Dragons on the Sea of Night (23 page)

What she was about to do terrified her to such an extent that she had to shut down all thought, moving as an animal did, out of pure instinct while the autonomous nervous system kept her alive.

Out along the swordblade she crept and now the darkness of the fissure was all she could see, a blank wall, a rock face that would surely stop her progress. And still she crept forward like a snail along the edge of a razor, unmindful of the madness of its actions.

But the rock face did not stop her. Instead, the fissure opened up like an oriel or the iris of an eye. This had been her mad notion: that in order not to die she had to be somewhere where the normal human laws of life and death did not apply.

She felt as she had when Phaidan was coming through, as if oxygen were no longer of use to her, as if gravity had ceased to exist, as if colors, sound, scent, sensation had all been whirled down a drain.

And, of course, they had, because she was crossing over to the dread place where flesh met the spirit world – the first human ever to have done so – using the Bridge to move from the realm of man into the dimension of Chaos.

Evening in the Khashm was the worst, Vato-mandry had told them before they left Mas'jahan, and he was not lying. The brackish water of the fens – actually a vast network of interlinked swamps, unexpectedly deep catch basins and treacherous tidal pools – stretched out before them, reflecting the dying colors of the day. At that moment, there seemed no distinction between water and sky, and any dry and passable land masses were totally obscured. These land masses – narrow spits and oval pads – certainly did exist; the Shinju seemed at home here. But they were inconstantly situated and, often, between them lay passages of deep-water sink holes and well-camouflaged meadows of what appeared to be solid ground but were, instead, quicksand that could draw a man under within seconds.

It was little wonder that the Syrinxians abandoned efforts to expand into the Khashm. From all accounts they were, like a majority of the more successful warlike races, a practical people. Harvesting the White Lotus might have been the ultimate prize but they saw in the massive loss of life, the sapping of their ethnological energies, a hint of their own demise. And so they had left the Khashm.

Had they been other than warlike they might have decided a peace treaty with the Shinju would have been to their ultimate advantage – the Shinju would have harvested the root for them. But treaties were not the Syrinxian way.
Conchius Altere Urbeun
. Conquest Above All. That was their motto, tattooed in paint and lacquer, etched with acid or chiseled by hand into the stone monuments that adorned their cities.

But they had been unable to conquer the Khashm.

Moichi, Sardonyx and Hamaan crouched beneath the inadequate cover of a marbatt tree, its low, twisted trunk shaped by the winds that eternally scoured sky and marsh. These trees were the only vaguely vertical objects as far as the eye could see. Otherwise, the expanse was as flat as an ocean becalmed.

They had left their co'chyn tethered at the eastern edge of the Barrier, as the Tsihombe had called it, God's creation at the moment of Shinju retribution against the Syrinxians. A week across the blistering Mu'ad had led them to a dead and crumbling city strangled by strange, creeping vines snaking through sand-streaked streets. Not even ghosts seemed to inhabit the desolate place. It had about it a sense of utter abandonment, as if God had turned His face from this place a long time ago.

Uneasy, but unable to say precisely why, they spurred their mounts on, and just beyond the ruins came upon a river. A few hours' exploration produced a fordable section and, after refreshing themselves, filling their water bladders and washing they crossed over to the far bank.

Scrubby trees like hunchbacks grew out of the sandy mineral-poor soil, but soon the vegetation became more plentiful until the Mu'ad was but a memory.

The Khashm began almost without warning, and Moichi was reminded again of what the Tsihombe had said, for there was indeed a profound barrier sense about it. It was as if the hand of God had sliced down, turning verdant plain and rolling hillside into flat and aqueous swamp. Flashes of light played upon the still, sticky waters, and the eerie sounds of unseen marsh birds echoed across a vast purple sky.

The nights were very cold and, coming from the Mu'ad, the group were unused to the temperature. But not unprepared. Vato-mandry had had warm clothes waiting for them, along with backpacks well stocked with food, water and such equipment as they might require.

At first, Hamaan had balked. He had no intention of heading off into Syrinx without his platoon of Fe'edjinn warriors. Vato-mandry had soon disabused him of his position, pointing out that the Khashm was no place for a large group – this was one of the facts the Syrinxians had failed to grasp. Also, the Fe'edjinn were trained desert fighters. A land of marshes was not a good place for them.

