Seaward (15 page)

The eye-stalks swivelled towards Westerly; the voice said happily, “You have them from your mother then—Lugan's guardians. You are privileged.”

Cally took a deep breath and knelt down, squatting on her heels, her hands resting on her lap. “He's Westerly,” she said. “I'm Cally.”

The creature came towards her and paused a yard away. Cally stayed very still. There was a moment's pause, in the silent dunes. Then the creature came close to her, and its feathery antennae reached out and gently stroked her cheek. It was the same light touch that had wakened her.

“I am sorry I startled you,” the soft voice said. “I have been looking for you. I am Peth. A . . . thing, as you said. A thing of the desert.”

“I'm sorry,” Cally said. “It was just—”

“Never mind, never mind,” Peth said consolingly, as if to a child. “Come now, you should be travelling. There is not much time. Come with me.”

“In the dark?” Westerly said.

“The night is the time for travelling, in this land,” Peth said. The music of his voice was a reassurance; every time
he spoke they seemed to feel strength flowing back into them. Cally looked at Westerly. In silence he put away his knife and bent to fold up the cloth of the tent. Cally helped him put it away in his pack.

They turned to Peth, and heard a soft, lilting sound, a sweet crooning. He was standing over the three glowing signs of the arrow, stroking them with his antennae, singing to them. His eye-stalks swung round to Westerly and Cally, and the crooning died away and the light went out of the white bones.

“Put them away now,” he said. “Now I have spoken to them. It has been a long time. They will do more for you yet than perhaps you knew they could.”

Westerly looked at him warily for a moment, but said nothing. He put the three bones back in his pack.

They set off, following Peth. His insubstantial stick-like body was hard to see in the dim moonlight, and at first he flickered over the sand so fast that they lost him completely, and had to stop and wait. He came back, making small consoling sounds of apology, and afterwards stayed deliberately close to them, stepping delicately over the sand a few yards ahead. Cally could see flat pad-like feet at the ends of his spidery legs, keeping him from sinking into the sand.

Westerly paused. He was looking up at the sky. “Peth.”

“Yes?”

“Cally and I have been trying to go westward.”

“To the mountains. Yes,” Peth said.

“But you're taking us south. I can tell by the stars.”

“Have faith,” Peth said. His delicate insect-like body moved ahead again.

“Hum,” said Westerly. He plodded on up the side of a dune, slithering under the weight of his pack.

Cally said softly, over his shoulder, “I like him.”

“You like everybody,” Westerly said wearily.

“I suppose you mean Snake.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Your bone-things glowed for Peth.”

“I'm not arguing,” he said. “I just like to know where I'm going.”

The moon was gone; the sky was beginning to grow light. Gradually the stars disappeared, and a cold greyness was everywhere. Without shadows, the dunes merged into an endless colourless world of dull sand.

Cally said, “The dunes aren't so high here.”

“It's just the light,” Westerly said. He walked morosely on, following the high-stepping figure ahead; in the cool dawn Peth looked skeletal, macabre.

After a while he said, “You're right. They're changing.”

Above them Peth paused on a ridge of sand, his body outlined spider-like against the brightening sky. They climbed towards him, and as they drew level the first rays
of the sun spurted into the sky at their right hand, and before them they saw the end of the dunes, and the beginning of a new desert, vast and intimidating.

There was no sign of life or water or any green thing, anywhere. They saw that they stood in a huge valley, filled with rock and grey scrub, with mountains rising dark and forbidding at either side. The sun rose; their shadows lay long and thin on the last few yards of white sand.

Peth said, “This is why I had to bring you south—to reach the solid land. Across the scrub, you will be able to reach the mountains before the sun dries you into dust—across the sand, you would have had no chance. In all that half of the valley, the White Sea stretches right to the foot of the hills.”

“The White Sea?” Cally said.

“He means the sand,” said Westerly.

“The sand and the salt,” Peth said. “If you had gone north, you would have come out of the dunes into a place still more deadly, a hard white land where the earth is paved with salt. A long time ago this valley was truly a sea, until the Lady Taranis took it. Now the water is gone, and only the salt and the sand are left.”

