Farlander (27 page)

It suddenly struck Nico how absurd this situation was: like playing a children’s game of hide-and-go-seek, armed only with wooden knives. But then he thought of the knife in Aléas’s hand, doubtless somewhere close, sharp as his own, and as capable of drawing blood. Nico’s heartbeat began to pump in his ears.

For a moment the light diminished behind him, enveloping all in deeper blackness. He swung his head around to see the silhouettes of Ash and Baracha stepping through the opening. They made no sound either.

Nico waved them out of the way, until they had crouched either side of the opening and the meagre light was restored.

Now
, he urged himself,
think
.

The cobweb nearby stirred. Nico had only time to lean back sharply as a vague form loosed itself at him from his right. He felt the air brush past his face, detected a blur of motion . . . then lunged forward, with his own knife. But it slashed through empty space, and then he felt the sting of pain across his left cheek, and again, across his right.

He was stunned enough to fall back upon his haunches. Crouching there, he clasped a hand to his face, blood leaking through his fingers.

‘Owhh,’ he moaned.

Aléas stepped before him into the dim light. The young man had streaked his face with grime, so that only the skin immediately under his hairline was still white. A chuckle sounded elsewhere in the attic, before Baracha clomped heavily back down the stairs.

Ash still waited, as Nico gained his feet and turned to him. He could not read the old man’s expression.

Ash took a drink of chee and smacked his lips.

‘Keep trying,’ Ash murmured. ‘You must be ready when I take you into the field.’ And, with a swirl of his robes, he departed too.

Aléas nodded to Nico’s facial wounds. ‘Coat them with beeswax,’ he suggested. ‘It will keep the scars small. Come, I’ll help you.’

For a moment, Nico found himself alone in the clammy darkness of the attic. Through his fingers blood dripped in a slowing rhythm. His right hand, shaking, sought the cool hard assurance of the wooden floor, and he sank down with it, his legs dangling over the edge of the trapdoor. He let out a long breath, and waited for his heart to stop pounding.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The night lay brooding in its own heat.

At the centre of the Lake of Birds, the imperial barge rocked gently, far from the distant lights of the towns that glittered around its shoreline. A jangle of music could be heard from those towns across the still water, and shouts and laughter, and the barking of dogs.

On the barge itself the only sound was the whispering of the slaves and the steady, heartbeat rhythm of a single drum. The atmosphere was unreal, heavy. The Nathalese slaves could sense it, huddling terrified together in their cages at the near end of the barge. They knew at last why they had been abducted so roughly from their everyday lives along the Toin. Tonight was to be their last night of captivity.

Above the rank stench of the slaves themselves, the air was pungent with musky incense wafting from the prow of the vessel, where the two priests, naked, stood, attended by their personal servants. Their bare flesh shone in the glow of several burning braziers, glistening with the oil that had been lavishly applied by their attendants. Two of the Nathalese slaves already lay prone at that end of the barge. A third had finally stopped screaming, and even now was crumpling to the deck, whether alive or dead they could not tell.

An Acolyte motioned quickly for another slave to be dragged forward. Most of the Nathalese captives protested, cowering at the rear of the cage as the guards kicked their way through to snatch one of them with rough hands. This time they seized a middle-aged woman, whose fine silk dress was stained and torn from her long captivity. She did not resist. She did not even appear to be aware of them. By her side, a young red-haired woman cried out and clung to her companion’s arm.

An Acolyte kicked the younger woman aside so that she shrank back, whimpering. Before they pulled the older woman out of the cage, they tore the expensive jewellery from her neck and cast it at her feet, where it sparkled next to the length of chain shackled around her ankles. The other slaves watched with varying degrees of empathy, though primarily with relief that they too had not been chosen. Shame hung heavy within the cage: they could barely meet each other’s eyes.

But the woman was not as helpless as she had first appeared. As the Acolytes began to lead her away, she stumbled and broke free from their grasp, making a sudden shuffling sprint for the rail at the near side of the barge. One of the Acolytes tried to restrain her, but a fraction too late. She pitched over the side, crashing into the water with a terrific splash, then vanished instantly as she was pulled down to her death by the shackles fixed around her ankles.

The red-headed girl whimpered as she watched her mother disappear over the rail. It was a pitiful, animal sound that came from Rianna’s throat, but it was all the emotion she had left in her.

She failed even to notice as her quaking hands tugged fistfuls of hair from her bleeding scalp. Her mind had detached itself from the physical, though it was still capable of thought, in a way. It was thinking:
now my mother is dead, and my father is dead, my dear beloved Marth is dead, and I am dead, and everything everything everything is dead.

‘Oh Er
s!’ she cried out in her head, seized by the sudden image of her mother struggling for breath down there in the freezing black depths of the lake.
Oh mother, oh dear mother
. . .

To stop thinking of that awful thing, she began to crack her skull against the bars of the cage, over and over again. A woman by her side tried to offer comfort by wrapping her arm around the girl’s shoulders. Making soothing sounds, she squeezed tighter and tighter, as though to stop both of them from rattling apart with fear.

Do the same with yourself
, some residual part of Rianna’s mind spoke to her.
Throw yourself into the water as soon as they release you.

No
, said another voice,
you don’t deserve such a clean death. They’re all dead because of you . . . because you caught that young priest’s eye with your look of defiance, and made him want you.

