The Heretic Land Part 7

'Hopefully.'

'But not if you're still smoking those stinking things,' Leki said as Juda lit another cigar.

He drew in the smoke, and it settled his inner darkness. 'I stop smoking these, and you're on your own. Without this ...' He exhaled, and the smoke danced around his head. '... my nightmares find form. Besides, better this than the stink of you two.'

Juda's legs ached, and he knew the others were rapidly tiring. But they had no alternative. As he took the lead again, he started telling them about the other dregs of magic he had found.

Chapter 6.

reborn When Venden woke up it was snowing, and there were three auburn tadcats sitting in the snow a few steps from his camp beneath the overhang.

He had seen snow in Skythe before, but only in winter, and only when it was extremely cold and the wind blew from the north. But as far as he could remember it was still late summer, and the breeze blowing as he'd drifted to sleep had been from the west. Maybe even the seasons are confused, he thought, and it was not such a shocking idea. The flora and fauna of Skythe had been damaged by the war so long ago. Why not the weather also?

The tadcats were skittish, and as Venden sat up with a blanket around his shoulders, they backed away. Still watching him, they settled in the long gra.s.s at the edge of the clearing and licked their delicate paws. The long, snow-free gra.s.s.

He closed his eyes, breathed deeply and opened them again. Snow still fell. Around the remnant it appeared as deep as his ankles, settling across the smooth lines and jagged parts he had come to know so well. But beyond, past where he had parked the cart, the plants were free of snow, many of them bathed in early morning sunlight.

Venden stood, ignoring the pressure on his bladder. He glanced once more at the tadcats as they scampered away, then stepped forward into the snow shower, convinced that it would fade away as sleep and dreams retreated.

His foot sank into snow. He gasped at the cold and looked up into the swirling flakes. They were fat, floating down slowly enough for him to target one and catch it on his tongue. It melted and freshwater flowed down his throat. Other flakes touched his warm skin, landed in his eyelashes and settled in the soft scruffy beard that had grown over the past year. The snowstorm was troubling but beautiful, and for a moment sleep still haunted Venden enough to relish its beauty.

When he took several more steps towards the remnant, the snow stopped. Sunlight burned through and warmed his face where the ice had recently touched.

'That wasn't normal,' he said. He looked at the remnant again and it was still covered in snow, thick layers that blurred its lines. But elsewhere it was quickly melting, seeping into the ground as though subject to a great, unfelt heat. Gra.s.s compressed by the weight popped up again, shaking the memory of snow as if it had never happened. Soon, Venden felt little more than a morning chill, and even that dispersed as he walked around the remnant. For the first few steps his feet squished in muddy ground, but then the soil grew harder, the gra.s.s swishing around his feet and whispering dry secrets.

The remnant remained covered in snow. It was frozen, not dripping beneath the sun, and several times Venden went to step closer, to see whether the world around him would stay the same once he touched the great shape. When he'd been attaching objects to it the day before he had been part of it at times, settled by its touch while he felt the world around him shifting, shivering. But stepping forward now, he was afraid that contact with this strange thing would remove him from his world. And much as he had devoted himself to it for some time, he was still afraid.

'So what now?' he asked, and as if in answer the snow on the remnant melted. This was no gentle thaw. One moment it was still there, frozen solid, icicles pointing and snow moulded to the remnant's peculiar extremities; the next moment, everything melted away and washed to the ground, spreading in a puddle through the long gra.s.s until the dry soil sucked it down. Venden closed his eyes and breathed in, feeling steam stroke down his throat and into his lungs. He heard movement, felt three harsh thuds against the ground, and when he opened his eyes he caught a glimpse of the shape flexing to motionlessness. It was an insinuation of movement rather than something overt, the air and landscape around him complicit.

The rain came then, great droplets that flattened the gra.s.s and splashed from the remnant and the dead tree. Venden cried out in surprise. His voice was loud and lonely, and he reined in the shout because he thought the remnant might frown upon it.

I know what you are, he thought, and it was the first time he had ever formed that idea. Before now he had been too afraid in case he caused offence, or the betrayal of such knowledge might mark him for murder. But the remnant already knew that he knew. His exposure of that knowledge was nothing. He was only a human, not ...

