Authors: Jude Fisher
The Man, the Woman and the Beast
, it said into his mind.
We shall be reunited
.
Interim
T
he hand of night reaches down to enfold the islands of the Northern Ocean. Already it has cast its inky net over Blackwater Moor and the Nag’s Head, over Long Eye Lake and the Old Man of Westfall; over Halbo and Southeye and Rockfall in the Westman Isles. In the bay at Ness, the fishing boats bob on a sudden churn of current, the waves slapping against sturdy wooden hulls to send them dipping and rocking, before breaking in a crash of white water on the seawall. On the greenstone cliffs bordering the chill waters of the Sharking Straits, the last of the seabirds have found their roosts and laid their heads beneath their wings. Their cries have ceased, but they do not sleep: out of nowhere, a cold wind has just barrelled up the precipitous sides of the chasm, ruffling their feathers and waking their young. On the quayside of the village at Wolf’s Sound, on the northernmost and ill-named Fair Isle, the only movement that might catch the attention of an observer is that of a pair of cats, out on the prowl for their dinner and some sport, as they cross the starlit space between the fishing nets and crab-pots. As a cloud passes across the silver eye of the moon, one of the pair startles, the fur on its back lifting and jagging as the muscles shiver and contract. The other cat drops uncomfortably to its haunches, ears flat. In the distance, a child wails, its sleep disturbed by a nightmare. At Stormway, all the dogs begin to howl at once; and in the upland saeters, where the sheep have spent the day cropping the sweet summer grass, the flock shifts about anxiously.
Something wild has stirred; something ancient and elemental. The animals feel it, though they do not know what it is; the birds sense it, though they know not whence it comes.
Two thousand miles away, herds of wild horses on the Tilsen Plain feel the ground move beneath their feet and flee in panic. Swans on Lake Jetra, disturbed from their refuge among the reedbanks, take to the water, honking and hissing. In Cantara, the women in the stronghold’s kitchens steady pots and bottles that are rocking unsteadily on the shelves. In the Golden Mountains, five days’ ride to the south, there is a rumble as deep as thunder and a slab of granite as long as a beach and as high as an oak detaches itself from a snow-capped peak and comes shattering down through the gullies. A great white eagle, its eyrie demolished, wheels angrily, crying its protest. Below, a mountain goat, its horns curled exotically around its narrow skull, is less lucky.
Minor tremors are not unusual here in the southern continent. The oldest inhabitants – the nomads, and the stunted pines bordering the high desert – can remember a time when such earth movements occurred daily; and witnessed the relentless passage of lava-rivers that swallowed everything in their path. But there has been no true earthquake, no great volcanic eruption for two hundred years and more; not since the old one was laid beneath the ground.
In the Golden Mountains, a nomad caravanserai comes to an abrupt halt, for the old woman, Fezack Starsinger – who had been scrying into the great crystal while seated on the back of her wagon – has just let out an ear-splitting shriek and tumbled from the step, beneath the plunging hooves of the startled yeka drawing the next cart. Her daughter, Alisha, is immediately at her side; but there is nothing she can do, for Fezack is dying: of that there is little doubt. Her eyes have lost all focus and blood is bubbling from her mouth, along with words that Alisha can barely make out amidst the hubbub around her.
‘Save us! The Monster wakes!’
And then she expires, passing swiftly and irrevocably into the Beyond.
The crystal lies where it has fallen in the scree, miraculously undamaged, and utterly inscrutable.
Amid the jumble of bergs and floes at the top of the world, an old man passes a cold and weary hand over his face. Emerging from the world’s longest dream, he opens his eyes. Without the magic to keep the place habitable, his fastness has become a freezing wasteland; the sconces are dark, the fire has gone out, icicles have formed around the doorframe.
Can this elderly being possibly embody the monster of whom the old woman spoke? Surely not: he is feeble as a mouse woken from long hibernation: his muscles wasted on his already-gaunt frame; his skin as stretched and sallow as old paper.
The Master sits up stiffly. How long has he slept? It feels like an age. His joints are creaky with disuse, his mouth as dry as cotton. His stomach, which aches dully, feels tight and empty. He frowns, recalling his dream. In it, a creature he had raised from dust and spit, loved and cared for more than it knew, had risen up and attacked him, robbing him of his powers, his mind and his most prized possession.
‘Rose,’ he calls querulously. ‘Rosa, my dear, why have you let me sleep so long?’
He turns to investigate the great, carved wooden chest in which his love usually lies sleeping: only to find it gone, its absence marked by a thin felting of recently-fallen dust.
‘Virelai?’ he calls into the freezing air. And: ‘Bëte—’
But they are gone, all gone, out into the world – he knows this without having to wait for the answering silence. Magic has slipped from his grip, and now he feels a true chill: not from the icy air, but deep within.
Fate has just laid its freezing hand around that ancient organ he once called his heart, and squeezed it tenderly: a gentle reminder that the natural – or unnatural – order of Elda is reasserting itself. While he has slept, the world has turned. Chaos beckons, chaos and death, and not just for himself. It will take a miracle to retrieve the situation; for out there, beyond his will, outside his control, sorcery is rising . . .