Dark Heart (36 page)

He had begged the voice in his head to erase the memories. They had instead blurred together into a gory pastiche. Whether this was a product of his own mind or some sadistic intent of the voice, he could not tell.

Or maybe the cause of his blurriness was the constant, disconcerting alteration of the rules of reality. Nomansland had always played by its own rules, and their shepherding there had been frightening but not surprising. But storms and whirlwinds, vanishing lakes and fireballs, not to mention supernatural strength and an orgy of bloody death—all these served to separate him from the comfort of the real.

So the giant wave, towering above the cliff and the tea house, made surprisingly little impression on Duon’s weary mind. He began running only because the voice in his head took over his nervous system, impelling his legs. A glance behind revealed the foaming water rearing above them like an angry stallion; he turned away and so felt rather than saw the wave crash to the ground.
Don’t look,
he told himself, but the thump pulled his head around.

The bulk of the wave had come down on the tea house. The structure had vanished under a white explosion that appeared to be erupting up and out from the clifftop. Running figures covered the hillside above the coast; most well clear of the water. Like him, many of them paused to watch the spectacle. And to watch the fate of those not so fortunate, who had not taken to their heels at the first indication of trouble.

Lenares was one such. Just below him, Duon could see Torve hopping from foot to foot, clearly desperate to rescue the cosmographer, but something restrained him. Dryman, no doubt. The man held an unhealthy, uncanny sway over the Omeran and no command of Duon’s had been able to break it.

The remaining power of the wave washed up towards the struggling girl. There seemed comparatively little strength left in it, but it hit her with force and took the legs out from under her. The wave ran another ten or twenty paces up the hill, then began to draw back. It withdrew from the place Lenares had been standing, but she was no longer there.

The water raced back towards the sea as though pulled by an overstretched cord. It smashed into the ruins of the tea house with as much vehemence as the original wave, and the one remaining wall succumbed, vanishing over the cliff in a flurry of foam, trees and detritus. And bodies, no doubt.

The magician lurking like an eel in the crevices of his mind began to laugh, puffing like a bellows.
Out to sea like a piece of wood in a flood,
he said, sharing his delight with Duon.
That girl could have ruined everything.

Duon realised the next few moments would be crucial, not only for his own survival, but also perhaps in thwarting whatever assault the gods were perpetrating on the world. The thought surged through his mind as an unvoiced feeling, and now he could try—
had
to try—the mental technique he’d devised during the days and weeks on the road north; days he’d been left alone by the voice save for a few brief checks. An answer, possibly, to the question: how does one mislead someone residing in one’s head?

He augmented the images in his head, feigning relief as Lenares fell into the foaming water and disappeared, to be sucked, along with beams, bushes and bodies, over the cliff. He imagined her, fearful and already half-drowned, tumbling down towards dark rocks. A moment of abject terror, then pain, disintegration and darkness.

I thought you were sympathetic to her,
the magician said.

She was a valuable asset to my Emperor, so I tolerated her,
Duon sent earnestly.
But three months on the road taught me that usefulness is no substitute for true humanity. She irked me beyond belief in the last few weeks. No one here will mourn her passing.

Is that so? I ought to have paid more attention. Perhaps you could have done the job for me.

Had you but asked,
Duon sent, desperately masking his feelings.

Ah, I see. Perhaps it is time for me to propose a more formal alliance, and in so doing explain what I am doing in your head.

Of course. But it might be wise to wait until I’m less busy. I will be expected to at least go through the motions of searching for survivors. I don’t imagine this will be of much interest to you.

The magician gave assent to this.
I have other things to attend to. When you have finished your task, you may summon me by speaking the word ‘Deorc’ in the mind-voice you are using now. I will attend you as soon as I am able.

Then came the curious ‘leaving’ sensation as the magician withdrew, as though something moved from the front to the back of his head. The top of Duon’s neck tingled and warmed. Then the parasite was gone and Duon found himself alone.

He blew out a breath. He had no way of knowing what the magician might do if he learned he had been deceived. Fry his mind perhaps, or make him throw himself off a cliff or walk into a bonfire. He dared not make a single mistake.

Now to help the others find Lenares. He had a feeling that without her they were lost.

Drawn by curiosity, an urge to see the patterns and to identify which of the holes it was, Lenares calculated the speed and size of the approaching wave. Her calculation was perfect, as always, but as a result of her curiosity she didn’t have enough time to react to the information the numbers supplied her. She managed to find the trap she’d set, which told her a god had conjured the wave, but wasted precious seconds doing so, and then she was out of time. The water would reach her before she could escape.