‘Mother,’ she croaked aloud, and everything cracked loose inside of her. She needed to get away from this nightmare. She needed to wake up from it all, and flee back to the world she knew as her own.

In a way her wish was granted her. She passed out, and descended into a sweet blackness.

*

When she came to, apparently not much later, she was still huddled against the bars amid her fellow prisoners. Rianna choked as the horror returned to her. She tried to breathe, spluttering for air.

She might have broken then, lost her mind entirely, had she not noticed how her hand was clutching something slung around her neck.

Without thinking, she used her other hand to pry open her bone-white fingers, gazing down at the object in her grip. The seal, she realized, staring dumbfounded, an item all but overlooked until now. It was the seal her father had bought for her on her sixteenth birthday, worrying as always over the safety of his family.

Rianna had been appalled when her father had first forced her to wear it. The thing was just as hideous to look at as it was to touch. She had been even more horrified to awaken that first night to find it breathing and alive against her chest.

But her father was adamant.
I am High Priest of this city, my daughter,
he had reminded her.
Many would like to see me dead, and if they cannot get to me personally, they may still get to my family. You must wear this always, if only for your own protection.

She had argued with him, complaining how awful it looked, and then howled that it wasn’t fair, because
he
didn’t have to wear one – nor did mother, so why should she? But still he would not be swayed.
Your mother follows my example
, he had explained.
The order of Mann does not allow me to wear such a thing. It would be seen as a weakness
, and he waited on her bed until her tears had run their course.

Look after it
, he had cautioned her.
It is bonded to you now – and if it perishes then so shall you.

She had been petrified at that thought of being linked so inseparably to this ugly thing. With ill grace she agreed to wear it always, though always she had tried to hide it beneath her clothing. That had made her father angry, claiming it was no deterrent if she kept it hidden from sight.

But would such a talisman stop these priests from Q’os?
Rianna wondered now, as the seal pumped in her hand like a living thing. A seal was a seal, was it not? Surely even these priests of Mann would be made to pay for her death like anyone else?

It was a chance at life, she realized, and she felt wretchedly guilty as she thought this.

But then, what if she tore the thing off and let it fall unnoticed to the deck? The seal did not have to actually be worn to be aware of her death; it was connected to her now, no matter how far away it found itself. What if she hid it from sight, and just let them have their way with her? What if she had the strength to do such a thing as that? If they took her life, a vendetta might be declared. Revenge for her loved ones would surely be exacted on these animals.

Rianna moaned aloud, doubting she would have the courage for such a sacrifice.

Suddenly the choices before her were almost worse than the hopelessness she had faced before. Rianna was frozen with indecision, and on the verge of losing her mind.

But then they came for her.

*

‘Quiet!’ the masked Acolyte shouted, dragging her on her back to the far end of the deck.

‘Wait!’ she cried out. ‘I’m protected, you see?’

But the Acolyte could not see, for it was too dark and he was too fevered with the rising excitement in the air. He threw her to the planking alongside one of the large braziers, and she saw a glint of steel as a knife came out.

The man ran it along her back, cutting her dress open from neck to waist. He pinned her struggling to the deck with a knee pressed painfully between her shoulder blades. Another Acolyte approached, bearing something in a clear-glass jar. He bent down to her face, showing her that it held some kind of worm: a fat and sickly-white atrocity wriggling for release from its glass prison.

‘Wait!’ she tried again, as the Acolyte tilted the jar and pressed its open end against her bare spine.

She cursed her father then, cursed him with all the passion she had left in her, for ever getting his family involved with these people, this obscene religion. What had he been thinking of? What crimes such as this had he himself committed in the name of Mann?

Rianna screamed: the pain was beyond bearing. But what was worse, much worse, was the sensation of the worm burying its way into her flesh.

The Acolytes released their pressure, and Rianna tried to fling herself upright, her hands scrabbling at the open wound in her back. A finger worked its way into it, seeking out the intruder.

Then something unexpected happened: all strength in her limbs deserted her. She collapsed back on to the deck, beside the three other slaves already lying there, panting helplessly, only the whites of their eyes showing. Rianna found herself unable to move or speak. All she could do was watch what happened next.

More slaves were fetched forward, and a worm was given to each one in turn. Soon, a dozen of them lay sprawled and paralysed on the deck. An atmosphere of panic increased with the slowly rising tempo of the single drum. The two priests watched the gathering number of victims with lustful excitement in their eyes. They exchanged words with each other as they stroked their own bodies, and occasionally inhaled deeply from a steaming bowl of some kind of liquid narcotic, the fine-linked golden chains of their facial piercings dangling just above its surface.

It began with the killing of a single slave, an elderly man with cataracts in his eyes; the priest woman, naked, her empty, sagging breasts swinging low as she bent over and took a knife to him.

Immediately, the atmosphere intensified to a higher pitch. It was as though the priestess had pierced more than a mere physical barrier by the work of her knife, but breached an abstract one too: a skin of the world that stretched over all life, shielding normal eyes from an outer reality devoid of humanity, boundless and alien. The dying man’s squeals pierced the night air. The paralysed slaves saw the fate in store for them, as he lay on the deck quivering and gurgling his last breath, bubbles of blood forming on his lips. This slaying, though, was purely the opening act.