Mima swallowed, her face wrinkling up as if she tasted something bitter. ‘Must I… must we take aruna together?’
Pellaz shook his head. ‘No, that’s not necessary. But I do need your Kamagrian life force, which is why I’ve asked you rather than Flick or Ulaume. The combination of Kamagrian and Wraeththu energy is extremely potent, a vast resource we have not yet begun to tap. We know so little about it, and it’s clearly fraught with dangers, but I do know that our conjoined force will be the focus to get us to the place where Lileem and Terez are. We can achieve this effect through means other than aruna. In this way, the outcome will be more controlled.’
Mima nodded, her lips a thin compressed line. ‘Yes. Yes. I’ll do whatever it takes.’ And if that had meant aruna with her brother, she’d have done that too.
‘Flick,’ Pellaz said, ‘we’ll need Astral for this. Mima must ride him.’
‘You’ll remove the constraints?’ Flick said.
‘Yes. No other way, I’m afraid.’
‘But won’t…?’
‘Don’t mention it,’ Pellaz said. ‘We’ll take a risk. I suggest we go to the place where we used to meet, Flick. It’s far enough from Shilalama to guarantee privacy. I’d like you and Ulaume to accompany us, then return to this house and wait.’
‘That will be… hard,’ Flick said. ‘What if you don’t return immediately? How do we explain Mima’s absence? It could take years.’
‘I will do everything in my power to make this mission as swift as possible,’ Pellaz said, ‘as will Peridot. Astral is not as experienced, but Peridot will guide him. If you have to, say that Mima has come with me to Garridan to deal with a family emergency or something. Use your wits.’
The sun had just set and the night air was still warm. The journey to Pell and Flick’s old meeting place was around an hour and a half way from Shilalama, at a fast pace. Pellaz told Mima to ride Astral on the way there to familiarise herself with him. She’d ridden a sedu before, of course, on the way to Shilalama from Freyhella, but her memory of that journey was hazy. It had been so bizarre and so swift, her mind had blanked out most of the details.
Mima could not believe this was really happening, that in a few short hours she would literally be out of this world, her feet on the soil of an otherworld realm. It was incredible. If it happened, would she remain sane thereafter? So many times she’d prayed to the dehara, Aruhani in particular, and begged them to show her a way to bring Lileem back. Ulaume had never given up hope, but Mima’s hope had vacillated. Sometimes, especially more recently, she’d been hit by a black depression, convinced that she’d never see Lileem or Terez again. Years had passed, but in private moments, when she dared to dwell upon it, it felt to Mima as if Lileem and Terez had disappeared only last week. Never, in all her wild imaginings, had she ever considered she would be doing this; voluntarily travelling to the no-place where aruna, and its unpredictable dehar, had taken her lost friend and brother.
At the appointed spot, Pellaz asked his companions to sit in a circle and join hands. They sat beneath the rock on the sweet summer grass that was damp with evening dew. A great ghostly owl flew over their heads: surely an omen. Peridot and Astral stood motionless outside the circle, and for once their masks of being ordinary beasts of earth seemed to have slipped. They did not bow their heads to munch the grass, nor switch their tails or toss their manes. They watched, with full and focused intention.
Mima took her brother’s hand on the one side, and Ulaume’s on the other. The moment she did so, she closed her eyes and it was like sharing breath. She was back at the white house with Lileem: it was a flickering grainy image, like the old movies she had seen what seemed like centuries ago. Her entire time with her adopted family flashed past her perception in seconds, then she was going further back, into a sunset and the smell of ripe cable fruit. She was brushing Pell’s hair before a mirror by lamplight, and she was thinking: he is so lovely, he should have been born a girl. The moment Cal had set foot in their settlement, with all his languorous beauty, Mima had known that Pell would be lost. And that was before she even realised Cal was Wraeththu.
Pellaz squeezed her fingers and she sensed he must be picking up on her thoughts. His own were shrouded, but perhaps not. Perhaps the images in her mind came directly from him.
