Part 14 (1/2)

Chapter 11.

dregs Juda surfaced to a smell he could not identify, and sounds he did not know, and the feel of rough hands pressing his arms against his body. They have me! he thought, because his nightmares had been of the slayers. They had caught up with him, Leki and Bon just before they reached the gas marshes, crucifying the other two on spa.r.s.e trees. Then they had slashed Juda's ankles to the bone, so that as he lay in the mud he could watch the two people he'd tried to save die. They had screamed as their weight hauled them down against the nails in their wrists, suffocating slowly.

The rest of his seemingly endless dream had been the slayers turning to him and considering what his own tortures should entail. The nightmare was not in witnessing what they had done to Bon and Leki, nor even seeing their horrendous, dead-but-living expressions. It was in his own imagination as he wondered what might come next. Juda had seen a lot on Skythe, and heard a lot more. He could imagine so much.

He opened his eyes and struggled against the slayers' hold, but then he saw Bon and Leki looking down upon him, not from the spa.r.s.e trees but from where they knelt at his side.

'Shh,' Bon said, but it was not in warning. It was a comforting sound. 'Shh. It's dawn. I'll free you, but tell me you're awake.'

'Am I?' Juda asked.

Bon and Leki exchanged glances. There was something between them that had not been there when Juda had been pulled down into disturbed sleep. An affection, but also experience. They had been through a lot.

'You are,' Leki said. 'We should know, because we've been with you all night.'

Juda nodded down at the bindings, and Bon went about untying them.

'We're in the marshes,' Juda said. 'Nice smell.' They were inside a huge old tree, the inner walls rough and smeared with patches of moss and decay. It was large enough to accommodate the three of them comfortably, and when his bindings fell away and he raised himself on one elbow, he realised that they were propped on ledges above the ground.

'The slayers went by a while ago,' Leki said.

Juda glanced at her, eyebrows raised. 'Close enough for you to see?'

'But not smell,' Bon said. He was grinning.

'It stinks in here,' Juda said. 'It'll stink out there too. We should leave the marshes as soon as possible. This gas ...'

'It's done us no harm,' Leki said. 'You gave us oil.'

'I did. Paste from my pack.' Juda glanced around for his pack, and saw it leaning against his feet, strapped shut. I sent them in there. He was unsettled, but still too groggy to realise why.

'So the oil worked.' He sat up, wincing at the stiffness in his limbs and his stomach's hollowness. 'First time I've used it.' He craved some scamp cigars, but he was out of the drug. Perhaps they would find some on the way out of the marshes, and then- 'Juda,' Bon said, 'take me to my son.'

'Yes.' Juda rubbed his legs, working feeling back into them. He felt their eyes on him. When he slept he was mad, but they were still looking to him for guidance, and leaders.h.i.+p.

Even after everything they had done.

'You carried me in here,' he said. 'All across the marshes. Slayers on your trail. Found this tree. Came inside, climbed, hid. Watched them pa.s.sing by, and you knew what they wanted to do to you.' He remembered his terrible dream, and perhaps it showed on his face, because he saw a shadow of fear pa.s.s across Bon's own features.

'Yes,' Leki said. 'And the marshes were ...'

'Not easy,' Bon finished. 'But now it's your turn to lead us. Get us out of this place. To where my son is.'

'Might be,' Juda said. He dangled his legs over the edge of the wooden ledge, then dropped to the floor of the hollow tree. His feet sank into mud. It released a smell, and the gas marshes made themselves known once again. 'The man I spoke to ... he wasn't certain. Your son might be there. But, yes, I'll do my best.'

And the dead G.o.d, Juda thought. But talking about G.o.ds living or dead to these people would not aid him. They all had a quest, and their journeys might well end in the same place. The fact that they sought different things mattered little.

He glanced at his pack again. Leki seemed preoccupied, adjusting her clothing as if she had only just dressed. If they had found anything that troubled them, they would have said by now.

I'm no Wrench Arc, Juda thought. He repeated the phrase to himself on occasion, but the more he considered the way his personal quest was taking him, the more confused he became. He had killed Skythians. Magic danced at the fringes of his mind whatever he was doing, at every moment of the day, and it pa.s.sed through every one of his nightmares. He grasped onto his sanity, but worried that such desperation marked him as something very much other than sane.

I'm no Wrench Arc ...

They gathered their belongings and left the relative safety of the tree. The morning marsh was a busy place, with night creatures going down and daylight dwellers already beginning their hunt for the day's food. Birds dived into areas of open water, insects buzzed and bit, amphibians squelched and jumped. High above, a marsh hawk circled on invisible currents, its size impossible to make out for certain. And below their feet something turned and flexed, sending shockwaves that bubbled mud and rippled the water's surface. Juda never stopped walking, because he did not wish to perceive its movement in more detail.

