Authors: Tim Lebbon
‘Did he really put himself in danger to save us?’ Bon asked.
‘I think he was in danger before,’ Leki said. ‘And he seems …’
‘Eager,’ Bon finished for her. ‘He’s done this before.’
‘But why?’ Leki asked. ‘What does he want?’
‘Maybe we’ll find out tomorrow.’ Bon sat close to Leki, pressing against her and feeling her warmth through the jacket Juda had brought for him. She had talked of not decorating the sea and air with make-believe, and those words to Juda betrayed more than she had to Bon. ‘You’re no slave to anything the Ald tell us,’ he said.
‘Did you even once believe I was?’
Bon chuckled, and it felt good. That surprised him. Could laughter really find a place against such darkness, when a madman writhed before them? But perhaps that was the best reason for laughter.
‘What were your plans when you got here?’ he asked.
‘Plans?’ She shrugged, glancing away. ‘I made none. They tore me from my family, my home, my life. I taught in Skeptin Lakes, history and philosophy. Taught everything
they
told me to teach, mostly, but there were always moments when some of what I believe found its way in. By accident, usually. I wasn’t stupid. Knew what I’d do to myself if I made it too obvious.’ She drifted away, perhaps disconcerted by how much she had said
in so little time. Her bitterness did not surprise Bon, but her uncertainty unsettled him. He liked the strong Leki.
‘So, plans?’ she continued. ‘Fuck plans. I wouldn’t honour them by making plans. Fuck them.’ She trailed off again, and Bon pressed sideways against her, a subtle but obvious movement. Not so blatant as a touch or a hug, but a gesture of comfort.
‘Even if you had, I bet I wouldn’t have been in them,’ he said.
‘Right.’ She sighed, drumming her fingers on her leg, the air heavy with something unsaid. But they sat in silence.
Before them, Juda rolled on a bed of dried twigs and leaves, a foam of spittle and blood sheened across his chin and lips.
Bon looked out at the shadowy valley one more time, saw no movement, and leaned his head back against the rough wall of the shelter. Tomorrow, he would begin his first full day on Skythe as someone hunted, and scared. But at least he was with a friend.
Someone shook Bon awake from a dream of being chased by a swollen killer, a heavy-cloaked thing bearing a spiked staff and his dead son’s face.
He rose from his dream like a god looking down, and in that brief omnipotence he saw himself sprinting across a desolate landscape spotted with bright purple plants, each of them a blooming bruise. The son-thing lurched after him, barely walking and yet closing on him with every step he took. Behind the son-thing came a shadow that belonged to something larger and more dreadful. Its shadow tendrils seemed to emanate from them both. And while he ran and his son-thing lurched, the shadow seemed to dance with unalloyed joy.
‘Bon Ugane,’ a voice said, and
Bon blinked himself awake, leaving the dream behind. For an instant he wondered whether that monster was still closing on his fleeing self, then Juda leaned back from him and smiled down. ‘You must have really needed that sleep.’
‘How long …?’ Bon asked.
‘It’s barely dawn.’ Juda’s smiled seemed strained, pained. There was blood smeared across his jaw.
‘Leki!’ Bon said, sitting upright and kicking at Juda.
What has he done where is she why did I fall asleep?
‘The water woman’s fine!’ Juda said, sprawling back.
‘Then where is she?’ Bon stood, remaining stooped in the shelter. Dawn sunlight slanted in between the roughly tied uprights, and his clothing was damp with dew.
‘I was taking a piss,’ Leki said from outside. ‘And keep your voice down or you’ll scare them away.’
‘Scare who away?’
‘Come and see.’
Bon’s shock settled and he smiled hesitantly at Juda. The man nodded back, wiping at his chin with one hand. He must have seen Bon looking at the dried blood.
Outside, Leki was standing beneath the shadow of the trees, looking out across the narrow, deep valley at a herd of creatures on the opposite slopes. Pale brown, the size of a child, they flitted back and forth across the grassed slopes like a flock of birds. Their hoofsteps sounded as a vague mumbling, and their call was a piping cry that mourned across the valley.
‘Anything?’ Juda asked from the shelter behind them.
‘No,’ Leki said. Bon realised that she had been to the ridge to check if anyone or anything was following, but now she seemed more taken with the creatures seemingly performing for them.
‘Hat-hat,’ Juda said.
‘Taste good with rose herb.’