Seeing herself as a creature of the mind, Lenares had never paid her body much attention. Some of the cosmographers had primped and pampered their bodies, while others had regarded their fleshly housing as not much more than a nuisance, but primper and ascetic alike had perished in agony in the Valley of the Damned. To pay too much attention to her physical needs, Lenares had decided, was a waste. So she had done nothing to augment her natural fitness, nor had she learned how to run efficiently. Either might have made the difference. Either might have saved her.

She ran as hard as she could, arms and legs flying in all directions, but as soon as her feet started uphill she could feel her strength draining. Ahead of her the Falthans struggled up the slope, the oldest of them borne in Robal’s arms.
Come back for me!
she wanted to shout. The crash behind her was louder and much closer than she had imagined, and a moment later something punched her behind her knees. She tumbled backwards, her legs shooting out from beneath her, and ended up underwater.

She knew about waves like this. She was a cosmographer: it was her job to know about every geographical phenomenon that could be affected by the gods. Such waves were generated by vast, deep movements of the earth, and could appear hours after such quakes. They were little waves while out to sea, according to the few sea captains who had seen them, but when they came ashore they grew enormous, like a tiny mouth opening wide to swallow a large meal.

But knowing about them did nothing to help her survive them. Something hard cracked the back of her skull. She immediately stopped fighting the water and wrapped her arms around her head.

How long can I hold my breath?

Her numbers offered her no answer.

I can’t die. Please! Not when everyone needs my help!

Her legs smacked against some hidden obstacle: the water threw her upwards, and she took a hasty, watery breath before plunging back into the foam. She had seen enough, however, to signal her approaching death. The obstacle had been part of the tea house: the cliff was seconds away.

Lenares screamed with frustration and her mouth filled with water.

Not enough time left even to think…

Then she was falling, surrounded by a circular curtain of water, tumbling towards the sea far below. Two breaths, one, all she had left.

And the water around her slowed, began to resolve into millions of shimmering droplets—a part of her mind was not happy with the imprecise idea of
millions
and set about counting them all—drifting downwards slower than dust motes. She herself had slowed.

So this is what happens in the moment before death.

Her eye was caught by a peculiar arrangement of droplets and foam directly below her. Almost in the shape of a face, a woman’s face, if the shadows of the rocks below weren’t playing a trick on her. Surrounding the image a curtain of water continued to sift gently towards the sea.

Lenares
, the image seemed to say.
Finally we are alone.

‘Daughter?’ she replied, not knowing what else to call her. Definitely the same face she’d seen earlier in the day, outlined in steam.

I have a choice to offer you
, the goddess said, her voice so sweet it seemed to sparkle on Lenares’ tongue.

‘You offered me a choice before, in the tea house,’ said the cosmographer.

So I did. In a way this choice, too, is in the tea house. Look around you, above you.

She looked. Dark shapes encircled her: wreckage from the building atop the cliff, heading with her towards obliteration.

‘Are you slowing time?’

Where I dwell there is no time
, said the Daughter.
It is a beautiful place.

‘You can’t fool me,’ Lenares said. ‘Pelanesse said time and space are the same thing, because space implies time required to cross it. I’ve seen the mathematics. If you don’t experience time, you don’t have a place.’

The goddess smiled.
You would happily argue with me even as you crashed into the rocks below. I like that about you.

Lenares noted the Daughter did not refute her accusation about time and space.

Here is my offer to you
, said the Daughter, her face sparkling madly.
Give me a place in your flesh, so I can touch the world directly. It’s only fair; my brother already has a host among you, and so grows stronger every day. I could ask for so much more. I could demand that we exchange places, that you go into the agony of darkness, where you find yourself smeared across the stars, each point of light a prick of anguish in a body no longer there, while I drink the warmth of your body and learn to be you. I would do a better job of being Lenares, too, much better than you. I’d have Torve on me and in me, again and again; I’d unmask the Son’s host; I’d save the world from him. But I’m not asking that of you.

Not yet, went the unspoken words.

All I want is the chance to battle my brother on equal terms. All I need is a place in your mind. From there we could work together to drive the Son out, to heal the rift in the walls of the world, perhaps even to call the Father back from exile and let the world find balance again.

And then the sweetest enticement of all.

You would know so much
, the Daughter said, her voice caressing Lenares’ ears.
The secrets of the universe are far vaster than anything your mind can imagine. I can share them with you. We can travel together in an instant and sit on the High Seat. You can ask me anything and I will give you answer.

Or you can fall to your death.

They were noticeably closer to the rocks.

Could she time this right?

‘I…I would like to know more,’ Lenares said. ‘More about how the numbers in my mind work, more about why I am different from others. Can you tell me more about those things?’

