Dark Heart (55 page)

‘Not a man of his word, then,’ he said. ‘I cannot say I am surprised. Then neither will we keep ours.’

He took a step forward, and another, carefully stretching cramped legs, until he reached the seaward end of the wharf. The
Conch
came into view, more than half a mile distant, slowly rounding the headland that defined the bay.

‘We will return, Cylene,’ he whispered, though the words were as much for Kidson as for her. ‘I promise.’

COSMOGRAPHER

WHAT DID CAPIXABA really know?

Torve sent a series of paired spiral kicks into the air directly above him, one-two, one-two, one-two, as fast as he could count. He wondered if he could lift himself completely off the ground with his own effort so he hovered unsupported in the air. Capixaba had said such a thing was not possible.

But the ancient progenitor of the Omeran Defiance had said a great many things, passed down from generation to generation without question, and Torve now knew some of them were not true. What had been his biggest lie? That the Defiance could only be used for self-expression? Or that it was a necessary part of what made him Omeran?

Both were untrue; he realised that now.

It was Capixaba he duelled with today, the most proficient exponent of Defiance ever to have lived. Or so said the lore. Was this also a lie?

The man was good, Torve would grant him that. He knew exactly how much to move in order to fake Torve out, a ripple of a shoulder or twitch of a thigh enough to trick him into moving precipitately. For the first few minutes of their encounter the imaginary master had entirely dominated him. Torve had found himself fully occupied with responding to Capixaba’s movement.

And really, that was the problem. By accepting this man’s teachings as heart and law, the Omerans had locked themselves into an ever-repeating pattern of subservience. Three thousand years of it, father and son, mother and daughter, bound by the ritual designed to set them free.

Yes, it had prevented them from being destroyed by the fierce Amaqi. But Torve had begun to harbour doubts about even that truth. Could this also be a lie?
Tell me, Capixaba, is there any truth in you?
He scissored his ramrod-straight legs left and right while supporting himself on the ground with splayed hands. The old master was there to meet his move, and flowed with it, always a step ahead.
As he always will be if I continue to use only the prescribed movements, the ones he invented.

Do something new,
he told himself.

Could he? Was it possible to escape millennia of restrictive practices? To lead rather than follow?

He would try.

Torve pushed back with his hands, landing on the balls of his feet. He tensed his strong leg muscles, then leaped forward, tumbling through the air, and landed on his hands, sending waves of pain through his wrists. But his illusory opponent had not tracked the move. A flick of the knee, an extension of the ankle, and his foot stopped a finger-width short of the master’s head, which had still not turned to follow him.

The wave of pure ecstasy that swept through Torve at that moment was the single most powerful emotion he had ever experienced. It undid all the fear and loathing that had built up after the terrible events at Foulwater.

Had he become something other than Omeran? Would the Desert Children, whom he saw as his pure ancestors, approve of what he had done, or would they reject him?

Had they been watching from some spirit world as he killed those defenceless villagers?

He let go of his meticulous training, his pattern of Defiance comprised of endlessly repeated prescribed movements, and moved his body at random. Capixaba stood motionless, unable to oppose him.

His freed mind went back to that morning, weeks ago, when the villagers of Foulwater came to confront the Amaqi. Dryman had led them south of the village, back to the wreckage of the Yacoppica Tea House, to search for any sign of Lenares.

‘She’s disappeared,’ he said, encouraging Torve and Duon to search for any sign of her.

‘We saw her swept away,’ Duon replied patiently. ‘No one could have survived such force of water. Of course she disappeared.’ He spoke as though to a child. Torve also could not understand what his master meant.

‘No, it’s not just that she’s missing,’ the mercenary said testily. ‘I can’t sense her any more. It’s as though she no longer exists. Even if she died, even if her body is buried under rubble or crushed and broken into pieces, I ought to be able to sense her still.’

Duon looked up from the wreckage he was searching through. ‘What are you talking about? How do you “sense” her?’

‘You are remarkably obtuse, even for a human,’ Dryman said. ‘Have you not yet worked it out?’

Duon looked at Torve. ‘Worked out what? What is the man talking about?’