'Not a G.o.d,' Venden said, and rain ran down across his face into his mouth. It was cold against his sensitive teeth, questing fluid fingers inside his shirts. He thought he was being examined. But the remnant already knew him, and had been using him for a long time. It would know him better than he knew himself.

Rain ended, hail began. The remnant flexed, and this time it did nothing to hide its movement from Venden. It movement was fluid and beautiful, harsh and terrible, like nothing alive he had ever seen before. It was more solid and real than everything else, and as the hail drove Venden to his knees he began to cry.

The hail ended and melted away, and sunlight warmed the tears from his cheeks. Wind rose up and faded again, caressing the remnant and the p.r.o.ne Venden, yet not touching the trees at the clearing's extremes, nor the plants hanging down the cliff face. Mist rose and fell, lightning cracked overhead and lit up the shape in a brief, incredibly bright flash. Venden's skin stretched across his face and his eyeb.a.l.l.s dried and his hair started to singe, but then a coolness closed around him like a protective hand.

It's coming to life, he thought. It's resurrecting! An idea flashed into his mind, more fully formed and detailed than any that had come before, and he realised that was not quite right. It was not yet living again, not in any way that he could understand. Without its final part it was a shape, not a life. Without its heart, this reconstructed G.o.d was an old memory flexing its muscles. New thoughts and memories were yet to come.

'Fifty miles away,' Venden said as he recognised the place displayed to his mind's eye. 'To the north.' The void inside him flexed in excitement.

He had never ventured that far north. Skythe was strange and dangerous, and in that direction lay the strangest and most dangerous place of all. Haunted, legendary, a location where myths were still birthed, Skythe's dead capital city, Kellis Faults, awaited.

The heart of the murdered G.o.d Aeon rested in that place, and Venden would help it beat again.

Once dressed, Milian sat on the beach and ate again. She'd found a seabird with a broken wing, and after a quick twist of the neck she plucked it and bit in. The warm blood inspired horrible memories, but she stared out to sea and continued chewing. She craved the sustenance. Those memories were of another time, and a Milian driven by something else. The daemon had made her do those things, that mad soulless thing, and then the shard of Aeon had driven it out.

I owe Aeon so much, she thought. But as she ate and looked around, she was far from certain about that. She had no concept of how the world was now a whether Skythe was still there, what had happened to those Engines, whether the daemons had raged on and on a and no idea of her place in it. She supposed that her first act would be to start exploring.

For the first time she noticed how cool the breeze from the north was. It picked up sea scents and spray and salt, and abraded her skin as it rolled up the long beach. It did not make her uncomfortable. After so long sensing nothing, it was beautiful. She stood and stretched her limbs, turning slowly around and inviting the breeze's caresses. The sand was cool and smooth between her toes, and she remembered the gla.s.sy sheen across the beach the last time she had been here, the sand melted by whatever cataclysm had occurred to the north.

'Will I find anyone?' She looked at the high, wide dunes behind her and wondered what might be beyond. Then she looked down at herself for the hundredth time since leaving the cave. The memories from before her long sleep were vague and informed mainly by dreams, but she could not recall ever acknowledging these curves, her shape, and the athleticism that should not be here now, but was. Perhaps because she never had. Or perhaps, she thought, because she had awoken anew. Refreshed by dormancy. Reborn. She ran her hands down over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, across her flat stomach, and down her muscled thighs to her feet, half buried in the sand. She could feel the potential in her body, coiled and glad to be awake. Standing bent over on that beach, every ache or pain from her joints had vanished, and her mind was clearing by the moment.

And the shard was there within her, that meagre surviving part of her destroyed G.o.d, calming fears and smoothing errant doubts about why she was here, and how.

She had been on Alderia for centuries, and now Milian Mu felt the urge to explore.

She left the beach behind and climbed the first of the sand dunes. Panting, sweating, relishing the exertion, she gained the summit and turned back to look out to sea. Even from this slight elevation she could see much further. A small sailing ship ploughed the water a couple of miles out, flying a flag she could not see and would not recognise if she did. It approached land at an angle, and Milian looked left along the coast to see if she could make out its destination. But dunes, trees and a headland to the west meant that her view along the coast was restricted. She watched the boat, hypnotised by its movement until something inside jarred her onward.

'I'm going!' she said, surprising herself. She spoke a language as old as her dead G.o.d, and wondered whether anyone here would recognise the words.

