None the less, Imber did not shout. He stepped cautiously through the gap in the wall and took shelter behind it, never taking his eyes from that rapid shadow. As it drew closer he could make better guesses at its size and shape. Because it was low like a
beetle
, because it moved and glinted like a
beetle
, he'd half prepared himself to meet and do battle with a
beetle
: cruelly overgrown, perhaps, malign certainly, but a
beetle
none the less.
Assumptions were foolish, assumptions in the dark were dangerous, ignorance was always deadly. The creature's body was segmented like a millipedes, and it scuttled on as many legs. It stood as high as a man's waist, perhaps; looking at it now, seeing it close, Imber felt no inclination to stand his ground and discover its measurements by his sword's length. It had eyes that glowed red in the dark, and mouth-parts that champed together as it ran. Whatever kind of monster this might be - and he'd never heard that even the apostates of the Folded Land bred anything so vile as this - Imber couldn't imagine himself fending it off with a longsword.
He could see no more of the creatures crawling up from the river's bed, who might have assaulted the camp. Just the one, and coming straight for him: he didn't believe in coincidence, nor in ill chance. He did believe in spirits, since he had met his first. He remembered how the djinni had sought him out and found him, simply by an act of will; there were other spirits in this Sanctuary Land, no doubt some that had the same authority over aspects of the world not know-able to mortals. Magic, the peasants called it, and priests and children also. He thought he could smell its working here and now, unless what he was smelling was his own terror of it, that he'd thought he'd long outgrown.
Nothing but wisdom, to be afraid of what was coming: what he could see under starlight, what he must meet alone and ill-prepared, armed but unarmoured, understanding nothing of what he saw. In his wisdom he stepped backward into the seeming shelter of the high-walled fields; once out of the creature's sight, he turned and stared about him, praying not to have stepped into a trap.
Relief: there was another opening in another wall, a way out of this stone box. He ploughed heedlessly through a flourishing crop of waist-high millet, till he came to the darker shadow of the gap in the wall.
Looked through — and of course it was not a way out, only a way into the next field. But this one too offered an onward path, a further opening; and the alternative was to go back and fight the creature, which was what he'd already considered and re
jected. A man might choose rightl
y or wrongly, but once he'd chosen he should stand by that choice. In woman, or in wan which was after all why he was here, how he'd found a war while he was looking for his woman. He'd be as steadfast in the one as in the other, which for now meant steadfast in flight. If the monstrous thing caught him before he found safety — if there were any safety from that thing, any safety at all in this cursed country — then he'd fight, because he must. Until then, he would run.
And did run, through crop to opening; and paused there to look back, and saw no sign of creature following. Went through thinking that perhaps he did have a chance, perhaps it would grow confused within this maze of walls, and lose his trail. Tried not to think about the djinni, how impossible it was to imagine that spirit confused by any mortal choice.
Glanced up at the sky, within its sudden square horizons - and was suddenly confused himself, reeling almost, as though the ground beneath his feet had shifted sharply out of true. Turned itself around entirely, in fact, because all the stars lay backwards overhead, as mind-twistingly wrong as a river that ran uphill
...
No. Absurd. It only took a moment to recover. Not the ground, not the stars: it was himself all turned around. He couldn't think how in so short a space, but high walls and speed and fear together must have confounded his sense of direction. That way lay north as it always had, the stars proclaimed it so; which meant he was facing south, which was a puzzle but none the less a place to start from. And the way out of this field lay to the east, and he should take it quickly, before the scuttling demon caught him up.
And did, and found himself facing three blank walls, and thought he had run himself into a trap after all; except that as he twisted around in desperation, he saw another way out in the wall that he'd just come through, barely three paces from the way that he had come.
That shouldn't have been possible, or else the other way out should lead back into the field that he had come from, no advantage. But he hadn't seen it from the other side, and thought it hadn't been there; and when he ran through it he was in a field of sunflowers, where he certainly hadn't been before. And he looked up, and again the stars were lying wrongly strewn across the sky, and there was that shuddering sense of dislocation before he could pull his own understanding into line with them.
He was beginning to comprehend. There was a spell bound up in these walls and fields, different from but like to the greater spell that had hidden Surayon away for a generation. That had lost a country, this would lose a man within a labyrinth and likely keep him lost, turning him more dizzy at every doorway, having him step unseeing from world to world. If he tried to retrace his steps, he thought he'd never find them.
If not for that, he might have felt quite grateful; for neither, surely, would anyone find him by following his steps. It was his body being shifted and shuffled around here, not his thoughts. Even the demonseed that tracked him should have trouble chasing his shadow through this unpredictable dance. He could have accepted even the staggering uncertainty that seized him every time he glanced up to what was fixed and immovable, the patterned stars, if he hadn't felt these walls as
a man-trap closed about him. A
spell like this must be built to keep what it captured, another protection for the land.
Then he saw the creature he was fleeing he saw its silhouette blank out the stars as it rose above the wall
ahead, flowed over and ran lightl
y down. Still on a direct bearing, entirely unperturbed by magic, still heading straight for him.
The spell lay in the gates, then, and it knew to avoid them. And had the legs, the build to do that, to run like a millipede up and down the walls. Perhaps it had always known that he would seek shelter in this maze; perhaps it had waited deliberately to catch him here, though its reasons were obscure.
Imber could climb walls, and hope to see a way out from the top; but he couldn't climb as the monster did, as easily as running. It was coming through the sunflowers, the blooms were high enough to hide it but it must be close, it must catch him in a moment.