Westerly said bitterly, “She kills everything.”

“Of course,” Peth said.

He ran down from the dunes to the stony land ahead; small eddies of dust stirred round his moving feet. Then
he turned away towards the mountains, and they followed. They were travelling westward again, the sun hot on their backs. Wearily they trudged over the dusty, rock-hard land, through grey scrub and shrivelled plants that looked as if they had never been alive. Sharp stones bruised their feet through the soles of their shoes; dust roughened their dry throats. All at once Cally felt giddy with heat and weakness. Her knees buckled; she crouched on the ground, head down.

Westerly called sharply, “Peth!”

Peth turned. His spidery body glittered now in the sunlight, iridescent, shot through with shifting colours that never became distinct.

“We can't go on much longer.” Westerly's voice was hoarse. He looked down in concern at Cally. “Where's that bottle? You need a drink of water.”

In relief she pulled it out of her bag and took a careful swallow, licking the last drops off her dry lips; then she held out the bottle to Westerly. He shook his head.”

“Come on, West,” she said. Her voice sounded strange in her ears: husky and thin. “Share.”

“Share,” Peth said. “There will be water before nightfall.”

Westerly said bleakly, “That may be too late.” But he swallowed a mouthful of water. There was an inch or two left in the bottle. He corked it again, paused, looked at
Peth. Slowly, as if forcing his own hand, he held out the bottle to him.

Peth made a rippling sound like laughter. “Well done. But I do not need it. Thank you.” He turned in a slow semicircle, head up, eye-stalks and antennae stretched out as if searching. “You must travel further. Slowly, easily. But you must come.”

Cally put the bottle back in her pack and stood up, unsteadily. Westerly reached to carry her bag for her, but she pushed his hand gently aside. Then she stiffened, looking out across the huge valley, squinting eastward into the sun. “What's that?”

“Where?”

She pointed. “There. Something moving.”

Far off, a plume of dust drifted up from the desolate grey land. Westerly stared, his eyes searching round the valley. “There's another to the south. Look—there—”

Behind them, coming from the further range of hills, the two smoky tufts rose into the air.

“Fire?” said Cally.

“Dust,” Peth said, his soft voice sharper. “The dust of feet, or of wheels. They have found you. Come quickly now, as quick as you can. There is not much time.”

They stumbled after his glittering, flickering shape with panic driving them. The wiry undergrowth caught at their feet; the twigs of small skeleton trees scraped their
legs and arms. Westerly's mind was full of the nightmare images of his pursuers:
they're coming—I always knew they were coming. . . .
Cally was trying to force out the memory of her terror-stricken flight from the People, and their crashing implacable progress through the wood. She said, hurrying, gasping, “We stir up dust too—they can see us wherever we go.”

Westerly came close to her; he said, low and anxious, “Maybe it's a trap—maybe that's why he led us out of the dunes. Got us out in the open, for
them.”

“No!” Cally said. “No!” She looked ahead for Peth, and saw him darting between branches as thin and angular as himself—and then suddenly he was gone.

“West! Where is he?”

Westerly said furiously, “I knew it!” He swung round, staring back across the valley; the approaching plumes of dust were closer now, converging on them, and there was a faint humming sound in the air.

“What can we do?”

“Nothing. Run. Give me your pack.”

But from somewhere near their feet they heard the singing note of Peth's voice, calling to them.

“Cally! Westerly! Quickly—get down on your hands and knees. And look, and come forward.”

Westerly paused, suspicious, and Cally pulled him down to the ground. He turned on her angrily—but then
amongst the thorny, clutching shrubs they could see Peth again. Unfolding his spindly legs, he was climbing out from beneath a shimmering, translucent covering woven between the lowest branches of a low dead bush. Cally saw that at the edges the covering was woven down to the ground too, leaving a space within it like an open-ended box. From above, it had been invisible.

“Inside!” Peth said curtly. “Both of you. And whatever you may see or hear, lie still and silent, and wait.”