The Tigron drew in a slow deep breath through his nose. He called upon the power of the Aghama, the life force of creation. He called it down upon them. Mima could see it as a radiant beam that came from the centre of the universe and held them in its light. They would travel this beam to other realms, to unimagined landscapes. Where her hand joined with Pell’s, she felt as if the flesh was melting, as if she had begun to meld with him completely. Their bones would interlace like the twigs of trees growing close to one another in a deep dark forest.
‘Think of Lileem,’ Pellaz said to her by mind touch, ‘and do not let her go. Keep the image pure and strong and true. It is your lantern in the darkness.’
He leaned towards her and put his mouth near her own. They did not touch but the streams of their breath mingled, causing myriad microscopic explosions in the air between them. The reaction kindled a new form of energy and where it existed, so the boundaries between the worlds became thin and unstable.
‘Rise,’ Pellaz said aloud. ‘Mount Astral, Mima. Flick, Ulaume, stand back.’
In a daze, Mima jumped up onto the sedu. The landscape around her had changed. It was as if she could perceive the essence of everything. The animal beneath her was so strange, she had to concentrate on the image of horse to stop herself leaping from its back with a scream of dread. She could hear the air fracturing, reality shattering, like guns firing in the distance or glass breaking underfoot. Astral connected with her as if his mind was a snake. A whip of intention lashed out and hooked into her consciousness. She could hear him speak. We will open the way on the steam of your breath. Hold true, little one. Hold the lantern high.
With a final ear-splitting crash, reality broke apart, Astral lunged forward and Mima was hurled into the space between the worlds.
Rushing, vortex, waves of energy that she could smell and taste. A soaring ghost beside her that she could not see, but could only feel. The thing she rode: it had wings that were like oars that were like blades rotating. She wasn’t riding it. She was in it. And this time, her awareness was fully awake and alert. She would not forget this journey. She was not a passenger, but a pilot and her navigator was the otherworldly being that enfolded her essence.
Few experience this Astral told her. Hara ride their dreams of flying horses and galloping limbs. Few perceive the truth of it.
Pellaz called to her: Keep the image strong. Hold it steady. It is Astral’s guidance instrument.
It was difficult to do that. Mima was having enough trouble trying to keep hold of her identity, so that she did not disintegrate into a billion motes of consciousness and scatter. Think, she told herself. Remember Lileem the harling. Remember her laughter. She couldn’t keep one image in her head, but she relived many moments. In some ways, it was easier to offer Astral the feeling of her love for Lileem and into this, she poured her entire intention. This was the true beacon. In the midst of its pearly cloud, she thought, we have never been chesna, and we never will be, but we are sisters in skin and we share a history. I am coming for you, Lee. I will bring you back.
Then she saw it: a beautiful azure blue light in the maddening chaos of the otherlanes. It hung up ahead like a star. It was the light of Lileem’s spirit. It was a lantern in a window in a tall dark tower. It was the great gout of radiance over a stormy sea that guided ships to dock. It was the candle of hope lit every evening high in a fortress, to show a rescuer where the princess was imprisoned. And Astral flew towards it.
Ever since she and Terez had tried, and failed, to get back home, Lileem had devoted herself to studying in the underground library. She had no means of writing anything down, so she had to memorise the symbols she saw. Terez spent his time explorin
g the great building above, seeking evidence of who might have built it and why. Occasionally, he went off into the landscape, searching for other buildings. He discovered that the purple sun revealed things in the chambers of the great pyramid. He’d occasionally seen what might have been furniture – strange objects. It was difficult to tell. Once, he’d found a room with painted walls. Images of birds surrounded him. When he and Lileem met up, usually by accident if she’d decided to come up from below for a while, he’d tell her what he’d discovered. But they met infrequently. Sometimes, Lileem didn’t see him for what felt like years. They no longer existed in time, and when Lileem looked down at herself, she thought she might be becoming insubstantial, like a ghost. She and Terez had died, and this world they were in, it might be hell, because it was so lonely and so desolate, but Lileem could not see hell in a place where there was so much knowledge. She knew that Terez was unhappy, and maybe she could be too, if she thought about it, but mostly she was driven purpose. Everything that had gone before, her old life, no longer mattered.
