Gool (9 page)

NINE

The first day they travelled safely, with the dogs alert and Xantee and Duro probing with their minds. Several times they led Tarl away from the course he wanted to take – runways, mazes in the rubble – away from bands of Keech men, patrolling randomly. Surprise was a tactic Keech had perfected. Twice they came across bodies of scavengers or defectors, punished in the places they were caught.

Too much killing, Xantee thought. Rain fell on the burrows, then the sun beat down from a hard sky, making flat surfaces steam and the ruins hiss like an oven, but she felt cold everywhere – the coldness of humans without pity and the unnatural coldness of the gool.

Tarl had made them cut branches of scrub. When night fell they found a den where no light escaped and made a fire. They scorched the meat he brought and ate it half raw.

For Hari, Xantee thought, swallowing.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘We’re nearly through Blood Burrow. Tomorrow it’s Keg.’ Tarl grimaced. Those names were lost. ‘If these books you want are anywhere they’re south of Port. There was a park by the sea. Hari went there. He went everywhere. Buildings called Music Hall and Art Hall.’ Tarl shook his head. He had no idea what art and music were. ‘If there were books . . .’

‘Book Hall?’ Xantee said.

‘Hari never said that name. He said the park had stone arms and legs, and heads of horses, and a fangcat killing a sheep.’

‘Statues,’ Xantee said. ‘Like Cowl the Liberator in People’s Square.’ Hari had told her about Cowl.

‘Cowl Bigmouth,’ Tarl said. ‘The bolt cannons broke the ones in the park to pieces.’

And the rats have eaten the books, Xantee thought. But they had to find out. She could not think of anything else to do.

They set out again in the morning. In the part of the burrows that had been Keg, women and children had built shelters in the ruins. As Tarl had said, they were every colour, some even had the reddish-brown of the south, like Sal and Mond. There was no way round them. Children approached, begging, but the sight of the dogs sent them scuttling away.

There were no dogs in the burrows any more. Keech had wiped out all that had not fled with Tarl.

‘These people will tell the patrols we’re here,’ Tarl said.

‘We can make them forget,’ Duro said.

‘There are too many. Capture one of the scouts. Make him tell us where Keech is.’

They found a hiding place behind a wall half fallen into a hallway. Tarl and the dogs slept – they could sleep at will – while Xantee and Duro kept watch. Women passed, carrying buckets of water from a well at the end of the street, but it was midday before a man appeared. He had the quick movements of a scout, and a way of shrinking into doorways and emerging like a shadow. He stopped suddenly outside the place where the travellers were hidden.

Duro, he’s seen the dogs’ footprints.

Grab him, Duro said.

They acted together – the simple command Pearl and Hari had taught them: Be still.

The man – a ragged man, white-skinned but blotched with some disease – straightened, grew rigid, turned as though a magnet drew him.

Stand still. Lean on the wall. You’re having a rest.

Tarl and the dogs had woken. The dogs were growling.

‘Keep them quiet, Tarl,’ Duro whispered. ‘What do you want us to ask this man?’

‘If Keech knows I’m here.’

Xantee spoke: What’s your name?

‘Hans,’ whispered the man.

Tarl shifted angrily. ‘Speak out loud so I can hear.’

‘Does Keech know Tarl has come?’

‘He knows there’s a man with dogs. A man with dogs is Tarl.’

‘What’s he doing?’

‘He’s sent out scouts. He’s sent patrols.’

‘Where do you report to him?’

‘In People’s Square. He’ll be there with his fighting men tonight.’

‘Ask him why People’s Square,’ Tarl said.

Xantee asked, although Tarl could have put the question himself.

‘Keech says Tarl will go to Blood Burrow,’ Hans said.

Tarl smiled and nodded. ‘Now ask him where the Clerk is.’

‘Hans, where’s the Clerk?’

The man gave a start, as though of pain, and Xantee, who was holding him only lightly, and without Duro’s help, nearly lost him. She took a firmer hold.

‘Where’s the Clerk, Hans?’

‘His name must not be spoken,’ Hans whispered. He writhed against the wall.

‘Why?’

‘Keech has forbidden it. Any man who speaks his name dies.’

‘Why?’

‘Hatred,’ Hans whispered.

‘Hatred for the Clerk?’

‘Yes. Hatred for . . .’ He could not say the name.

‘Where is he, Hans? The man whose name you can’t say?’

