The Dreaming Void (34 page)

“Um. Right.”

“It would be terrible to die a virgin, wouldn't it?”

“Lady! You are the worst novice in the whole Void.”

“Don't be so silly. The Lady must have enjoyed a good love life. She was Rah's wife. Half of Makkathran claims to be descended from them. That's a lot of children.”

“This has to be blasphemy.”

“No. It's being human. That's why the Lady was anointed by the Firstlifes, to remind us how to discover our true nature again.”

“Well, right now we need to think survival.”

“I know. So how old do I have to be? Your age?”

“Um, probably, yes. Yes, that's about right.”

“Can't wait. Did you go with Zehar last night?”

“Not—Hey, that is not your concern.” For some stupid reason, he suddenly wished he had given in to Zehar's advances.
She'll be dead now, quickly if she was lucky.

“You're going to be my husband. I'm entitled to know all about your old lovers.”

“I'm not your husband.”

“Not yet,” she taunted. “My timesense says you will be.”

He threw up his hands in defeat.

“How long are we going to stay in here?” she asked.

“I'm not sure. Even if there's nothing left to scare them off, they won't want to stay too long. The other villages will know what's happened by now. The smoke must have reached halfway to Odin's Sea, and the farmers would have fled, longshouting all the way. I expect the province will raise the militia and give chase.”

“A militia? Can they do that?”

“Each province has the right to form a militia in times of crisis,” he said, trying to remember the details Akeem had imparted about Querencia's constitutional law. “And this definitely qualifies. As to the practical details, I expect the bandits will be long gone before any decent force can get here, never mind chase them into the wilderness. And those guns they had—” He held up his trophy, frowning at the outlandish design. No doubting its power, though. “I've never heard of anything like these before. It's like something humans owned from before the flight into the Void.”

“So that's it? There's no justice.”

“There will be. As long as I remain alive, they will curse their boldness of this day. It is their own death they have brought to our village.”

She clutched at him. “Don't go after them. Please, Edeard. They live out there. It's their wilderness; they know this kind of life, the killing and brutality; they know nothing else. I couldn't stand it if they caught you.”

“I had no notion to do it right away.”

“Thank you.”

“Okay, I think it's the afternoon now. Let's take a look.”

“All right. But if they're still there and they see us … I can't be his whore, Edeard.”

“Neither of us will be caught,” he promised, and meant it. For emphasis he patted his gun. “Now let's see what's out there.” He started to apply his third hand to the cool stone. Lips touched his. His mouth opened in response, and the kiss went on for a long time.

“Just in case,” Salrana murmured, pressed up against him. “I wanted us both to know what it was like.”

“I … I'm glad,” he said sheepishly.

This time it was a lot harder to move the huge stone slab. It was only after he started that he realized how exhausted he was, and hungry, and scared. But he shifted the stone a couple of inches until a slim crescent of mundane gray sky was visible. There were no excited shouts or farsight probes down into the pit. He could not send his own farsight across much distance given the tiny gap and the fact that he was still below the ground. Instead his mind called out to the guild's sole ge-eagle. His relief when the majestic bird replied was profound. It was perched up on the cliffs, distressed and bewildered. What it showed him when it took flight swiftly brought his mood down again.

There was nothing left. Nothing. Every cottage was a pile of smoldering rubble; the guild compounds with their sturdy stone walls had collapsed. He could barely make out the street pattern. A thin layer of grubby smog drifted slowly over the ruins.

When the eagle swooped in lower, he could see the bodies. Charred clothes flapped limply on blackened flesh. Worse still were the parts that stuck out of the debris. Motion caught the eagle's attention, and it pivoted neatly on a wing tip.

Old Fromal was sitting beside the ruins of his house, head in his hands, rocking back and forth, his filthy old face streaked by tears. There was a small boy, naked, running around and around the wrecked market stalls. He was bruised and bleeding, his face drawn into a fierce rictus of determination, not looking at anything in the physical world.

“They're gone,” Edeard said. “Let's go out.” He dropped the hated gun and shoved the slab aside.

The stench was the worst of it, the cloying smell of the smoking wood remnants saturated with burned meat. Edeard almost vomited at the impact. It wasn't only genistars and domestic animals that were roasting. He tore a strip of cloth from his ragged trousers, damped it in a puddle, and tied it over his face.

They halted the running boy, who was in a shock too deep for reason to reach. Led old man Fromal away from the hot coals that had been his home for a hundred twenty-two years. Found little Sagat cowering in the upturned barrels beside the working well.

Seven. That was how many they and the eagle found. Seven survivors out of a village numbering over four hundred souls.

They gathered together just outside the broken gates, in the shadow of the useless rampart walls, where the reek of the corpses wasn't so bad. Edeard went back in a couple of times, trying to find some clothes and food, though his heart was never in the search.

That was how the posse from Thorpe-by-Water village found them just before dusk. Over a hundred men were riding horses and ge-horses, well armed, with ge-wolves loping beside them. They could barely believe the sight that awaited them, nor did they want to accept that it was organized bandits who were responsible. Instead of giving chase and delivering justice, they turned and rode back to Thorpe-by-Water in case their own loved ones were threatened. The survivors were taken with them. None of them ever returned.

Edeard used his longtalk to tell Salrana: “The caravan is here.”

“Where?” she answered. “I can't sense them.”

“They've just reached Molby's farm; they should be at the village bridge in another hour or so.”

“That's a long way to farsee, even for you.”