As the sound of the sea slowly faded behind her, she felt a tug of loneliness. I've been hearing that for hundreds of years. She was woken, but could she really move on? Her condition was remarkable, but if she attributed it to that thing inside her then she was not wholly herself. I am me! Milian thought. But it carried little weight. She felt the shard in the background, and if she defied or denied it, perhaps then it would come to the fore.

So she walked south, because that was the way she felt compelled to go.

The dunes stretched further inland than she had antic.i.p.ated, and they grew larger than she could have imagined. Those close to the sea were mere sand humps, speckled here and there with gra.s.ses and spiked on occasion with driftwood worn smooth by the sea. Soon the slopes became higher, held in place by numerous tall trees hanging heavy with a deep orange fruit. She plucked one and ate it, and it purged the taste of raw meat from her mouth.

Some valleys between dunes were strafed by sunlight, others shadowed by the huge sand hills. She found freshwater streams and drank, gulping down so much that her stomach sloshed when she moved. She soon needed to urinate, and moments after that she was drinking again. She felt herself growing stronger and more whole, and the next time she pa.s.sed a small copse of fruit trees she ate from them once again.

With every step she took, she moved on from the memories that had haunted her strange hibernation. She welcomed the distance, because with it went the sickness about what she had done. This Milian Mu was becoming a whole new person. And though as yet she did not know how that was possible, or why, simply being was enough.

She walked on through the day. The landscape changed, sand dunes giving way to a gently rolling plain. It was dotted with rocky mounds that looked artificial, reminding her of burial mounds back on Skythe, and here and there were swathes of woodland singing with bird life. Much further south she could see high hills, hazed with sunlight and glinting with what might have been water or veins of exposed, pale rock. Some hilltops were craggy where rock falls had sharpened them, others seemed smoothed by erosion.

Later, she heard voices from the other side of a low ridge. She paused and remained motionless for a long time. The falling sun caught her shadow and cast it eastward, and she lengthened into dusk without once moving. She was a tree, a rock, a mountain, etched as part of the landscape until the sun went down and her shadow combined with the general darkness.

There were several children, shouting and arguing as they played some game remote from the adults conversing in more level tones. No one attempted to disguise their presence. The glow of a campfire lit the air above the small ridge, and as dusk bled across the hills in the west, the smell of cooking permeated the air. Stomach heavy with soft fruit and freshwater, still Milian salivated. She could not identify what they were cooking, but it was rich and tangy. That, more than anything, drove her to move closer.

There were two covered wagons and several shires, similar to creatures she had known on Skythe but taller, stronger, with s.h.a.ggy hair on their legs and much broader shoulders. The wagons were parked parallel, and between them a large cooking fire had been set. Six adults fussed around the fire, and beyond them Milian could see the silhouettes of frolicking children.

The smell of cooking meat was almost overpowering.

A shadow fell across her, cast by faint starlight. Milian froze. A woman spoke. Milian did not understand the language, and did not reply. She thought that to betray herself would be a bad idea.

She turned around. The woman stood six steps away, wary but not threatening. She was short and stocky, with a wild head of hair and intricately woven clothing. A tall man stood just behind her, a long object of some sort nursed in both hands. His clothing was equally fine. He said nothing, but his eyes spoke volumes. Reflecting his camp's firelight, they flickered as they took in this mysterious woman, her stained clothing and the tatty fisherman's bag by her side. He looked her up and down. Milian could almost taste his l.u.s.t.

The woman spoke again, slower, her words just as incomprehensible.

Milian touched her ears and mouth and shrugged. The woman nodded, seeming to sink slightly as tension left her. The man looked away.

So now I am deaf and dumb, Milian thought. But she knew that subterfuge could last only so long, and that her otherness would be revealed in a thousand ways.

She put herself at the campers' mercy until the shard urged her what to do next.

'That first dreg in the roots of the Chasm Cliffs changed my life. I carried it back towards New Kotrugam, intending to examine and study it. But it started a hunger for more. Thirty miles from the New Kotrugam wall, I spent three days in an inn with a heavy head cold. I drank water and ate rice, and only ventured down to the inn's public rooms late on the third evening for beer and more food. Starting to feel a bit better. Hungry. And that's where I met the Brokers.'