‘In the city. In Ceebeedee.’

Tarl grunted. ‘Enough. Bring this Hans in here so I can kill him.’

‘No. No killing. Duro and I will make him forget.’

‘If you can.’

‘We can.’ Duro?

They spoke together, silently: Hans, you’ve talked to no one. You’ve seen no sign of dogs. Go, and keep forgetting.

The man woke from his trance. He turned in a circle, as though finding out where he was. He scrubbed out the dog marks with his foot then slunk away.

‘Now,’ Tarl said, ‘we go to People’s Square.’

‘No, you said Port.’

‘I want to have a look at Keech. I know places to hide.’

‘But Hari’s dying.’

‘One more day. Then Port.’

There was no shifting him. But every step they took back the way they had come seemed like a weakened heartbeat – seemed like Hari fading away. They hid from scouts and patrols. In the afternoon Tarl veered from their previous course, turning into alleyways crushed by walls that had collapsed. They crawled through openings barely wide enough for a man, grazing their skins, sinking their hands in slush and water. They climbed into rooms with fallen ceilings, where fires had been lit in corners and soot had painted flame shapes on the walls. The bones of ancient feasts littered the floors.

‘Where?’ Xantee panted.

‘Soon,’ Tarl said.

The rooms grew bigger. Richer houses, she supposed, from the days before Company had destroyed Belong. Giant beams, hacked and knife-shaved for kindling wood, climbed like branches into floors above. They went up, Tarl and Duro carrying the dogs, and came into a hall with the ceiling unbroken and star-shaped holes in the walls.

‘Hari came here,’ Tarl said.

It had been a place for feasting and dancing, and Xantee remembered Hari speaking of a room with pictures on the floor made from pieces of coloured stone. This was the room: horsemen in green cloaks hunting deer, women stepping out of baths filled with blue water, a yellow sun, a red fire in a kitchen with a pig roasting on a spit . . . Some of the pieces had been dug out with knives but enough were left for Xantee to see how skilled the makers had been. If they could do this they could make books and explain the story of Barni and the stars.

‘Come,’ Tarl said impatiently.

‘Hari told us about these pictures. Duro, see, women dancing. And here are men playing instruments. Here’s one with a flute like Pearl’s.’

Duro cleared stones and dust with his foot. ‘And here’s a man unrolling a book,’ he said.

‘Where?
Yes
. And see behind him, lots of books stacked on the walls. Tarl, do you know where this place was?’

‘No place,’ Tarl said. ‘Company burned and broke everything. Now follow me, and quiet. People’s Square is on the other side of the wall.’

That silenced her. People’s Square, where the Clerk had branded Tarl and Hari had escaped the Whips by swimming deep in the swampy pool surrounding the statue of Cowl the Liberator. He had climbed into this room and seen these pictures . . . He seemed to be standing at her side, she felt the warmth of his arm . . .

Come on, Xantee, Duro said.

Hari, we’ll save you, she thought, and although it was too far she sent the message anyway, from this room, across Blood Burrow, over the forests and jungles and mountains, over the Inland Sea, to the room where he lay. Perhaps he would hear a whisper that would help him draw another breath.

Tarl had started off. The bitch, Her, nudged Xantee with its nose. She followed. Tarl led them through another big room, then smaller ones, some filled with rubble almost to the place where the ceiling had been.

‘Quiet,’ he whispered.

As they passed a jagged hole in the floor they saw a cobbled street below and Xantee knew this was one of the gates leading into the square. It allowed her to get her direction fixed. They had reached the western edge. She smelled swamp air rising through the hole.

Soon Tarl turned again, into ruins on the southern side of the square. He stilled Xantee and Duro with his hand and sent one of the dogs ahead, trusting its nose ahead of Xantee’s probing. She could have told him no one was there, and that there were people in the square.

Duro, how many?

Hard to tell. Fifty. Sixty.

Tarl beckoned them. They went ahead, crawling in narrow spaces, then found more height and walked upright. Xantee sensed that Tarl had not been here before but knew it all the same, from outside in the square. It must be where Hari had lain and watched men tie his father to a cart and lead him away to Deep Salt.

The dog stopped in a small room with a boarded-up window. People had lived here since Hari’s day then abandoned it. Again there were bones on the floor. The burrows were a bone yard, Xantee thought. One of the boards had fallen at an angle, giving a view of the square. Tarl held Duro back. He looked out, while the dogs put their noses to a crack lower down, sniffing the unwashed human smell rising from the square.