“The ge-eagle helps,” he admitted.

“Cheat!”

Edeard laughed. “I'll meet you in the square in half an hour.”

“All right.”

He finished instructing the flock of ge-chimps clearing out the stables and excused himself to Tonri, the senior apprentice. All he got for his courtesy was an indifferent grunt. Thorpe-by-Water's Eggshaper Guild hadn't exactly welcomed him with open arms. There was a huge question about his actual status. The Master hadn't yet confirmed him as a journeyman. Edeard's request that he be recognized as such had generated a lot of resentment among the other apprentices, who believed he should be the junior. It didn't help the situation that his talent was so obviously greater than any of theirs, even the Master's.

Salrana had been accepted a lot more readily into the Lady's church by Thorpe-by-Water's Mother, but she wasn't happy, either. “This will never be our home,” she told Edeard sadly after the first week. Thorpe-by-Water's residents did not exactly shun the refugees from Ashwell, but they were not made welcome. Rulan province now lived in fear of the bandits; if they could strike Ashwell, which was three days' ride from the edge of the wilderness, they could strike anywhere in the province. Life had changed irrevocably. There were patrols out in the farmlands and forests constantly now; and craftsmen had to leave aside all nonurgent tasks to strengthen village walls. Everyone in the Rulan province was going to be poorer that winter.

Edeard walked into the market square to the same averted glances he had been getting every day for the last three weeks. With its stalls and cobbled floor, it was remarkably similar to the one in Ashwell. Larger, of course: Thorpe-by-Water was a bigger village, built in a fork of the river Gwash, which provided it with natural protection along two sides. A canal moat had been dug between the two fast-flowing watercourses, with a sturdy drawbridge in the middle completing the defenses. Edeard thought that might make them safer than Ashwell; there was only one real point of entry unless the bandits used boats. Where would bandits get enough boats from …?

His farsight was casually aware of Salrana hurrying toward him. They greeted each other in front of one of the many fish stalls. She was dressed in a Lady's blue and white novice robe that was too large for her.

“Almost like before,” Edeard said, looking her up and down. He was quietly aware of the glances she was drawing from the other young men in the market.

She wriggled inside it, pulling at the long flared sleeves. “I'd forgotten how prickly this fabric is when it's new,” she said. “I only ever had one new one before at Ashwell for my initiation ceremony; the rest were all secondhand. But the Mother here has had five made for me.” She gave his clothes an assessment. “Still not found a weaver?”

Edeard rubbed at his ancient shirt with its strange miscolored patches. His trousers were too short as well, and the boots were so old that the leather was cracked along the top. “You need money for a weaver to make a shirt. Apprentices are clothed by their guild. And apprentices without status get the pick of everything the others don't want.”

“He still hasn't confirmed your journeyman status?”

“No. It's all politics. His own journeymen are totally inept, and that's mostly thanks to his poor training. They lose at least six out of every ten eggs; that's just pitiful. They're also five years older than me, so putting me on their level would be an admission of how rubbishy he actually is. I didn't appreciate what I had with Akeem.” He fell silent at the painful memory. They should have made time to recover the bodies, to give their village a proper funeral blessed by the Lady.

“You knew,” she said supportively.

“Yes. Thanks.” They wandered through the market, with Edeard looking enviously at the various clothes on display. As an apprentice he was not allowed to trade any eggs he sculpted; they all belonged to the guild. Akeem had been decently flexible about it, believing in a quiet reward system. But now Edeard found himself with no money, no friends, and no respect. It was like being ten years old again.

“One of the patrols came in last night,” Salrana said as they walked. “The Mother was at the meeting of village elders this morning; the patrol leader told them they'd found no sign of bandits, let alone a large group of them. Apparently there's talk about cutting down the patrols.”

“Idiots,” Edeard grunted. “What were they expecting to find? We told them the bandits can conceal themselves.”

“I know.” Her expression turned awkward. “Our word doesn't count for much.”

“What do they think destroyed Ashwell?”

“Give them some grace, Edeard; their whole world is being turned upside down right now. That's never easy.”

“Whereas we've had a cozy ride.”

“That's not nice.”

“Sorry.” He took a long breath. “I just hate this: After all we went through, we get treated as if we're the problem. I really should have kept that gun.” He'd left it at the bottom of the well shaft, not wanting any part of a bandit legacy. The gun was pure evil. Ever since, he had been trying to draw the fidgety little components he had sensed inside. Thorpe-by-Water's blacksmith had laughed when he had taken the sketches to him, telling him no such thing could be made. Now people were becoming skeptical about the whole repeat-shooting-gun story.

“You did the right thing,” she said. “How awful life would be if everyone had a weapon like that.”

“It's pretty awful that the bandits have it and we don't,” he snapped at her. “What's to stop them from sweeping through the whole province? Then farther? How about the entire region?”

“That won't happen.”

“No, it won't, because the governor will raise an army. Thankfully, there are more of us than them, so we can win no matter how terrible their weapons are. But that will mean bloodshed on a scale we've never known.” He wanted to beat his fists against the nearest stall. “How did they get that gun? Do you think they found one of the ships we came in?”

“Maybe they never left the ship they came in,” she said in a small voice.

“Perhaps. I don't know. Why will no one listen to us?”

“Because we're children.”

He turned to snarl at her, then saw the deep worry in her thoughts, her tired face dabbed with greenish ointment. She was so lovely. Somehow he knew Akeem would approve his risking everything to save her. “I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm taking it out on you.”