Leki and Bon were wide-eyed, glancing all around as they moved and keeping close. There was a link between them that hadn't been apparent before Juda had fallen into sleep, and that troubled him. They had also acquired an awareness of their surroundings that only came with experience. He had no wish to ask what they had seen, because he'd heard all about the marshes, and knew that it must have been terrible.

They pa.s.sed across the gas marshes. Juda's vision swam, his lungs ached, his limbs felt heavy. He knew they were being slowly poisoned, but they had no alternative. The marshes' emissions were more active during daylight hours when the sun heated the water and swelled subterranean gas reservoirs, but the idea of staying for another night could not be considered.

The slayers might have turned around by then to retrace their tracks.

Close to the edge of the marsh, Juda found some scamp bushes. Bon and Leki took a drink while he plucked as many of the seed pods as he could, crus.h.i.+ng them in one hand and collecting the fine seed grains in the other. He had no tobacco left, so he would have to crush and chew the pods, and take care about how much he took. In this purest form, scamp would temper his nightmares but might raise demons of its own. But even having the seeds drying in his pocket made him feel more relaxed. More in control.

They started to leave the gas marshes as the sun pa.s.sed its zenith, and kept walking until they were clear of the smell. They headed north-east, and the autumn breeze came from the north, so they were saved from the fumes drifting after them to remind them of where they had been. Yet the gases remained with them in other ways. Leki started vomiting, and her skin paled to a ghostly white as she struggled to keep up with them. Bon Ugane helped her, but his eyes and nose were running freely, almost blinding him to the trail. Juda felt the sickness also, but he swallowed it down and chewed on a few scamp seeds. He had no idea whether they would aid him, but there was a familiarity about their calming effect. When Leki and Bon both refused his offer of a few seeds, Juda did not force the issue.

They stopped to eat around mid-afternoon. The land was rising now, and they were heading into mountainous countryside that Juda had never explored before. He'd rarely had cause to stray away from coastal areas, but now he was consulting his sketched maps more and more.

The rumours of Aeon lay ahead. All the magic he had ever wanted a a source beyond his imagining a might be present at the site of the murdered G.o.d. That was his goal, and having found Bon Ugane, and then heard whispers of his son's name from the dying Skythian, he believed he had come by the luck he had been painstakingly seeking for years.

But there was something else out there. It edged him aside, away from the route he believed they should be taking. It was a weight pulling him with dreadful gravity, or a force repelling him from the path. And when he closed his eyes, Juda felt the familiar tingling sensation inside that told him what might be close. He had never decided whether it was a manifestation of his excitement, or a physical reaction to magic. But right then he did not mind.

They moved on, and Juda changed their course. The other two seemed not to notice a Leki had stopped vomiting but looked weak and pale, and Bon's eyes and nose were red and raw. Memories of the gas marshes came with them.

Juda felt it close by. An Engine. One that no one knew about on Skythe; he was sure the other four he had visited were the only ones anyone else was aware of. He'd questioned many people, listened in on enough whispered conversations in shadowy corners of taverns in Vandemon and other places to be certain. He had only ever heard vague whispers of an Engine this far north, and that was because few people came this far. There was no need, and though few would admit it, Skythe exerted a fearful miasma that pushed most people against the coast. Perhaps with a few, Alderia to the south called and they could no longer answer.

With the possibility of an Engine so close, the temptation was too great. Magic lures me on, Juda thought. Not for the first time, he sensed a terrible sentience behind its allure, and the more obsessive he became, the more intense its stare.

When they stopped again to take a drink, he took the calm moment to broach the subject.

'I believe there is an Engine close by.'

'Really?' Leki's eyes widened.

'No,' Bon said. 'Not now. My son, Juda. You tell me he's alive and out here somewhere, and now you want to show us an Engine?'

'You were interested before,' Juda said. He began to s.h.i.+ver, fearful that they would insist upon pa.s.sing it by. He had long known himself an addict of magic. His scamp dependency was nothing in comparison.

'That was before you told me about Venden!'

'Bon-' Leki began, but Bon threw down his water canteen.

'Neither of you have children. You have no f.u.c.king idea!'

'The Engine is on the way,' Juda said. 'I can sense it close by. We'll reach it by nightfall.' His heart was hurrying with need, and with a fear that the chance might be taken from him. He knew it would not, and could not, because he was in charge here. But with a chance of dregs close by, his reasoning was wavering. The feel of it the taste of it the sensuousness the touch ...

He would not let them sway him.