Page 16

“Look, up there!”

Esterra said. “Cave.”

Without checking to see if the old man had heard, she clambered upward.

As the incline grew steeper, she hurled her torch up into the cave with an accuracy born of long practice, and used her left arm to climb onwards.

As she pulled herself into the cave, she looked down.

The old man was clambering ineffectually, with the giant snake heads gaping just a few paces below.

Leodin swung out his arm, flinging out the wooden crutch.

Esterra grabbed the end and dragged upwards.

She hooked her feet around a stone, but felt it pulling free under the weight. Just as it came loose, Leodin rolled into the cave. The two crawled backwards. The snakeheads flashed into sight, hissing, venom dripping from giant fangs.

Leodin threw the last explosive.

One of the heads flashed forward and swallowed it.

The grisly head exploded.

Blue-streaked flesh splattered across the cave entrance.

A shattered fang flew across Esterra’s cheek, leaving a wide gash.

The wooden hydra rocked on the cliff’s edge.

The surviving heads dove forward, and the mass managed to keep its grip.

Esterra and Leodin scrambled back into the deeper recesses of the cave, where the irate heads couldn’t reach.

* * *

Esterra had recovered her torch.

With the embers of the torch and some dried animal dung, she soon had a little fire burning.

The red sun had set over the tract’s wall, bringing the humid chill of the jungle.

Leodin sat hunched over, the low roof of the cave inches above his head.

Esterra’s shorter stature gave her a tiny boost in comfort, but negligibly so.

The stench of the burning dung filled their nostrils.

The food from their packs lost its taste in such conditions, but Esterra did her best to cook it well.

The giant snake creature lay before the entrance, two of its heads lying inside the cave.

Their tongues flickered out every few minutes, but the monster was otherwise still.

“It is called an enskaal,”

Leodin said.

“A name means nothing,”

Esterra replied. “How do we kill it?”

“The name was for your man, when you tell him of this moment.”

“I don’t have any man.”

The old man remained silent, packing his pipe full of dried crimson weed.

With deft fingers, he spun a piece of cloth into a tiny wick and held it to the fire.

As soon as it caught, he lifted it to his pipe and proceeded to puff away with a half smile.

His dark eyes glittered in the firelight from between the mess of bandages.

Esterra dropped dried mushrooms into the boiling water, some roots, a pinch of aromatic herbs, then added a palmful of coarse cornmeal, thickening the water and adding some flavour to the eten , as stew was called in the Archan tongue.

"Haven't seen any corn in nearby tracts.

From the Circle?" the old man asked.

"Aye."

"Must have cost a nice few tals."

"I usually trade hides."

"You're as recalcitrant as every tractwalker. What is it about conversation that frightens you all so?"

Esterra levelled the same deadpan stare at him that usually shut the mouths of the overly talkative. Leodin didn't take the hint.

“I understand you killed the old woman in the tree.”

“How long have you known about me?”

Esterra asked in return.

“For years you’ve followed me. Unwittingly, for the most part. In that tract of the three-legged wolves, you first noticed my tracks, consciously.”

“Nope. I saw them well before then.”

“Is that so? Then why has it taken you so long to catch up?”

"Why would I want to follow and find a tractwalker? Besides, you tried your best to throw me off your scent, with the way you varied your tracks.

I note you used different things as your second foot.

Sometimes a boot, sometimes a claw, sometimes nothing but your pitchfork."

"Do not flatter yourself. I started that little habit well before you picked up my trail."

"Ha. Admit it, you're impressed I found you."

"If you say so, Stake. Perhaps I simply let myself be found."

"Oh really. Mighty handy excuse, that."

“Interpret my words as you will, child.”

“Why the constant evasion? You’re not afraid of much, that’s clear.”

The old man puffed at his pipe, the sweet red smoke pushing out the stink of the dung fire. “Who said it was evasion?”

he replied.

Esterra glared at him. So the bastard wants to play games . She grit her teeth and lay down. Her ribs still ached, and she was dead tired. Don’t have patience for bloody word games . The old man looked at her, the half-smile on his lips not fading.