Imber turned and ran, back the way he'd come.
As he'd anticipated, it led him not out into the open but further into confusion, into fields he had not seen: more crops, more doorways, more moments of jolting shock as the stars realigned themselves at every turn. His head spun, his muscles ached, his breathing laboured as he drove himself on and on, faster, harder - and often, often he saw the creature that he fled, ahead or to one side or the other, always coming over a wall with that smooth scuttling run that spoke of infinite stamina, infinite knowingness —
‘
will always find you, little mortal-
and infinite patience,
you cannot always run.
Soon he found himself stumbling over his own tracks in the soft earth, but they were no use to him, going this way or that, no kind of guide. The earth was soft and watered, the crops were tended, weeded, must be harvested — men must come and go within this maze. Magicians, no doubt, immune to any spell: though it was hard to think of such men grubbing their ringers in the earth to grow millet for their morning porridge.
It was hard to think at all, as the sweat ran and the air stung his throat, his legs trembled beneath his weight and he all but fell as he plunged through one more doorway.
Plunged from near-darkness into soft and simple light, and all but fell again from the simple shock of it; and did fall to his knees - more in wonder than in worship, though how much more he was glad not to be challenged on - when he saw who stood there among the broadleaf greens.
There were two figures in the light. One was a boy who held a lamp, a page in service to his mistress; the other was Julianne.
They made a strange and troubling tableau, standing with their feet in leaves that were green where the pool of lamplight fell, that turned silver under the stars and black beneath the walls; they looked as though they stood on the stillness of the ocean, as though they were statues cast in light against the darkness that only they could hold back, and only for a time, what time they lingered here. He did not think they would linger long. Not for a moment did he think that Julianne was here to be rescued, by him or anyone.
She smiled at him, and gestured:
stand up, come closer.
He did both, slowly and reverently, which might equally have been said
slowly and fearfully,
because that too was true. He felt as though he were approaching some sudden manifestation of the God, a revelation to be both feared and revered.
When he was near enough she reached out a hand, though, in a way tha
t was all wife and nothing saintl
y: as though she needed the reassurance
of his physical touch as urgentl
y as he did hers.
Their fingers met, and gripped: fumblingly at first, and then with a solid certainty. He might have crushed her hand between both of his; he might have dragged her to him, crushed her slenderness against his weight; he might have crushed any resistance in her, to claim her as his again. He thought there was permission, implicit in her touch.
He did none of th
ose. He let her choose how tightl
y she held him, tighter than a social favour but not tight enough for passion, never tight enough for him. He felt a tremble in her fingers and thought that she was fighting her own instincts, holding back.
He stood and gazed at her. His lips shaped her name without breath, without sound. He marvelled at her as he always had, at her height and beauty and the straight gaze of her measuring eyes. He wondered how he stood in her assessment, and only then why and how she stood here, waiting to
assess
;
and only then - when the boy shifted at her side and all the shadows danced in time with him to remind Imber of what had driven him here to find her -only then, too late for any dream of safety, did he realise how very far he'd failed her.
Still breathless from the running, breathless from the startlement of her, breathless as ever in her presence, he gasped what little air he could and croaked, "Ware, run, there's a demon, I'll face it while you flee . ..'
It came out strangled, all but incomprehensible; it was in any case too late. His arm had pointed back, behind him, through the opening, but the monster came over the wall as it always did. This was like a child's dream - a dream of his own, as he'd found that becoming adult was no defence against the nightmares that had always dogged his sleeping: a dream of being
hunted by an unchanging, relentl
ess evil that would always, always reach him in the end. Except that he had never for one moment imagined that he was dreaming tonight, despite the unearthly horror and uncanny knowingness of what he fled, the impossibility of what and who he'd found. That thing was real and really here, and so was he, and so appallingly was Julianne.
He gestured her back with his arm, and the boy with her, so that they at least had the gateway to flee through, and he had the creature before him. It had followed him this far, perhaps he was all it wanted; if not he could buy them some time at any rate, though not he feared a very great deal of time. He could see the thing more clearly and more closely now that he was no longer running, now that it was coming to him across a ground-crop, now there was a true and steady light. If he'd ever felt a moment's shame at how he'd fled at first sight of it, he could have abandoned that at a glance. Some creatures were not made for men to fight. This wicked beast had horns and claws and antennae like whips, such as no millipede that ever walked the world; its glowing eyes were shielded within plates of black and gleaming armour. Its innumerable feet marched forward like tattooing-needles, swift and sharp and deadly. It would overrun him, he thought, and never pause, never need to glance behind. Every step would puncture and pierce deep; never mind a man, a hundred such steps would shred a bull to rags and threads of flesh, and it could take a hundred steps to cover the length of a man, the length of him
...
'Run,' he said, making the effort now to find his voice, too late. 'Julianne, run - and you, boy, go with her. This thing is mine.'
'If yours, why should we run?' she countered stubbornly. 'Imber, has that blade been blessed?'
'What?'
'By a priest, a man of faith sworn to the God ...'
'No.' What was she talking about, why was she talking at all, why was she not in flight? Because she had some care for him, and would not leave him? That was madness, they would all die together, to no point. He drew breath to say so: to scream it, indeed, to throw her from him by the sheer power of his desperation and all of it located in his voice. If he were a djinni he would have made a great wind to carry her far, far from here, far from wherever she had come from, out of this cursed country and safe home to his own hearth which ought also to be hers
...