Torve could not answer, of course, for fear that he might betray his master’s secret; though it appeared his master was on the point of doing so himself. At that moment the first villagers, angry and out of breath, burst through the shelter belt and out into the open.

‘What did you do to her?’ one of them shouted in between deep gasps for breath. ‘What did you do?’

He had a flimsy stick in his hand, clearly broken from some bush. The others with him were similarly equipped.

‘We know what they did,’ said a youngster. It was the curly-haired boy at whose parents’ house Torve had stayed last night. ‘Foul murderers. I want to know why!’

‘What is going on here?’ Duon cried, as a line of twenty villagers, sticks and farm implements in their hands, advanced on them. ‘What did we do to whom?’

Dryman stepped forward. ‘We killed her,’ he said, and the villagers roared, an ugly sound.

Duon spun to face him. ‘I killed no one! What are you talking about? I don’t understand.’

‘Those words will be on your lips when you die,’ Dryman said. ‘You’ll never understand. Now get out of the way.’

The message must have made its way back through the forest, as the next group of villagers to emerge—older men, well-armed with axes and swords—asked no questions.

‘Get them!’ a burly man cried, and the crowd surged forward.

Duon and Dryman had weapons, but Torve was unarmed. As an Omeran, he’d never been taught their use, so even if he could disarm the men rushing towards him, he could do nothing to oppose them. Nor could he protect his master, except by interposing himself between him and the mob. And that would slow them down only for a moment. Nevertheless, he took a step forward.

I’ll be with you soon, Lenares.

Such anxiety, such helplessness, had settled upon him that he automatically thought of his Defiance. To think was to act; and, before he could check himself, he’d assumed the opening stance.

A single thought flashed through his mind, one of the five basic tenets of the discipline:
The Defiance can only be used for self-expression. It is not a weapon.
Then the mob was upon him.

He convinced himself they were imaginary and began throwing moves at his attackers. But for the first hectic seconds he could not make contact with them; his blows, learned from thousands of sessions on his own, stopped short.
It is not enough to dominate them,
he told himself.
I must strike.

The first blow, delivered by the rigid outer edge of his right foot, took a man in the throat. The feel of his foot crashing into the man’s neck, of the complex and delicate membranes of the throat tearing, crushed beyond repair, almost paralysed him with self-loathing. But the Defiance had him now, and he could no more stop than he could disobey his master, who was shouting: ‘Kill them! Kill them all!’

To his eternal shame, he felt a sort of glory come over him.
This is what all these movements are for; this is the real purpose of the Defiance.
Chops, thrusts, rapid blows, closed fists, open palms, patterns interwoven in the classic combinations he’d trained himself in his whole life, but taken to their logical conclusions. That the recipients of these blows didn’t deserve to die barely touched his consciousness.

He danced, as the Children of the Desert had danced, and found his true self amidst death.

‘Torve! Torve! They are fleeing!’

Duon’s shout brought him back to himself. His real opponents had melted away and he’d carried on defying imaginary foes. He forced himself to stillness—it took an effort, even though his muscles screamed with agony—and bowed to the retreating backs of the villagers as they disappeared into the trees.

‘Count them, Torve,’ his master said.

‘What?’

‘Your victims. Look around you.’

Ten bodies lay still, scattered in a circle around him. Ten lives ended. No sign of the curly-headed boy; perhaps he’d run rather than fought. Three more people groaned with their injuries, two faintly stirring where they lay. The third—a woman—crawled slowly towards the trees.

Ten. He’d just killed ten people. Or, more correctly, his Omeran heritage had slain them. He bent over the first of the injured, to see what he could do for them.

‘Greedy Torve,’ said his master cheerfully. ‘Leave them for me, would you?’ He came over to the young man Torve was examining, who had suffered a broken back, and pulled out his research knife.

‘Master!’

Duon walked over. ‘What is he doing?’ he asked, as the man set to work on the villager.

A roar sounded from the trees. The villagers had returned, bringing reinforcements, including those who had been slower to arrive in the first place.

