The Harvest Tide Project (19 page)

‘Then Rak Ek Namen came to power and took over the lands of the monastery. He told us we would no longer be allowed to practise our religion, but that we could continue our work. Later, he got some of us working on the Harvest Tide Project and moved us to Noran. That was nearly ten years ago now. We were joined by botanists from all over the Noranian Empire. Since then, we've worked in these huge gardens and greenhouses, never allowed to go out or talk to anyone outside the group. It still wasn't a bad life. They gave us anything we needed and left us alone most of the time. There were many rules, more than we had in the monastery … and loads of guards too, but we were scholars – we learned how to live with it.'

‘But then two Myunan children dumped you into a river and the Noranians lost track of you.'

‘Yes. Since then, everything's been much, much more complicated.'

When they had a skirt-full of cones, they made their way back to the mill. The four of them then set about piercing the skins and building a pile beside Lorkrin. When the smell became too much, Hilspeth tutted, and sprinkled something from one of her bottles over the heap which deadened the odour slightly.

‘What's that?' asked Taya.

‘It's a concoction of mine made of rosewater, honey and quidal spit. It's for the treatment of offensive body odour.'

‘You should give Lorkrin some of that when he wakes up. How do you get spit from a quidal?' 

‘You hold a jar over its head and insult it.'

Taya held her hands out to the warmth and eyed Groach.

‘So, how do you know about all this stuff?' she enquired.

‘I'm a botanist.'

‘What's that?'

‘It's like a gardener.'

‘Then why don't you just say you're a gardener?'

‘Because I'm a
botanist
.'

Having exhausted all the conversation she could muster, Taya looked down at her injured leg; she hoped there wouldn't be a scar. Scarred muscle was hard to amorph, and even harder to change colour. And besides, she was proud of her smooth skin. She self-consciously compared herself with Hilspeth, who sat across from her. Hilspeth's freckles were nice. Taya wondered how she'd look with freckles; she decided to try some when she got home. Putting a hand to Lorkrin's forehead, like Ma did when they were sick, she gazed down at him, and suddenly remembered the stolen quill. She glanced nervously to where Draegar was sitting outside.

‘Here, Shessil,' she said softly. ‘When you were in the sewer, we think you picked up something by accident – a quill that Lorkrin dropped. When you picked up all the stuff that fell out of your bag. It belonged to our uncle. Do you have it there?'

Groach frowned, struggling to remember what seemed so long ago.

‘I left that bag at the Moffets', the house in Crickenob.'

Taya rolled her eyes and mouthed a curse.

They sat in silence for a while. Taya took some bread from her bag, and cut it into slices which she spread with honey
and handed around. Groach nodded his thanks and gazed out at the sky while he ate. Taya noticed he was fidgeting a lot. He seemed to be bothered by something. She lay back and let her eyes wander across the stars visible beyond the edge of the broken roof. At one point, she thought she saw an eagle fly overhead, but she reasoned that it must have been an owl – eagles did not fly at night.

Draegar had positioned himself outside where he had the best view of the land around them. He leaned in to the rough shelter.

‘We will have to move on tomorrow,' he said. ‘I will keep watch. You should all get some sleep.'

Not needing any more persuasion, they all curled up under whatever cover they could and quickly drifted off. Draegar sat where he could not be seen from outside, and listened. His ears and nose would tell him what his eyes did not.

14 F
RESGKY
T
URNED
E
ARTH

Taya awoke suddenly. Sitting up, she saw that Lorkrin’s bed was empty, and she got to her feet. Her leg still hurt, but she could almost walk without limping now. The storm had blown over, leaving a clear blue sky scattered with strands of white clouds. Groach and Hilspeth still lay asleep, Hilspeth under her cloak, Groach buried in some old straw. The pile of crumble cones was nothing more than a patch of
brown-black
sludge on the damp floorboards. Hearing movement outside, she climbed over the low ruins of the mill’s outer wall, and walked to where Draegar was sitting on a tree stump, working on a map of the area. She took a quick look at the drawing, divided between envy and delight at the Parsinor’s skill, and then turned her attention to the wreck of the millwheel, leaning against the riverbank. Lorkrin
straddled
the top of it.

‘That thing could collapse, you know,’ she scolded.

‘I checked it out first. It’s solid enough.’

Taya climbed up and took in the view from that height.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked her brother.

‘Okay, I was a bit dizzy when I woke up, but I’m fine now.

Draegar said you got hit with a crossbow?’

Taya undid her bandage and showed him the wound, which was now little more than a scar.

‘Wow! Did it hurt?’

‘Yeah, lots.’

They continued to sit there, not saying anything, just gazing around at the meadows and woods of the hills. Lorkrin broke a rotting spar off the wheel and threw it into the fast-moving water.

‘I thought you were dead,’ Taya said after a while. ‘When you fell in.’

‘Draegar reckons I almost was.’

‘Shessil saved you; he had this kind of mask that let him breathe under the esh.’

