ARC: Sunstone (13 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

I

Horada stood at the edge of a small cluster of trees and shivered as she looked across the expanse of countryside separating her and the large Forest of Bream, two days’ ride to the west. Between them lay the hamlet of Franberg, her current destination.

Even though whatever had been following her had come awfully close to finding her in the trees, she still felt more comfortable within them, as if the Arbor itself had sent its children to protect her. But out there, in the fields where there was little cover and an unusual bout of light rain, she would be exposed and vulnerable, an easy target for whatever strange entity it had been that had decided that stopping her reaching Heartwood was its ultimate goal.

Still, she couldn’t stand there all day. Her only hope, she felt, was to keep going and put some distance between her and her stalker.

She nudged Mara forward with her knees, aware that the horse also appeared strangely reluctant to leave the forest’s skirts, and guided her along the pathway leading between the two hills ahead of her. The rain, which was more like a heavy mist really, soon soaked into her cloak and made it hang heavily, but Horada didn’t mind the weather. Oddly, in contrast to what she had felt before exiting the forest, she found her spirits lifting the further they went, her mood echoed in the way Mara’s ears pricked up and her tail swished as she trotted along in a lively fashion.

She puzzled on this as they passed the fields of wheat, the ripening sheaves a blurred golden yellow through the rain. She remembered that moment she had tried to open her eyes in the forest, the heat she had felt on her skin, and the way the leaves had been turned to ash when the tree finally released her. And there was also the information that Julen had imparted, about there being strange fires springing up all over the place.

Unbeknown to her mother, Horada and her father had often discussed the Darkwater Lords’ invasion in great depth. Chonrad had confessed to his daughter that Procella didn’t really understand the love-hate connection he had with the Arbor, and he didn’t want to burden her with things she couldn’t – or wouldn’t – understand. But Horada’s willingness to listen, and the fact that she seemed to comprehend what had happened, meant that he had told her everything of the events of twenty-two years ago.

The history had rung a bell deep inside Horada, her understanding somehow more than just mere comprehension. It spoke to something within her, in her blood maybe, an emotion or a knowledge concerning the elements and the balance that the Arbor tried to control that Chonrad hadn’t needed to put into words. She had known intuitively that the wars and the people’s disconnection with the land had led to the imbalance which had subsequently made the rise of water possible.

And now, just as instinctively, she knew the same thing was happening with fire.

She lifted her face and let the misty rain fall on it. Perhaps this was why she felt more at ease in the open air? Even though she had thought the Arbor could not protect her out here, somehow the wet weather meant the fire elemental – if there were such a thing – would not be able to travel, or at least its power would be subdued, like throwing a bucket of water at a house on fire.

She thought about what Julen had said about another attack on Heartwood and the Arbor. That was worrying, because the Arbor itself had broken down the Temple that protected it, telling her father it did not need protecting in that way. It had told Chonrad that, providing the love of the people for the land was strong, it could defend itself. And since then, the Heartwood Council, headed by Dolosus, had made great efforts to maintain the Nodes, honour the Veriditas greening ceremony and keep the energies flowing. So what had gone wrong?

She pondered on the question as Mara trotted through the puddles, heading for the hamlet of Franberg. Country lanes diverted every now and then from the main road, and they passed the occasional house or workers in the field who raised their hands as she passed, but otherwise the road remained quiet, with no sign of anyone following her, even though she looked over her shoulder frequently to check.

She arrived in Franberg as the sun was beginning to set and went straight to the small inn. The innkeeper’s son took Mara to rub her down and feed her, and the innkeeper’s wife sat Horada in front of the fire with a plate of stew and cup of ale. She tried to engage her in conversation, and Horada chatted for a while, finding out that there had been a few fires in the neighbourhood recently, which the woman thought strange because they had seemed to spring up out of nowhere.

The woman finally went back to sweeping the floors and serving the other couple of travellers in the inn, and Horada finished her stew and curled up in the chair, tired and comfortable.

She studied the fire as her aching bones – unaccustomed to hours in the saddle – gradually began to relax and her eyelids drooped. The flames leapt around the log like dancing figures, dressed in yellow, orange and red. She watched as they danced higher and higher, the figures more twisting and writhing than dancing, like tortured souls bound by invisible chains.

Something thrummed in her ears, a rumbling like the tremors that could supposedly be heard in the middle of the Spina Mountains. They passed up through the legs of the chair and vibrated through her, until her heartbeat seemed to match the steady pounding like a deep bass drum. For a brief moment it was as if her body had melted and soaked into the ground and become one with the earth – she felt that if she stretched out her arms she would be able to touch the sea on one side of Laxony and the mountains on the other. It was a glorious sensation, a merging, and her heart swelled.