Dryman growled in frustration, pushing the villager aside with his boot. ‘You have angered them, Omeran,’ he said, in a mock-chiding voice. ‘They will keep coming until we wipe them all out. Those lying injured here will keep until we are through with this.’

The villagers advanced, exercising much more caution. Dryman strode forward, raised his arms and, with an ear-popping
whoosh
, the vegetation around the villagers erupted into flame. Screams rose from the trees ahead as stragglers were suddenly surrounded by fire. The villagers who had already entered the tea house clearing were trapped between the three Amaqi and the flames.

‘Take care of these fools,’ his master bade Torve. ‘I will subdue the village. Duon, stand where you are and do not interfere. Instead, reflect on your uselessness.’

It was one thing for Torve to use his Defiance to defend himself against assault, however justified; entirely another to pursue and attack people who had lost the stomach for fighting. Yet his master had commanded him and Torve was compelled to obey.

Wasn’t he?

The memories of that morning were already an inextricable part of who he had become. Revealed as a killer, gifted with the deadly legacy of his heritage. He had stepped—no, he had been
pushed
—over a line forbidden to his race, and was now a dangerous weapon in the service of his ruthless master.

But, his mind whispered, he had crossed one line. Could he not cross another? Could he not disobey his master? Could he not…could he not break free?

That morning he had tried. A dozen villagers had been trapped between himself and the burning trees and, from their faces, it was clear none of them wished to engage him. His master had gone in pursuit of the rest, striding into the flames as though they weren’t there, leaving Torve alone to fulfil the man’s wishes. Which were what exactly?
Take care of these fools.
How much room did those instructions give him? Could he literally take care of them? Succour them, ensure their continued good health?

No. Even as he formed the thought an immobilising burst of fear took hold of him, the paralysis that claimed him whenever he entertained any thought of disobedience. It was such a basic part of his nature that Torve had never questioned it until recently: were he to think of doing something forbidden, his muscles locked tight; while a decision not to do something he had been commanded led to a burst of energy blossoming within him, forcing him to act.

This attempt at disobedience was complicated: he’d intended doing the opposite of what he’d been bidden, using the ambiguity in the command he’d been issued. His master had been careless. His body tried to respond in two contradictory ways, by both paralysing and energising him. He screamed with the shock of it, and the villagers, taking heart from what must have appeared like an injury to them, scurried towards him.

His equal and opposite imperatives remained so only for a moment, until paralysis gave way to the immediate need for energy. This, he understood in that moment, must be what the Emperor had trained him for: to generate and use in his service the energy released by thoughts of disobedience. He’d always known he was a tool, but had not realised just how cynically he had been manipulated. By someone who called him ‘friend’.

He moved with a precision and swiftness even greater than that which he had seen in the Children. Not a single inch of wasted momentum. It was almost as though he could predict where the villagers’ slow, untrained bodies would be. Again the glory of his body’s efficiency overwhelmed him and he ceased to consider the deadly consequences of his actions.

This time Duon did not recall him to himself. In fact, when he regained his normal thought patterns—rather, when his mind slowed to normality—the explorer was nowhere to be seen. The only things moving in the clearing were himself and half a dozen severely wounded villagers.

Very well,
Torve told himself.
I have taken care of them. Now I will see what my master has done to subdue the village.

Torve’s thoughts returned momentarily to the present. A total of seventeen villagers slain by one Omeran: an unheard-of number for a member of a pacifist race. But the guilt associated with such behaviour gave way before the abhorrence he felt towards what had happened next. For what his master had done to the village.

Disoriented by smoke, Torve had stumbled through the smouldering trees for an age before finding the small village of Foulwater. The Emperor, or whoever the Emperor had now become, had already surrounded the village with a ring of fire. Deep red flames with bright orange cores rose in sheets from the ground itself, as though a chasm had opened into the molten underworld, a chasm that bent around until joining with itself at the far side of the town. Dryman himself stood in the middle of the main street, surrounded by the men and women of Foulwater, some begging him to put out the flames, others demanding to know what had happened to their brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers. Their voices mixed with the crackle and roar of the flames to create a discordant sound that ground on Torve’s already abraded nerves.