They wriggled into the tiny shelter and sat there crouched on the stony ground, in a haze of diffused white light that had in it none of the fierce heat of the sun. Even the blazing sunlight at the entrance seemed to be growing gentler too; peering out, Cally saw Peth's frail body flickering to and fro there so fast that he was no more than a blur of movement. Like a spider, he was weaving more of the strange shimmering web to cover them and hide them—but weaving far more than was needed just to cover the entrance. To and fro he flashed, back and forth, out on either side beyond the little shelter. He was making an invisible fence: a barrier. But what defence could it possibly be against the attackers rushing on them across the valley?

She reached out a tentative finger to touch the filmy covering round them, remembering the fragility of spiders' webs. But for the second her finger brushed the tiny filament, the air all around them seemed to fill with a sudden
blinding light, and Cally was flung half-stunned against Westerly.

Peth's voice sang sharply from outside. “Do not touch—
do not touch!”

The humming from across the valley was growing louder, more distinct. Westerly had his head up, listening. His eyes searched anxiously for a gap anywhere in the luminous screen around them—and then he saw a slit of brighter light, and leaned eagerly forward, taking care not to touch.

He saw a great cloud of dust over the scrubland, coming close. Dimly inside it he could see two gigantic formless shapes, dark and menacing. Fear washed over him, and he gazed horrified, motionless, as they rushed headlong towards him. They were caught, he and Cally, trapped; in an instant they would be obliterated. There was no escape. He could hear a strange high sound from Peth, a high triumphant singing. He felt the weight of Cally's inert body against his side, and knew he should help her, yet still he could not take his eyes off the whirling dust outside, the growing, darkening cloud. The deep ominous humming filled the air, the huge pursuing figures loomed over him, so close that he could see their faces now—and he gasped in pure terror, for the faces, staring at him, laughing a dreadful cold laughter, were Cally's and his own.

He crouched, clenching his fists, waiting for them to
break through the tenuous barrier of Peth's web as they rushed at it. And then, in an instant, they were gone.

Westerly stared. There had been no moment in which he saw them disappear. There was simply silence, nothing, no sign of any pursuit but the long lingering cloud of dust, drifting through the air.

He reached down to Cally. She lay still; her face was dry and hot, and her breathing shallow.

The filmy curtain in front of him split suddenly in two, and Peth was there, outlined monstrous against the sunlit sky, laughing.

Westerly looked at him out of a blur of gratitude for which he could find no words. He said, “What did you do?”

Peth laughed again. “Your shadows are gone. They will not come back. When the nightmare cannot leap a fence, it loses all power. Remember that, Westerly-bound.” His eyestalks bent towards Cally. He said soberly, “She is not well.”

“She needs water.” Westerly's voice was thick; his tongue felt huge in his mouth. He took the last of the water from Cally's pack, propped up her head and gently forced the rim of the bottle into her mouth. The water trickled through her lips; in reflex, she swallowed. Her eyes flickered open, and tried to focus. “So . . . hot,” she said.

“Not for long,” Peth said gently. His long questing antennae reached forward and brushed Westerly's hand
and wrist. “Westerly, take Lugan's guardians from your pack and bring them out here to me.” He backed away, and disappeared outside.

Westerly took out the three white bones. Cally stirred, blinking, whispering. He bent his head to her.

“West—the chasing . . . what—”

“They've gone,” he said. “Peth—killed them. You just rest.”

Her eyes closed again.

Peth was standing outside on the dry earth, among broken bushes and tumbleweeds. He made a soft, purring sound of welcome as he saw the three bones. “What did your mother tell you about them?” he said.

“She didn't tell me much.”

“She would have told you all she knew.”

Westerly's throat felt empty as he remembered his mother's face: the smile of pleasure in sharing, the conspiratorial delight in the dancing eyes as she had made him hold the bones, whispering to him. He had thought she was crazy, then.

He said huskily, “She said, keep them always, they are very old and very powerful. If you touch them with your knife, they will talk to you, they will glow for safety and grow cold for danger. They will always be right. Trust them.” He looked up penitently at Peth. “But I didn't trust you for a while, even though they told me to. I'm sorry, Peth.”