by Darren Shan
She stretches out, pulls off her boots – she’s not wearing socks – wriggles her toes and runs them through the grass.
“What now?” I ask.
“Now?” Inez glances up at the light green sky and smiles as if she hasn’t a care in the world. “Now, we wait.”
14
I examine my uniform while we’re waiting. The left knee of my trousers was torn in the fall, and there are stains on the elbows of the blazer that I don’t think will ever come out in the wash. George and Rachel will be mad when they see this. I’m going to be in so much trouble when I get home.
If I get home.
“How long will we have to wait?” I ask, feeling the stirrings of guilt.
Inez shrugs. “Sometimes it can be minutes, other times hours.”
“I’m worried about what my foster parents will think if I’m away from home too long.”
Inez sniffs. “Then you should have gone back when you had the chance.”
I glare at her but don’t say anything, because she’s right. I brought this on myself. There’s no point complaining now.
I start to think about climbing the bank to explore, but then a foghorn sounds. I wasn’t expecting the noise and I flinch.
“It’s OK,” Inez says, pulling her boots back on. “That’s the steer.”
I stand and look up the river, then down. I can’t see anything.
“Do they use sails or motors?” I ask.
“Nothing so primitive,” Inez replies cryptically.
I keep watch but nothing drifts towards us. Instead, the air to my left shimmers and a large borehole, like a wall of black, appears.
Then the boat is there and the borehole vanishes.
It’s as quick as that. One moment I’m looking at the river, the next there’s a craft in front of me. It’s made of logs, bound with thick rope, and is almost rectangular in shape, just the slightest hint of an angled bow at the front. There are no cabins, instruments or a mast. The deck is completely bare, except for the steer, who stands near the middle, arms crossed behind his or her back, head bowed.
I watch as the boat draws closer to the bank. There’s no sign of a tiller. I get the impression that the steer is controlling the boat by thought alone.
Inez stands as the boat comes to a halt beside us. The lip of the craft doesn’t touch the bank, but there’s not a big gap, no more than a few centimetres.
The steer walks over and I see that it’s a man, tall and thin, dressed in faded blue robes, no shoes or sandals. He has short dark hair and piercing silver eyes.
The steer greets Inez and she returns the gesture. I forget to do it until she nudges me. Blushing, I stretch out my hand and accept the soul that’s been offered, drawing in my hand and pressing it to my chest.
“Good day to you,” the steer says. “I am Preston.”
“Inez.”
“Archie.”
The steer bows his head. “Where do you wish to travel?”
“That depends,” Inez says. “Where are we?”
“You do not know which zone you’re in?”
“Not even the realm.”
If Preston thinks that strange, he doesn’t comment. Instead he says, “We’re in Diamond.”
Inez whistles. “So that’s why the zones are deserted.”
“This has become the quietest of realms,” Preston says sadly. “I am rarely called upon these days. Your destination?”
Inez thinks for a moment. “Sakkara?”
Preston nods. “I can take you there.”
“The price?” Inez asks.
“Some mushrooms.”
“Of course.”
“And I would ask you to carry a message,” Preston adds, and Inez frowns.
“You know I’m a camel?” she says sharply.
“Yes,” Preston replies. “I also know where you are ultimately bound.”
“How?” Inez snaps.
“Word has circulated,” Preston says. “People are searching for you, even here.”
Inez curses and looks around as if expecting a horde of killers to come storming over the brow of the hill.
“Should you make your destination,” Preston continues, “I’d like you to pass on a message to one who will be there.”
Inez makes one of her growling noises. “I’ll deliver it if I can.” She clicks her fingers at me. “Stop gawping. We have mushrooms to pick.”
I haven’t understood most of what they’ve said – Diamond? Camel? – but I got that payment involves providing Preston with mushrooms, though it beats me why he doesn’t step off and pick them himself. So, putting my many questions aside, I bend and pick until Inez tells me to stop.
With our hands full, we face Preston.
“That will be plenty,” he says, and Inez steps aboard.
I hesitate, wary of setting sail on the deadly river, but since I must follow where Inez leads, I cross my fingers (mentally, since my hands are full) and step across the short divide between the bank and the boat.
A second later, with only the slightest of tremors, we’re off.
15
We drift out into the middle of the blood red river and through the countryside. I sit close to the edge to study the land as we pass. Preston stands in the centre of the boat. Inez goes to chat with him for a while, then comes and sits by me.
“Why did you say you were a camel?” I ask.
“Because I am,” she says.
“Then where’s your hump?” I joke.
Inez smiles thinly. “Camels are couriers. We travel the Merge, taking things from one area to another.”
“Aren’t you a bit young to have a job?”
She arches an eyebrow. “I’m over four hundred years old, Archie.”
I grimace. “Point well made, but you’re still a teenage girl, aren’t you?”
“In many ways,” she agrees, “but in the Merge you can be both a child and an adult. I could grow up if I wished – we age in the Born, so I’d just have to spend a few years there – but I enjoy this form.”
“Did Preston give you his message?” I ask.