Juda was marching quickly, telling them his story as if to lure them on. Bon Ugane and Leki followed, apart from Juda and together in their silent acknowledgement of each other. They walked without looking or touching, but a connection had been made which Bon felt would not be broken. Leki might act distant and aloof at times, but he knew that she felt the same. She hadn't needed to tell him.

'I'd heard of them before, and thought them fools,' Juda said. 'Maybe that made me a fool's fool. Because they have records, and knowledge, and what they do can't be denied.'

He's talking about people who openly seek forbidden magic, Bon thought. He had heard and read so much, and his doubts led to him continuing his son Venden's research into the war. That was sedition, and such dissidence had resulted in him being deported to Skythe. Now, Juda was talking about the forbidden magic that Bon and many others believed had been borne by the Ald to a.s.sault Skythe's manifested G.o.d. There had been no plague, and the war had left dregs of magic scattered across both lands. Bon believed that as fact, but proof had always been much harder to find.

Though terrified, Bon could not help being fascinated by Juda's tale.

'I spoke to the Broker,' Juda said, 'but I've always been ... on my own. People didn't like my Regerran blood, though it barely meant anything to me. The green eyes are unusual. So I stayed another day, and late that afternoon I showed them what I'd found. I was expecting a certain reaction. A certain ... shock.' Juda leaped a small stream easily six steps wide and carried on, not once looking back. After Leki crossed she did look back, one eyebrow raised, smiling gently.

'Come on, then,' she said softly, and Bon kept his eyes on her as he jumped. He landed awkwardly and tipped back, and Leki grasped his hand and pulled him upright. He staggered forward, exaggerating his momentum so that they ended up face to face with their arms around each other.

'My saviour,' he whispered.

'The Brokers knew exactly what they were looking at,' Juda said. He'd stopped away from the stream but hardly seemed to see them. He was looking elsewhere, at another time. 'Finding it is all very well,' one of them said. 'But do you know how to use it?'

'How much further?' Bon asked. He and Leki disentangled themselves, and he felt a warm flush as her hand swept across his back.

'Far enough to tell you the rest.' Juda looked up the slope they had descended, scanning it quickly with his telescope. 'And we have to reach the gas marshes before nightfall. I don't have many scamp smokes left, and ...'

'We know,' Leki said. 'Don't worry. We'll tie you tight.'

Juda's green eyes flickered strangely, and Bon realised then that he would never know this man. It wasn't his part-Regerran ancestry that made him a mystery. It was his quest. The Brokers were considered one of the most dangerous criminal organisations on Alderia by the Ald, and there were frequent cases of the Ald's personal army, the Spike, a.s.saulting a suspected refuge. Bon had once pa.s.sed the site of such an a.s.sault in the slums of New Kotrugam's eastern quarter. Five properties had been gutted by fire, a dozen bodies were laid under blankets in the street outside a several adults, the rest children. The bitter memory had always remained with him.

'I found the second and third dregs inside an Engine,' Juda said, and as the shock hit Bon so he heard Leki gasp.

'You've actually seen an Engine?' Bon gasped.

Juda continued, ignoring the question and telling the story his own way, at his own pace.

'I came to Skythe ... on my own. The Brokers are an organisation. And no organisation can be as personal as you need to be about magic. As subjective. Because magic is a personal thing, like love or hate. I love differently from you.' He pointed at Leki. 'And you.' He nodded at Bon. 'And if either of you took to magic, your experience of it would be very different from mine.'

'You won't find me touching it,' Leki said softly, but Juda seemed not to hear.

'We're close to the river,' he said. 'There's a rope bridge a mile upstream.'

'Can't we walk or swim it?' Bon asked.

'You wouldn't want to.' Juda moved on, falling quiet and contemplative.

Bon looked up at the cloudy sky, seeing the smudge of sunlight behind a spread of clouds and comforted by its presence. He had never worshipped the Fade sun G.o.d, Flaze, but it was a presence that no one could do without. It bathed his face with warmth, and as he blinked slowly he could almost be somewhere else. He had a sudden, unbidden memory of his wife falling, and his hand reaching out terribly slowly to stop her. How he had loved her. How he had almost feared her, on days when a distance hung between them. She had come into his life, and left it, entirely of her own accord.

