Saeng shuddered. ‘You are right. I do not understand the regimen of cruelty.’
‘
For that I am glad
.’
The madman waved them on, grinning like a child on his birthday. ‘Come, come. Follow my lead.’ He sidled up close to Saeng and lowered his voice as if conferring a secret: ‘Though in truth you cannot, as I think differently now and see things which my blinkered brethren are incapable of.’
Saeng nodded her guarded agreement. ‘Of that I have no doubt.’
‘Exactly! And so I must thank them. The method of instruction may be vindictive and inexcusable but in this case it
has
led to enlightenment.’ He opened his hands as if to express the obviousness of it. ‘You see?
‘Yes. I … see.’
‘Excellent! It is a shame, really. I am suffused with pity for my brothers and sisters who can only writhe like blind worms in the mud while I now soar among boundless vistas.’
‘Where are you taking us?’ Ahead winds shivered the massed emerald jungle canopy. A storm of crimson and gold flower petals came showering down in the gusts like swirling flocks of birds. Hanu brushed them from his shoulders. The priest held out his cupped hands to gather a few stray petals.
‘Tears of Himatan,’ he said, offering them to Saeng.
‘Pardon?’
‘Flower petals. This is what they are. Tears of Himatan.’
Saeng hadn’t heard that old superstition since she sat listening to ghost stories as a child. A stray thought – a touch mocking – moved her to ask, ‘And what does Himatan weep for?’
‘For her children.’
That answer made her shiver and the small hairs of her arms and neck actually stirred.
Mad
, she told herself.
The man is mad
.
Once they were clear of the far end of the cyclopean bridge the forest engulfed them once more and Saeng felt chilled to be among the gloom and dappled shadows. She missed the clean heat of the sun and the woods that had seemed so full of life next to the river – so many new bird calls. One possessed a piercing rising and falling whistle that made her jump each time it let loose.
Carefully, Hanu gestured aside. Two children, a boy and a girl, had emerged from the dense brush. Seeing them just after the madman’s odd pronouncement unnerved Saeng even further. They wore only the very traditional, even outmoded now, loin wrap. Their hair also had been prepared in the old style that one only hears of in the folk tales: the head shaved but for a single small tightly braided queue hanging on one side. Each held out a circlet woven of pink and orange flower blossoms.
‘Please, take them,’ the Thaumaturg said.
Saeng felt positively alarmed now, but offered the children a smile then bent low. The girl slipped her lei over her head. Hanu merely peered down at the boy. Saeng gestured for him to comply. His stance betraying a sigh, her brother took the lei and slipped it over his helm.
‘Now you are our honoured guests,’ the mage announced. ‘Come.
A
banquet is being prepared. A momentous event is to come. Sit, rest, enjoy.’
The children led them off the raised causeway into the dense jungle. If there was a path here Saeng could see no sign of it. Then she smelled the familiar homey scent of wood smoke and cooking – or thought she did. Perhaps it was merely the memory of such things that had come to mind. Ahead rose the peaks of some ten or twelve huts standing tall on their poles, as in the traditional construction. The children ran ahead, scattering chickens. Pigs, captured wild ones, rooted under the huts. Each was secured by a rope of woven twine.
‘Come, come,’ the mage urged and he motioned to a hut where the villagers were gathering. The men and women all looked as if they had been taken straight from some old story from her childhood: hair brush-cut severely short, both men and women, and all in plain blue-dyed shirts. Each bowed to Saeng and Hanu, who answered. They motioned to the main hut’s short set of stairs, inviting them in.
Here Saeng paused. So far she had been willing to go along with whatever emerged from the jungle. Some encounters seemed more or less random – such as their meeting with Varakapi – which could have occurred at any day or time. But other meetings seemed fated, or unavoidable. As if they’d been arranged by someone or something. What, or who, that might be Saeng had no idea, though she had her suspicions. The encounter with the man-leopard Citravaghra had possessed that flavour. And she felt it here again, as well. She was inclined to cooperate in that she sensed nothing malign in the attention. Yet it was of course disturbing that she could not yet understand – nor yet know even whether she was capable of understanding.
