Part 13 (2/2)

Anfen looked at him for a while in silence. 'It's done now. We move.'

'Where we going? I don't move at all till you tell me.'

But Anfen walked away without a word. Sharfy lay there less than a minute before cursing and proving himself a liar.

AN EMPTY BED.

1.

The world fell away again fast, fast. Through layers of rock he went like a shadow pulled, down as far as he could go, to the secret places. Caverns and creatures whizzed by, labyrinths and hollowed caverns now devoid of any living thing, if living things had ever set foot or claw here. Then he found that final deep layer of rock which wasn't to be penetrated, not by him or anything else. He battered himself against it for a while, each impact provoking his curiosity further till it was a screaming, burning rage. What was beneath the world's floor?

No answers. Up then, up to the surface again, pausing briefly where the unco-operative girl still stumbled her way blindly through tunnels. An enjoyable sight, though the feeling grew hollow as he watched her, some inner, nagging, distant sense that it was wrong to leave her here. Strange creature! He was annoyed with her still; after having chased off the dragon, having taken her so far ... then to be refused one simple request, a thing so much easier for her to do than what he'd done for her? He did not understand it.

He would revisit her. She had caught his eye back when the Wall fell, she and the fellow she was with: Eric. Something about them, he knew not what, had marked them as reference points. Maybe his only ones.

The surface. Night time. He crossed many miles falling down the world's face, pausing on a whim in a logging cabin. Four men slept and snored. Anything interesting about them? He shadowed them and found only physical strength, aches, anger. Nothing more. The girl, she'd had a little glimmer of something. The dragon, now that was another thing. It had been filled with more power than he'd been able to properly perceive in that brief time.

These men had nothing of the sort. Angered suddenly, Shadow swept through the place cutting them down as they had cut down trees during the day. It was fast, no complaints. His anger abated, though not because this act of death-making had spent it; it went as it came, for no reason at all. Pointless as all these deaths and lives fleeting by. Pointless, surely. He was lost in it all, he was nothing, he was debris on a tide.

A mess in the cabin. How strange, these shreds of flesh and spilled life, so ugly across the floor and walls and ceiling. Put together, capable of beauty. Beauty like hers ...

Suddenly there it was again, that feeling. He'd felt it before, but never so close! Something pulled him, yanked him skyward. He was so intrigued and curious it hurt. He yielded to the pull for some distance and found its source: in the air a drake flew along slowly, a girl on its back. Out of reach! He couldn't go up through the sky in the same way he could move across the world's face, and down through its belly. It was cruel! This strange compelling pull was so powerful, coming directly from either the drake or the girl on its back, he couldn't tell which. There was nothing to be done but to watch the creature's flapping wings, so maddeningly slow.

Then the pull's force went slack, to leave him craving something he didn't fathom, a need to fill this empty pit inside him.

2.

It was still night when Eric rose. The sound of breeze and waves gently filled the tower's uppermost floor; the glimmer across the walls was light glancing off water.

In one of the beds Loup muttered in his sleep and appeared to swat a fly. In another, Bald the Engineer slept with the Glock pressed to his cheek, presumably dreaming about the live rounds which had been hidden from him. The Engineer's efforts so far in replicating the gun had resulted only in some bent wire and planks tied together with rope. It did not look promising.

A head count of the sleepers revealed someone was missing. Siel's bow was propped up beside one empty mattress. The tower seemed to hate her; maybe it hadn't let her sleep.

Eric went to the raised dais in the middle of the floor and climbed its half-dozen stone steps. The thick dark winding ribbon of magic he'd seen from outside came through this very spot, funnelled through one window over this raised platform to escape out another window behind. He put a hand into the stream of magic, faintly disturbing its course to either side of his fingers. The diluted threads of this stuff in the atmosphere could barely be felt; concentrated, it was cool to the touch. He breathed deeply the way the war mage had, sucking it in like asthma medication he'd had as a child. Tendrils of dark mist threaded toward him before he'd begun taking the breath, as though called by his intent to do so. Coldly it went into his lungs. A dizzy feeling came over him, the sense of a very mild and almost pleasant electric shock, pulsing from his mind through the rest of his body.

Stepping away, the feeling faded. The dark winding stream of magic continued its flow, unperturbed.

