Nightpeople (5 page)

Saria noticed for the first time how tired he appeared. His eyes were drawn and he rubbed stiffly at the back of his neck.

‘That run across the lake with you on my back wore me out a bit,' he told her ‘So let's try and get some rest.'

Realising that she was exhausted herself, Saria lay down. The sand was cold and slightly damp.

‘Further. We'll need to get under too.'

Saria scraped a hollow depression deep in the shade and allowed herself to sink into it. Despite all the questions running around in her mind, tiredness rushed over her and she was only vaguely aware of Dariand and Dreamer Gaardi clambering quickly under the bush beside her. And when the distant, high-pitched humming echoed between the dunes a few minutes later, she was completely asleep.

Saria woke in the middle of the afternoon, the sun still high overhead. The two men slumbered beside her and the shade where they lay was dappled with brightness. She sat up cautiously, not wanting to disturb Dariand, and crawled carefully out.

The glare of the sun on red sand painted the afternoon in a harsh, bloody light, which burnt at the back of her eyes. She took a couple of hesitant steps towards a curve in the dune, but leapt back into the shade with a yelp as the sand seared the soles of her feet.

Above, the dayvault shimmered, a little like the surface of Silver Lake had gleamed in the vaultlights. The rest of the landscape was hidden behind the huge dunes, red sand rippling steeply up to peaks on either side of their bush.

A clicking broke the silence. Instinctively, Saria closed in on it. It took a couple of minutes to find – a tiny chirping insect, nestled in a fork in the branches. Saria sighed in disappointment. She'd tried reaching insects before, larger ones than this, but only ever with limited success. Their minds were too small, too dependent on instinct to reach into.

Still, there was nothing else to do. Settling cross-legged on the sand, the tiny creature perched just in front of her face, she examined the feelers and spiderwork-patterned wings folded along its length, then let the earthwarmth flow up from the ground into her body. Finally, her toes and fingertips tingling, Saria closed her eyes, relaxed and reached out.

It was there immediately: a twittering, skittering little mind, alien and cold, right in front of her, a flickering spark against the afternoon. Sighing with contentment, Saria let herself sink into the insect's consciousness.

It was unlike any reaching she had ever done. Even the wild dog, for all its aggression, had not been as overwhelming. With other creatures there was always some sense of being slightly detached from the land, of living in it but with a barrier of intelligence keeping distance between the mind and the core of the land. With this tiny creature, though, there was no protective thought process to hold her separate, only cold, mute instinct. She was sinking into the fabric of the earth itself, drowning in sudden, all-encompassing awareness.

She could feel every tremble and vibration in the shrub, the coldness of the damp, deep below where the root system twined through living rock. She could feel the warm restless air drifting between the leaves and across the membranous wings of her host. The two sleeping men, a few metres away, pulsed – their size and power almost overpowering the little creature's sense of its world.

For a long while Saria stayed hovering at the outermost levels of the insect's consciousness, barely even brushing it with her own senses and calming herself against the barrage of sensation. Then she slipped deeper, probing out into the surrounding landscape, searching for other life.

The emptiness of the land almost swamped her and for a moment she came close to losing contact. There was nothing in every direction. Somewhere a long way distant, a few tiny flickers might have been creatures, but they were gone before the insect was even properly aware of them.

After years in the valley, reaching into creatures surrounded by familiar life, the sudden isolation shook Saria to her core. Desperately needing to find some other indication of life nearby, she dived deeper in.

When it struck, the pain was blinding; flashes of burning colour leapt across her vision and into her mind and Saria yelped, reflex tearing away her connection with the insect. She fell back, clutching her hands to her temples, and lay curled on the warm sand, sobbing as waves of bright pain washed over her.

A soft hand touched her lightly on the forearm. Through eyes still blurred, Dreamer Gaardi swam into view, kneeling over her.

‘You gotta sit up. Here.'

His touch was gentle as he eased her back into a sitting position and held a water-skin to her lips. Saria drank long, the water tepid against the back of her throat. When she finished, she wiped a sleeve across her mouth and the old man sat back on his haunches and surveyed her closely.

‘You've gotta be careful with them little ‘uns.'

His voice was hardly more than a whisper. He was being careful not to wake Dariand.

‘What?'

He opened his left hand. There, sitting quietly on his palm, was the insect.

‘These fellas. You gotta watch yourself. These blokes are much closer to the land than us bigfellas. You go in too deep and you'll feel the Shifting, and that's real bad pain.'

‘The Shifting?'

Dreamer Gaardi nodded. ‘How long have you been reaching, girl?'

‘Reaching?'

‘Touchin' land spirits. Just like you were doing then.'

‘I … don't know … As long as I can remember.'

‘Yeah?' The old man raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘What else have you reached into?'

‘Lizards, mainly.'

‘Warmbloods?'

‘When I can find them. I tried to reach a dog once.'

‘Phah!' Dreamer Gaardi spat. ‘Those bastards'll bite you any way they can.'

‘I know.'

‘Listen …' He leaned closer. ‘Don't go telling anyone that you can do this, eh? Especially not him.' Dreamer Gaardi nodded towards Dariand.

‘Why not?'

‘Young ‘uns like you shouldn't be able to feel the land. You don't know it well enough to read it properly. And girls aren't supposed to be able to reach at all. It's not your business. Being able to do this means that you're different from most people. It gives you power, eh? There are people around who aren't gonna be too happy to discover that a little tacker like yourself has it.'