She could only examine the stone books on the lower shelves of the library, because she could find no means to access the upper shelves, which towered at least a hundred feet over her head. But even so, she had enough to occupy her for an eternity. When she finally came across a book that she could read, she felt she had been rewarded for her industry and application. It slid out from the stack and she experienced a chill – the first physical sensation for an aeon. She saw the name of Aruhani, carved in stone.
Lileem pressed a hand against the word. The sight of it kindled memories of her old life. The book was covered in words, symbols and pictures. The name might be coincidence, because in this place she would come across anything that had ever been thought of eventually, but below the word she saw an image of the dehar, almost exactly how Flick had described him. There was a symbol too and she realised it was a summoning glyph.
The words and markings were so tiny, and so many were crammed onto the stone, it was difficult to interpret them. First, she looked for other familiar words and was not surprised to find Miyacala and Lunil, but was pleased to discover Agave, who she’d invented as a child, and in adult life had considered not to be a bona fide dehar. But there were so many others: thousands. Mima felt excitement. She thought of Flick. She wanted him to know about this.
But he never will, she thought. That is why this is hell. I am given proof or evidence, then condemned never to be able to share it.
Lileem leaned her forehead against the stone for a few moments. She felt the ghost of a headache, far behind her eyes. The books were not heavy, despite appearances. She found she was hauling this one right out of the stack. She was going to take it to the upper place. She was going to make Terez look at it.
If there is a way to get home, she thought, it lies somewhere within this library. I just have to keep looking for it.
Aruhani had come to her. He had prodded her and made her remember the life she had left behind. She could not ignore this message.
Outside, no suns were in the sky and the stars wheeled overhead. Lileem found Terez beside the ocean, staring up. Her footsteps crunched upon the gravelly shore, but Terez did not look round. In the strange light, his naked skin looked like marble. Once, I believed I loved him, she thought. This place has stolen that from me.
‘Terez,’ she said. ‘Look.’
He did not respond immediately, but then turned slowly towards her. She held out the stone, which was almost half her height.
‘You shouldn’t bring those out here,’ Terez said. ‘It’s forbidden.’
‘Who’s here to forbid?’ she asked. ‘Just look at it, will you.’
She hunkered down and laid the stone out on the ground. Terez squatted beside her. ‘What am I looking for?’
Lileem pointed out the words. ‘Dehara,’ she said. ‘See? We didn’t make it up.’
‘Maybe you did,’ Terez said, annoyingly unimpressed. ‘Whatever any creature thinks is recorded here. This is just your book, or Flick’s book.’
‘No,’ Lileem said. ‘I know it’s not.’
Terez sighed. ‘What does it matter?’ He stood up again and stared at the sky. ‘Somewhere, out there, perhaps in another layer of reality, lies home…’
Lileem was silent for a moment, then said, ‘I want to go back too, Terez. And I’m going to find a way how, I promise you. The information we seek lies in the library.’
He glanced at her. ‘Maybe wanting to is the beginning,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s been you all along who has kept us here, because of that damned library. You haven’t wanted to leave badly enough.’
Lileem considered his words. He might well be correct. ‘Well, I do now,’ she said. If only they could find desire in this arid place, but she knew that route was closed to them. ‘I’ll find a way. Come with me. Don’t stay out here. It’d be quicker if we looked together.’
They walked back along the shore with the cyclopean edifice looming over them, casting its gaunt shadow on the sea. It was necessary to climb long sloping dunes of silver grey sand to reach the entrance to the library. Lileem and Terez waded up the dunes, their progress hampered by the shifting granules. The book felt heavy in Lileem’s arms now.
Just as they reached the top, there was a great flash in the sky. Lileem almost dropped the stone. ‘What was that?’
It looked as if a star had exploded for much of the sky ahead of them was filled with pulsing, sparkling clouds. The ground was shaking, and there was a sound like thunder.
‘A portal!’ Terez cried, trying to scramble faster up the dune.