Almost immediately, a noise filled her ears – a bellowing roar, like the backdraft of a fire as it engulfs a house. Heat swept over her, as if the flame had entered her fingertips and travelled along her arteries and veins. Pain made her open her mouth in a soundless scream as her whole body stiffened. She was going to burn…

And a voice said, “Halt!” and abruptly the roaring noise stopped, the pain dissolved and the heat disappeared. She opened her eyes slowly, panting with exertion, only then realising her eyes had been closed.

In the inn, a man stood before her, dressed in a long light grey cloak topped with leather bracers and straps across his body, and a hood that covered his face.

She pushed herself to her feet and glanced around. The half-dozen people in the room looked like statues, frozen in various poses, and the air had a strange, shimmering quality to it.

She looked back at the man.

“Hello, Horada,” he said.

Heart thumping, she glanced around again, noting that the people still hadn’t moved. “Who are you? What have you done to everyone?”

“I have done nothing to them,” he said, his deep voice mellow and soothing to her frayed nerves. “The Arbor has paused the passage of time to enable us to have a conversation. And in answer to your first question, my name is Cinereo. I am from the Nox Aves.”

She recalled the name of the group from Julen’s conversation, although not the name of the man. She couldn’t think what to say. In front of her, the air glimmered as if the sun had highlighted silver dust motes. A shiver ran through her. Something magical was happening, way beyond her understanding. But if the man standing before her
was
from the Nox Aves, she knew she could trust him.

“What do you need from me?” she asked. “I want to help. What can I do?”

The air shimmered around him. “The wheels are in motion,” he said, “the chess pieces are moving into place. It is nearly time, Horada.”

“What can I do?” she repeated.

He passed his hand in front of her in an arc, and the air glittered again. An image appeared before them. She had not seen anything like it before, but her father had described one to her once when he had journeyed to the University of Ornestan many years before.

It was an hourglass. It tipped slowly in the air, the sand trickling from one bulb to the other, marking time.

She stared at it, not knowing what it represented in this context. “I do not understand,” she murmured.

“You are the Timekeeper,” Cinereo said, his voice deepening, resonating through her.

“The Timekeeper?” She watched the hourglass turn, the movement reminding her of the wheel of the stars in the sky above her head at night.

“You must be ready.” His form shimmered, and for the first time his voice sounded faint. “They are coming, Horada. The Incendi – the fire elementals – they use the Arbor’s roots to move through space and time. They use them to find you.”

Her eyes widened. “That is who was following me in the forest?”

“Yes.” He disappeared, then reappeared briefly. “You have a natural link to the Arbor. But be careful how you use it – the Incendi are coming!”

He vanished.

At the same time, Horada opened her eyes to see the fire in the grate leap up a foot high. She stood so suddenly her chair toppled over, only then realising that the people in the room had started to move again, and were exclaiming as the fire spat scarlet embers across the floor to light the rushes. Flames sprung up all around the room, and in her half-daze, Horada was sure she could see figures within them.

The innkeeper’s wife squealed, grabbed a bucket and dashed outside, and Horada followed suit, finding a pail outside the front door and following her to the large water butt to one side of the building. They dipped the buckets and ran back into the inn, and proceeded to douse the floor with water.

For a brief moment, Horada thought they weren’t going to be able to get the blaze under control and she was going to be responsible for burning down the whole inn, but then the flames gradually sputtered and died, and the emergency was over.

They put down the pails, panting and wide-eyed. Horada wrapped her arms around herself, close to tears.

The innkeeper came forward and rubbed the top of her arms. “It is all right, no damage has been done.”

“They found me,” Horada said, shaking.

The innkeeper’s wife frowned. “Who found you?”

But Horada couldn’t reply, knowing none of what she said would make any sense. Had it all been a figment of her imagination, a dream born out of tiredness and exhaustion? Or had Cinereo really been there? There was no way of knowing, and because of that she couldn’t afford to stay there any longer and put herself – and all these people – in jeopardy.

“I have to leave,” she said, turning to pick up her bag. “Please, let me give you some money in compensation for the mess.”

The innkeeper’s wife waved a hand, concerned. “It is my fault the fire was not well tended – I should have placed a guard around it. Please, stay a little longer.”

Horada took out some coins and shoved them into the woman’s hand. “No, I have to go.” Too upset to talk further, she walked out of the inn and round to the stable to collect Mara, led her to the road, mounted and set off at a fast trot, aware of the innkeeper’s wife’s anxious face watching her as she left.

Tears poured down her cheeks, joining with the rain, which had grown heavier since she had arrived at the hamlet. What was happening to her? Had Cinereo spoken the truth? Were these Incendi really hunting her down?