And as the demented Thaumaturg was a demonstration: some lessons can be most harrowing indeed.
And so she mounted the stairs and took her place on the mats arranged in a broad oval. The mage sat on her right while Hanu took her left. Children came bearing banana leaves, which they laid before each person at the banquet. Then came rice steaming in wide clay pots. Saeng sampled the rice and the stewed meats and spiced vegetable dishes before her but tasted none of it. Flowers adorned every selection. Indeed, a few of the dishes mainly comprised edible flowers. And blossoms adorned every child and adult present.
Outside night fell quickly and torches on poles were lit against the dark. The bright jade glow of the Omen had been haunting the
west
and now with the darkness it came to dominate the night far more brightly than any full moon. Saeng squinted at one of the open windows, troubled. The Banner, or Scimitar, seemed unaccountably intense this evening. She raised a hand to the west. ‘What do you call that light?’
The Thaumaturg’s manic features turned down and he sighed heavily, as if suddenly overcome by an unbearable sadness. ‘That is the coming judgement of the High King, Kallor. This night it shall fall.’
Saeng dropped the ball of rice she had gathered in her hand. The room darkened as her vision closed to a tight tunnel and a roaring swelled in her hearing as if the descending Omen itself were crashing in upon her. She lowered her head, blinking, and forced the air deep within her chest.
‘
Saeng?
’ Hanu enquired from her side. She raised a hand to reassure him. Now she knew why the food tasted of nothing and why the smells seemed only remembered. All were ghosts. The people. The children. Even the village itself. Gone, long gone. Wiped from the earth.
She took a long slow breath to calm the fluttering in her chest then shot a glance to the mage. ‘When?’
He raised his head to the west. ‘Soon,’ he sighed. ‘Any moment now.’
Saeng was appalled. She swept a hand over the banquet. ‘Then why this? Why not flee now?’
‘There is no time. And nowhere to go. What I argued against has come to pass.’
‘Then … why …’ Again she gestured helplessly to the gathered bounty.
The madman smiled his understanding. ‘We celebrate the High King. Under him we have known centuries of peace and we honour him now. It is our way of saying farewell.’
Saeng could only blink at the mage. ‘You …
honour
Kallor?’
Now he studied her as if she were the touched one. ‘Of course.’
She turned from the madman. ‘Hanu,’ she began, uncertain how to convey this.
‘
Yes?
’
‘This insane Thaumaturg says—’
A blazing emerald light pierced the hut and Saeng broke off to cover her gaze. All stood to face the west, hands and arms shading their gazes. A pillar of green light now dominated the western horizon only to fade to nothing even as Saeng glimpsed it. All was
complete
silence, for the jungle had stilled in every direction. Eerie it was, the unnatural quiet. Saeng blinked, blinded, as after staring at the fire at night.
‘Now it comes,’ the Thaumaturg breathed into the silence.
Saeng turned on the man. ‘Tell me what to do! What must I do to avert this?’
‘I do not know what you must do, High Priestess. I can only say that you must not despair. What rises must fall only to rise again. What has gone shall come again. It is the way of the world.’
The surrounding treetops now stirred and groaned in a rising wind and Saeng knew that what was on its way was far more than a strong wind. She took hold of the man’s tattered shirt front. ‘What does this mean? Platitudes? I asked you to help me, damn you!’
‘
Saeng?
’ Hanu asked again. ‘
What is going on?
’
The man’s gaze was fixed far beyond her. ‘Yea,’ he murmured, ‘those who reach for fire shall be destroyed by fire. For she is the Destroyer and the Creator and in her dance are we revealed.’
‘What? Babbling …’ Saeng’s attention shifted to the west where a moaning now climbed to a roar as of continuous thunder. Around her parents held children, faces pressed to faces; loved ones hugged, crying and rocking. Then a wall of churning and billowing darkness hammered through the jungle verge, obliterating it, and Saeng screamed.
* * *
Mara fell into thin ochre-red muddy soil and rotting leaf matter. Convulsing, she dry-heaved, her body attempting to rid itself of any possible ingested toxins, yet her stomach was empty and so only sticky acid bile burned on her tongue. She spat and gagged.