They reached the river without Juda saying any more, and Bon feared his revelations had ended. I want to hear about the Engine, he thought. I want to know where it was, what it was like. There had been much talk of the Engines amongst the circles he orbited a the devices used by the Ald, so it was said, to gather and channel magic during their attack on Skythe. They were almost mythical creations, product of stories told in the shadowy corners of bars and private meetings where fear kept watch at the doorway. Some said that there were ancient Engines, thousands of years old, buried deep in western caves on Alderia, and even older constructs had been taken apart, their elements broken down and melted and scattered to the winds. The further back in history Bon looked, the more mythical the Engines were. But here on Skythe they suddenly seemed so much more possible.

It was obvious from first sight why they needed the rope bridge to cross the river. It was not too wide, and it flowed at a sedate rate, but something in there exuded menace. Silvery, sharp things with membranous wings, leaping above the waters and taking any unfortunate bird that happened to fly too low. The length of a person's arm, Bon could see the stark glint of their teeth even from the river bank.

'They're only the ones that let themselves be seen,' Juda said. 'Sometimes, others come out. There are water pigs, similar to those on Alderia but twice the size, with ragged teeth that seep poisonous blood.' He shook his head as he walked. 'All gone wrong.'

'What's all gone wrong?' Leki asked.

'This place. Don't you feel it? See it? The war did more than destroy millennia of Skythian civilisation and history. It set a rot in the land.'

They walked until they saw the rope bridge a a rickety affair, half of its planks rotten and dropped away. To cover his fear Bon asked, at last, about the Engine.

'They're here, if you know where to find them,' Juda said. 'There's the remains of one on the coast, maybe twenty miles from where you landed. And there are others. More whole.' He tested a plank on the bridge and started across, walking quickly from plank to plank and gripping the rope rails. They were frayed, and strung with dried, crackly growths that crumbled beneath his touch.

'More whole?' Leki asked, probing.

Juda glanced back at her but said nothing.

Bon looked down at the river only a few steps below. Shadows moved across its smooth surface. They might have been clouds or reflections, or larger things beneath the surface.

'So what was it like?' he asked at last, because Juda seemed to be toying with them. But the man simply walked on ahead, checking each board as he stepped across and barely pausing to drop his weight.

'I think we'll see one,' Leki said. Bon glanced at her, eyebrows raised.

'What makes you think that?'

Leki shrugged. 'I'm good at reading people.' She was staring down at the river, and there was a look in her eyes that Bon did not like. It resembled hunger.

'And amphys can read the water,' he said.

Leki started across then, and Bon followed her footsteps over the swaying bridge. It reminded him of the feeling in the hold of that awful ship, and his stomach lurched.

'You won't be sick,' Leki said, her voice almost a laugh.

Bon paused, watching her increasing the distance between them. She moved with such grace, and even beneath her long coat he could see the delicate sway of her narrow swimmer's hips. It had been a long time since he had been with a woman, and- Leki glanced back over her shoulder, mock-stern. Then she looked down and moved again, and Bon knew that she was looking between the boards, at the water. Using her strange amphy's gift, she had sensed Juda's intentions and let Bon know that she could perceive his as well.

He smiled. And as he crossed he allowed his imagination to swell, seeing Leki lying naked in a warm bath of scented water, webbed hands closed around him and his fingertips playing across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He chuckled, the image helping him smother his fear of falling. But even if he did drop through into the river, he was sure that Leki would be there to save him.

She had saved him before, after all.

When he reached the other side, Juda was already heading towards what looked like a dozen mounds of moss-covered rocks. Leki was waiting for him, an enigmatic smile picking up the corner of her sensuous mouth.

'So what else did you see?' Bon asked.

'Those mounds are the ruins of a Skythian village,' Leki said. 'He's taking us there to ... it feels like to meet someone. But the urgency's growing in him, too. The slayers might be closing. And I think the Engine ...' She closed her eyes, frowning. 'He won't talk about them, because he's going to show us. There's rumour of an Engine beyond the marshes.' She opened her eyes again. The frown remained. 'And you. Your name, in his mind. He thinks you might lead him to magic.'

Bon snorted, confused. But then he asked the real question. 'And what else did you see from me?'

'Something wet.' Leki went after Juda, and Bon thought, I'm going to see an Engine!

Following Leki, troubled by what she could see and yet aroused as well, he could not help dwelling on how much things had changed in a matter of days.