And what had he meant by calling her the Timekeeper?

II

Catena’s uneasiness grew the more miles they put between themselves and Harlton.

She had thought she would enjoy the adventure of travelling all the way to Heartwood, seeing the changing countryside, meeting new people, new places. But instead she found the whole process unsettling. The food – even in the cities – tasted different: bland and without the usual spices she was accustomed to. The air, absent of the tang of metal from the forges and the dust from the mines, smelled strangely sweet, reminding her of the cloying odour of rotting meat. Her joints ached from too many hours in the saddle, and the water in the bathhouses was never hot enough to relieve it. The wine was sour. Even the beds were uncomfortable.

She had thought the experience of meeting people from other lands would be exciting, but ultimately she discovered the inhabitants of all cities had the same old prejudices – the same bad attitudes, the same grumpy moods and irritations with life – as anyone else in her home country. The sense of humour was different, and they made jokes about things that left her staring blankly. The men seemed lewd, the women interested only in what other women were wearing and which members of the opposite sex were available for marriage. She could find nothing to connect with them at all, and longed to return home. She had thought her life in Harlton dull at times, but now she ached for her rooms in the castle, for the peace and quiet of daily life, for the nights she would spend patrolling the castle walls, letting her thoughts trail off into the star-scattered sky.

Part of her unease was due to the strange story that Demitto had told her, and the events of a few nights before. When they had reached the safety of the city of Realberg, Demitto had sat down with them both to tell Tahir what he knew. As the story had unravelled, it had become very clear that he had not told her everything. He revealed that the Incendi elementals were able to manifest by entering people – that anyone around them could in fact be an Incendi, and the only way they could tell was the eyes, which always lit with the fire that raged within them.

Catena had exploded with rage, demanding to know why he hadn’t told her this essential piece of information. The emissary had just shrugged in his usual inimitable fashion and said he had told her what he thought she could deal with at the time.

Catena had told him icily that she would decide what she could and couldn’t deal with and, as she was the one in charge of escorting the Prince until they got to Heartwood, Demitto was not to withhold information from her any longer. He had nodded, straight-faced, but she knew he would not impart anything further unless he decided it was time.

Since then, she had hardly spoken two words to him, spending her time instead focussing on Tahir, who had been badly shaken by the assault outside Realberg’s walls and by the revelations that Demitto had given him. The four Heartwood knights accompanying them had died in the skirmish outside Realberg, and she could see that Tahir thought himself responsible because of the way he had connected with the Arbor.

The Prince – who was still pretty much a boy even though his fourteenth birthday loomed – was facing an immense moment of his life; after all, not many people had the knowledge of exactly what day they were due to die on. Being Selected was not his choice, and it wasn’t even as if he could approach being sacrificed in privacy or with only herself to accompany him. Instead, he had to do it all in public so everyone could see the fear that would no doubt show itself at the moment of his death.

Everything else was irrelevant, she decided. Tahir’s peace of mind in the days leading to the Veriditas was all that mattered, and the only thing for which she was responsible. And she wasn’t even responsible for that, really – her only task was to ensure that he arrived at Heartwood in one piece. His emotional state did not rest in her hands. And yet she was the closest thing to a friend he had, and she found she could not abandon the boy or ignore his well-being just because she was impatient to return home.

After their argument, Demitto had left her alone, and he travelled mostly in silence. Most of the time he seemed lost in thought, his mood seemingly darkening the closer they got to Heartwood.

Catena pretended to ignore him, but she made sure to watch him carefully. At the time of his little revelation on the night she’d caught him communicating with Cinereo, she had believed him wholeheartedly, caught up in his spell the same way she knew Tahir had been. But she could see Demitto was a skilled manipulator, and therefore she was aware he must also be affecting the way she thought, too.

Was it purely through the power of words that he had been able to convince her? She wasn’t sure. There was no doubt he had a strange…
quality
she couldn’t put her finger on. It was more than a charming personality or a knack for turning conversation. The Prince was besotted with the emissary – she could see it in his eyes – and she had watched Demitto play on his emotions and use them to get what he wanted. And she was certain he had done the same to her, to convince her that he was the hero in all this.

There was something about the mysterious ambassador she did not trust. It was only after the attack outside Realberg that she remembered the way his eyes had been filled with flame when she had interrupted his strange ritual. And even though his story made a kind of strange, surreal sense, and he had joined in with the fight against their attackers, she could not be convinced that everything he said was the truth. There was no doubt he hadn’t told her everything. What other important information was he withholding?