At evening, the Khashm sparked with encroaching starlight. The sky and water was the color of dried blood, deep purple in the shadows. Craans, the long-necked marsh birds skimmed the water, plucking with their long beaks bony fish with flashing, oblate eyes. Like almost everything in the Khashm, the craans looked benign enough with their apricot-colored feathers and wide, elegant wingspan. In fact, they were not only predators but omnivores, fearless when it came to confronting any prey including man, who, it could easily be imagined, might prove a tastier treat than the mud-colored fish.

Moichi caught several of these eely creatures, roasting them over a fire, only to find them so oily and bony as to be virtually inedible. The piscine oil, Sardonyx eventually discovered, proved remarkably proficient at healing the small but inevitable wounds inflicted on them daily by the low, heavily thorned gorse that grew in bewildering profusion throughout the Khashm.

What insects thrived here were out of all proportion. Their first night, Sardonyx discovered a glossy, humped-back beetle the size of her hand happy to share her tent. She was hardly so inclined and missed by a fraction being stung by a pincer. Where the end of the pincer struck a small stone, a yellow-green vapor with a caustic odor rose up, choking her. She used the blade of her dagger to hurry the creature along, and only afterward noticed the tiny series of pits in the hardened steel. Not surprisingly, she developed a healthy respect for the beasts. Once, making camp on a dank spit of land in the sea of marshes, she discovered a dead one, and spent the better part of the evening dissecting it and extracting its peculiar liquids.

Hamaan, crouched and chilled, put his hands to the fire, did not look up when Sardonyx went off to the privy. It was after the evening meal; the Khashm seemed somehow even vaster in the starlit night. Insects whirred and sang and, occasionally, the flap of a nocturnal predator's wings could be heard. Nothing else.

‘Why did you bring her?' Hamaan said.

‘Do you have something against her?'

Hamaan shook his head. ‘Not
her
personally. I hardly know her. But women – especially your women, Moichi – always seem to get in the way.'

‘I suppose that is because all my women have minds of their own.'

To his surprise, Hamaan smiled. He could not remember the last time he had seen his brother smile.

‘Yes. I suppose that is true.' Hamaan rubbed his hands together. ‘You did a fine job tracking down Yesquz's murderer.'

‘Would that I had brought him back to you alive.'

Hamaan shrugged. ‘From what you have told me of the fiend I doubt very much whether he would have allowed that.'

Moichi, wanting to take advantage of his brother's uncharacteristically accommodating mood, said, ‘Have you heard of a man named Bjork?'

‘Bjork. That is neither an Iskamen nor an Adenese name. A Catechist?'

‘No. From what Sardonyx tells me the name is alien to their language.'

‘That name is unfamiliar to me.' He paused for a moment, staring into the fire. ‘Moichi,' he said at last, ‘I know we have had our differences before, but on the eve of our holy war with Aden, I have no wish to extend our quarrel. On the contrary, when I go into battle I would wish for there to be peace between us.'

‘That, too, is my wish,' Moichi said. ‘Jud'ae has been dead a long time, Hamaan. So should our rivalry for his affections.'

They gripped each other's forearms across the fire.

‘We could use you in the Fe'edjinn,' Hamaan said, the flames sparking his eyes. ‘What a team we would make, brother! What a fearsome swath we would cut through the Adenese troops.'

Sardonyx returned then, and Moichi was grateful. At the moment of his reconciliation with Hamaan he was unwilling to renew his arguments against the war.

Exhausted by their trek, they slept soundly. Moichi, wanting to dream again of Sanda, was instead stalked by owls, swivel-headed beasts with the bodies of dragons, whose improbably slender legs propelled them across the marshes with astonishing speed. He spent the night tossing and turning, attempting in his dreams to catch and harness such speed.

He awoke before dawn with a foul taste in his mouth. His body seemed a sea of pain from the recent wounds and bruises inflicted upon him. Stifling a groan, he rose and went silently to the area they had chosen as a privy. He relieved himself, staring into a distance unbroken save for the orange oblate of a slowly rising sun. At which point he became aware that he was being observed he could not say. But some instinct caused him to turn with extreme slowness.