Of course
, said the goddess, gazing up at Lenares.

Gazing
up
. Everything depended on how aware the Daughter was of the world around her, a world in which she was unwelcome, alien.

Of course. What do you want to know?

‘Why do I think in numbers? Why doesn’t everyone else? What is wrong with them?’

The Daughter’s eyes flashed. Not real eyes, drops of water reflecting light. She said,
Their minds are like the rooms in a house. A person can be in only one room at a time, in a house like theirs. They’re seeing or hearing or tasting or touching or smelling. But in your house there is only one room. Your mind sees and hears and tastes and touches and smells all at the same time. It’s why you have no real memory of your childhood: your mind took far longer than most people’s minds do to come to terms with what the world was telling it.

‘It makes sense,’ Lenares breathed, and she did not have to feign her excitement. ‘My room is large, while theirs are small. I see everything, while they separate the world into different categories.’ She smiled at the goddess. Soon, soon. ‘I’d rather be like me.’

And because you have such a large mind, you will not even notice sharing it with me. Your mind is so large, so warm; you and I will be fast friends, Lenares. My name was…
is
Umu. You can call me by my name because we are friends. Lenares, will we be friends? Can I come into your mind? All you have to do is say yes. Invite me in. I won’t leave you like Mahudia did, or like Martje, your real mother. Say yes, Lenares.

Only a moment more…

Martje? Oh, goddess Umu, we could have been friends, if you weren’t such a liar.

‘Yes? Just yes?’

That’s all.
Anticipation thrumming through the words, a slavering hunger.

‘No!’

The goddess shrieked in anger, time returned with a jerk and Lenares plummeted perhaps five paces to the rocks below.

Her last thought before the blackness swallowed her was that she’d underestimated the pain.

EVENING CAME AT LAST, coating the gentle northland summer landscape in a patina of forgetfulness, blurring the outlines of hills and trees so familiar to the searchers after hours of looking. Telling them it was time to end their endeavours; they had done all they could and more, surely. Time for food, for drink, for laughter and companionship, time to put the day’s tragedy behind them and let the healing process begin.

Torve had no truck with the night. All it gave him was a chance to reprise his litany of suffering. And now it conspired to steal his hope.

Lenares, his beloved, was one of three lost in the great wave. A local man from the nearest town had been found wedged among the piles of the tea house, and a mangled body, most likely that of one of the hosts, was located at the foot of the cliff. The path down to the sea had been obliterated by the wave, and it had taken an hour for a brave villager to clamber down to the body. During that hour Torve had been desolate, believing the body was that of Lenares. He remained impassive, so his master could not read him, but stricken with grief nonetheless.

The body was too small to be hers, the villager reported when he returned, and had a distinctive birthmark under the chin. Balanced against Torve’s short-term relief, a rotund woman collapsed to the debris-strewn grass, sobbing her anguish. A daughter lost.

Who will mourn the loss of Lenares?

At the least, Duon and Dryman ought to have joined him in his distress, but neither seemed troubled beyond annoyance at the loss of a useful asset. He realised he was experiencing the beginnings of anger, an emotion he’d always kept under control. If anything, the Falthans and Bhrudwans seemed more concerned. Arathé and Bandy, in particular, had not stinted in their searching.

But now, with nightfall imminent, the hands of sympathetic townspeople, themselves shocked by events, reached towards the strangers, beckoning them towards pale paths leading to lamplit homes and fire-warmed food. Torve found himself in the company of three young men, perhaps fifteen years of age, eagerly doing their part—and obviously enjoying the welcome interruption in the routine of their lives.

‘Where are you from?’ one of them asked him.

‘Pardon me?’ Torve responded. He did not have the heart to join in the conversation, nor the ill manners to ignore the question.

‘Where do you come from?’

The boy asking the question had tight, curly hair, not unlike his own, reminding him of the Children of the Desert. For a moment he wished he was back there. He and Lenares should never have left.

But I had no choice.

‘From Talamaq,’ he replied.

‘Is that as far south as Raceme? I went to Raceme once.’ The boy turned eager eyes on him, trying to prove he was not some back-country lad.

‘Further,’ Torve said, drawn in by the lad’s enthusiasm. ‘Much further. With more people living in one city than all the people on the Fisher Coast combined.’

‘Don’t bother him,’ one of the other boys whispered fiercely to the curly-headed lad. ‘He’s lost his girl. Dad said not to bother him.’

‘Was jus’ asking. Thought he might want to talk.’

‘Would you? Say it had been Ina swept away. Would you want to talk?’

Curly-hair grunted something unintelligible in reply.