“Before the First Lichtvallen, in the times before the First College even, there were no tracts. The licht created them.”

“The licht has no mind of its own.”

“Does it not? You know as well as I do that it shapes the hollows, now and then. Creatures morph, humans die, and yet some humans… do not. Is that not a sign of decisive will?”

Esterra shook her head.

“You believe it all to be mere chance,”

he continued. “And perhaps you are right. But there are things beyond chance and luck, wills stronger than these, powers strong enough to reclaim destiny.”

“If destiny is destined, then why must it be reclaimed?”

“Words, my dear, all words and wordplay.”

“Seems to be all you have, old man.”

“Look. The world’s direction can be changed, and we can determine wholly in our own souls where we are going.”

“Where are you going, Pitchfork?”

Leodin looked at her, his dark eyes unreadable between the tight bandages.

Red smoke wisped between his lips.

Esterra looked right back, through the black smoke of the little campfire.

There was little trust in Verpace, between humans or animals.

Honesty was as dead as the tales in the books that people burned to keep warm at night.

The scars of the First Lichtvallen were far deeper than the tracts alone.

Yet she felt something like kinship brewing here. It put her on her guard.

“What do you seek, Stake?”

Leodin asked.

Esterra maintained her steady stare, refusing to allow any emotion to show. Emotion was a weakness to be exploited.

The man she had met in the snowy waste had asked her a similar question during their journey together.

Esterra had often asked it of herself since.

What do I seek? Most of Verpace was embroiled in a day-to-day struggle of murder and expansion and survival.

People did not travel from their chosen tracts.

The hollows were spoken of in whispers.

Cults and warlords ruled in every place where anyone gathered.

Survival. But for what? Scratching out a feeble chance to not die, but without any real life as well. A mindless, instinctual habit that held no meaning.

Once she had held hope for a safe tract.

A fertile land with few predators, defensible and secure.

To build a real life without the hardships that Verpace heaped upon its denizens.

But there were none beyond the Valley, and that was forever shut to outsiders.

She was loathe to even think of returning to it.

No other tract was immune to the lichtvallen.

Only the Valley remained unchanged.

She had seen the effects of the lichtvallen in her travels, the death of all humans within the tract, and sometimes even the reshaping of the tract itself.

Roads once safe were broken and reformed, new horrors spouting from the earth or seemingly from thin air to populate it.

Giant rats with myriad eyes, mad hounds, necrotic frogs which feasted on whatever poor damned soul might stumble into their watery nests.

These things were birthed from the licht, and there was nothing anyone could do to prevent or change such things.

Only the Circle provided any stability, with the listeners gripping their bell-cords under the heavy watch of the merchant-barons.

But no tractwalker could afford a life there, and grovelling was not in her nature.

So she had no answer.

She was without purpose.

In a world where safety and security were invaluable yet impossible, where listeners were chained within dark towers and where steel talens ruled, perhaps there was no purpose to be had.

Survival would have to be enough.

She was destined to die like every other inhabitant of Verpace, like her own father, without meaning or reason.

While her soul ached for something that she both feared and desired, the world would have none of it, and there was no reason to dream of clemency.

“You see why I answered with a question,”

Leodin interrupted her thoughts.

“Aye, old man,”

she replied.

“So what is your purpose?”

“To survive.”

“For yourself alone?”

“Of course for me alone. It’s always been me alone, protecting myself, fighting for myself.”

“Yet that’s no purpose at all,”

Leodin said.

“You are like a knife, sharp and vicious, indeed, but to what end? The blade is good, but if it is used recklessly without a goal, without care, it becomes chipped.

Damaged.

Who will tend it? The blade cannot mend itself.

That is where purpose enters.

“The reason you fight cannot be the fight itself.

You must fight for a cause.

When all the combat has you lying wearied and bloodied in a land far from home, only that cause, that purpose, will offer solace from the terrible loneliness and frailty you face then.

