious, but Vince was already swinging a fist, punching out to hold Mallian back. As Angela fell through and back into her own real, harsh world, she saw the Nephilim’s arms swinging down to crush the man she loved.

  “No!” she screamed, but passing through had stolen her voice, and all that emerged was a dull croak.

  Angela struck the ground and scrambled back to her feet in one movement.

  “Take her,” she said, pushing Sammi toward Lilou. She turned, ready to rush back through into the Fold and confront whatever awaited her there.

  But there was nowhere to go. The mountain escarpment was bare, wild, harsh, and home to nothing out of place.

  “No!” she cried, and this time the scream came out. But no matter how many times she tried to deny it, the truth was that the Fold was closed.

  Grace had made her new world whole.

  * * *

  Angela held hands with Sammi, and with Lilou and Jay walking on ahead they began to make their way down out of the mountains. It was dusk again. Jay was limping and in pain, but too proud to accept a ride. Baylor was still there to support her as much as she would allow. The old woman sobbed silently.

  Angela had never felt such a sense of deep loss. It was bad enough seeing the body of Fat Frederick Meloy, a big man reduced in death. His murderer had vanished by the time they came back through, the kooshdakhaa melting back into the vast woodlands when she realized Mallian was not returning. Whether she actually cared about his cause, Angela did not know, and Lilou and Jay wouldn’t hazard a guess. She was now just another Kin in hiding.

  They spied Thorn now and then as they headed down the mountainside. Something about him had changed. He seemed uncertain, even afraid, and though still cautious, they no longer felt threatened by him. Long before they reached the first of the hiking paths that would take them back to the vehicles, the pixie disappeared.

  “He doesn’t like me,” Sammi said. Something about the way she spoke troubled Angela. The girl had a depth of knowledge in her voice that she was afraid to examine.

  “That’s no normal girl,” Jay said when she was out of earshot. Lilou said nothing, even when Angela asked.

  Losing Vince left an unknowable void. If she had seen him die, could touch his body, she might not have felt so hollowed out as she did now. One second he had been there with her, the next he was a universe away. That cutting of ties had been a physical thing, inspiring a flush of pain through her core and a sickness of the soul from which she wasn’t sure she’d ever recover.

  Where is he? she wanted to ask, but there was no good answer.

  Is he alive? Once, she might have been able to tell. She wasn’t one to believe in mystical links and the tight bondings of love, but the sickening sensation when the Fold closed would be with her forever. At that moment she and Vince had been split in half, one core cut in two, one love ripped forever. It was a horrible, empty feeling.

  Maybe Sammi might help her fill some of it. Maybe not. That was something for the future.

  “Where to now?” Lilou asked when they stopped for a rest, and Angela was surprised by the question. The nymph had lost something, too, Angela realized. Whatever the relationship between her and Mallian, that had also been torn asunder, even before the Fold closed. Perhaps she was feeling that same sense of deep, unfathomable loss.

  “I have no idea,” Angela said. She looked at Sammi, who was sitting on a rock and staring down across the valley. There was a road in the distance, vehicles moving along it like single points of light. It was a comfort seeing signs of civilization, but it also brought back the familiar worries. “I’m still wanted by the law, and that’ll never change.”

  “I can help,” Jay said. “Know a few places that’ll be safe. Cabins outside of small towns, easy to get stuff delivered, private communities. No one asks questions.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever feel safe among people again.”

  “Welcome to my world,” Lilou said. “So, what about…?” She nodded at Sammi.

  “I’ll look after her,” Angela said. At the same time, she had the odd feeling that part of their relationship might go both ways.

  There was something about the girl.

  40

  Time moved unevenly in this strange new world.

  Sometimes it felt like hours since the Fold had closed and he had felt that brutal, irreversible dislocation that separated him from Angela. Other times it felt like days, even weeks. The sickness was the same, the sense of loss uniformly awful. Time did nothing to dispel that.

  Vince had taken shelter in a small cave close to the river. Here he had water, and food in the form of berries growing on nearby bushes. He didn’t recognize the berries. Hunger had driven him to try them, and he wasn’t dead yet.

  The sun rose and fell, but the length of each day felt arbitrary. His watch had stopped working. He’d tried his phone, but then remembered that the battery was dead. He suspected there would be no signal even if it wasn’t. It made him feel even more isolated.

  There were small animals here, and he’d seen several deer higher up the slopes. Sometimes he heard creatures calling wild, ebullient cries that sounded almost human. He saw them in the distance, and once or twice he thought they’d come closer. He couldn’t pretend that he was here covertly. He was not that foolish.

  Leaving his cave to walk to Mallian once again, something felt different about this journey. He knew it wouldn’t take long—he’d been five times before, and the geography of this part of the Fold was already starting to feel familiar—but there was an air of danger about the place now. It was as if the land held its breath, waiting for something to happen.