Inez nods. “It’s for a woman he loved before he became a steer. He’ll be killed when Diamond falls, so he wanted to pass on a few words.”
“Diamond’s the name of this realm?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s in danger?”
She studies the mushroom-lined banks, gathering her thoughts, then says, “There were nine realms originally.”
I nod. “You told me. And you said three of them had fallen.”
“There were also nine Families.” She stresses the word. “They were normal people living in the Born, and there were nine members in each Family. They became the Merge’s containers.”
I blink dumbly. “Huh?”
“The Merge was created by the dead,” she says. “The spirits of people who’d moved on to other spheres decided to make a place for those who were murdered, and built it in the mental universe of those eighty-one Born.”
I squint. “They built the Merge inside people’s heads?”
“No,” Inez says. “In the mental space that they shared. It’s like the internet cloud that your people have created. The royals – every Family member is a king or queen, a prince or princess – are the computer servers in which the information is stored, and the Merge is the cloud that they have generated.”
When she puts it that way, it starts to make sense. Kind of.
“And the servers that keep Diamond stable have started to fail?” I guess.
“All but one are defunct,” Inez nods. “When a royal dies, their power transfers to a relative, but the inheritor doesn’t become active until we bring them into the Merge — think of that person as a computer that hasn’t been turned on.”
“You know a lot about twenty-first century technology for a girl who died four hundred years ago,” I note.
Inez grins. “I have to pass through the Born every now and then, and I’ve found it pays to keep up to date w
ith these things. Anyway, the problem is, we don’t always find the inheritors. In the early days it was easy to keep track of the relatives, but now there are thousands of them, spread across the globe. Until an inheritor pays a visit to the Merge and is activated – turned on, as it were – their power lies dormant.”
Inez pauses and looks to the banks of the river again. My head is hurting from trying to keep up with everything.
“A realm can continue with a single active royal,” Inez says, “but if all nine die, it falls. The realm tightens to the size of an acorn, then explodes. The zones are destroyed, and anyone trapped in them is obliterated in the blink of an eye. There’s only one Diamond royal left, an elderly, frail man. He’ll die in the near future, and when he does, this realm will fall.”
I gulp. “If he died right now, would you and I die too?”
Inez nods. “We’d wink out of existence before we had a chance to scream.”
“Then don’t you think we should get out of here?” I squeak.
She shrugs. “Believe me, I’m keen to move on, but I need to access a borehole in Sakkara to get onto a known path. We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed that the realm won’t fall during the short time that we’re present.”
I feel fidgety and start prowling the boat by myself, looking for signs all around that the world’s about to end. I don’t spot any apocalyptic omens, but I do catch sight of another person. I’m not sure if it’s a man or a woman. He or she is standing on a rock overlooking the river, holding a pair of binoculars. I wave and almost call to Inez – she’s gone to stand beside Preston again – but then the person jumps off the rock and vanishes from sight, so I don’t say anything.
Later, I join Inez and Preston and ask, “How much longer will we be?”
“A few hours yet,” Preston says softly.
“How come you haven’t left Diamond?” I ask.
“The end of this life will be nothing more than the start of the next,” he says. “Death is nothing to be afraid of. Besides, I cannot leave. I’m tied to this boat.”
“How come?” I frown. “Is it a punishment?”
“No.” A brief smile twists his face. “It is an honour. Some steers can traverse the Merge, but most are confined to a single realm.”
“That sounds like a bum deal,” I mutter.
Preston shrugs. “Those are the terms we accept when we choose the way of the rivers. We can never set foot ashore. If I stepped off, or if my craft touched the river bank, my body would unravel.”
“That’s why you needed us to pick mushrooms for you,” I note.
“Indeed. Unlike the rest of you, we Steers don’t need to eat very often – we can go decades without a bite – but a little food every now and then is most welcome.”
His gaze strays to the mushrooms, which he’d placed in a pile by his side. Bending over, he picks one, holds it up to the sky to admire it, then nibbles on the cap, smiling with satisfaction.
After another hour or so, we come to a branch in the river and Preston takes the left turn, changing the boat’s course with a simple gesture of his hand. We head through a canyon shortly after that, cliffs rising sharply above us, almost meeting at the top overhead.
“This was once a popular spot for bungee jumpers,” Preston says. “You would often see them here, leaping from the cliffs, the threat of annihilation if they fell into the river of blood adding to the thrill.”
I shiver at the thought, wondering what drives people to risk their lives on crazy activities like that.
We clear the canyon and I spot the zone’s buffer in the distance, a wall of light green stretching up to join the sky.
“I’m looking forward to –” I start to say, but howls cut me short. They come from a point on our right. My head snaps in that direction, my heart already starting to beat fast, because the howls are familiar.
“No,” Inez moans, her eyes widening. “It can’t be.”
But it is. Tearing across the grassland are five hell jackals, bounding along on all fours, howling like rabid wolves.
Four people are jogging behind the yowling hell jackals. Two are strangers to me, but I recognise the others, with their white suits, mostly shaven heads and signature weapons of a thin knife and axe — the assassins who were chasing Inez on the bridge in London.