Lorkrin nodded, and Taya could see he was more shaken by the episode than he would ever admit. Suddenly she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. Lorkrin put an arm around her, feeling a bit awkward. They pulled apart when Draegar called to them. Groach and Hilspeth were up.

‘We need to get on,’ he said, blowing on the map to help the ink dry, and packing the rest of his gear away. ‘It would be better if we didn’t move at all during the day until we get further from Noran, but we need to put some distance between us and where we met the soldiers yesterday. We’ll stay under the cover of the trees in daylight, then get out onto the road at dusk. Gather your things. It’s time to go.’

They climbed the slope among the tall poplars. It grew steep as they worked their way up, and Hilspeth’s and Groach’s calves were burning by the time they got to the top. The hill was clear of trees on the other side, and Draegar
stood, surveying the land for a path down under cover. Taya and Lorkrin walked out onto the dull green moss that lined the bare slope and Taya gave a shout.

‘It’s mattress moss!’ she cried, and began bouncing down the hill.

‘Aw, yes!’ Lorkrin took a running start and launched
himself
into the air. He landed on the spongy moss and vaulted up again, springing down the hill after his sister. Draegar sighed.

‘So much for keeping a low profile,’ said Hilspeth wryly.

The spread of mattress moss was like a huge trampoline; the two Myunans bounded down the slope like rubber balls, limbs flailing as they flew through the air. Hilspeth shrugged, and ran out onto the springy carpet, a giddy smile on her face as she chased the two shape-shifters. Draegar went after them at a more sober pace. Groach brought up the rear, stepping lightly, distracted by his thoughts.

Taya hit a bare patch of ground and grunted as her injured leg twinged. Lorkrin leap-frogged past her, laughing. She ran to catch up, taking strides as big as Draegar’s, and feeling elated at the distance she was covering. After the events of the past few days, the mindless fun released all their
tensions
, letting them breathe easy again. Together they played an airborne game of catch, pestering Hilspeth until she agreed to join in. Every time they hit the moss, a light puff of dust and tiny insects exploded out of it and made it seem like the ground itself was spitting the travellers out. Draegar kept his eyes peeled for trouble. He was sure the alarm was out all over the country and many people would be
watching
out for them in the hope of a reward.

Taya and Lorkrin reached the bottom first and flopped on
the last stretch of moss, panting for breath. Hilspeth landed after them. Draegar loped down to them, maintaining his dignity, with Groach some way behind. The botanist was still preoccupied and hardly noticed that they had stopped.

‘Let me make this clear,’ growled Draegar to the Myunans. ‘We are trying to stay hidden. We are trying to stay clear of the Noranians. We are trying to stay alive. If you two do not start behaving, I will tie you both up and carry you the rest of the way. Am I making myself clear?’

‘Yes, Draegar,’ they moaned in unison.

With expressions of mock seriousness, the two set off at a more resigned pace. The adult members of the party fell back behind them at Draegar’s beckoning.

‘Those two are wilful and mischievous. I expect this kind of thing from them, but we must set an example,’ he lectured the other pair. ‘If you have any doubt that we will all be killed, with the exception of the botanist here, then let me assure you that the Noranians mean business in everything that they do. And they mean to catch us. The soldiers are experts at hunting people down and they have skilled
trackers
. They will find us eventually, if we do not lose them down south.’

‘And here I thought they just wanted us to like them,’
Hilspeth
said airily.

‘This is not a joking matter,’ the Parsinor retorted sternly. ‘The lives of these children are my responsibility and they will not be taken by the Noranians while I am able to draw breath. If either of you endanger them further than you have already, you will answer to me.’

‘I’ll face Everness’s wrath long before I feel yours,’ Groach whispered.

‘What was that?’ Draegar rumbled.

‘I think there is much, much worse to come,’ Groach murmured.

‘What do you mean?’ Hilspeth asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

But Groach would not be drawn out and they walked along for some time after, lost in their own thoughts. At the bottom of the hill, Draegar took the lead, and they followed a gully shrouded in leafy ash trees to the banks of a river, where they turned to follow it upstream. The Parsinor chose trails that hid them from sight, sometimes keeping to the river, sometimes climbing the hillside to stay in the shadows of the foliage.

The sun was high in the sky when they came to an open space that looked as if it had been inhabited until recently. Burnt patches on the ground marked the locations of what had once been huts; freshly turned earth covered what appeared to be a burial pit, and there had been some kind of construction bridging the river, the charred remains of which could be seen on the riverbed. The odour of burnt wood and oil still hung heavy in the air.

‘This was a Gabbit village, with a sundat mill,’ Draegar observed. ‘There would have been a wooden gantry over the river to process the skins of sundat worms.’

He examined the mess of tracks in the ground around them.

‘A Noranian battlegroup was through here last night. The soldiers terrorised the villagers and burned the place to the ground. By the looks of things, the Gabbits were even
prevented
from putting out the fires. Their homes were
completely
destroyed. The Noranians beat them back, some were badly hurt. You can see where their bodies have been
dragged away. And yet the people still stayed true to their beliefs. See how they’ve taken down the remains of the huts and buried the debris – still trying to leave the land as they found it.’