He went to the next floor down, expecting to find Siel. A quick tour of the place showed she was no longer here. 'What have you done with her?' he asked, speaking to the tower. The sound of waves lapped quite innocently in reply.

At the window an arrow from the soldiers' failed attack still jutted out from the sill. He pulled at it but it was stuck fast. Gazing at the water below, a part of his dream suddenly returned: watching someone Had it been Siel? wandering through underground tunnels, not unlike those he himself had been marched through at the point of Sharfy's knife.

But if it had been more than just a dream, even if it had been a vision, she could surely not be far. He thought of the steps leading down to the swirling whirlpool and decided to explore them when movement caught his eye. The huge white wolf stood down at the water's edge, its head lowered, panting as though after a long, long journey.

Far Gaze, he recalled, had tried to rip Stranger's throat out back at Faul's place. Which made it a little odd that none other than Stranger now rode the beast's back. She wore the same green dress and looked more or less the same, except her head too was slumped and, though it was hard to be certain at a distance, she looked to be weeping.

But why was Case not with them?

The wolf put one paw experimentally into the water. Eric waved to catch its attention, thinking he should warn it about the water's occasional tendency to boil. But soon Far Gaze had made it safely across, padding out of sight beneath the tower where the water was deeper, Stranger in tow. It came up the steps, staggered a few paces then collapsed. It looked starved, was missing clumps of fur. Stranger slunk up the steps after it, her head bowed, face streaked with tears.

'I see you two have kissed and made up,' said Eric. The wolf shut its eyes. To Stranger he said, 'I'm Eric. I already know who you are.'

'You may know who I was,' she said in a flat voice. 'I'm nothing now.'

'Oh?'

She wiped her eyes, went to the window and stared through it.

'Maybe I know the feeling,' he said, taking a seat on the floor behind her. 'I'm not what I used to be either.'

'Has your heart ever been spat out of your true love's mouth like coughed bile?'

'Not exactly. My true love pretty much thinks I'm pathetic and has from the start. Can't argue either.'

The wolf meanwhile writhed on the floor. Its hair and fur were already shed. Its bones began crunching and breaking. It made a vomiting noise so horrible Eric had to cover his ears for a minute or two. When that finished he said, 'I seem to remember you two used to fight each other. What changed?'

Stranger laughed bitterly. 'I'm lucky he didn't tear my throat out. Dyan gave him every chance.'

'Dyan? Who's that?'

She began to speak, hesitated, then smiled. 'Why not? Why not tell you all I know of him?'

'Not yet,' said Far Gaze hoa.r.s.ely. 'Wait until I've rested. Then tell us together. Till then, not a word about it.' He stood naked among a litter of white wolf's hair, then bent over, clutching his belly. 'Mongrel! How much rot did he eat? Never again. d.a.m.n him!' With a retching noise no less horrid than the wolf's in transition had been, Far Gaze vomited down the steps to the whirlpool below. When at last he'd finished he stood, swayed, muttered to Eric, 'Your friend is dead,' then pa.s.sed out.

BENEATH THE SURFACE.

1.

When Siel lurched back into the regular flow of time it felt like she'd been dropped from a height to land with a jolt that jarred her senses. She'd found herself alone in the underground chamber. The wall's shackles all hung limp and empty, the walls behind them crisscrossed with gouges from what might well have been Anfen's sword.

The place to her immense relief had been left unguarded, as had the surrounding rooms and tunnels. She'd run from there with no idea which way led back to the surface, only meaning to get away from those hooks before someone tried to put her there where Stranger had been.

That was some time back. There were precious few lightstones in the network she now wandered through, though she'd begun hearing voices and footsteps through its membrane-thin walls. How many hours of it went crawling by, this flitting about like a rodent in a house full of cats? Dead ends. Blocked pa.s.sages. Footsteps so close they sounded right on top of her. One narrow escape, crouched behind a pile of rubble as two men went by sharing a joke. She'd been a heartbeat from striking at them with the fist-sized rock she'd adopted as her new weapon, could have sworn one of them looked right at her but kept on walking.

Rounding a bend where the lightstones were brighter, she hesitated, debating whether or not to risk a pa.s.sage where she'd be so visible. It was this or hours of backtracking for likely the same ultimate result. Why not deal with it now, while she had some energy left to fight.

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