16
“Can we go faster?” Inez snaps at Preston as the hell jackals close on us.
“No,” Preston says, gazing at the approaching creatures with nothing more than mild curiosity.
“They’ll get to us before we hit the buffer,” Inez says.
“Well before,” Preston agrees, then raises an eyebrow at her. “They have come for you and Archie?”
“Yes,” she sighs. “The two with weapons are Orlan Stiletto and Argate Axe.”
“Ah,” he says with a hint of a frown. “I have heard of them.”
“Inez?” I whimper. “What are we going to do?”
“I have no idea,” she answers honestly. Then she looks at me. “Preston, are there any old rags that you could lend us?”
The steer reaches down, tears a strip of cloth from his robes and hands it to her.
“Thanks,” Inez says and passes it to me. “Wrap that around your face.”
“Why?” I frown.
“It will be better if Orlan and Argate don’t get a fix on you. That way they can’t hunt for you if we get away and you return home.”
“You think we’ll escape?”
She shrugs. “It always pays to think positively.”
As I’m covering my features, leaving only a slit for the eyes, the hell jackals race to the edge of the bank... and stop. They scream and spit at us, clawing the air with their taloned fingers, but don’t leap onto the boat, even though the river is narrow here and we’re close to shore.
Preston raises a hand and brings the boat to a halt, and we stare into the crazed eyes of the nightmarish hell jackals, watching spittle fly from their lips as they gibber and screech.
“Maybe it’s not the best idea to stop,” I whisper.
“I can concentrate better if we’re not moving,” Preston says.
The four people stroll up behind the hell jackals. Orlan and Argate are smiling. One of the others is a woman, and she’s focused on the beasts. Bulky binoculars hang from a cord around the neck of the fourth person.
“Him,” I groan, pointing. “I saw him further back the river, and he saw us.”
“You’re only telling me about that now?” Inez hisses.
“I didn’t think it mattered,” I cry. “He was standing on a rock. Then he jumped off and –”
“– crossed to the Born to summon Masters Axe and Stiletto,” the man with the binoculars giggles.
“We came as fast as we could,” Orlan says, “but didn’t think we would catch you before you departed this zone.”
“Luck, however, was on our side,” Argate says. “We even had time to summon our associate Clara and her pets.”
“A hell jackal handler,” Inez says sickly. “You didn’t think you could deal with me by yourselves?”
“We normally operate without backup,” Orlan says.
“But the river of blood was a concern,” Argate growls.
“Hell jackals are expendable,” Orlan says. “Nobody’s going to miss one or two if they slip over the edge of the boat during the struggle.”
“Not so loud,” Argate mock-whispers. “You might upset Clara.”
Orlan turns his attention to the incredibly calm Preston. “Master Steer,” he nods.
“Master Stiletto,” Preston replies, returning the nod.
“We have no quarrel with you,” Orlan says. “If you set the girl ashore, you can be on your way.”
Preston shakes his head. “I offered them safe passage.”
“You know who we are,” Orlan says quietly.
“I do,” Preston says.
“But you would cross us regardless?” Orlan presses.
“And our hell jack
als?” Argate adds.
“It’s not my wish to cross anyone,” Preston says, “but I’m bound by my oath to defend those who travel with me, so I’d urge you not to board my craft.”
Orlan sneers but Argate looks troubled. “I’d rather tackle her on land,” he says.
“We have no choice,” Orlan shrugs, then narrows his eyes at me. “I wonder who her companion is?”
“Nobody,” Inez says quickly. “Just a fellow passenger who happened to be going the same way as me.”
“Then why has he covered his face?” Orlan asks.
“He’s incredibly ugly,” Inez says. “I was worried he might scare you.”
The killers laugh, then turn serious.
“Last chance, Steer,” Argate says flatly.
“Give her to us or face the consequences,” Orlan whispers.
Preston sighs. “I urge you not to do this. Steers are the servants of all. You should never involve us in your battles and force us to take sides.”
“We didn’t force you,” Argate says. “You made your decision and now you must die with it.”
“Unleash them, Clara,” Orlan says.
The woman waves a hand at the hell jackals. In response, they leap, and a second later all five are on the boat, yammering like demons and moving in for the kill.
17
Inez has drawn both her knives and prepares to stab the nearest hell jackal. Before she can strike, Preston is in front of her and his hands clasp the invader’s shoulders. With a wrench, he sends the beast flying off the boat, into the river. It screams once, then disappears beneath the crimson surface.
The other four hell jackals howl and focus on Preston. “Back away to the edge of the craft,” he says to Inez and me.
“I can help,” Inez gasps, but the steer shakes his head.
The hell jackals are on him before he can say anything else. They surround him in a roiling blur, hissing and screeching, lashing at him with jagged nails, snapping with their fangs, their yellow eyes flashing brightly with the promise of death.
One of the hell jackals sinks its teeth into Preston’s thigh. Another snakes its bony fingers round his throat. He fends off the other two with his hands.