‘Why would the army do this?’ Taya gazed around her, trying to imagine the village that would have been here only the night before.

‘Because they were looking for us,’ Hilspeth muttered, and Draegar nodded.

‘They would need little excuse to persecute Gabbits,’ he growled. ‘But this was not a random patrol. The troops didn’t come from the road, but from the same woods we’ve just come through, and the tracks are old, from last night. Soldiers don’t travel in dark forest unless something takes them there. They were hunting for us, but they were ahead of us and didn’t realise it.’

Lorkrin glanced at Taya, who avoided his eyes. The knowledge that a whole village had been razed to the ground, because of them, fell like a physical blow on the Myunans. Taya felt suddenly dizzy, sitting down on a rock to avoid falling. Lorkrin rubbed watering eyes and put his hands up behind his head to ease the tightness in his chest. He had never really stopped believing that they had been living an adventure, like those he loved to hear about around the lodge’s fire in the evenings. Through all their ordeals, he had been fretting over a lost quill, and how to escape their uncle’s fury. But the burnt shapes in the grass – shapes that had once been homes – suddenly changed things for him. People they had never met had suffered because of them, and it awoke a profound shame in him. Looking over at Taya, he could see that she felt it too. She
still would not meet his gaze, looking out over the river, and chewing on the end of her ponytail. For some time, nobody said a word.

Eventually, Draegar indicated to the others that it was time to leave, and they followed him up the slope and into the woods, away from the trail of the soldiers. Keeping well inside the border of the trees, they walked until late afternoon.

They stopped in the shade of a weeping willow, its
drooping
branches forming a tent around them. Groach removed his boots and massaged his aching feet and calves. He had never walked so far in his life. They had gathered berries along the way, and Taya and Hilspeth made sandwiches of them with the last of the bread and honey. Lorkrin took the canteens and went off in search of water.

Draegar sat down, and took out some parchment and a quill. He spoke as he drew.

‘We’re running out of trees. The next stretch is over fields. We’ll walk along the hedgerows as much as possible. I want to reach the road to Brodfan by dusk. We’ll make better progress once we’re on the road, but we can’t walk it in
daylight
. We’ll camp in the thickets around Brodfan, then stay there tomorrow. From there on, we travel only at night.’

‘I have to go back to Noran,’ Groach said abruptly.

‘What are you talking about?’ Draegar looked up from his work.

‘I know why the Harvest Tide Project is so important,’ the botanist sighed quietly.

Putting on his boots, he stared hard at the ground.
Hilspeth
sat down beside him.

‘We were never told why we were doing all that work,’ he
went on. ‘We were so caught up in it, we never really gave it much thought. To us, it was enough that we would be
learning
more about the esh-bound bubule. We believed that the Noranians wanted to farm it or something. We thought the Prime Ministrate was as fascinated by the bubule as we were.’

Stopping for a moment, he dug a heel into the ground and twisted it to reveal the earth beneath the weeds.

‘We didn’t know how he thought, you see – the Prime Ministrate, I mean. Noran was so caught up in learning and working hard … we thought we were just another part of it. But we weren’t; we were special. Not many projects had armed guards and high walls. I cracked the problem. I
figured
out how to make the esh-bound bubule bloom. That’s what causes Harvest Tide, you see – that’s when the esh floods the land and leaves the bules in their thousands when it recedes. The next Harvest Tide is at the end of the summer. I was amazed at how simple it was when it came to me. It was so obvious that we’d overlooked it for years.
Harvest
Tide happens at the end of the summer, when the esh is at its warmest. I found out that it was heat, not sunlight as we believed, that made the plant blossom. The plants soaked up heat, and then when they bloomed, they released a gas that made the sessium swell. So all I had to do was find some way of warming up the gas until it reached the temperature that made the flowers break out.’

‘But how could you do that?’ Taya asked. ‘Fire doesn’t burn in the esh. How would you manage it?’

‘Several shiploads of pierced crumble cones would do it. Dump them near the bubule plains and it would take less than a day to force the plants to bloom. The only problem
was that the bules themselves would be next to useless. They would give off very little oil. And the early tide killed the plants; you could wipe out the very thing you were trying to use. Force a Harvest Tide this year, you won’t have one next year. No Harvest Tide, no bules. We’d explained that to the Noranians, but they didn’t seem interested. That had been bothering me for some time.

‘Then I went after Lorkrin when he fell into the esh. He was almost killed … and that was when it hit me. The Prime Ministrate might not be after the
bules
at all. He might be after the tide itself. You see, when the esh floods the plains on the coast, it rarely rises above the level of your knees. Eighty years ago, though, there was a summer storm in Braskhia and the gas drove inland. It reached levels higher than the head of a grown man in several places on the coast. Some people died before they could get above it. If you heated up the esh enough around the bubules, you could create a wall of gas so high it could swallow houses,
esh-boats
… everything. For anyone on the coast who did not live in the hills, it would mean certain death by suffocation.’