Book Of Shadows Part 13

Another full day's marching had pa.s.sed when with no explanation Anfen veered from the Great Road, cutting across a plain of loose stone and bare grey pillars, lands once blasted by fire from dragons' throats so that nothing now grew here. It gave way to more liveable country, though it was overgrown and abandoned, replete with ruins both recent and ancient. Their feet scattering pebbles or crunching the bitter, brittle ground were so loud they may as well have shouted out here we are with each step.

They were now some way north of Elvury if Sharfy judged right, and had to be nearing Invia country. Anfen had never told the Mayors' Command he was Marked; the rest of them wouldn't have known either but for his constantly checking the sky for the creatures. But he wasn't doing that now. 'Invia, Anfen?' said Sharfy. 'You worried? Forgot about em? Huh? You're Marked, don't forget. Marked! That sword's pretty good, but you can't beat em just with that, can you?' And don't look to me for help, he didn't say. 'What if a few of em come, like at Faul's place?'

He was answered by the sound of trudging boots.

Sharfy squinted at motion on the horizon. 'People coming,' he said. 'Look! Ahead there. There's a lot of em. Hard to tell but I think some got weapons. We should hide.'

Crunch, crunch went Anfen's boots.

'Look. You can walk headlong into em. But I'm gonna hide.'

He fancied a faint puff of heat came from the armour beneath Anfen's shirt. Then they were in the twilight place again, with no past or present sign of humanity at all. In the quiet, they were the only ones who'd ever lived, there were no roads but the Great Dividing Road, no enemies or friends, no homes or houses but the gra.s.s, trees, hills and distant mountains.

And the pretty diamond-like cl.u.s.ters suspended in the air. It was not the first time Sharfy had seen them, though never so many as now. He had less than no idea what they were, only that he wanted to pocket them. In the distance was a huge one, big as a house, way high up.

'What are those?' he asked, pointing. Anfen didn't respond. 'Someone would pay big for those shiny things. Bet you they would. Look like they're full of magic. Scales, gold we'd get.' It was a hint but apparently missed. 'f.u.c.k it, Anfen. I'm not getting paid to follow you. I should get some loot. Look yonder. That outcrop there. If we climb it we can get hold of those small ones. Reckon I'd reach em with a long stick. Knock em out of the air.'

Anfen paused, turned to face him full of majesty and grace, spoke quietly: 'If you try to touch them. If you dare go near them. I will slay you.' He turned away and trudged on.

Sharfy wished he were angry. It was the first time Anfen had ever threatened him. Ever. But such was the command in his voice Sharfy could not but feel it had for some reason been entirely fair: a simple statement of the law. And like an obedient dog he followed his master, grappling with his pride until the sound of a bird call broke the dreamy silence and the quiet's mask fell away.

The village Anfen had led them to was a few years abandoned, Sharfy judged, for the buildings though neglected were not in such bad shape, and some could probably be mended in a week fit for living again. In the southern distance Elvury's ranges stood like a row of huge teeth. They were further north than Sharfy had guessed, well and truly in Aligned country. Anfen unstrapped the sword from his belt, let it drop to the ground, and walked away from it.

Sharfy quickly picked it up, surprised at how light it felt. Since his glimpse of it that night with the light flashing down its face, he'd been eager for a close look but afraid to ask. Now he pulled the handle free of its scabbard and was surprised to see there was no blade there at all, just the finely wrought handle. He set the handle back atop the scabbard and put it carefully down.

Anfen staggered past a small vegetable field overrun with weeds. He looked for something in the tall gra.s.s, then fell to his knees. 'These are mine, Sharfy,' he said hoa.r.s.ely.

Sharfy went to him and waited.

Anfen began pulling gra.s.s out with his fists, clawing at the dirt. He moved with feverish speed. Sharfy got down to help but Anfen snarled, 'Back!' with such ferocity he thought he was about to be bitten. So he stood away and watched. Half an hour later Anfen's hands were caked in dirt, his fingernails cracked and split. He panted like a dog. And like a dog he had dug up buried bones. All were clearly human. 'These are mine,' he repeated. 'My bones. I made them.' Slowly, tenderly his hands wiped every speck of dirt from them.

Having seen far worse than this in his time, Sharfy was nonetheless troubled. 'Your bones need a rest. Let's get under a roof for a while. Those huts will do. No one's here.'

Not seeming to hear, Anfen pulled length after length of bone from the unearthed pit. Ribs, vertebrae, fingers and toes. Once he'd got them all out he arranged each with tenderness on the gra.s.s nearby. He gently wiped dirt from the skulls, and took a long while making sure each skull sat atop a body which looked to match it. 'They owe me nothing,' Anfen said, weeping. 'Nothing. They have not forgiven me. I'll ask them for answers all the same.'

