The Heretic Land (15 page)

He plunged the object into the man’s ear and pushed it into his brain. Then he connected the trailing nark-gut lead to the top end, held his breath and pushed the needle on the lead’s other end into his own neck. He gasped as the cool metal slid home, the pain immediately simmering to white-hot. But he did not have time to hurt.

Juda leaned over the stinking, dying man and whispered into his ear, muttering the Old Skythian word for
magic
over and over, and soon …

He had done this five times before, without success. But this time he found something. This Skythian knew nothing of the magic Juda craved to quieten his soul, but he did know of other things, more incredible and valuable than any Juda had ever hoped to find.

In his confused, dying thoughts, the man held
rumours of Aeon’s resurrection, and whispers of the strange young Alderian who was bringing it about.

Venden Ugane …

As Juda fell back and tugged the needle from his neck in a spray of blood, he uttered a mad, high laugh at what might come
next.

On previous journeys to search for and retrieve objects associated with the remnant, Venden had taken a whole day to prepare. The location would be a blur in his mind. The distance obscure, like tomorrow seen through a heat-haze. Since the first journey when he had discovered the cart upended at the foot of a small waterfall, he had taken it with him as much as possible, only leaving it behind when the terrain grew too uneven, the journey too long. But this time something pressed him to go alone and unhindered. He had the old clothes he was wearing, some food and water, two knives, some meagre camping equipment, a flint, and cooking implements he had fashioned from shreds of something melted. He had often wondered what they had been before. Perhaps he ate food with deformed cogs from the heart of an ancient Engine.

He readied himself to leave before midday, and then stood close to the remnant, waiting for something else.
It will show me where exactly to find the heart, how to retrieve it, how to transport it back here
, he thought. But the remnant was silent and still, and he sensed a deep weariness cradling it against the
cold, wet ground.

‘I’ll find the heart of you,’ he said. There was no response. ‘I’ll bring you back.’ Silence filled the clearing, seeming to steal the sound of movement from the orange spiders and the rustle of leaves on some of the withered trees to the north. Venden wondered where those sounds had gone, and whether anyone else would hear them.

He reached out to touch the remnant, but was repelled. He frowned, but the closer he moved, the further away the shape seemed. It did not shift or flex, but its altered shape was beyond him.

‘I only want to touch you,’ he said, but his plea was swallowed by the silence.

So Venden left the clearing, looking behind at the things he had brought back, which, together, went to make up Aeon. The reconstructed god looked more innocuous the further he walked, and by the time it passed out of sight, hidden behind a screen of low trees, he could believe that it was a dead thing that had been there for six centuries. Its bone was dulled and unreflective, giving back nothing of its surroundings. A fine camouflage, he thought, but it also left him feeling bereft. He might as well have seen himself fading into nothing.

‘I am
not
nothing,’ Venden said as he walked. ‘And Aeon chose me.’ The hollow place inside him seemed to churn with potential, and then settled once more.

He planned his route north to Kellis Faults as a way of occupying his mind, but he had little knowledge to draw from. Already he was in the wilds, further north than most banished to Skythe ever came. He saw amazement in the eyes of the few Skythians who encountered him. There was some fear, but they were also fascinated by him, a reaction refreshing on every new meeting. He had seen some of the
same regressed Skythians several times. They knew him and his name, and sometimes he believed they spied upon him. Often they seemed somewhat in awe of him, and if he had been more superstitious he might have thought himself a ghost.

Perhaps I am
, he thought, pushing through a whispering forest. He had been this way many times before, but there was no evidence of his presence here, nor that of his wagon. No flattened ferns trampled by his feet or crushed by the cart’s wheels. No route worn into the landscape by use, even though that use was not frequent. ‘I am not a ghost!’ Venden shouted, and a small flock of sparrs took flight, and something larger scurried in the canopy thirty steps to his left. He smiled, pleased that they agreed and content with his own reality.

