Treason?
“Yes,” Webster said, though he hadn’t said anything aloud. She was too perceptive; it threw him off. Who was this woman? “As I said, you may consider me a mouthpiece of His Majesty. Anything against my orders, at least in this matter, constitutes a violation.”
He noticed she didn’t say ‘His Majesty’s Government’ like last time, but didn’t correct her. He wasn’t sure it was an omission. He didn’t think she made mistakes.
He blinked at it rapidly, then returned it to her hands and looked away. Something bigger was at play here. Something buried and deep and large. Was he not tasked precisely with finding out what all this meant? For the world? Was it not his… duty to reveal such knowledge?
He would.
“I will.” He forced a smile.
“Just like that?” She was still smiling, but he didn’t think the pressure was off just yet. “That was… less difficult than I thought.”
“Well,” he said, taking the paper from her again and shaking it, “I doubt this was easy to obtain. Besides, digs are not my focus; the research is. Knowledge. My books. After all, I felt no attachment to the crown. It was a means to an end, and you have given me that end… and then some.” He signed it and handed it back to her.
The woman stood quickly, that sureness again making him feel slightly anxious.
“I am pleased to hear it, professor.” She shook his hand. “I bid you farewell.”
And with that, she was gone.
He watched from his window as she disappeared into her carriage. Suddenly the police officers appeared, nodding to her and doffing their hats. The carriage disappeared.
As soon as she was out of sight, he sprinted upstairs and began packing.
WHEN HE ARRIVED at the dig in Iraq a few days later, he found his students sitting around restlessly. He kept mostly out of sight, but there was, as far as he knew, no magical technology to somehow detect his movements or his identity. Maybe there was—it wasn’t his field. Who was to say what was possible? Those he dug up thought that light was magical, and the sun a god.
Marianne, perhaps his best student, had already set up the site for the dig. The students had begun digging around the edges—though “digging” was such a boorish way to convey the careful art of discovery. He rarely spoke to his students in class, and only little more when they travelled. He gave instructions where needed, but his chosen candidates were always competent enough not to need handholding. One doesn’t enter the halls of Oxford if you’re still expecting apron strings.
They spent days at the site, from first light to dusk. Eventually, a security detail arrived. At first he was afraid that whatever mysterious branch of government had harassed him had found him; but it turned out to be the local government, setting up blockades. He was being paranoid: he had some time before the university realised what he had done. After all, they had his plans and knew his movements. They would send someone.
ONE NIGHT, HE was suddenly awoken by a sound outside his tent. A silhouette gradually came into focus, lit by the moon. A fire blazed nearby, notes and papers flapping in the soft wind.
The shape took the form of a dog.
De Quincey grabbed his covers and recoiled. A sudden massive gust of wind tore open his tent and the roar of a beast exploded the night.
De Quincey felt himself rolling backwards, pain striking him in the forehead. The beast, wreathed in shadow and moonlight, slunk towards him, growling. He blinked blood and sweat out of his eyes.
Behind the creature, a shadowed figure had its arms raised.
“Destroy.”
He wasn’t sure where the word came from. It seemed to emanate from the rocks, from his own mind. He kicked his feet into the sand, scrambling backwards, feeling warmth on his head and hands.
“Professor!” He heard Marianne shouting. The creature closed in, and he watched as the security detail attempted to intervene. Blood was everywhere, screams. Someone kicked a lantern over and a fire blazed.
The creature moved through it all, a roaring, liquid darkness. De Quincey could barely see anything.
Suddenly it was on him. He screamed, raising his arm in defence, as the giant creature seized his arm in its mouth.
With his other hand, he grabbed a rock and stabbed it where he thought an eye would be. Even this close, he could barely understand what the creature was. It released him and backed off. He heard it bounding past him in the sand, more screams. It had found other targets.
Then he saw his father. He seemed older, paler. He stood in a long cloak, the wind sending ripples through the material. Blood covered his face, and in his right hand he held the crown.
“Sacrifice.” His father’s mouth didn’t move.
He could not believe it. He would not. This was hocus pocus, nonsense! There had to be a scientific explanation.
“Father!” He tried to scream, but barely any noise came out.
He watched as his father’s head exploded and the sound of a bullet richoted off a nearby rock. Suddenly, figures emerged from the shadows. He vaguely recognised Lady Webster charging from the night, a blade in her hand. She knocked him down and the world went grey.
He watched as the newcomers slaughtered the beast; some went down, but the rest fought on, using strange weapons and… powers? He couldn’t understand from his fuzzy vision.
With one last guttural cry, the beast died, and De Quincey fell into blackness.
THE HOSPITAL WAS hot, the bedsheets uncomfortable and the flies happy. He kept wanting to poke his wound, but an irritable nurse smacked his hand.
“No.” That was her only English word, and he wasn’t surprised it was all she needed.
He was in a cot, uncertain how long he’d been there. He could hear groaning from the other side of curtains, doctors rapidly walking back and forth. There were tubes in him, and bandages over parts of his body he’d long forgotten about.