'Bones don't talk.'

Anfen's laugh was the cough of someone dying. He arranged it all as nine complete bodies, minus a foot on one and some fingers here or there. Several of the skulls were broken. He sat forlorn among them with his head bowed, not moving, just murmuring and weeping.

Sharfy was disgusted. He foraged what roots and fruit he could find and spent the night on a bare floor in an abandoned house with his pack for a pillow. From time to time Anfen's weeping woke him. By morning he was so sick of the whole spectacle he decided he'd chance the long march back, through enemy country or not.

Anfen was still with the bones at first light, a small skull cradled in his arms. Sharfy took off without saying goodbye and instantly felt better about life. About him were bent, thin trees with pale crescent leaves. The stillness and quiet made his footsteps through brittle undergrowth very loud.

He had seen people broken in the slave farms by grief or starvation, pain or fear. But he had never seen a man choose to go so far, march so many miles, only to roll around in the shattered pieces of his own ruin. Of course there was only one way Anfen could have known those bones lay where they lay. His very own hands had surely put them there. But what of that? Anfen had killed more of the enemy by now than he ever had of innocents.

Distracted by all this, Sharfy's ankle nearly twisted on a fallen branch, which he angrily kicked away. Then anger consumed him for a minute as he stomped the f.u.c.k out of that branch and several others, cursing and spitting up several days' worth of suppressed rage and indignity. Only then did he really look at the ground and see the many spiked holes punched into it.

He froze, looked through the woods, drew his sword. He spun about twice before catching sight of a dark form up the incline there, maybe a long knife-toss away. It was motionless but for the wriggling spikes along its flanks.

Visions came to him of tavern talk late at night, telling an improbable tale of battle with a monster; doubters calling names; Sharfy reaching into his kit bag and triumphantly producing the monster's head. Finally the renown he'd already earned a dozen times pouring down on him; slaps on the back, women offering themselves, free ale for weeks: tell it again, tell the tale of your duel with the beast from beyond ...

They'd believe his other tales too, after he had proof of this one, indeed they would.

He went nearer to the beast. It still hadn't moved. One very hard blow and he might just have it. He'd have to swing with all the strength he had; their hides were tough. As long as it was the only one around.

A rattling sound came from behind him. A sense of inevitability as he turned to find a second Tormentor staring down at him with stony eyes. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d thing had been conjured just to thwart his simple wish for a little respect and a free drop of drink. Its arms spread wide as though for an embrace; its huge mane of spiked needles shook.

He was off and running, hoping blindly that he headed for the place he'd just come from. Two dozen paces later everything slowed down. Sharfy found himself running through water. He heard the beast's feet approach, the sound of its steps impossibly fast while he was so slowed down.

Then he was out of the Tormentor's spell, flung forward and toppling into a tree, adding yet another dent to his face. Blood gushed through his nose. Dazed, he looked back and caught a flash of gleaming metal, the whoosh of a blade slicing air. Anfen struck the creature with cold fury, only in that confused moment it was not a Tormentor he saw ...

The world had shifted so it held again the blurred edges of a dream. They were back in the quiet, and there it indeed was not a Tormentor Anfen struck down, but a man. Or something like a man but stretched and warped as if it was made of rubber being pulled. Its limbs were curved and warped; its face too long, mouth twisted into a long gaping S-shape. It did not fight back, just stiffly turned toward Anfen, movements clumsy, and without resistance it watched him kill it.

Sharfy shut his eyes. When he sat up, they were out of the quiet and the world was harsh and cold again. He wiped blood from his newly broken nose. Anfen sheathed his blade. At his feet was a large Tormentor corpse in many pieces, like slabs of cracked dark stone.

Sharfy would work out later how to rationalise being rescued, but already he supposed he'd lured the creature quite deliberately into a trap, that he had been on the brink of turning to fight it. Grat.i.tude nonetheless was one of the many things he felt.

Anfen nodded at the corpse at his feet. 'They filled the woods with them. They let the foul things loose, by design.'

'The castle?' Sharfy spat out blood. 'Why? It's their land.'

'Think! They now make their last push south. And they will win. They let these things loose near the roads, in the woods, anywhere an army might come.'

Sharfy nodded understanding. They'd let Inferno cultists loose in some places for the same reason they made lands dangerous for fleeing refugees, as well as approaching enemies. 'So they protect the place when their troops are gone,' said Sharfy. 'But when the war's done, what then?'

Anfen smiled. 'What do you do with a dangerous tool you no longer have need for, Sharfy?'

'Throw it out.'