‘I’m happy just to watch,’ Leki said.
The hat-hat streamed left and right across the slope for some time, and then a pair of hawks swooped down from out of the sun and took one. They tore it apart on the ground, and as they ate the rest of the flock grouped tightly together and fled over the hilltop.
‘He says there’ll be two of them following us,’ Leki said. ‘They’ll pick up our scent and be on our trail. Today’s the day we have to escape them, or they’ll hunt us until we drop, or they do. And it won’t be them.’
‘Then why aren’t we moving now?’ Bon asked, knowing there was an answer. Today had a strange feel already, as if he had woken into a world with different rules.
‘Because Juda is going to try and use some magic.’
Bon caught his breath, staring at Leki, waiting for her to elaborate. Magic? The word was used as a turn of phrase, but Leki had given it weight.
‘So what happened when I was asleep?’ he asked.
‘Our lives changed,’ Leki said. She looked at him at last. ‘And I found out why our saviour and friend is just a little mad.’
Juda emerged from the shelter and lit a roughly rolled cigar. He breathed in deeply and glanced their way, nervously.
‘Magic?’ Bon asked.
To begin with, Juda did not respond. He took a long pull on the cigar, shivering slightly and closing his eyes. Smoke drifted from his nose and curled like a living thing, caressing his cheek and forehead before dispersing in his hair.
‘Why else do you think I’d come to Skythe?’
‘You came here voluntarily?’ Bon asked.
‘Could say that.’ He stood beside them, taking deep, long pulls on the cigar.
Seemingly without noticing, he clasped at the air before him with one hand, searching for something that was not there.
Mad, indeed
, Bon thought, but he was never one to judge madness on simple deviation from the norm. He knew the norm to be an ambiguous thing, a construction of doctored beliefs and prescribed outlooks. It could be that Juda simply saw in a different way. ‘I came here looking.’
‘For magic,’ Leki said.
‘Where else would I look?’
‘You’re not Regerran?’ Bon asked.
‘I’m told my mother was,’ Juda said. ‘But the nightmares are mostly my own. Magic does strange things, when you’re close to it for a long time.’
‘And those cigars?’ Leki asked.
‘Scamp smoke helps. A problem hidden, not cured. Scamp keeps the nightmares deep, for a while.’ He stared across the valley. Even with the cigar clamped between his teeth he seemed to be sniffing the air. ‘You need to break camp. Prepare yourselves for a fast, long journey. We must escape the slayers today, and to do that we first have to gain a good lead.’
‘So shouldn’t we be running
now
?’ Bon asked, panic blooming.
‘We’re about to. But I’m leaving something behind.’ Juda glanced back at them and nodded up at the steep hillside beyond the shelter. ‘Climb. Snuggle together and watch. But don’t come close. I’ll join you soon, and then we run.’
Bon and Leki packed up the few things they had with them and left Juda behind, sitting on a fallen log close to the shelter and absently kicking loose soil over the remains of their campfire. They climbed silently, the brief respite already behind them. Bon felt an urgency borne of fear, and confusion about why they hadn’t run
through the night, why Juda couldn’t have smoked and gone further despite the nightmares. But then he thought of the reason Juda said the people of Vandemon kept fires flaming in the dark, and he wondered whether night was a safe place for visitors to Skythe.
The slope soon became steeper, and for the last stretch they were climbing on hands and knees, crawling up from handhold to handhold. Bon tried not to look down, but the knowledge of Juda called him. That, and what their rescuer might be doing.
I’m leaving something behind
, he had said. As they reached the ridge and sat down, panting and sweating, Bon looked down into the valley to see.
Juda was moving slowly around the shelter and the site of their campfire. He paused many times, seemingly listening or waiting for something before moving on. Smoke from his scamp cigar drifted about his head, forming a larger cloud that settled over the area and stole colour and sharpness.
‘Why is he taking so long?’ Bon asked, but Leki merely shrugged. She was frowning, concentrating, and Bon wondered what she was waiting to see. He had no idea what magic was supposed to look like.
Juda finished patrolling the site and knelt down. He reached into his pack and seemed to sprinkle something on the ground, moving his hand left to right in a casual wave. Then he stood, surveyed the area one more time, and started climbing.
‘That was it?’ Bon asked. Leki shrugged again. Her silence deepened her mystery. He wanted to clasp her hand, ask what she knew, but he was certain that she would only tell him if she wanted to. She’d had ample opportunity, and remained silent.