Lileem stumbled after him. ‘Another har and parage, do you think?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe Gelaming. They can go anywhere in creation, I’m sure. We must make them see us.’
‘Terez,’ Lileem said, ‘it might not be…’
Whatever words she was about to speak were swept away from her. An immense radiance burst out of the boiling sky with the sound of an entire city crumbling to destruction at once. Both Lileem and Terez ducked down, and a hot wind seared over them, blowing back their hair. Sand scoured their naked bodies. Does this library have an owner? Lileem thought. And they have they just come back to it?
She was afraid.
Terez dragged her to her feet and together they reached the top of the dunes. A short distance away, they could see two bizarre creatures, crouched on the ground outside the pyramid. Were they creatures? They could equally have been machines. In some ways, they were like giant insects, because they had wings and their segmented bodies appeared to be made of some metallic substance that shifted with many colours like oil. The wings were similar to insect wings in that they moved so fast they were simply a blur, but Lileem could see that they were rotating rather than flapping. There was also something about the creatures that reminded her of sea animals. Their legs were like a crab’s or spider’s legs, with their bodies hanging between them. Their heads were long and triangular like a sea-horse’s. They had three enormous faceted eyes. It was only when she heard her name called aloud that Lileem realised the strange creatures had passengers or riders.
‘Lileem!’
She knew that voice, even after so long. ‘Terez,’ she cried. ‘It’s Mima!’
‘I know,’ he said and there was fear in his voice, as if he thought this was a terrible, cruel illusion.
‘Come on!’ Lileem began to run towards the creatures.
The creatures appeared to be surrounded by a shimmering bubble of sparkling air. Lileem careered into it and then found she was lying on her back on the ground, the stone book on top of her. Something had repelled her with immense force.
She stood up quickly, and put out a hand towards the light. Something pressed against her hand. She couldn’t push through it.
‘Lileem,’ Mima called. ‘Come to me. Come now. There isn’t much time.’
‘I can’t!’ Lileem wailed.
‘Try!’
Terez was at her side now a
nd together they pushed against the resistant air. They could make no impression on it. ‘This isn’t real,’ Terez was saying, over and over, but he kept trying to break through the barrier.
‘Terez!’
Everything was happening so swiftly, Lileem hadn’t inspected who rode the other creature. Her whole being was intent on reaching Mima, on going home and there was no time for thought or consideration. But now, she turned her attention to Mima’s companion. She knew him at once, not just because he looked so like her visions of him, but because he was surrounded by golden light, by power.
‘It’s your brother,’ Lileem said. ‘Terez, it’s Pellaz. He’s come for us.’
Pellaz leapt down from his peculiar mount and came to the side of the bubble. He looked like a dehar and perhaps he was. ‘Concentrate,’ he said. ‘This world is responsive only to one-way portals. There is no way back. Peridot and Astral are holding open the portal they made, but they are weakening. You have to break through this barrier. You must believe you can.’
Terez took Lileem’s hand in his own. ‘I believe it!’ he said fiercely.
Pellaz closed his eyes briefly, then extended one shining hand towards them. It came through the barrier as if through water and it dripped with opal fire. Terez grabbed hold of it. Pellaz would pull them through, together. ‘Now!’ Terez yelled to Lileem.
She hesitated, then let go of Terez’s hand and ran back the short way to where the stone book lay in the sand. She heard them all calling to her, urgently, angrily, but she couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t leave this place with nothing. They’d suffered too much. The book felt so heavy now. She could barely pick it up, but if there was one last thing she could do in her life, it must be this. She staggered back to Terez, whose expression was demented.
‘Lee! Drop that thing. Hurry. What the fuck are you doing?’
‘Drop it!’ Pellaz shouted at her. ‘You can’t bring it with you.’
Lileem ignored him. She held it close against her body with one arm, feeling the muscles rip beneath its weight. Its surface felt rough now and it ground against her naked skin. She must ignore the weight. She must believe she could do this. With her free hand, she grabbed hold of Terez’s fingers and she saw that her own were bleeding.