Flick would not return to Rofalor’s house for more information about harlings, so the morning following Terez’s arrival ‘Esmeraldarine’ left the Unneah settlement and headed north. Terez departed before they left, riding one of the Uigenna horses he’d stolen years before. Lileem stood on top of the boat and watched him gallop off into the morning, where an early mist hugged the ground. I wouldn’t mind being like him, she thought, not if I could look like that, riding a horse. Not if I could be a walker of shadows, like he is, and never be flustered, unsure or frightened.
‘Hey!’ Flick called to her. ‘Are you dreaming? There’s work to do!’
‘Sorry.’
Flick looked at her strangely and she found her neck was burning.
It began two weeks after Terez had come to them, two weeks after the conversation at Rofalor’s. Lileem was ashore one afternoon, walking in overgrown fields next to an abandoned farm. Feral horses galloped in the sunshine and the air was full of insects, murmuring lazily in the summer warmth. Lileem walked to a gigantic oak and sat down against the trunk. She leaned back and closed her eyes, breathing deeply, absorbing all the scents of the land. Why had she ever been afraid? She was a part of the world, at one with it. She could feel every ray of sunlight as it fell on her skin, coming down through the softly rustling leaves overhead.
‘Lileem!’
She opened her eyes at once. There was nohar there, and yet the voice had sounded so close. She jumped up and glanced around herself, but the field was empty of all but horses, which had stopped cavorting around and now cropped the grass nearby, their tails swishing to ward off the flies. It must have been one of the others, putting out a mind call to her, but it hadn’t felt like that at all. She had heard her name spoken, not in her head, but with her physical ears. Neither had she recognised the voice.
This could be a haunted place. Humans had once owned the ruined farm. They may have been slaughtered in this field. Unnerved, Lileem ran through the sunlight to the shelter of trees and the woodland path that led back to the river. Just when the world feels right and good, something peculiar happens to remind you that nothing is certain.
Lileem didn’t mention anything to her companions about what had happened, but for the rest of the day she felt slightly disorientated. Her ears had started to ring, and it was a strange ringing that sounded like the distant lilt of a choir. If she put her hands over her ears in order to concentrate on it and hear it properly, it went away. But when she was speaking or others were making noise around her, she could hear it again, faint and insistent within her.
That night, she was plagued by troubling dreams. All of them involved voices shouting her name. They were calling to her desperately: come to us! But she didn’t know who or what they were. In the single word of her name, repeated endlessly, she perceived the message: you belong with us. Come quickly! It is time.
She wondered if it could be her hostling, and in the morning felt she had to confide in Flick about the dreams. She asked him to go for a walk with her in the woods, because for some unknown reason, she didn’t want Ulaume or Mima to hear what she had to say. Flick listened to her account of the call in the field the previous day and the events of the night. He did not interrupt, which was unusual, and unsettling.
‘Is it the Kakkahaar who was my hostling calling to me?’ Lileem asked, making a conscious effort not to wring her hands together. She couldn’t stop shivering.
‘I don’t know,’ Flick said. ‘I doubt it. Maybe it was just a bad dream.’
Lileem could tell he didn’t believe this, because his expression was deeply worried. ‘Is it…’ she began. ‘Is it the… other thing? Is this what happens? A call from somehar I don’t know, the har who’s supposed to…’
‘No!’ Flick said quickly. ‘I’m sure not. It could be something to do with the landscape here. We’ll move on. Let me know if anything else happens.’ He paused. ‘There haven’t been any other changes, have there.’
Lileem’s face burned. ‘No. I’d tell you.’
Flick nodded. ‘OK. Don’t worry. It’s probably nothing.’
The walked back to the boat in silence and Lileem considered how much Flick had changed since she first met him. It was as if she were seeing him for the first time. He no longer appeared so fey and vulnerable. He was strong and his hands were calloused. They rarely talked of the dehara nowadays, although Lileem had kept up her devotions to them privately. Flick had lost faith in all that was wondrous, as had Ulaume. Flick had always believed the world would be fair to him, and it hadn’t been. What had started in Saltrock had only been compounded by the events with Terez and the Uigenna. Flick never spoke of those things either, but sometimes Lileem could feel self-loathing coming off him like a black flame.
All day, Lileem felt nauseous. Her face was hot, her ears were singing and her head felt as if it was stuffed full of cotton. It was inevitable that both Ulaume and Mima noticed she was out of sorts. ‘You’re flushed,’ Mima said. ‘Do you feel all right?’
Lileem wanted to escape them all. She was terrified that the dreaded time of feybraiha was upon her. What would happen? What must she do? As the hours passed, the voices in her head became louder, calling her name insistently. She must be going mad. She would become like Terez had been, a half creature lost in darkness.
Just before sundown, it became unbearable. One moment, Lileem was sitting down on deck to begin the evening meal with her companions, the next she was on her feet, screaming aloud. She jumped off the boat and landed in the icy cold water with a great splash.
