Motherstone (7 page)

Yellowclaw and the Birdfolk turned in the sky, out of bowshot. She knew how sharp their eyes were, and she smiled at them, said, ‘Thank you.’ They would see.

‘Master,’ Slarda cried, ‘you are killing me.’

Osro kicked again. ‘The boy was dead. You told me. You lied.’

‘No, Master. We heard our bolts strike home. We saw him fall. Greely and I.’

Osro swung to the girl, trembling nearby.

‘Saw him. Pierced him with our bolts,’ she cried. ‘We heard his body fall in the river.’

Osro struck her face flat-handed. ‘I am cursed with fools. The boy tricked you.’

‘The Birds are lying, Master.’

‘They don’t lie.’

Slarda said, ‘Does it matter? He can do no harm.’

‘I spoke to him of the Weapon. He will tell this Council of Freemen. They will make their own.’

‘Master, it is difficult – ’

‘It is not. The work is done, written down for them to find.’

‘Perhaps he will not speak. He will forget.’

‘Perhaps! There is no perhaps. We must raise our army. Strike before they are ready. And we must lose these sky-borne vermin now. Get up. Bring the girl. She is useful yet.’

He turned across the red dunes towards the rim of jungle. It shimmered in a haze. The sand was the colour of rusty iron. Heat rose from it, throbbing. They walked through ponds of heat. Susan felt if she did not keep her head up she would drown. Steen walked behind, holding her rope. A change had come on Steen since Nick had crushed the Shy in his face. He rarely spoke. He watched Susan with strange puzzled eyes. For two days he had ridden in a litter. Then he walked again, but not as guide. He had lost his hardness, seemed to dream and wonder. The others no longer spoke to him. Slarda took his crossbow. He was useful only as Susan’s guard. She welcomed his turn on her rope. He let it hang more loosely than the others. And sometimes, when they paused on the burning sand, he stood so his shadow fell on her and eased the sun.

The Birdfolk were specks. As the day went on she lost any sense that they were real. They were tiny things suspended in a pool. They were specks swimming in her eye. The jungle rose. It was black and green, full of openings where creepers hung like fly-stops in doorways. Blood-red flowers lay in the darkness, beating, pulsing. She stepped into the shade. It was warm and wet. She felt as if she had gone inside an animal’s body. The desert was its skin. This was mouth and gullet. She was swallowed.

Steen nudged her on. They went down, climbing, sliding, deep into a gully where everything that grew was black or brown and grown too large. Leaves like rubber doormats, limp and fat. Flowers with black trumpets and black tongues, opening wider than an oil drum and giving out a stink like ensilage. She looked up. The sky was gone.

‘They cannot see us,’ Osro said. ‘But somewhere we must cross the sands again. Then the tribes will find us and Birds trouble us no more.’

And, Susan thought, they won’t need me. Insects as large as sparrows were droning up from the gully bed. They made a dancing iridescent flash. One of the women cried with pain. Quietly, unseen, Steen unrolled his blanket and covered Susan’s head.

‘Master, we must climb out of here,’ Slarda said. ‘These bloodsuckers are too many to fight.’

‘Keep on a while. We must strike in deep.’

They went down the gully in a whirl and hum of insects. Somewhere on the higher plains a beast was roaring like a Jersey bull. Slarda armed her bow. The gully ended in a swamp where trees grew knee-deep in water red as plum juice. Bubbles rose in it and sat on the surface. Susan wondered if they were eyes, but they burst with a sticky pop and new ones oozed up to replace them. Something was stirring deep down in the water. She knew if she escaped she would not live long in this jungle.

They climbed into a drier place and the insects fell away. The jungle opened out, with taller trees, and colours more like those of Earth. Susan felt it was like the bush around her home. There were creepers like supple-jack, and others that grabbed like bush lawyer. Ferns grew in the under-storey, and tiny birds looped and darted, catching gnats. Somewhere high, another sang like a tui. Osro led them on for several hours, and Susan knew that if she got away she would have a chance here. There were even fruits she recognized from Wildwood. Steen picked one and gave it to her to eat.

Towards dark they came to broken hills and criss-crossed gullies. Steam rose from hollows in the ground and once shot hissing from a mouth-shaped hole in the side of a hill. She had guessed they were coming to this, for the jungle had been wrapped in a rotten-egg smell for some time. They crossed a little creek where the water ran warm. She hoped that tonight she would be able to wash her face and hands in a hot pool.