The village lay half an hour’s walk inland from the sea. By the time they arrived darkness added its own distance, making conversation much less certain: no one liked talking when the listeners’ faces were hidden. Torve was thankful.

‘This is Foulwater,’ said the quietest of the three youths. ‘The name was given the village by the Undying Man hundreds of years ago. But we call it The Water. Dad says you’re to come straight to our place. He’s asked Ma to get a bath ready for you.’

A pause; no doubt Torve was supposed to be impressed. And he was. Not by the bath, but by the trouble these villagers had taken on their account. The wave wasn’t their fault, but the townspeople had acted as though it was, and were not prepared to let the strangers go on their way without caring for them first.

‘Foulwater,’ Torve repeated, his brain still slow.

‘Aye. Nothing wrong with the water, but apparently not to the Undying Man’s taste, so he cursed us with the name. We ignore it. Easy to do, this far south of Andratan.’

‘How far south?’

‘Two months’ walking, they say, or a month aboard.’

To the right and left of them doors to small houses opened, letting yellow fingers of light into the street. One by one the strangers were shepherded into homes by earnest villagers. Torve noted where his master was taken, and the inevitable question raised itself:
Will he require me tonight?

Of course he will. He will not be able to resist.

So the village would pay for its hospitality with a life.

He was welcomed into a tiny hut by a spectacularly wrinkled woman and a bent-backed man, who treated him like a visiting prince. He spoke politely to them in his rapidly improving Bhrudwan, but giving the conversation only as much attention as required. His mind still rested on a difficult but beautiful woman, lost in the water and the darkness. Ignoring his preoccupation they fed him, then showed him the barn where he would bathe and sleep, and the aroma of scented water brought a tear of longing to his eye, reminding him of easier days in Talamaq Palace. Days before the Emperor went mad.

As he lay in the rusty metal tub, his exhausted body fighting sleep, Torve realised that, apart from those days spent in the House of the Gods with Lenares, this would be the first night for many years he had slept in a different house from his master.

He awoke to cold water, a wrinkled body and a hand on his shoulder.

‘Did you not mark where I was housed?’ his master asked him, anger freighting his words. ‘I expected you before now. I wait for an hour or more, only to find you taking your ease rather than serving your rightful master. Get out and get dressed. We have work to do.’

Torve scrambled out of the tub, and found his clothes neatly folded on a chair, courtesy, no doubt, of the wrinkle-faced woman.
And I will thank you by tormenting one of your fellow villagers.

‘Haven’t you learned enough yet, master?’ Torve asked. The question slipped out before he could exercise his usual caution, tiredness and heart-sickness contributing to his rash words.

‘I have learned, Omeran, not to tolerate criticism from slaves.’

The last word bit into Torve, as it was intended to, reminding him that he had been a gift to the young Emperor-in-waiting, had been brought up with him, partaking of all the privileges of the Palace while his fellow Omerans suffered abused, shortened lives at the hands of their masters.

But then the Emperor smiled at him, removing much of the force from his words.

‘You were once a friend, Torve,’ he said, his voice softening a little. ‘We shared superior minds and insatiable curiosities. But since this cosmographer entered our lives, you have drawn away from me. You bring me little more joy now than any beast, and less value.’

Dare he say it? Could he say it? Drawing the strings of his tunic closed, he opened his mouth—and the words came out.

‘Might it not be, master, that you have changed more than I? I have no right to ask, but were someone of status to comment on your altered behaviour, could you deny it? I am not defending my own actions, save to say I have remained ever loyal, as my nature commands; rather, as I once did, I am acting as a mirror, reflecting your question back on yourself. Since the day Lenares appeared,
you
have changed.’ A final risk. ‘Why, my friend? Why?’

To his astonishment, his master closed his eyes and bowed his head. ‘Ah, Torve, you shame me. You are right: I kept many secrets from you.’

A long pause. Something obviously under consideration. The eyes opened, a decision made.

‘You were not privy to what happened late one night, the night following our dear cosmographer’s presentation to the court at Talamaq. I was visited, Torve; visited by a god.’

His eyes widened and he stared at the Omeran: they were black, rimmed with white, the pupils mere pinpricks in the darkness. Profoundly disturbing.

‘A god, Torve. The Son, no less. I know I abolished the gods, but that night they taught me better. They are real, my Omeran. They speak. The Son did not require worship, he said to me; indeed, far from making me abase myself before him, he acknowledged me as an equal. He had heard what the cosmographer had to say, and asked if he could sift my thoughts and memories. I know it sounds incautious of me, but his presence was so…so starkly real, everything else felt false and hollow. I doubt I could have resisted even had I wished to. So I opened myself up to him.’