The shadow inside seemed to lean forward and take note. Venden felt the blank space in his soul that did not belong to him swelling and shifting, and the attention from there was harsher than ever before. He glanced around, but the eyes focused on him were not from without. The sense of being watched was something he had carried with him ever since he could remember – it was one of his earliest memories – but at moments like this it made his skin crawl, and gave him reason to run. He halted instead, breathing deeply and squeezing his eyes closed.
It’s just another part of me
, he thought, as always.
Just a part of me I don’t yet know … my older self, waiting to meet me …

Venden walked on, not a ghost but never quite himself.

They headed south, away
from the sea and deep into a continent where Milian had never set foot during her first life. Bouncing along in the back of one of the wagons, she lay with her eyes closed, trying to cast aside terrible memories. All that time lying asleep in the cave, she had dreamed. And now, awake at last, those dreams had left their taint.

She opened her eyes, and the woman and child were staring down at her. Milian was taller than average, her features wider, and her skin was paler than most on Alderia. But these people seemed untroubled by her appearance, and perhaps they were unaware that she was Skythian.
I wonder if there are even any Skythians left
, she thought, shocked at the idea.

The woman spoke, forming her strange words slowly and deliberately, but still Milian could not understand. She shrugged and shook her head, touching her ears again. The boy giggled and copied her. Milian smiled, touched her nose, and the boy did the same. He shrieked in delight. She sighed, he sighed. She laughed, he laughed, and she found that simple act of laughter illuminated the darkness.

The shard of Aeon is still within me, but I am whole again. The daemon is long gone. Perhaps the things I did
–
the things
it
did
–
went with it.
The shard nestled, piercing her heart and soul and the landscape of her memories, but dormant for a time. Silent.

The woman started forming some sort of sign language, but Milian shrugged again. She felt her heavy breasts moving beneath the scruffy clothing, and the woman’s disquiet took on new tones. She eyed Milian up and down, and the species of fear in her eyes was obvious. But the last thing on Milian’s mind was fucking.

They’re not the ones
, she thought of the two men steering the wagons. The thought echoed again with the shard’s influence. Never
quite
dormant, it seemed.

Later, Milian was woken from an unsettled sleep by cries of delight and children’s laughter. She blinked herself awake and groaned as she worked stiffness from her joints, warmed
her muscles by tensing and moving. Whatever strange influence had allowed her to hibernate for so long and emerge alive had not yet driven all signs of age from her body.
Only on the outside, perhaps.
If they cut her open, she might be grey and dead.

She crawled across the bedding and clothes strewn around the covered wagon’s interior and pushed open the small wood-framed door. She realised that they had stopped moving, and when she stepped out onto the wide wooden deck at the back of the large vehicle, she understood why.

The two families stood off to one side, the adult couples holding hands, children dancing and leaping under the multi-coloured sky. There was a river not far away, its gentle movement audible in the background, and it glowed with sunlight as if possessed of a sun itself. The gently undulating landscape was interrupted in a score of places by tall, thin spires, their wider bases supported by heavy buttresses, doorways and window openings shadowing their entire heights. But it was the pinnacles and what danced above them that grasped Milian’s attention, and held it for a long time.

Rainbows played through the air. Flexing, melding, fading and reforming, sheets of light frolicked from one spire’s top to another, arcing high above with a sound like a giant walking through fallen leaves. The hairs on Milian’s arms and neck stood on end, bristling. She caught her breath and held it, and for a panicked moment a rush of thoughts sickened her:
If I breathe that in, if it touches me, if it leaks down from there and drowns me.
But the fear was momentary, because the adults and children looked back at her as one, and grinned. The tall man who had first found her shouted something and laughed, and waved a hand at the sky as if fearing she had not seen. But how could she not? Milian stood alone on that wooden deck for a while longer, watching the display and
feeling a sadness inside her, stirred and reborn by the certainty that she had no memories this wonderful of Skythe.

It had been a beautiful place, but much of the beauty evaded her now. Most of those vague, ancient-feeling memories from before the daemon and the shard revolved around something growing dark, or things going wrong.

The sight inspired tears, and the distortion only made the flailing, sweeping light-show more wonderful.
I am truly alive again
, she thought, revelling in the wonder. The light and colours dipped down as if to bounce from the spires’ highest points, then streaked up into the sky once more. It was lightning with colour, and lacking the violence.