‘So now we run,’ Bon said. ‘Maybe I should just go the other way. Let the two of you
flee, I’ll go back and meet the slayers on our trail.’ He didn’t mean that – not after the horrors he’d seen on the beach – but he was trying to provoke Leki into saying something. Anything.
‘Self-pity is ugly,’ she said. They watched Juda climbing towards them, and no more was said until he arrived.
He scrambled up the slope and sat beside Bon, lighting another cigar. He was breathing heavily, but seemed otherwise untroubled by the climb. Bon wondered how long he would be able to keep up with Juda and Leki. Already his legs burned, his muscles ached.
‘That might help,’ Juda said.
‘What did you do?’ Bon asked.
‘Left something behind for them. A dreg.’
‘What will it do?’ Leki asked.
Juda seemed upset and distracted. ‘We need to move. I’ll know exactly when the slayers reach here, and whether they’re still following our trail. And the more distance we put between them and us, the better.’
‘How will you know?’ Bon asked.
Juda puffed on the cigar and the scamp smoke hung heavy and spicy in the air. He stared at Bon through the smoke, and seemed very far away. ‘You don’t know much, do you, Bon Ugane? How will I know? I just will.’
Juda set the pace, taking them along the ridge and down into the next, much wider valley. He marched with purpose and determination, and it soon crossed Bon’s mind that Juda seemed to be rushing towards something, not away from something else.
Venden Ugane came awake with something dead beneath him. He could feel it nestled under his stomach, an object whose presence was different from the bundled blankets and the sparse mattress he’d made from
moss and hat-hat hide. It was cold and hard. It did not belong.
For a while he did not move, staring across the clearing at the remnant and those objects he had spent so long gathering to it. It had now arced up into a perfect half-circle, and the dead tree stump at one end had tipped over to an extreme angle, a skin of dried bark fallen to the ground. It had shifted more while he had been sleeping.
He rolled onto his side and looked down to find what had died.
He had no name for the orange spiders. As large as his fist and the colour of bloodfruit, this one must have crawled down from the low cliff and dropped from the overhang into his bed just as he rolled in his sleep. They lived up on the cliff face, spinning funnel webs in holes in the rock, venturing out at sundown to harvest any prey caught in the web traps they set elsewhere across the cliff. He had observed them keeping to their own traps and not thieving from others, and he had wondered why. It hardly bode well for survival. Catching and examining a spider had crossed his mind, but there had always been something else to do, and he’d never had the chance. Now, the chance had come to him.
It had burst beneath him. Its insides were slick and sticky, stringing from his jacket as he sat up. The creature had seven legs and, search though he did, Venden could find no evidence of an eighth. Lost in a fight, perhaps. But it was just as likely that it had mutated this way. He prodded the sad body, and its ruptured shell was cool and surprisingly soft.
‘Seven legs,’ Venden said. Whenever his voice sounded across the clearing, it felt like an intrusion into the wild. ‘Nature welcomes even numbers. Hard walking. Goes in circles. And the eyes.’ He turned the dead creature a little, leaning close and trying to ignore the acrid smell. ‘Simple surface eyes. All but blind.’ There was a
thick line of thread still hanging from the spider’s abdomen, trailing across Venden’s mattress and disappearing into the grass. He scanned left and right until he saw where the sun glinted from a hanging thread high above his head, drooping down from the overhang and waving in the slight breeze. Perhaps it had been lowering itself down when it fell. Venden touched his face and throat, because he had never known how these things hunted, or killed. He found no punctures.
Beneath the overhang was a rock with a hollow in its surface, and Venden took his morning scoop of water from here and drank deep. It never tasted fresh. Water dripped from the overhang above, and he wondered how long it had taken to filter down the surface of the cliff. Perhaps some of it was run-off from the previous night’s dew. Or maybe it originated deeper, filtering down through the cliff and exiting eventually to drip into the hollow, and pass into him. This filtering water might have been many years on its journey through porous rock, and he wondered what this clearing had looked like when the rain fell.
Barely taking his eyes from the shifted remnant, Venden went through his usual waking ritual of toilet, a meal of dried fruit and a silent moment of reflection upon this land. He had been here for years, and he was more certain than ever that the war and its results had banished humanity from these shores. He was only a visitor here. That the unknown presence, the hollow inside, seemed to feel at home disturbed him, but he did not dwell on it.