‘You mean Dariand?'

‘Nah. He's got a better landsense than most, but even he can't reach and touch the land spirits like you just did. You don't want to tell him because you shouldn't be letting anyone at all know you can do it.'

Saria's eyes narrowed.

‘Are you saying I shouldn't do it any more?'

‘You gotta listen more carefully, girl.' Dreamer Gaardi took her chin gently between the fingers of his free hand. ‘There's people in these Darklands who have a lot of hope ridin' on you. You're special, and this just makes you even more so. There's never been a girl before who could feel the land. Ever. Especially not with these little fellas.' He held up the insect. ‘That's gotta mean somethin', right? But it's a serious business. There are things you need to learn to do it right, and people who'll want to use you for their own bad business when you do.'

‘Will you teach me? How to do it right?'

The old man's face crinkled into a broad smile.

‘Nah, girl. From the way you woke me up then, it feels like you already got more power in you than there ever was in this old bloke. Dreamer Wanji'll help you with it when we get back to Woormra. ‘Til then you just be careful, alright?'

‘I'll try.'

‘Good girl. Now get back to sleep and don't tell anyone about this.'

Saria crawled back to her sleeping place, her head still pounding. The last thing she noticed before she fell asleep was Dreamer Gaardi still sitting on the other side of the bush holding the insect close to his face.

‘Wake up, girl!'

Dariand was shaking her, and groggily Saria crawled out from under the bush. It was twilight, the vault above already deep purple on its way to black and the first vaultlights shining brightly above.

‘Here.' The usual mouthful of warm water and tough dried meat. ‘While you're chewing that, I'll get your shoes on.'

She let Dariand lace the animal skins around her ankles and legs, not even complaining when he tied the thongs tight.

‘You alright?'

‘Fine. Sleepy.'

‘Well, you'd better wake up. We've a long way to go tonight. I want to be halfway through the dunes by morning.'

A little way off, Dreamer Gaardi was watching the vaultlights.

‘Eh. Look!'

Saria and Dariand followed the direction of his finger, straight up to where a tiny vaultlight, much smaller than the others, was slipping rapidly across the sky.

‘What is it?' Saria asked.

‘Don't know. But you see them sometimes at this time of night.'

Saria followed its progress across the vault. Its movement was fast but unhurried, steady and dead straight. It gave the impression of never once having deviated from its course, never having sped up, never having slowed, even a tiny amount.

‘How come it moves so fast? The other vaultlights don't move at all.'

‘They do. I told you last night.'

‘Not like that. Why?'

‘Nobody knows.' Dariand lost interest and Saria continued to follow the strange vaultlight until it vanished over the crest of a dune to the nightwards of them.

‘Let's go.'

That night's walk was harder. The red sand was soft and sucked at their feet, making every step an effort, and their course seemed to be taking them nowhere. Instead of angling nightwards across the dunes, they wound forwards and backwards around the bases, twisting through valleys. On occasion, Dariand would stop and clamber to the top of one and look around for a few seconds, but he always refused to let Saria climb up with him.

‘You need to save your energy.'

Morning found them still winding between dunes. That day they slept again under another clump of brush, and it was well towards the end of the second night when Dariand called them to a halt.

‘Saria. Come on.'

Without waiting, he began to scramble up the soft, steep slope of the nearest dune.

The climb was harder than it looked. The sand was even softer than in the valleys and she understood now why they'd taken such a circuitous route. Her feet and legs sank up to her ankles, and she had to claw with her hands just to keep moving. Dariand seemed to spring up the slope without sinking in. When he reached the top, he turned to watch her.

‘Try not to fight against it. Move with the flow of the sand. Don't try to dig into it with your toes; flatten your tread as much as possible.'

She did as he told her and found herself climbing faster, though without his graceful ease.

At the top she fell to the ground beside him, panting heavily.

‘Look up.'

The landscape on the other side of the dune was dramatically different. It stretched away in the dim vaultlight, flat in every direction. Here and there shimmers of silver indicated the dried-out remnants of small lakes and between them the land was empty, undulating gently and pitted with rocks and craters and the occasional scraggly tree. Far off in the distance to their right a couple of dull lights shimmered.

‘What is it?'

‘The Darklands plains. You were born out there.'

‘Where?'

‘You can't see it from here. You came from Woormra – still a long way over the nightwards horizon.

‘What are those.' She pointed at the lights.

‘That's Olympic.'

‘What is it?'

‘A town. Like Woormra.'

‘Town?'

‘A group of people living in the same place. Those lights'll be their night-watch men. We'd best get moving. Olympic's not close, and I want to be in and out of there before dawn.'

‘We're not staying there?' Saria didn't try to hide the disappointment in her voice. After growing up in the valley, the idea of lots of people in the one place was something she'd like to see.

‘No. We'll be there just long enough for me to sneak into the town and fill our water-skins.'

‘Will I get to see it?'

‘Not close up.' Dariand noticed the expression on her face. ‘Don't worry, you'll get plenty of time to explore a town when we get to Woormra.'

‘How many towns are there?'

‘Not many now. There used to be a lot of them dotted around the plains. Most started getting smaller and died off and the few people left in them moved somewhere else, like Woormra or Olympic.'

Saria studied the tiny, flickering cluster of lights down on the plain.