Past a small fortress of thorny gorse he saw a pair of eyes. They were inhuman – that is, the eyes of a beast. This was his first thought. But, again, instinct kept its hold on him and he made no overt offensive motion. In fact, he made himself move not at all.

He was looking at something with a triangular head. Reddish fur plumed up the center of the face and between the large triangular ears. The muzzle was white, the inquisitive nose black. The beast was sniffing the wind for some scent of this unfamiliar being.

Now it moved and Moichi saw that it was a long-backed creature with, much to his astonishment, the improbably spindly legs of the curious beast of his dream. Its body looked perhaps most like a deer or a luma, although it was covered in the same fine reddish fur.

‘You are not Shinju,' the beast said. ‘Can you give me a reason not to kill you as you stand?'

Moichi was so astonished that for a moment he could say nothing.

‘Not as dumb as I appear, am I?'

Was it smiling at him? He asked the only question that might save him. ‘Have you a name?' he said. ‘Mine is Moichi Annai-Nin. I am a native of Iskael, a land far to the southeast.'

‘Return, then, to Iskael, Moichi Annai-Nin,' the beast said. ‘No doubt your people look for you. Here you have neither dominion nor concern.'

‘But I do,' Moichi said, and in sudden inspiration, produced Sanda's ring.

The beast, who had started at Moichi's movement, now craned its neck above the thicket of gorse. ‘Myttali, can it be? You hold the Ring.'

‘You know this ring?' Moichi asked holding it out as if it were an offering.

‘And so I ought,' the beast said. ‘It is Shinju.'

Moichi was stunned to silence. How had his father come to acquire a Shinju artifact? Through one of his trader's deals? Obviously.

‘May I come forward?'

It was only then that he realized the beast's demeanor had reversed itself. ‘Come ahead,' he said. ‘How may I call you?'

The beast used its slender legs to pick its way unharmed through the dangerous gorse, and Moichi saw just how long they were. This creature was fabulously made to move through marsh and fen.

‘I am known as Ouwlmy,' it said. ‘A female of my species, the Shakra.'

As she negotiated her way through the gorse Moichi saw how beautiful she was, slim and graceful yet, beneath the rippling coat of fur, lithe and powerful. She stood near him, peering at the ring, and he caught her scent, sweet as freshly mown hay, tart as citrus.

Her eyes, round as moons and close to its color in harvest summer, regarded him. ‘Who do you seek in my domain?'

Moichi opened his mouth, prepared to damn Dujuk'kan, but instead he said, ‘Bjork.'

‘Ah, Bjork, the Shinju saiman–'

‘Saiman?'

‘You do not know the term? Bjork is the most powerful enchanter of the Shinju.' Ouwlmy looked from Moichi to the ring. ‘This is his, you know.'

‘The ring belongs to Bjork?'

Somehow, the moment the words passed his lips, Moichi knew they were the truth. But then from the moment he began to dream last night this entire episode had about it a sense of having lived it before.

‘It was made by Bjork. Have you come to return it?' Ouwlmy turned those huge ingenuous eyes on him, but Moichi was not fooled. Instinct told him that she would instantly know whether he lied or told the truth.

‘I would speak with Bjork about the ring and other matters,' he said. ‘This ring was given to my sister by my father many years ago.'

‘And she is now dead,' Ouwlmy said without missing a beat.

‘How would you know that?' But in his heart he knew, and he was already weeping all over again for Sanda.

‘Because,' Ouwlmy said with infinite sadness, ‘she would never have parted with it otherwise.'

I am that I am
.

That was, in the end, all that was left Chiisai. She felt as if she had been turned inside out, as if her skin now lay at the core of her, while her organs, blood vessels and viscera pulsed on the outside.

She wanted to see but she was blind. Deaf, dumb and blind.

She could feel nothing but the odd pulsing of her own body, not breathing precisely, because she had ceased to breathe the moment she Crossed Over. There was no oxygen – no atmosphere at all, as humans know it – in the dimension of Chaos. God only knew how these creatures sustained themselves. But they existed, all the same.