Osro stopped and the guards made camp. Slarda and Greely went off to hunt and came back with the carcase of an animal like a pig. They boiled pieces of it in a pool that bubbled in a cluster of stones. Osro had gone into his shelter. He ate alone. Steen brought Susan meat and fruit, and later let her wash with the women guards in a deep warm basin above the camp. She slept almost comfortably that night. No chance came for escape, but she consoled herself with the knowledge that Nick was alive and free.

For two more days they travelled north. At times the steam was so dense the jungle seemed on fire. Mud lakes boiled like porridge pots. Cliffs steamed and geysers burst from mounds and roared in jets and sprays and feathers high into the air. Around them the bush was warped and mineral-crusted. The trunks of trees gleamed white and pink and blue.

They cooked pig-meat and deer-meat, and caught crayfish in cold pools and boiled them in hot. Susan felt almost too well-fed. But she watched everything. She might have to survive alone in this place.

On the third night Slarda said, ‘Master, tomorrow we will reach the sands again and we must cross.’

‘We have the girl. And we can cross at night if we need. There is no danger.’

‘Then,’ Slarda said, ‘let us rid ourselves of her. She slows our march.’

‘Keep her, keep her,’ Osro said. ‘You can have her soon.’

He had eaten with them, not in his shelter. He was pleased with himself that night. ‘Earth-girl, you have travelled with the ruler of O. But you do not seem to know who I am.’

‘Oh, I know,’ Susan said. ‘We have your sort. You’re like Adolf Hitler or Al Capone. You’re a gangster.’

‘Who are these? Great men? What is a gangster?’

‘Why don’t you marry Slarda? She’d be a good queen.’

‘Master,’ Slarda cried, ‘let me silence her.’

‘No, no,’ Osro said. ‘She presumes. But she is harmless. She speaks so to keep her courage up. It interests me. I shall be king, Susan Ferris, not just because I have the Weapon and lead the tribes but because I know how people think – how their minds go, how they move, from here, to here, to here.’ He made little movements with his hands. ‘It is all so tiny and pathetic, and to one who sits above it all and sees, predictable. I can turn them, and place them, these small ones, so – and so. Therefore, I am king. I am greater.’

‘Perhaps,’ Susan said. She had the sick feeling it might be true. ‘But in the end you’ll die, like everyone else. And be forgotten.’

Osro’s eyes flashed, and narrowed briefly. Then he laughed. ‘That is true. I don’t forget. But before that happens, how wide I shall spread myself, how great I shall grow. And the games I shall have with my little toys.’

‘People won’t let you. They won’t follow.’

‘Oh, but they will. Already they do. So eagerly. They cannot wait to give themselves away. They think they are part of me. Is it not so, Slarda?’

‘Yes, Master.’ She did not understand, but her eyes shone with devotion as she looked at him and her horsey teeth turned pink in the firelight.

‘You see, Susan? But first, of course, there is the war to fight. I shall bring fire to the tribes. My Weapon. They worship fire, and they shall worship me. I shall lead them against these Freemen and strike before they are ready. And burn them into ashes. They will join me, those who are left, they will be mine, part of me. And I shall give them enemies, creatures to hate. Birdfolk and Woodlanders and Varg. And lead them to conquer new lands. They shall shout with one voice and think, if at all, with one mind – which I control. That is the new history of O, Susan Ferris. You played your little part in the old, but you have no part written in the new.’

She could not answer. She felt very tired, and told herself that tomorrow, chance or not, she would escape. Osro turned away and went into his shelter, but the memory of his face, with its sharp bones and hungry mouth and pale hot eyes, stayed with her as she tried to sleep. Steen threw a blanket over her and sat behind her on a stone, holding the rope knotted round her waist. The embers in the fire dulled.

She did not know she had slept, but knew she was woken. She was cold, the blanket gone. And someone was kneeling by her head. She heard the gristly creaking of his spine as he bent close. Fingers nipped her mouth so she could not scream.

‘No sound. If they wake we are dead.’ It was Steen. ‘Follow the rope. Go where it leads.’

She heard him stand, and knew she had no choice but to follow. With no one to trust, she would trust him. She sat up, stood up, felt the rope tugging at her waist. She stepped after it, past the pale blur of Osro’s shelter. She had no idea where the guards were sleeping, but heard snorts and gurgles, whispered dreams, nightmare slayings. Steen took her soft-footed round their edge. She heard the exhalations of his breath. A hot pool hissed and simmered as they passed – heading west, or starting west. The jungle made a humming; distant screams as something died. Steen led her into it, giving little tugs like a fisherman feeling bites.

