The Heretic Land (31 page)

‘We should talk as we walk,’ Leki said. She was looking around the clearing like a trapped bird now, alert and anxious.

‘I’m not sure I …’ Bon said. He closed his eyes, but his son was still gone.

‘He’s dead,
Bon,’ Leki said. ‘As dead as you’ve believed him to be these past years.’

‘But he’s done something.’ Bon opened his eyes again. The clearing looked so empty, sparse, as if something vital had been removed from it that might never be replaced.

‘Yes, he has.’

‘Why are you here?’ Bon asked. ‘What are you looking for? Who sent you? If you believe that was Aeon, how come you still work for the Ald? And I didn’t think the Spike recruited floaters.’

Leki ignored his use of the derogatory word for amphys, and it hung between them like a sour smell. It tasted bad in his mouth.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘I’ll tell you, Bon. But can we agree on something first – we have to follow that thing?’

‘Follow Aeon,’ Bon said, and it felt ridiculous to suggest anything else. Of course they had to follow the risen god. It was what he had spent his life believing in, researching, mourning. And Venden had given his life for Aeon to walk again. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Then come on,’ she said. ‘Everything else can wait until we’re moving. Come
on
!’

Leki moved off, and Bon followed. He walked backwards for a moment, looking at the last place Venden might have called home. He hoped his son had found happiness here, of a sort, but he would never know.

He turned his back on the cliff and followed Leki. They passed the dead tree and the wound in the ground from where Aeon had torn itself to leave, standing to an impossible height, running with impossible limbs and disappearing as though it had never been here at all. They passed the smear that was all that was left of the male slayer, and off to the left Bon saw
their other pursuer, head parted from her body by Leki’s vicious attack.

They might write songs about today
, Bon thought as they left that place. Leki was running, and he struggled to keep up, determined to survive to hear those songs.

Bon expected to find Juda’s body at any moment. He’d seen the man struck by the slayer’s arrow, fall, then rise again and flee shouting, screaming, as the arrow’s poison seeped into his system and started attacking his vital organs. Leki’s dismissal of him had felt harsh, but his death was assured, and so there was no reason for her to consider him further.

Perhaps she had seen and known many dead people.

But they did not discover his body. Once, Leki paused and pointed out a splash of blood on a plant’s leaf, careful not to touch it herself. But she followed the more obvious trail made by Aeon, rather than tracking the still-wet traces of doomed Juda. Poisoned, even carrion creatures would not touch him. He would rot into the land.

Leki did not keep her promise that they could talk while they were moving. They ran too quickly to talk, and whenever Bon urged her to slow down she either shook her head, or ignored him completely. She was so much more than he had ever suspected, and the idea that he could never trust her again came as a shock.

Initially, Aeon’s route was easy to follow. Its limbs had made obvious marks as it ran – impact depressions, prints in soft soil or mud, crushed plants. Occasionally, a footprint was still smeared red with the remains of the slayer. They found a shred of scalp and a bent knife. But the reality of what had happened was still blurred, too close for true analysis and acceptance. The haze of madness he thought he might welcome
in was, he realised, of a very personal kind. This was self-preservation.

‘What are you going to do if you catch up?’ Bon asked, but Leki did not reply.

The footprints grew further apart. Several times they had to backtrack to the previous print and search outward for the next. There seemed to be no design to the directions Aeon had taken, and it appeared to turn on a whim.

The landscape around them was silent, observing, perhaps stunned into immobility by what had passed.

Leki became more frustrated and anxious, muttering to herself and only glancing at Bon if he offered an opinion, or asked a question. The sun was close to setting, and though they had followed a series of prints across the Skythian landscape, they were no closer to setting eyes on Aeon.

‘I’ve lost it,’ she said at last. They had paused beside a small lake, smudges of pastel sunlight reflecting from the water and shimmering where fish broke the surface and jumped for insects.

‘The last track wasn’t far back,’ Bon said.

‘And if it goes that way, it’s beyond us to follow,’ Leki said, indicating the lake. ‘And if it doubled back, or made a turn along the lake’s shores, it’s too dark to see.’ She was struggling with something, an internal conflict that Bon felt he was not part of. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘No what?’