  Mallian was still there. His hands and feet remained pinned to the ground by whatever magic Grace had used to secure them. The Nephilim rolled his head so that he could watch Vince approach. Was it imagination, or did he appear weaker than he had last time? Diminished, denuded? Perhaps, even for Kin, hunger and thirst eventually did their worst.

  Vince sat ten feet away and they remained silent for a while, as they had on his previous visits. Sometimes they didn’t talk at all. He wasn’t sure why he came here. It might have been because Mallian offered some shred of familiarity i
n this place. A vague link to Angela.

  Today, the Nephilim seemed more eager to talk. “You said the girl wasn’t Kin.”

  “Angela said that.”

  “Hmph. Humans. They know nothing.”

  Vince had wondered about Sammi, but the fact that she and Angela had escaped gave him peace. Worrying about the girl’s origins could achieve nothing, not while he was trapped here. But now, this.

  “So what is she?”

  “What is she?” Mallian said, repeating his words several more times. “She’s what many humans are. Touched by Kin.”

  “Meaning what?”

  Mallian rolled his head left, right, cricking his neck. He grumbled, a growl or a sigh.

  “Release me and I’ll tell you.”

  “I can’t. Even if I could, I wouldn’t.”

  “I see none in you,” Mallian said. “Interesting.”

  “You see no what?”

  “No Kin blood.”

  Vince frowned, and then raised his head as realization set in.

  “You think so many generations of human and Kin can keep apart?” Mallian asked. “Countless numbers of you are blessed, and you don’t even know it.”

  “The deniers?” Vince asked.

  “The mongrel humans. The half-breeds. Our pure, honored blood diluted by your human… filth.” He spat the last word.

  “So what is Sammi?” Vince asked.

  “Help me and I’ll tell you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You won’t.”

  Vince frowned and stood to leave. This new information swirled in his head, and although so shocking, it was also painfully, patently obvious. Of course Kin and humans would have come together, perhaps even fallen in love. Not so much now—at least not as far as he knew, although there might have been something between Meloy and Lilou—but centuries ago, creating bloodlines that simmered down through the years.

  “She won’t let you live,” Mallian said. “You’re not company for her. None of us are.”

  Vince paused. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see,” Mallian said. He chuckled, a dry, throaty rasp. “I should have known.”

  “Known what?”

  The Nephilim turned his head and stared up at the sky. By day, the sun was a constant comfort. By night, strange constellations passed over this new place.

  “Known what?” Vince asked again, but he was wasting his breath. Mallian sighed and closed his eyes.

  Vince left and walked back along the river toward his cave. There was no point trying to hide, and as yet none of the Kin in this place had bothered him. He mused on what Mallian had said about Grace, and wondered whether he and the Kin were in the same situation.

  Close to the cave, something caught his eye up on the hillside. It was a creature loping on two legs, nude yet with feathered limbs and a sharp, avian head. It didn’t seem able to fly, but it could certainly run, as if hunting something. Deer or rabbit, perhaps. Then as Vince watched, he realized that the creature was hunted, not the hunter.

  Grace darted across the hillside and brought the Kin down. Vince heard a faint squeal of pain and alarm. He moved beneath the shadow of a willow tree growing by the river, parting drooping branches to watch.

  You’re not company for her, Mallian had said. None of us are.

  The creature’s struggles were useless, and when Grace bit down into its arm, its squeal became a screech of pain.

  Vince gasped. Shock bit in.

  Grace shook her head and ripped away a chunk of flesh, the vivid red wound visible even from this distance. Then she turned and stalked away, leaving the injured Kin to escape in the other direction, holding its wounded arm across its chest. Vince wasn’t sure, but it sounded like it was weeping.

  He rushed back to his cave, making sure to keep to the shadows and the cover of trees and rocks. He felt vulnerable now, rather than simply abandoned and alone. He felt eyes upon him.

  As his cave’s coolness welcomed him in, he remembered something he’d heard back in London. Something Mary Rock had said to Angela. It was a phrase that made everything that had happened and continued to happen here much clearer.

  A fairy has to eat.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks as ever to the whole splendid gang at Titan. And a very special thanks to my agents Howard Morhaim, Michael Prevett, Caspian Dennis, Danny Baror, and Ed Hughes. I wouldn’t be doing this without them.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TIM LEBBON is a New York Times-bestselling writer from South Wales. He’s had over forty novels published to date, as well as hundreds of novellas and short stories. His latest novel is Blood of the Four (with Christopher Golden), and other recent releases include Relics, The Family Man, The Silence, and The Rage War trilogy.

  He has won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Scribe Award, and has been a finalist for World Fantasy, International Horror Guild, and Shirley Jackson awards. Future novels include The Edge—third in the Relics trilogy—and others.

  A movie of his novel The Silence, starring Stanley Tucci and Kiernan Shipka, is set for release in 2018, and the movie of his story Pay the Ghost, starring Nicolas Cage, was released in 2015. Several other projects are in development for television and the big screen.

  Find out more about Tim at his website

  www.timlebbon.net