Like a whetstone and oil, that purpose will resharpen the blade.

But not only does it make the blade sharp again.

This mending removes those fatal nicks in the blade that would, if left untended, lead to a terrible betrayal in a future moment, snapping under too much pressure.

“A strong man can win one or two battles.

But they can't win fifty on strength alone.

A purpose is required, a reason to fight.

Your life is a guttering tallow candle, liable to be snuffed out by any random gust of wind, or your own soul suffocating itself in misery.

Focus yourself.

Ask why you fight.

And if you find no answer, then perhaps it is time you fine one.”

Esterra looked at him for many long moments.

“Does it make you feel safe?”

Esterra asked.

The old man gazed back through his bandages.

“This purpose of yours.

You know, when the wicks burn low and the whispering darkness that swirls about this world closes in, a thick blanket of dread chilling you in its clammy folds, when you lie with your back to the campfire because you don’t dare roll over in case, just in case, that noise you heard might actually be something coming to claw out your gut and chew on your steaming intestines… In those moments, when the last of your embers are dying and there’s no more wood and the moon goes behind a cloud… Yes, your eyes show me that you have these moments.

Does your purpose keep you safe? Does it have a sharp edge, sharp enough to cut the night? Is it full of warmth and light? Or does it falter?”

He looked at her, she scowled at him, then tapped the grip of her knife.

“This is my purpose.

My life is mine.

That is purpose enough.

Purpose.

Ha.” She spat into the little fire, grinning as it hissed.

He sat unmoving as the moment stretched out till it was taut, ready to snap, the firelight dancing across his bandaged face.

“Don’t misread my words, Stake,”

he said, voice low.

“You’re a strong woman.

Few survive the world outside of the Valley, even those born without any deformity.

With a lichtridden arm, you’ve survived decades without submitting to either the licht or your fellow humans.

Strong, and hard.

But you have grown weary, doubtful of late.”

Esterra closed her eyes, but Leodin knew she was listening.

“I’ve met few who could control the licht, and less who lasted more than a few years.

It calls to those it infects.

You of all people know it has a life of its own.

I bear another curse, as you can see.

I believe they called it mafeng in the old tongue, or leprosy.

I’m quite ugly under all these bandages, alas.

Women barely look my way these days.”

He broke into muffled laughter, as if at an old private joke.

Esterra snorted, refusing to offer any more response.

“I know of your exile from the Valley,”

he continued. “Hearing of your father’s bravery cooled my taste for vengeance.”

Esterra opened her eyes. “Aye, I know the place well, know the temperaments even better. I was not so young as you, perhaps, but my soul bears its scars.”

Esterra did not speak.

“I was married, a follower of the silver bells like all who live there, as you yourself will surely have been had you stayed.

Ring the bells and pray to the stars.

Some of those damned prayers still come to me when I travel, in the quiet moments.

I was too young to enter the temple, same as you, but I remember kneeling before it as they chanted and wondering at the great mysteries as we all mouthed the words.”

He glanced at her, saw no reaction, changed tack.

“Anyway, freshly married and happy, it was only natural that chaos would strike.

My wife was exiled.

She had crossed one of the priests, maybe questioned her faith or rang a bell wrong, who knows.

The official indictment was that she had swallowed licht.

Lichtridden.

Petty vengeance in their eyes, but exile to her.

Not too bad, you might say.

Well, the priests had me held down, a pitchfork to my back and boots crushing my wrists, held there to watch as she was stripped and sent into the hollows with red brands prodding her all the way.

Alone. Without her husband. Last thing I saw that night was her vanishing into that dark crevice, a shadow into the shadows, my life gone in a blurry moment.

“The next night, I grabbed one of their pitchforks, stabbed the guard outside my house, and followed.

Not this pitchfork, mind you, but one like it.

And I went through the depths of that licht-poisoned hollow without a light, and well… You know the City of Exiles, how they treat newcomers.

My wife wasn’t there waiting for me.

Not alive, anyhow.