Deaf to the cries of her companions behind her, she swam strongly towards the eastern bank and climbed from the water. She wanted and needed to run, to keep running. Clawing her way through thick, thorny bushes, she headed east. It was the only way to go, and the faster she went and the longer she ran, the more the pressure let up within her. This was the way the voices wanted her to go. They lay in this direction: waiting. She found she was both laughing and crying as she ran.
Breaking free of the bushes, she hurtled down an old road that was cracked and half hidden by weeds. Here, her limbs took flight. She had never run so fast and it had never felt so good.
She ran for half the night and only stopped running when she fell exhausted in her tracks. Flick found her before dawn. She was still panting.
He wanted to take her back to ‘Esmeraldarine’, but she could only screech and lash out at him with her fists when he tried to make her do that. She couldn’t go back. It was far too painful. ‘This way!’ she yelled, pointing to the east. ‘I’m going this way and you won’t stop me. I have to.’
Flick crouched before her, his hands hanging between his knees. ‘Why?’ he asked.
Lileem gripped her head, squeezed it. ‘It’s a call,’ she said, trying to think clearly. ‘So strong. I have to obey it. There is no choice.’
Flick stared at her and she stared back, breathing heavily. She couldn’t slow down her breath. After a long minute or so, Flick said, ‘All right.’
‘All right what?’ she cried. The singing in her ears was so loud now she had to shout to hear her own voice, never mind Flick’s.
‘We’ll go east,’ he said. ‘I’ll come with you, if you have to go.’
Lileem threw herself against him. ‘Thank you.’ She realised she had never wanted to go alone.
He held onto her tightly, for just a moment, then held her shoulders at arm’s length, gazing into her eyes steadily. ‘I’ll go back to Ezzie, tell the others, see what they want to do. OK? Will you wait for me here for a just a while?’
She nodded vigorously. ‘Yes.’
He stood up. ‘If you really have to go, leave signs. I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Lileem watched him lope away from her and when he had vanished from her sight, began to weep. He hadn’t questioned her desire. He accepted it, and he would be with her. Her breast ached as if something inside it was about to burst. She had never felt so happy, yet at the same time, so sad.
>
It was difficult not to give in to the desire to leap up and keep running, but Lileem managed to control herself. She knew she should feel hungry, because she hadn’t eaten anything since lunch the day before, but she had no hunger within her. She was simply itching to move and had to keep pacing around. While she did so, she prayed to Lunil, her gentle dehar. What is happening to me? Help me. But it was daytime and Lunil’s influence was weak. She shrank from calling upon Aruhani, because of his arunic associations and Miyacala did not feel appropriate. Her own particular invention, Agave, could give her strength perhaps. For some minutes, she spoke to him, and maybe it was her imagination at work, but her body did begin to feel less agitated. It was fortunate she’d not strayed as far from the river as she thought she’d done, because Flick returned to her just past noon.
‘Ulaume had an idea,’ he said. ‘It might take strength for you to go through with it. There is an eastern tributary to the Serpent a few miles north. You should come back to Ezzie and we’ll head that way. It’ll be quicker than travelling on foot.’
Lileem considered this. ‘It’s a good idea, but I don’t think I can.’
‘You could try.’
‘But it hurts so much. You don’t understand.’
‘We don’t know who or what is calling to you,’ Flick said. ‘It would be better if we could all stick together. Try speaking to these voices in your head. Tell them your intention is to go east, but that you need to go back west first for quicker transport.’
‘OK, I’ll try.’ She took a few tentative steps towards Flick and it was as if a giant fist closed about her mind. She uttered a cry, clasped her head, stepped back. ‘I can’t!’
‘Lileem, you are strong,’ Flick said. ‘Fight back!’
Lileem screwed up her eyes and cried, ‘Agave, be with me! Give me your strength, your fire.’
‘That’s it!’ Flick urged. ‘Take my hand. Come to me.’
Lileem reached out and his fingers curled around her own.
‘I will feed you strength,’ he said. He pulled her towards him.
It was like being hauled through a thicket of blades, perhaps the blades of Agave’s sacred plant itself. But then, a warm wave of energy coursed through Lileem’s body: Flick’s strength and love. For a moment, her head was completely clear. ‘Run!’ she cried.
As they ran towards the west, Lileem imagined the immensely tall figure of Agave on the path behind them, blocking the way of any pursuers. He held a lance and a sword, and his being protected her.
Chapter Twenty One
The tributary to the Cloudy Serpent, called Little Drake, pours down from the eastern mountains. At first, it is fierce and white, as it tumbles over precipices and between narrow rocky channels, but gradually, it curbs its temper and flows smoothly, if purposefully, through fields and forests towards the south west.
In the early days, when the Varrs first fell to the Gelaming, you could travel up the river and see the signs of old battles all around you: blackened ruins, some with smoke still issuing from the timber, months after the initial fires; burial mounds that blocked out the sun, with ragged standards drooping at their summits; a general reek of unease and pain. Any Varrs you might meet, who were not even allowed to refer to themselves as such any more, were generally suspicious, dispirited or stultified. Gelaming commanders supervised rebuilding, and scouting parties still roamed the hills, rooting out the last of the Varr leader, Ponclast’s loyal followers. The Gelaming regarded themselves as a force for good, and in many ways they were, but they were also inexorable and their compassion could often feel like oppression.