Birdsong assaulted her ears, along with the whirring and buzzing of countless insects, including the startlingly loud cicadas, which she found particularly maddening. Lurching to her feet she staggered, hands mimicking strangulation. ‘Where is he!’ she slurred and spat, wiping her mouth. ‘I’ll fucking kill him.’ In the distance, through the fronds and tree trunks, she glimpsed Thaumaturg soldiery marching single file. Labourers passed, bent almost horizontal beneath the tump-lines of enormous loads.
‘He’s run off,’ Petal groaned from nearby.
She searched for and found the man lying like a beached whale. For a moment she entertained the idea of attempting to help him up, reconsidered. There was no way she could budge that great bulk.
Skinner arrived then, and clasping the man by the robes at his shoulder, hauled him to his feet. ‘We are returned,’ Petal announced, peering about.
‘Indeed,’ Mara murmured, but only half scathingly. She’d learned more of the man during this mission than she’d ever known before – or in truth had bothered to know before. While he might be awkward, plodding and pedantic in his mannerisms, he was also no fool. She might have been wrong to be so dismissive of him all these years. He was loyal, and conveniently apolitical. Perhaps she should dedicate some time to finding the lever that would bind him to her. If she could then cajole Red to her side … then … then she would have real clout and could consider intervening in command decisions. If necessary. For Skinner’s own good, of course.
A Thaumaturg officer approached, pushing aside the ferns and hanging vines. He saluted Skinner. ‘Master Golan has a standing order that you report at once, sir.’
Skinner did not answer the salute. ‘Fine,’ he growled. The officer inclined his head and marched stiffly away. Skinner indicated the column. ‘They are making even less time than I’d imagined.’
‘None will see daylight again,’ Petal affirmed.
‘Well then,’ Mara said, and she invited Skinner onward. ‘Things are proceeding nicely.’
Master Golan’s covered palanquin was now no more than a sagging chair on poles. He sat in it glowering down at them and slapping a horsehair switch about his head and shoulders to ward off the hanging clouds of insects. ‘And where have you been?’ he demanded. ‘Perhaps it is an amusing idiosyncrasy of mine, but I prefer my allies to be present at my battles.’
Skinner gave a vague gesture. ‘We were pursuing leads. There have been many attacks, then?’
The Thaumaturg’s wide frog mouth clamped shut and he frowned, seemingly uncomfortable.
A scrawny clerk nearby cleared his throat. ‘Attacks from the Witch-Queen’s creatures have in fact fallen off sharply.’
Master Golan glared at the man.
Skinner gave a slow nod of agreement. ‘Excellent. Our approach is working, then. Anything else?’
‘No,’ the Thaumaturg allowed, almost choking on the word. ‘That is all. You will notify me when you next plan on wandering off pursuing these, ah,
leads
. Yes?’
Skinner half bowed. ‘Yes.’
‘Very good.’ Master Golan waved the switch. ‘You may go.’
Walking away, Skinner ordered Mara, ‘Find me Jacinth and Shijel.’
They met together in conclave around a fire that, like all those kindled here in Himatan, generated far more smoke than any appreciable heat or flame. Skinner stood, helm under an arm, his thick dirty-blond hair flattened with sweat. He was growing a full ruddy-blond beard as well. No scabbard hung from his weapon belt; he’d thrown it away as useless. While everyone else’s armour and fittings betrayed the green, black and ochre-rust of corrosion from the constant damp, the glittering black mail that swept down to his ankles revealed no such deterioration. It occurred to Mara that perhaps it was enamelled, or consisted of some sort of non-metal layering. A hardened resin, perhaps.
Shijel had discarded any pretence to armour and wore now only a hauberk of banded layers of leather, and a scarlet silk sash over wide black trousers pulled tight at the ankles by tall sandals. His twinned Untan duelling swords were thrust through the sash. The man had always dressed his black hair straight and long. But now because of the lack of water for washing and the crabs and lice that infested everyone, he had hacked it all off and now stood with a stubbled scalp, scraped raw and clotted by dried scabs of blood. His lean wolfish features held a barely suppressed impatience.