Suddenly, the curtain was pulled aside. Lady Webster looked down at him, her hair unmade, sweat and blood covering her face. The nurse popped back and glared at her.
“No!” She pointed at him.
Lady Webster’s expression was unchanged as she looked from De Quincey to the nurse, but the nurse suddenly shrunk, nodded and scampered off. Webster sucked her teeth, grabbed a nearby chair and fell more than sat. Her clothes were torn in some places and her boots scuffed, but her air of control never wavered.
“I told you, professor.” She was dusting her gloves as she said this, the ceaseless drone of the medical facility throbbing around them. “I warned you not to come. I offered you the chance…”
“My father,” he croaked. He reached for a nearby glass of water. She didn’t help him, only watched as he struggled. He swallowed some water. His throat was on fire. “My father was there.”
“Yes.” She looked at him, her eyes narrowing. “You genuinely didn’t know, did you?”
“How could I? He’d disappeared! He…”
“That he was possessed by the crown.” She sat back.
“Possessed? How is that… It’s… no. He was an old, sick man. I didn’t—”
“In his desperation to bring back a wife he believed dead, your father delved into… areas he should not have. The crown was not originally a crown: it came a from a source we are still trying to understand. Call it magic, supernatural. Dagan made it his crown, but it was never really his. And when your father found it, it… awoke. Again. It whispered lies to your father. And it wanted blood. These things... these things always want blood. And yours, the son of its host, was the best kind. That is the way of magic and strange things…”
“Magic? You can’t be…”
“Professor, there’s a world out there you have seen, felt, experienced and yet refuse to acknowledge.” She brought out the crown from somewhere, and he shrank from it. “Do not be afraid. It’s useless now. Its power is gone.”
“How could a crown…”
“You don’t believe in the strange and the unexplain
ed,” she said. “Yet it comes. It comes with teeth and claws.” She seemed to be speaking to herself. “Professor, I realise now I was foolish to think what you wanted was a book deal and tenure. That’s not what drives you, is it?”
“I don’t understand anything that’s happening.” He tried to sit up. “Who killed my father?”
“One of my men…” She finally looked at him. She stood up, placing the crown down carefully and leaned on his bed. “Professor. I ask you again: those material things. Those are not what drive you, is it? That’s why you were willing to risk treason to come here, to dig, to find what you were told not to find. Why?”
“My father’s dead and this… please. Let me be.”
“You had no love for your father. You knew something was wrong.” She stood up. “Face it. Look at me and tell me. Why?”
“I had to know!” he snapped. He sat up and felt a pain in his back, but he ignored it. “I had to know why! I wasn’t going to be kept in the dark anymore! I will not be kept in the dark!”
She looked at him, his voice seeming to echo. Doctors and nurses looked over, then at each other. Some patients even stopped coughing.
Then slowly life returned and Webster smiled. “Yes.”
“What is it you want?”
“Professor, you want answers? I can give them to you.”
“How?”
“I want to offer you a job…”
Nalangu’s Trials
Gaie Sebold
NALANGU WAS ON her way back from fetching water when a slash of brightness caught her eye through the trees. She turned and saw glimpses of scarlet cloth and gleaming blades.
The young warriors were practising with their spears.
She moved closer. Surely it could do no harm just to watch, for a little.
The water in the container on her back sloshed reproachfully. Her mother would be waiting. Just a little, just a little, she told herself.
How the blades shone and stabbed. The men laughed and shouted insults, but this was serious business. The men with their weapons protected the people, and the cattle who were the wealth and gift and life of the people.
Nalangu felt a longing in her heart, and wondered what she would do if a lion came for the cattle and something had taken all the men away; perhaps they were all sick, or gone to war. Perhaps one of them might have left a spear behind.
She imagined herself, standing between the lion and the precious cattle, holding her spear, the lion roaring and leaping and her spear stabbing…
But she did not have a spear. If such a thing happened she would have nothing to do but scream at the lion, and screaming was not much good with lions.
The strap around her forehead was making her head ache with the weight of the water, and there were many more chores to do today, but she kept watching. Something was wrong.
She knew every one of the warriors, they had been part of her world since she was born, but one of them… one of them was not right.
His face was familiar, but when she tried she could not put a name to it. It was just a face. It said, I belong here, but it lied.
The men leaned and turned, their backs to her, and stabbed forward.
And behind the wrong-face, hanging down, was an ugly hairy tail.
Nalangu gasped in breath, and clutched at the nearest tree.
Demon.
The men did not see it, they did not know it was there? What was she to do?
If she tried to tell them, they would laugh and tell her to go help her mother. And the demon would know she had seen it and would come for her in the night.
Perhaps it meant to steal the cattle. Disguised as it was, that would be easy; it could walk one right out of the enkang. The thought gave her a cold fury. The cattle were sacred, given to her people by Engai’s own will, every beast named and loved. The cattle were life.
No demon is going to take our cattle!