‘I’ve wasted too much time already.’ She looked at Bon, and it felt like she was seeing him for the first time since her fight with the slayer. ‘Bon, I need to do something, and I’d like you to help.’

‘That depends,’ he said.

‘Yes. Of course it does.’ Leki paced back and forth, wet ground sucking at her boots. A flock of birds swooped across the lake,
competing with the jumping fish for the clouds of insects buzzing above the mirrored water. Something howled in the distance. Songbirds mourned the passing of the day from their perches in a woodland further along the shore. It seemed to Bon that Skythe had returned to itself, which perhaps meant that Aeon was no longer close by.

‘What do you need to do?’ Bon asked. Something had chilled him.

‘Bon.’ Leki stopped pacing and stood before him, her back to the sinking sun. She was a silhouette. He found he could read her easier that way. ‘Bon, Aeon is something that was never meant to rise. When the Ald put it down so long ago, they thought it was for ever. There has never been doubt about that, although there were those who chose caution over certainty.’

‘And that’s why you’re here.’

‘I’m one of the cautious ones. And because I choose not to put my fate in the hands of gods that I know to be false, I volunteered to come here. Investigate. Just … keep track of what’s happening on Skythe.’

‘Don’t the Ald have enough agents here to do that?’

‘Not ones who know what to look for.’

‘And not ones who know the true story, right?’

‘Right.’ Leki nodded.

‘So you acknowledge all that? The magic the Ald drew with the Engines, destroying Aeon, creating the Kolts. Then the Kolt slaughter, and the magic used again to put them down. As an Ald, you admit all that?’

‘I’m not much different from you,’ Leki said softly. ‘We both know a version of the truth. But in mine, Aeon made the Kolts on purpose.
Before
it was put down. It brought them up to fight for it.’

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘Yes,’ Leki said. ‘And to
leave it running loose once again, ready to do what it did last time—’

‘It was your ancestors’ twisting of magic that made the Kolts.’

‘Are you prepared to take that risk?’

‘There’s no risk to take!’

‘Bon. Look.’ Leki shook her head, frustrated. ‘Maybe it’s ready to create an army of Kolts again, or maybe, as you believe, it can’t. Either way, it might want revenge. It has to be put down.’

Bon stared at the amphy’s big, fluid eyes. ‘You’re just as bad as the rest of the Ald,’ he said. ‘Devout or not, you’re still blinded to the truth.’

‘
Everything
I do is for the good of Alderia.’ He could see that she believed. But her ignorance hurt him.

‘And your people set the slayers to kill me. Named me to them as someone to be eliminated.’

‘And that’s why you followed me. Because of who I am.’

Leki blinked at him, glanced away, looked up again. He could see her agonising over what she had to say next, and suddenly he didn’t want to hear it.

‘There were rumours of Aeon amongst the Skythians over the past year, and we have our spies. We’d heard whispers of … Venden Ugane, and what he was supposed to be doing.’

Bon caught his breath, but could not speak. Leki continued.

‘We thought that the best way to find Venden would be to banish his father here, then follow him. I also knew of Juda, and was hoping that he might hear of you. He knows Skythe well, so … I just followed. Came to gather intelligence, and see if there was any truth to the rumours. And …’ She shrugged.

‘You knew Venden was alive,’ Bon whispered.

‘No, Bon. We
heard whispers of his name, that was all.’

‘Whispers amongst the Skythians.’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

Leki looked pained, but had nothing to say. She sighed and came closer. Bon backed away. The more they talked, the less he knew her.

‘You purposely gave my name to the slayers?’

‘A gamble,’ Leki said.

‘Gambling with my life.’

‘And my own!’

Bon shook his head and turned away, wondering how different things would have been if Leki was not there. She had lied so much. He turned back to her and asked, ‘What is it you need to do?’

Leki turned and looked out across the lake. It was very beautiful and, with her back to him, he remembered her as beautiful as well.
It doesn’t mean she’s a bad person
, he thought. But no agent of the Ald could be a friend to him.

‘I need to send word that Aeon has risen.’

‘So that the Ald can come to put it down again. With magic. With the Engines.’

‘New Engines,’ she said. ‘That thing Juda showed us was …’

‘A relic?’