'Destroy it. When the Arch wins, his armies are not intended to return. Most people in the world will be killed. Their own people too. A small herd is easy to control.' The distant form of a lone Tormentor a small one could be seen through the trees with its back to them. Anfen gazed at it. 'My redeemer revealed all this to me,' he said. 'My redeemer told me I was cleansed. But also he told me my will was my own.'

'Anfen. The bones. Why?'

'I cleansed them, Sharfy. As best I could. I was gentle. I was loving. They did not forgive me, as I asked. That is their choice. I leave them unburied now. Let all who come by here see the bones, Sharfy. Let them see what I did.'

Sharfy spat more blood. 'Look at it this way: the bones are as clean as they'll ever get. They're as dead as they'll get. Can't hurt em now. Don't owe em nothing either. Don't owe em saying sorry or coin or nice words. Or time.'

Anfen looked at him for a while in silence. 'It's done now. We move.'

'Where we going? I don't move at all till you tell me.'

But Anfen walked away without a word. Sharfy lay there less than a minute before cursing and proving himself a liar.

AN EMPTY BED.

1.

The world fell away again fast, fast. Through layers of rock he went like a shadow pulled, down as far as he could go, to the secret places. Caverns and creatures whizzed by, labyrinths and hollowed caverns now devoid of any living thing, if living things had ever set foot or claw here. Then he found that final deep layer of rock which wasn't to be penetrated, not by him or anything else. He battered himself against it for a while, each impact provoking his curiosity further till it was a screaming, burning rage. What was beneath the world's floor?

No answers. Up then, up to the surface again, pausing briefly where the unco-operative girl still stumbled her way blindly through tunnels. An enjoyable sight, though the feeling grew hollow as he watched her, some inner, nagging, distant sense that it was wrong to leave her here. Strange creature! He was annoyed with her still; after having chased off the dragon, having taken her so far ... then to be refused one simple request, a thing so much easier for her to do than what he'd done for her? He did not understand it.

He would revisit her. She had caught his eye back when the Wall fell, she and the fellow she was with: Eric. Something about them, he knew not what, had marked them as reference points. Maybe his only ones.

The surface. Night time. He crossed many miles falling down the world's face, pausing on a whim in a logging cabin. Four men slept and snored. Anything interesting about them? He shadowed them and found only physical strength, aches, anger. Nothing more. The girl, she'd had a little glimmer of something. The dragon, now that was another thing. It had been filled with more power than he'd been able to properly perceive in that brief time.

These men had nothing of the sort. Angered suddenly, Shadow swept through the place cutting them down as they had cut down trees during the day. It was fast, no complaints. His anger abated, though not because this act of death-making had spent it; it went as it came, for no reason at all. Pointless as all these deaths and lives fleeting by. Pointless, surely. He was lost in it all, he was nothing, he was debris on a tide.

A mess in the cabin. How strange, these shreds of flesh and spilled life, so ugly across the floor and walls and ceiling. Put together, capable of beauty. Beauty like hers ...

Suddenly there it was again, that feeling. He'd felt it before, but never so close! Something pulled him, yanked him skyward. He was so intrigued and curious it hurt. He yielded to the pull for some distance and found its source: in the air a drake flew along slowly, a girl on its back. Out of reach! He couldn't go up through the sky in the same way he could move across the world's face, and down through its belly. It was cruel! This strange compelling pull was so powerful, coming directly from either the drake or the girl on its back, he couldn't tell which. There was nothing to be done but to watch the creature's flapping wings, so maddeningly slow.

Then the pull's force went slack, to leave him craving something he didn't fathom, a need to fill this empty pit inside him.

2.

It was still night when Eric rose. The sound of breeze and waves gently filled the tower's uppermost floor; the glimmer across the walls was light glancing off water.

In one of the beds Loup muttered in his sleep and appeared to swat a fly. In another, Bald the Engineer slept with the Glock pressed to his cheek, presumably dreaming about the live rounds which had been hidden from him. The Engineer's efforts so far in replicating the gun had resulted only in some bent wire and planks tied together with rope. It did not look promising.

A head count of the sleepers revealed someone was missing. Siel's bow was propped up beside one empty mattress. The tower seemed to hate her; maybe it hadn't let her sleep.

Eric went to the raised dais in the middle of the floor and climbed its half-dozen stone steps. The thick dark winding ribbon of magic he'd seen from outside came through this very spot, funnelled through one window over this raised platform to escape out another window behind. He put a hand into the stream of magic, faintly disturbing its course to either side of his fingers. The diluted threads of this stuff in the atmosphere could barely be felt; concentrated, it was cool to the touch. He breathed deeply the way the war mage had, sucking it in like asthma medication he'd had as a child. Tendrils of dark mist threaded toward him before he'd begun taking the breath, as though called by his intent to do so. Coldly it went into his lungs. A dizzy feeling came over him, the sense of a very mild and almost pleasant electric shock, pulsing from his mind through the rest of his body.