With every mile and every minute that passed, her concerns grew. They played on a lifetime’s worth of suspicion of Heartwood and the holy tree, of stories told by travelling merchants of the way the city had fallen to depravity. She wanted to believe in the Arbor and its power, but how could she when young, innocent children were picked without choice as its sacrifices simply because their father offered more money than anyone else? How was that religious or holy or dignified? How was it something that she – as a follower of Animus – should believe in?

And why should she deliver Tahir to Heartwood only to have him offered for sacrifice like some kind of crude entertainment for a king who did not deserve the title? Demitto had admitted to her the chicanery of the celebrations, and however much he insisted the meaning beneath them was true and noble, she began to find it more and more difficult to think of handing Tahir over to dance for his supper like a bear in chains.

The boy had withdrawn into himself, going a little crazy, she thought, as the event to come played on his mind. His previous arrogance had faded away like mist, and she began to realise how much of it had been a result of his loneliness and isolation in the castle, his haughtiness a by-product of his efforts to show everyone he didn’t care that he had few – if any – friends of his own age to play with. She began to wish she had taken more time to get to know him, and now, as she rode beside him and thought about how his mother had not shed even one tear when he left, her heart went out to him.

By the time they reached Lornberg, Catena had made up her mind. Tahir was bleary-eyed and in a half-trance most of the time, and she was sure fear was the main cause. The boy did not deserve to die, and certainly not for a cause that she wasn’t sure she believed in any longer. What use would he be to the Arbor, other than to act as manure? There was nothing spiritual about his sacrifice, and therefore surely they could find somebody else to fulfil the role.

Gairovald, Tahir’s father, would be furious if the ceremony didn’t go ahead and would see it as a public humiliation. If she decided to take this action, she would not be able to return to Harlton. She would have to take Tahir away somewhere, find a job in another city or maybe even working on a farm, and live in relative obscurity. Much as she knew she would miss her old rooms and job, the idea appealed to her, and she was certain the thought of escaping would be a relief to him.

She dwelt briefly on Demitto and wondered how far he would pursue them before deciding it would be easier to find another sacrifice. He could talk until he was blue in the face about destiny and fate and what was meant to be, but ultimately if Tahir vanished, the emissary would have to find a replacement. Let someone else give up their life for others’ entertainment.

That night, they found lodgings in a hamlet just north of Lornberg, two small rooms in an inn. Demitto kept the Prince with him at all times now, ostensibly to protect him from the Incendi, but Catena thought secretly that he was afraid the boy would try to escape at the last minute once he realised how little his sacrifice actually meant. She would not be able to get him out of the room without Demitto waking.

So she slipped a little packet of herbs into his ale.

The enigmatic emissary snored louder than Atavus, she discovered. When she crept into the room late in the night, Demitto didn’t even twitch, although Tahir woke as soon as she laid a hand on his arm. He looked younger, she thought, without his fine clothes, his face untouched by the frown lines he had gained when awake.

“What is the matter?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. His hand automatically strayed to Atavus’s fur as the dog came over to see what all the fuss was about, tail wagging.

“Dress and come with me,” she whispered. “Quietly now.”

He stared at her, puzzled, but did as she bid and slipped on his tunic and breeches while she stuffed the remainder of his belongings in his bag. She wrapped his cloak around his shoulders and held out her hand, and he blinked and took it, following her out of the inn into the cool night air, Atavus at his side.

“Where are we going?” he asked when they were outside.

She stopped and turned him to face her. “Tahir, do you want to go to Heartwood?”

He stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, for the first time in your life, someone is asking you: do you want to be a Selected?”

He said nothing for a moment. The Light Moon hung low in the sky, three quarters full, and the Dark Moon was just rising in the west. The clear sky glittered with stars, but the night was warm, unusually so. The thought of the Incendi flickered through Catena’s mind, but she pushed it away impatiently.

“It is my destiny,” Tahir said eventually.

“It has been decided it is your destiny by your father and the King of Heartwood who is accepting your sacrifice in exchange for gold,” she said flatly. “That is not destiny. It is a transaction.”

She took his hands and looked earnestly into his golden eyes, which shone almost silver in the moonlight. “You are just a boy teetering on the edge of adulthood. You deserve to have a life, to fall in love, to have children if that is your wish, to have adventures, see the world. To live until old age. Not to be public entertainment in a pointless ritual. I know the ambassador tried to convince you that ultimately what you are doing has meaning, and that you have some affection for him. It is your choice. So I ask you once again. Do you want to be a Selected?”

The Prince blinked and looked across at the Light Moon for a moment. Then he looked back at her.

“No,” he said simply.

Catena smiled. “Then come. We shall leave Demitto behind, and find ourselves another life to live.”