Milian examined the closest spire some more, focusing on the openings she could see pocking its surface from the ground all the way up to its highest point. They betrayed no light, and when the colours were right they illuminated part-way inside. There was no sign of anyone standing at the doorways watching the display. Maybe the strange buildings were abandoned or never meant for habitation. Or perhaps the people inside were used to the display, and would not give it a second glance. It shocked Milian that such beauty might be ignored.

She closed her eyes and the colours still danced.

The families returned to the wagons, flushed with excitement and chattering amongst themselves. The tall man grinned at Milian, and it was the nervous sideways glance at his wife that betrayed his thoughts. She would have to be careful. She had no wish to cause a problem. They were taking her south, and the shard seemed happy with that direction.

The slayers were pursuing them, intent on slashing Bon’s throat and spilling his guts to the ground, and the man who had made it his mission to save them might be mad. And yet Bon
found that he was enjoying these moments alone with Lechmy Borle.

‘Leki,’ Bon said, voice low. ‘Over here. I’ve never seen anything like this.’

They had worked their way through the half-collapsed doorway, and discovered that there was a set of steps leading down. The cellar was a complex of eight rooms, three of which had been buried by tumbled ceilings. But the others were surprisingly free of damage. Time had imprinted itself in these places – mineral stalactites drooped from the ceilings, pale and delicate, and there were traces of animals’ nests and dens in every room – but considering they were more than six centuries old, most of the rooms were surprisingly well preserved.

Leki had found the torches, and lit them with her flint.
I wonder if the last person to carry this was Skythian
, Bon had wondered as she handed him a blazing torch, and the idea was both thrilling and chilling. He could not help wondering what had become of them. Killed by the Kolts, perhaps – those Skythians driven to murderous frenzy by Aeon’s destruction. Such a fate was beyond imagining.

‘What have you found?’ Leki asked. She crossed the room, kicking through grit and rubble and uncovering the remains of the intricate tiled floor. There were mosaic designs there, but Bon hadn’t been able to make them out in any detail.

‘I think this must have been their Aeon shrine,’ Bon said. He nodded at the wall, and Leki added her light to his. There were gorgeous images in ceramics, their colours as brash and bright as the day they were created, and all of them displayed wondrous scenes of Skythian landscapes, wildlife and plants. The animals were powerful, the plants lush and blooming, and much of what he saw was a mystery to him. There were similar species on Alderia, but others were unknown. They had
vanished from the world, but still existed here, a frozen history. Bon’s breath caught and he swallowed, a lump in his throat. ‘This is everything they lost. Everything we took from them.’

‘Not “us”,’ Leki said. ‘You and I didn’t take anything.’

‘The Ald. Leaders of Alderia. Same thing.’

‘Six hundred years ago,’ Leki said. ‘You still truly blame a race for actions that old?’

‘Don’t you?’ Bon asked, aghast.

‘I blame the Ald now for continuing to blame the Skythians for what happened here, yes. But when they used magic back then, they were doing what they thought best. They didn’t know whether Aeon would be benevolent or not.’

‘So they killed it,’ Bon said. ‘And faced with the same thing now? Don’t you think the Ald would do exactly what they did then, to protect their Fade?’

‘Protect a lie from a lie,’ Leki said. ‘Yes, I suppose they would. That’s what depresses me most, you know. Always has. The fact that everything that happened to this place happened because of one false belief facing off against another.’

‘You don’t believe Aeon really appeared.’

‘Do you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Bon replied, because he didn’t yet want to say yes. But he’d spent years reading forbidden books about the war and its causes, and speaking to academics who had spent their whole lives living a secret. And yes, he
did
believe that Aeon had appeared, because why else would the Ald back then have launched something so devastating against Skythe, and something with such unpredictable results? They would not have used magic to wipe out a rumour, a faith that had always existed. They would have used it to destroy the
root
of that faith – Aeon. The appearance of the Skythian god
had proved them, and their Fade religion, wrong. And they could not stand for that.