Stepping away, the feeling faded. The dark winding stream of magic continued its flow, unperturbed.

He went to the next floor down, expecting to find Siel. A quick tour of the place showed she was no longer here. 'What have you done with her?' he asked, speaking to the tower. The sound of waves lapped quite innocently in reply.

At the window an arrow from the soldiers' failed attack still jutted out from the sill. He pulled at it but it was stuck fast. Gazing at the water below, a part of his dream suddenly returned: watching someone Had it been Siel? wandering through underground tunnels, not unlike those he himself had been marched through at the point of Sharfy's knife.

But if it had been more than just a dream, even if it had been a vision, she could surely not be far. He thought of the steps leading down to the swirling whirlpool and decided to explore them when movement caught his eye. The huge white wolf stood down at the water's edge, its head lowered, panting as though after a long, long journey.

Far Gaze, he recalled, had tried to rip Stranger's throat out back at Faul's place. Which made it a little odd that none other than Stranger now rode the beast's back. She wore the same green dress and looked more or less the same, except her head too was slumped and, though it was hard to be certain at a distance, she looked to be weeping.

But why was Case not with them?

The wolf put one paw experimentally into the water. Eric waved to catch its attention, thinking he should warn it about the water's occasional tendency to boil. But soon Far Gaze had made it safely across, padding out of sight beneath the tower where the water was deeper, Stranger in tow. It came up the steps, staggered a few paces then collapsed. It looked starved, was missing clumps of fur. Stranger slunk up the steps after it, her head bowed, face streaked with tears.

'I see you two have kissed and made up,' said Eric. The wolf shut its eyes. To Stranger he said, 'I'm Eric. I already know who you are.'

'You may know who I was,' she said in a flat voice. 'I'm nothing now.'

'Oh?'

She wiped her eyes, went to the window and stared through it.

'Maybe I know the feeling,' he said, taking a seat on the floor behind her. 'I'm not what I used to be either.'

'Has your heart ever been spat out of your true love's mouth like coughed bile?'

'Not exactly. My true love pretty much thinks I'm pathetic and has from the start. Can't argue either.'

The wolf meanwhile writhed on the floor. Its hair and fur were already shed. Its bones began crunching and breaking. It made a vomiting noise so horrible Eric had to cover his ears for a minute or two. When that finished he said, 'I seem to remember you two used to fight each other. What changed?'

Stranger laughed bitterly. 'I'm lucky he didn't tear my throat out. Dyan gave him every chance.'

'Dyan? Who's that?'

She began to speak, hesitated, then smiled. 'Why not? Why not tell you all I know of him?'

'Not yet,' said Far Gaze hoa.r.s.ely. 'Wait until I've rested. Then tell us together. Till then, not a word about it.' He stood naked among a litter of white wolf's hair, then bent over, clutching his belly. 'Mongrel! How much rot did he eat? Never again. d.a.m.n him!' With a retching noise no less horrid than the wolf's in transition had been, Far Gaze vomited down the steps to the whirlpool below. When at last he'd finished he stood, swayed, muttered to Eric, 'Your friend is dead,' then pa.s.sed out.

BENEATH THE SURFACE.

1.

When Siel lurched back into the regular flow of time it felt like she'd been dropped from a height to land with a jolt that jarred her senses. She'd found herself alone in the underground chamber. The wall's shackles all hung limp and empty, the walls behind them crisscrossed with gouges from what might well have been Anfen's sword.

The place to her immense relief had been left unguarded, as had the surrounding rooms and tunnels. She'd run from there with no idea which way led back to the surface, only meaning to get away from those hooks before someone tried to put her there where Stranger had been.

That was some time back. There were precious few lightstones in the network she now wandered through, though she'd begun hearing voices and footsteps through its membrane-thin walls. How many hours of it went crawling by, this flitting about like a rodent in a house full of cats? Dead ends. Blocked pa.s.sages. Footsteps so close they sounded right on top of her. One narrow escape, crouched behind a pile of rubble as two men went by sharing a joke. She'd been a heartbeat from striking at them with the fist-sized rock she'd adopted as her new weapon, could have sworn one of them looked right at her but kept on walking.

Rounding a bend where the lightstones were brighter, she hesitated, debating whether or not to risk a pa.s.sage where she'd be so visible. It was this or hours of backtracking for likely the same ultimate result. Why not deal with it now, while she had some energy left to fight.