‘Yes. Dangerous, and unknown. The new Engines are more … attuned to magic.’

‘They’ve never stopped playing with it, have they?’ Bon asked, and a cool fear settled across his soul. ‘Venden always said that. He always suspected.’

‘I don’t know everything,’ Leki said. She still faced away from him. Her voice was harsh, but Bon thought perhaps it was because of tears.

Anger rose and
fell in waves, and tears came when he was struck with a sudden, unexpected memory of Venden grasping his hand as they walked along the banks of the Gakota River. Older, more innocent times, when history was just that. Now, history had returned.

‘You’d bring the Spike here.’

‘Can we leave a …
thing
like that free, knowing what hate it might harbour?’

‘You can’t even use the word god.’

‘Then I’m more of an unbeliever than you. Can you call it a god when you can touch it? See it?’

Bon lifted a hand and indicated the lake. ‘So touch it. See it.’

Leki sighed and came closer to Bon. This time he did not step back, but neither did he react when she placed a tender hand on his face.

‘The Spike are
already
coming,’ she said, sounding uncertain, perhaps even afraid. ‘They set sail days after me. I’m just … advance intelligence.’

‘You’ve been in contact with them already?’ Bon gasped.

‘Several times, when I’ve been alone.’

‘How?’

‘That’s what I want you to help me with.’ She took his hand and lifted it, kissed it. ‘Please, Bon.’

Bon did not reply. He thought through what she had said, and wondered how much sense it made. About Aeon, and why it was back, and whether revenge was a part of its aim. The idea of that was terrible, because, much as he hated the Ald and what they stood for, Alderia was his home. He could not bear to see harm visited upon it.

Can you call it a god when you can touch it?
Leki had asked.
Yes
, Bon thought.

Leki sighed at his silence. ‘At least don’t try to stop me.’ If there was
threat in her voice it was cool, and camouflaged.

It turned out she did not really need Bon at all. She said she did – told him to stand in a certain place, hold a certain small, metallic valve which she produced from her pocket, and he silently helped – but, in reality, she did everything herself. Asking him to help was asking him to accept, and in observing, he feared he gave tacit approval.

I should be stopping this. I should
do
something.

But Bon’s mind was still distant from things, and he could not answer his own silent self-condemnation. Leki was unusual – an atheistic Ald, believing in the good of Alderia. And whatever knowledge she had withheld about Venden, she seemed to care about Bon.

He had heard of racking, and knew that the Ald and Spike used it for keeping their extensive networks in touch across Alderia. Its use was forbidden by civilians or those not involved in government business, and the shoot dust necessary for racking was a rare compound. He had never believed that he would see the act performed himself, but even so his interest was slight. More important was the information that Leki would send, and the result of that communication. He was witnessing Skythe’s history changing again.

‘There must be another way,’ he said, but Leki merely took the valve from his hand and inserted it into the apparatus.

She must have carried a component in each pocket. Set up at four corners of a square, the valves were stuck into the ground three handwidths apart. Leki made a cursory effort to clear some of the grass and loose soil within the square, then she extracted a long, flexible tube from her sleeve.

‘The shoot dust,’ Bon said.

Leki nodded. ‘Not much left.’ She popped a stopper on the tube,
then carefully sprinkled two lines of dust along the square’s intersecting diagonals.

‘I hear rumour it’s still living,’ Bon said.

‘It’s the crushed eggs of fleeting lizards,’ Leki said. ‘About as alive as hair we’ll cut off and discard.’

He’d heard talk of fleeting lizards, but had never been interested enough to investigate further. The Ald – and especially its army, the Spike – was surrounded with rumours of arcane knowledge and technology, of which the steam weapons were most visible.

‘I went on a hunt, once,’ she said. ‘I was basic training with the Spike, and the Blader took us down into the caverns beneath New Kotrugam. Deep down.’ She worked the square as she spoke, making sure the dust lines were straight and the steam valves properly primed. She was ready to perform a racking now, but Bon realised she wanted to tell him this story. As a matter of trust, perhaps. Or simply an admission. ‘There were hints that many had gone deeper, and we’d heard the rumours, of course.’