‘Steen.’

‘Don’t speak. Not yet.’

She followed, walking blind, for what seemed hours. At last he stopped. She felt his fingers working on the knots and the rope fell away. He put the end in her hand. ‘Hold it now and follow.’

‘Why are you doing this? Helping me?’

For a moment he made no answer. She seemed to see his eyes moving faintly in the dark. ‘I can be this Osro’s man no longer. So I will take you to your friends.’

‘They’ll kill you if they catch you.’

‘They’ll kill us both. We must get far away. They will hunt, but not for long. Osro cannot waste the time.’

‘Slarda won’t give up.’

‘She is the one. We must keep ahead. Do you have the rope?’

She gave it a jerk.

‘Hold and follow.’

‘What about animals?’

‘We must take the risk.’

She could not tell how long they went on then, but guessed three or four hours. They climbed spurs and threaded through valleys, crossing streams that were cold or warm, and sometimes both. Steen seemed to know his way; but told her when she asked that he did not know this part of the jungle, he was heading west, that was all.

‘Why west?’

‘We’ll go to the coast. Birdfolk will find you there. Or perhaps these Seafolk men you say you talk with.’

‘I can talk with them. And Stonefolk. And Woodlanders. Varg too, in a way.’

‘I know nothing. That is all I know.’

Dawn came, lighting the sky, but leaving the jungle almost as dark as night. Steen gave her meat from his pack. They found berries, sour but edible, and drank from a spring tasting of iron. It set her teeth on edge.

‘Do you need to rest?’

‘I can keep going.’

‘They have woken and found us gone. Slarda hunts. She tracks like a dog. We must stay ahead.’

She tried to see his face but could make out only his eyes, pale and gleaming, and the movements of his hands as he carried food to his mouth. A few days ago he had wanted to kill her. Now he risked his life to help her escape.

‘Why can’t you follow Osro?’

‘I don’t know. I cannot. Something in me says, turn away.’

‘Because he’s evil?’

‘I don’t know evil. I don’t know good. I know nothing.’

‘Was it the Shy?’

‘The stinkweed? When the boy crushed it in my face, then I seemed to lose all I knew. But for a moment there was something. It said no, and it said yes. To one way and another. But I can’t – I can’t remember. And I must. Something goes before me, but it turns, it eludes me, I glimpse it but it will not stay and let itself be seen. All it tells me now is – I am alone. And so I must not be Osro’s man.’

‘What will you do? When we’re safe?’

‘I’ll go into the mountains. Live alone. And find there the thing that I must know.’

‘You can use the Shy again.’

‘Perhaps. I would sooner learn it for myself.’

‘You’d have a better chance of getting away if you left me.’

‘I cannot.’

They started west again, the sun behind them. It slanted through the trees and brought some light to the jungle floor. Then the jungle shrank, and soon they pushed through scrub that pricked like gorse. Steam rose ahead, with cliffs and towers that seemed to be trekking by like misshapen men.

‘We are at the Belt,’ Steen said. ‘A place gone mad. It rots the land like gangrene. O burns in a fever here.’

‘Do we have to go in?’

‘It runs north and south. So we cross. One day, one night. Then more sands. Iron, pumice, copper. Beyond that jungle, down to the sea.’

‘Can’t we find the Birdfolk?’

‘I’ve looked. They’re searching elsewhere.’

‘Steen – ’

‘Don’t be afraid. Test every step. We’ll use the rope.’ He tied an end round her waist and knotted the other in his belt. They walked over pumice sand, through fissures wet by steam and dried by heat. The bushes dwindled, giving way to scurfy weed and rock in clusters. Then they were in the cliffs and towers, which leaned away from them or bent over. They were like giants peering to see or jerking back. The steam turned and surged like blown cloud. It wet their faces and their clothes. Water covered them like sweat, dripping from their chins and fingertips. At least Slarda can’t track us here, Susan thought. She followed Steen’s back. She trusted him. He was almost as broad as he was tall – built like a barn door, Nick would say. She trusted him to find a way through this.

They went round the side of a boiling spring half as long as a football field, and followed the river flowing out. It churned through rapids, dived over falls, but did not lose its heat until it joined a cold stream flowing from the south. Steam sprang up from their meeting, rolling in the monoliths and blotting out the sky. They crossed further down, swimming roped together in water warm as tea.