‘Keech men,’ Tarl whispered; then, with a quiver almost of grief: ‘Blood men too. I see Richard One-eye. I see Ratty.’

‘Is Keech there?’ Duro said.

‘No Keech.’ He stepped away from the fallen board. ‘Careful. Burrows men have sharp eyes.’

Xantee and Duro looked out. The first thing they saw was a brown pond with rushes at the edge. Hari had swum there, escaping from the Whips. It was smaller than Xantee had imagined, or maybe it had shrunk since that time. The statue of Cowl the Liberator was smaller too. His mouth seemed wide in grief rather than victory. His chest and shoulders grew moss and a curtain of sun-dried weed hung from his raised sword. A black and white gull was perched on his head, but it flew away squawking when Xantee said, Get away from here. There are better places than here.

Keech’s men were close below. She picked out the one called Ratty (rat was in his twitching nose), and Richard One-eye. They had been Blood men but seemed no different from the others: barefooted, splay-footed, clad in string-stitched trousers and leather jerkins bald at the shoulder blades. There were no women. Keech must have broken the bands of knife-women Hari had told her of and returned them to their ‘proper’ place, which was cooking, she supposed, and sex and breeding. The men below her, resting on the cobbled stones where the Whips had herded their captives, smoking some sort of weed that sent a dung stink into the air, playing a game with wooden dice, cursing, laughing, looked as if women had never entered their lives. Yet if they caught her . . . Xantee could not finish the thought, but stepped back and let Tarl take her place.

‘You’ve seen them. Let’s go,’ she said.

‘I’m waiting for Keech.’

‘Why do you need him?’

‘Quiet, girl.’

‘Why?’

One of the dogs growled softly, but after a moment Tarl answered, ‘To find out.’

‘Find out what?’

He turned and looked at her. ‘If I need to kill him.’

She did not understand. When he turned away again she risked going into his mind, smoothly, like a sleeve of Dweller silk sliding on skin. He shifted his shoulders, troubled, not knowing why, then came away from the window and sat down by the wall.

‘Watch, boy,’ he said to Duro. He closed his eyes to sleep, but Xantee, still soft, kept his thoughts in motion. She found Keech there: a short man, bandy-legged but heavy in his torso. He had a blind milky eye and a lopsided face. Tarl was afraid of him. It surprised her. She had supposed he was frightened of nothing. He feared – she could barely find it – a darkness, a power, in Keech’s mind. She risked going deeper to find what it was, but Tarl’s eyes flew open and fastened on her, and the dogs, which had lain down at his sides, rose to their feet, growling.

‘What games are you playing, girl?’ Tarl said.

‘I was trying to help you sleep,’ she lied.

‘I don’t need help. Keep away.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

The dogs sank down again and in a moment slept, and Tarl slept too.

What are you doing, Xantee? Duro said.

Finding out why he needs to see Keech.

And why’s that?

I don’t know. Something Keech has that Tarl doesn’t have. He hates Keech and wants to kill him. But I think he’d like to follow him too.

What for?

Getting the burrows together. Making them one. Tarl would have liked to do that. He doesn’t want to take Keech’s place, he likes dogs more than people, but he likes the way Keech has kept the burrows equal with the clerks. He doesn’t want to spoil that. And he hates the Clerk more than he hates Keech. He wants to feed the Clerk to his dogs – she shuddered – like Ottmar.

Ancient history, Duro said, turning back to his spyhole.

But still, he’d like to kill Keech.

Well, he might have a chance, because he’s here.

Who, Keech?

Duro gave a silent laugh. The king of the burrows, he said.

She went to his side and saw what amused him. There was nothing kinglike about the man coming round the edge of the pond. The picture she had found in Tarl’s mind was accurate: bandy legs, thick chest, a blind eye like a milk-stone on a beach, a face mottled grey by disease on one side, and fallen so his cheek hung like a dewlap. He was like a dog that should slink at the rear of the pack, yet here he was leading this band of savage men, telling them when to fight and when to kill. He was dressed the same as them. So, Xantee thought, it’s in his mind, it’s in his tongue.

He was white-haired, and white in the half of his beard that grew, and older than the man in Tarl’s mind. He moved as though his joints rasped, one bone against the other. But his good eye was as quick as a beetle. He carried a sword of hammered iron in his hand.