The Emperor raised his arms, spreading them wide, and a grinding weight came down upon them both, setting the air itself to groaning. A deep rumbling and shuddering shook the barn, sending dust drifting across the lamplight. In the rear of the barn a cow lowed nervously.

‘I opened myself to the Son,’ the Emperor continued, in a deeper and more commanding voice, ‘and he came. He changed me. At every stage he asked my permission and, after examining what he had done, I granted it. He enlarged my mind and changed me for the better. One of the many benefits, Torve, is that the halfwit Lenares can no longer read me. She will never associate me with the mask-wearing Emperor.

‘And neither did anyone else. The court acknowledged the mask, just as they did the afternoon we played a prank on them and you wore it. But under the instruction of the Son, I shed my mask and walked through the corridors and halls of the Talamaq Palace. None marked me. Even you did not mark me.

‘It was that day I conceived my plan to secure absolute control of the Empire. Titular head to a murderous group of Alliances does not offer me the security I need, nor the power I desire. I used the fool Duon as the excuse to organise an expedition with a twofold purpose: to go north myself in search of the secret of immortality, and to be rid of the Alliances forever. So I contacted the Marasmians.’

Torve staggered and slumped against the bath, slopping water everywhere. ‘You contacted the Marasmians?
You
masterminded the death of your own army?’

His master’s smile was wide and self-satisfied. ‘Indeed, my friend. We lost many soldiers that day, but the price was worth it to be rid of so many drones. We can grow more soldiers! You see the logic of it, do you not? Many times we talked about the Alliances and what it would take to break their power over the Empire. Now they are broken, without any cost to Talamaq. Not a house burned, not a single murder on the streets. A plan breathtaking in its elegance.’

‘Yours or his?’

‘Now, Torve, no need for bitterness. Changed though I am, I am still your master. I hope I have demonstrated this on our nocturnal forays. To tell the truth, in an attempt to convince you I am still whom I once was, I have been more vigorous in my pursuit of answers to our eternal question. Yes, it was the Son’s plan, but it was my execution, and it could not have been more perfect. Even the intervention of those interesting desert children served my purpose, delivering us from the Marasmians who were about, I suspect, to double-cross us. And here we are, in the company of powerful men, none of whom suspect my real identity.’

Certainly Torve had not suspected the mercenary of being his Emperor. He’d wondered about that in the weeks after Dryman had revealed himself, but he’d not seen the Emperor maskless since his tenth birthday, his Masking Day. So how was he to read his childhood companion in the soldier’s bland face? The voice ought to have given him away, but it had subtly altered; deeper and huskier now than the voice he remembered. Altered just enough to confound Lenares, who had repeatedly expressed her frustration at her ignorance.

So now his master carried the Son with him.

Torve decided to make it his mission to find out what benefit the Emperor thought to derive from the arrangement, and what cost he—and, by extension, everyone—might be paying.

If only Lenares were here,
he said to himself.

The Emperor selected their victim with patience and care. The village of Foulwater was a small one, with perhaps five hundred residents, and as a consequence the starlit roads were almost empty: few people were about after dark. Torve and his master waited for perhaps an hour and saw no more than a handful. Those who were to be found outside appeared to be fetching things for their guests inconvenienced by the destruction of the Yacoppica Cliffs Tea House: food, drink, washwater and washcloths.

As soon as Torve saw the woman, he knew his master would not be able to resist her. Her face was shadowed, but it was clearly the same woman who had hosted them in the tea house that morning.

The Emperor stepped into the street. ‘Excuse me, we’ve lost our way,’ he said. ‘Can you help us?’

‘Of course.’ Her face was drawn, weary in appearance; the bags under her eyes were recent additions to an already unflattering appearance.
A day searching for a lost workmate can do that to a person,
Torve considered. ‘You’re staying at the Nevem place. If you return the way you have come—’

Her breath hissed as the Emperor placed his knife against her belly. She didn’t cry out. She would later, Torve knew.
Oh, lady, you should have cried out. Perhaps someone would have heard.

‘You know what this is?’ the Emperor said.

‘I know.’ Remarkably calm. ‘I have no money, but the village would be happy—’

He moved until he had the knife pressed against the small of her back. ‘You do not yet know what we want,’ he whispered into her ear, and this intimacy alerted her to the likely nature of this encounter.

She took a deep breath, that was all, as Dryman forced her along the street and down a side alley, away from the houses and past a smithy on the edge of town. Her chance to call for help gone.

‘You don’t mean to leave me alive, do you?’ she said, her eyes darting right and left. Her voice had thinned, as though forced through a constricted throat.