Flick and Ulaume could not help but feel skittish passing through this territory. They were not, nor ever had been, Varrs, but strangers could very easily be mistaken for Varrish warriors in disguise and neither Flick nor Ulaume relished the idea of having to submit to interrogation.
It wasn’t until they began their journey east that they realised how vast the Varrish empire had spread and that the Uigenna had really only been minor players in the war with the Gelaming. One thing was upon everyhar’s lips, however: the Uigenna Wraxilan’s days were numbered. The Gelaming had a price on his head and he would not escape it. This gave the travellers some small comfort, because none of them had ever lost the fear that the Uigenna might pursue them, even if none of them spoke of it. But perhaps the Gelaming might be worse than the Uigenna, especially so if Mima and Lileem should be discovered. The Gelaming advocated a kind of Wraeththu purity, which even in the least educated breast kindled feelings of discomfort and unease, echoing as it did similar obsessions by earlier human conquerors.
To Flick, it was like emerging from a dream. Orien had whisked him away from the scenes of conflict to hide him in Saltrock, and his life since leaving his first Wraeththu home had been one of isolation. He hadn’t heard much news, only rumours, and the stories that Terez had told them, but now they were travelling through the real world and it drew them into itself. Wraeththu fought for power, and stronger hara could affect the lives of those weaker than themselves.
Lileem appeared to be fairly comfortable, although Flick suspected she still kept a lot to herself. The voices in her head and the presences in her dreams did not leave her, but they were less strident as she continued to head east. As to where they came from and what might be waiting for her at the end of the journey, she did not know, but Flick was reassured by the fact that she did not appear to fear it. She had turned to the dehara for comfort, and Flick knew she was disappointed that Flick appeared to have lost interest in the gods he had dreamed up. Ulaume, however, had taken up where Flick had left off, and was quite happy to meditate with Lileem, so that they could gather visualised imagery about the dehara.
Once, Lileem confronted Flick and told him that Aruhani was displeased he had turned away from him.
‘No he isn’t,’ Flick snapped angrily. ‘Don’t make things up.’
‘Wasn’t that what we were always doing?’ Lileem countered. ‘Didn’t you say we couldn’t really make anything up, that everything we can think of exists in the universe somewhere already? What happened, Flick? The dehara were yours. Why don’t you like them any more?’
Flick could not tell her how he had come to believe that Aruhani was a terrible and perverted force. It was Aruhani who had made him enjoy being with Wraxilan, who had encouraged him to perform disgusting sado-masochistic acts with the Uigenna leader for several unforgettable nights. Flick could never forgive himself for that, and he thought that in conjuring dehara, he’d been playing with a force that was far too strong and unpredictable. He knew that if he spoke of it, Lileem would disagree and try to persuade him otherwise. It was unthinkable he’d ever tell her what he’d done, in any case. Not even Ulaume knew. Once, not long after they’d left Casa Ricardo for good, Flick had thought longingly of Itzama and his serene wisdom. If he could speak of his problems to anyone, it would be him. But so many years had passed, and his time with the strange shaman was like a dream. None of what happened then seemed to have any bearing on the reality of life. Flick’s excitement in discovering the dehara had been crushed. The gods were capricious. They could smite as well as bless. But only Flick thought this.
‘The voices that call to me,’ Lileem said. ‘The dehara know what they are. They give me strength and courage. I am not afraid.’
Many times, Flick wondered whether it was actually Pellaz calling out to her, drawing them all to him through her, but he could not decide if this was wishful thinking or paranoia. Part of him still could not believe that the Pellaz who sat upon a throne in Immanion was the same har who’d been his friend at Saltrock and yet, looking back, there had always been a faint autocratic air about Pell. Given the right conditions, his wilfulness and stubbornness could very easily have slipped into arrogance and pride. Sometimes, Flick’s heart ached for Cal, and he thought that the Gelaming perpetrated atrocities upon the world. He wanted no part of them, so therefore became troubled when he discovered they were travelling
closer to them than might be safe.
In these lands, Mima and Lileem kept below deck whenever the boat passed other hara or settlements along the river bank. But they still needed to stop for supplies, and for some months the constant travelling had meant they’d had less time to devote to their crafts, which was how they generally earned their living. Also, the defeated Varrs weren’t that interested in charming little talismans of bark, feathers and leaves, or Lileem’s carefully worked clay statues of the dehara. The boat needed fuel, so quite often Ulaume and Flick had been forced to seek work along the way. Flick did all that he could to make himself appear unattractive and he noticed Ulaume did the same thing. They bound up their hair beneath turbans of dirty scarves and didn’t wash themselves for days. They went barefoot and their toenails were black. It was safer that way. They didn’t want to invite attention.
When they took aruna together, Flick felt sad, because these times of freedom, when they could be themselves again, were too brief. The years they’d spent at the white house seemed like a lost idyll: the future was uncertain.