She clenched her hands. She had to tell someone. She could not tell her mother, her mother would be angry at her. Again. The obvious person was an oloiboni, a diviner, but there was none nearer than a day’s walk away. Even if she could get permission to be out alone so long, what might the demon do before she got back?
She would speak first with yeyo Loiyan—who was kind and wise and knew almost as much about medicines as the oloiboni. Maybe she would know a medicine for this.
Nalangu moved away as stealthily as she could, so that the water she carried would not slosh and betray her, and as soon as she thought the demon would not hear her, she ran.
As she pelted through the enkang people cried out after her, laughing.
“Shake that water all you will, it won’t make butter!”
“Hurry, hurry, your mother is waiting!”
“Yeyo, please, may I come in?” She said, panting, at the entrance of the hut. “It’s Nalangu.”
Loiyan came to the entrance. She was an old woman, very straight, with eyes as bright as an eagle’s, her long earrings clicking against her broad beaded collar. She looked Nalangu over, beckoned her in, and gave her milk. “Now,” she said. “Tell me.”
Other than the door there was only one small opening at the back of the cooking area, to let light in and smoke out, but Nalangu could see Loiyan quite clearly. She did not look as though she were about to scold.
Nalangu took a deep breath. “I saw a demon. I stopped—” Nalangu unhooked the headband, and stood holding the water-carrier in her hands, lowering her head. “I stopped to watch the men practise with their spears, and I saw a demon.”
For a moment Loiyan was silent. Please, yeyo, believe me.
“Put the water down and come sit with me,” Loiyan said.
Nalangu did as she was told.
“Look at me, child. Is this a true thing you are telling me?”
“Yes, yeyo.”
“Tell me what the demon looked like.”
Nalangu did her best, though apart from the tail, it was hard. “It looked like all of them,” she said. “It had no face of its own.”
Loiyan said, “Wait here for me. If anyone comes in, you must say nothing of this. That is very important. You understand?”
“Yes, yeyo.”
Nalangu sat smelling the comforting smells of milk and meat and leather and smoke, and the mud mixed with cattle-dung that made the roof and walls. Outside, people were laughing and arguing and building and carrying and mending, and the children who were too young for chores were running about and shrieking, and she felt strange and far away from all these things, knowing there was a demon out there.
Loiyan came back with a young woman called Nkasiogi, who was only a little older than Nalangu herself. She was quick and strong and often seemed angry.
“Tell her what you saw,” Loiyan said. Nalangu did.
Nkasiogi did not look angry at Nalangu. Instead, she gave a hard fierce grin, and left the hut.
“Don’t worry, child,” Loiyan said. “There are people who know what to do about demons. Have you seen one before?”
“Not like that.” Nalangu told her about the time she had seen a shadow that hovered about one of the cows, but had been too young to explain what she saw. The cow had gone mad and killed its calf. It had to be slaughtered, with swift brutality instead of the normal loving care and respectful ceremony. The whole enkang had been miserable over it.
“Yes, I remember that cow,” Loiyan said. “That was very bad. And have you seen other things?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you not tell anyone?”
“I told my mother, but…” Nalangu did not want to be disrespectful to her mother, but speaking of what she saw got her nothing but scolding and extra chores, for trying to make herself important, so she had stopped.
Loiyan asked her many things, and Nalangu found herself confessing how she had imagined defending the enkang. Loiyan smiled, but did not laugh at her.
Nkasiogi returned. “They are ready,” she said.
“Good,” Loiyan said. “Lis
ten, Nalangu. You know that Black Engai is kind and generous, she gives us cattle and water and good pasture. You know that Red Engai is vengeful, and punishes wrongdoers. You are ilkonjek, one of the People of the Eye. You can see things other people cannot see. And sometimes when women are ilkonjek, and if they have the spirit and the heart for it, Engai chooses them to become Sisters of Night. The Sisters embody both aspects of Engai, to protect the people. Not against the lion, not against those who deny us our pasture or take our cattle, but against other enemies, that cannot be defeated except by those who know how to hunt them.”
“How?” Nalangu said. “How are they defeated?”
“With skill, with cunning, with stealth.”
“And with seme and spear,” Nkasiogi said.
“With spear?” Nalangu’s shoulders straightened.
Loiyan leaned forward. “Tell me, when you dreamed of defending the enkang, did you imagine that people were watching?” Loiyan said. “Did you get praise and presents?”
“No. I just killed the lion.”
“That is good,” Loiyan said. “That is very good. Because if Engai chooses you, and you succeed at the tests, then it is a hard trail you will walk. You will know what the people cannot, and you can never speak of it. Your duty will be to the people, but you will be always a little separate from them.”
And Nalangu, who had always been close-woven in her tribe as a thread in a cloth, felt a shadow on her heart.
“Engai is asking you to be as the thorn fence around the enkang,” Loiyan said. “The cattle do not know how the fence is made, they only know that they live through the night.”
“The cattle at least know the fence is there,” Nkasiogi said, her voice sour.
The True History of the Strange Brigade Page 10