I found her mangled, brutalised body nailed to one of their bloody torture wheels, up there on the ridges.

An animal could not have made such wounds.

“I hunted them down, the bastards who had done that.

I found out she had been taken within minutes of entering the city.

I hurt them until I ran out of energy, then took their heads and… But that does not matter.

I made a name for myself there, leading a gang of kidnappers for the most part.

Lichtridden children.

I knew that those who survived the licht could harness it.

What if I could harness them, destroy the Valley? What sweet vengeance that would be.

But they died or vanished, one by one, eaten by the filth that prowls the city or fleeing into the wilderness, taking their chances.

None gave me what I needed.

And then the plague came. Leprosy. It cleaned out most of the city, but it turned me into this.”

He smoked in silence.

The dung burned without a sound.

Now and then the snakeheads hissed a warning into the cave.

Esterra stretched her neck, bones creaking.

She sipped at her gourd, conserving as much water as she could.

Who knew how long it would take the damned thing to die.

She certainly had no idea.

Esterra wrenched her boots off and unwrapped her foot wraps.

The fire was warm on her aching ankle, the old sprain from the sickle-tree tract rearing its head after too much activity.

She massaged it, trying to ignore the sweat, wishing she had a cool stream to drop the damned thing in as she rested.

Cool water was a distant memory in this stinking jungle.

The pain ebbed away, then waxed strong.

She kept massaging.

In an attempt at self-distraction, she returned to the previous conversation.

"You never answered my question,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“Where are you going? Why are you always travelling in the same direction as me?"

"What direction might that be?"

“So you’re playing it that way. Let me rephrase to match your clever words. What is your purpose?”

Esterra asked.

"Our ancestors were once great and powerful, ruling over Verpace and building many of the great building you see buried in the tracts."

"The ruins are just that. Ruins."

"No, beneath them. You have seen the buried city, the broken temples and halls, larger than life. I know you have, following my trail as you did."

"Hm, your trail. Those ruins aren’t empty. And whatever walks there isn't human, old man."

"Alas, the might of the past has indeed fallen." He fell silent, staring into the flames, his eyes golden in the flickering light.

Esterra remembered the tall statues, the marble king, the vast emptiness that ruled in the shadows.

She saw no glory there, only tyranny and fear.

She wondered if the old man spoke of the same things, rapt as he appeared to be with the memories.

"Perhaps it is through the broken that they will return," he whispered.

"What?"

He looked up, as if from a daze, and shrugged. "Nothing, nothing. Thinking of the intricacies of time and space and suchlike."

"You're an odd man, as well as an old one. Tell me about yourself. How damned old are you anyway?"

“Over a century now.”

Esterra snorted. “So you’re not just old, Pitchfork, but senile too.”

“One hundred and ten years and three months.”

He pulled back his sleeve, where a large swatch of cloth held markings, black scratchy slashes, in multiple rows. “One mark for every month. I keep a careful tally.”

Esterra looked at him, wide-eyed. “Aye, practically immortal. Ugly, skin decaying, but immune to all other sickness. Though I believe the venom of that beast out there would put me down quickly enough.”

“You’re full of it. Just a preachy old man with too much shaken loose in your skull.”

He tapped out his pipe, scattering the perished ashes over the sandstone floor of the cave.

The dung fire burned low, and for a moment she swore his eyes glittered with tears in the semi-darkness.

As the flames sputtered out and darkness enveloped them both, he sighed heavily.

“In a way, I understand the Valley now.

The purity they seek, looking to our past.

Humanity.

The origins of the exile were not born of disgust or hatred, though for the last few centuries that seems to have become the overriding motive.

It was simple survival.

Some of our ancestors had made the connections that I finally discovered in the City of Exiles.

Where there is licht, there are lichtvallen. No licht, no lichtridden, no lichtvallen. Remove the prey, and the predators lose all interest in the place.”

Esterra frowned in the shadows, the frown deepening as the logic set in.

She pondered it for a few moments, then whispered:

“But that doesn’t make it right.”