“These ain’t the dumb beasts you imagined them to be all these years,” Clay replied. “You gotta know that after everything we seen. And no, they don’t think like us, or talk like us. But they do think.” He turned his gaze to the south once more, the Black now no more than a speck above the mountains cresting the horizon. “And they do talk.”
The plains gave way to sparse forest as they neared the mountains, which soon grew into thick jungle. Clay called a halt with the onset of evening and they settled down to eat a meal of roasted Cerath meat. Whilst the others talked over their options Clay sat in silent contemplation of the map Hilemore had given him.
“Climbing the first mountain we come to seems like the best bet,” his uncle said. “Find us a nesting drake and Miss Kriz can do what she does with the crystal. Females don’t fly when they’re nesting.”
“You think they’ll let us get anywhere near a nest, Captain?” Skaggerhill said. “Nesting female will be sure to have a big mean male close by who’s likely to roast us before we manage to scale more than a few feet. I say we do what we did last time, ’cept we try for a capture ’stead of a kill. Preacher’ll shoot us some game and we leave the carcass out in a clearing. Black’ll come along sooner or later, most likely a young ’un as they’re less wary than the adults, be easier to rope up too since they’re smaller. After that the lady can do her thing and . . .” Skaggerhill shrugged. “I guess we’ll see iffen it works.”
“Worth a try, I guess,” Braddon said after some thought. “Be right tricky, though. Might end up killing any beast we catch, given how they can be . . .”
“No,” Clay interrupted, looking up from his map. “We ain’t doing any of that.”
“Then what d’you suggest, cuz?” Loriabeth asked. “We all just go strolling on in there and wait for one to come say hello?”
“Not all.” Clay scanned them with a steady gaze, making sure they all understood his next words to be sincere and not subject to argument. “Just me and Kriz. The rest of you are gonna skirt the mountains and make for the coast. I’ll trance with the lieutenant along the way to let you know how we’re doing. If I don’t trance for three days straight, head for Stockcombe.”
Loriabeth let out a disparaging laugh, quickly echoed by his uncle. “Clay, if you think I’m gonna let you walk in there on your own . . .”
“They remember!”
Braddon fell silent, his laughter fading as Clay’s shout echoed through the jungle.
“Drakes ain’t like us, like I said,” Clay went on, voice lowered. “One thing that makes ’em different is their memory. It don’t die with them, they carry it. Every Black holds the memory of its parents, and its grandparents, and their grandparents, going all the way back for thousands of years. You’ve been here before so they know your scent and they know what you did. They’ll kill you.”
“I ain’t been here before,” Loriabeth said. “I should come too.”
“You carry your pa’s scent, cuz,” Clay said, shaking his head. “I ain’t risking it.” Braddon began to say something more but Clay cut him off. “It’s settled, Uncle. You made me captain, well, I’m giving orders. You head for the coast.” He turned to Kriz. “We’ll set off in the morning, if you’re willing.”
He detected a slight hesitation before she replied with a nod and a forced smile. “Of course. There was a city here in my time. I’m keen to see if there’s anything left of it.”
* * *
• • •
They parted the next morning after a brief farewell that saw Loriabeth fighting tears and Braddon make a last and fruitless attempt to persuade Clay to another course of action.
“Course is set, Uncle,” he replied, turning to walk away before pausing for a second to add, “And don’t try tracking after us.”
To be certain, he called a halt after he and Kriz had covered the first few miles and waited, hearing and seeing no sign that they were being followed. “Is it true?” Kriz whispered as they crouched in the undergrowth.
“What?” Clay asked.
“About drake memory. It’s not just something you told them to spare them danger?”
“’Course not.” He turned to her, frowning in realisation. “You didn’t know?”
Her face took on a sheepish grimace. “Clearly we had much left to discover.”
“Seems to me the more I find out about your people, the more dumb they seem. You didn’t know how the crystals work but you used them anyway. You didn’t know what the White was capable of but that didn’t stop you breeding the damn thing. Also, turns out you barely know shit about the animals you spent years studying.”
“All knowledge is . . .”
“Precious and dangerous. Yeah, I remember.” Clay waited for a few moments more and, satisfied they were in fact travelling alone, rose and resumed the southward trek towards the nearest mountain. He stopped when he realised Kriz wasn’t following, turning back to find her standing with her gaze averted, hands fidgeting on the straps of her back.
“What?” he asked her.
“Thousands of years,” she said. “Their memory goes back thousands of years.”
“So?”
“So . . .” She raised her gaze, eyes wary with reluctant admission. “So, they might well remember me. Remember what I did, all those years ago.”
Clay took a step towards her, finding his voice had hardened when he spoke on. “What you did?”
“Experiments.” She closed her eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “Dissections.”
Clay came to a halt and they stared at each other for a time, Kriz forcing herself to meet his eyes, Clay realising the depth of his ignorance about this woman.
“As you said,” she went on, breaking a lengthy silence, “we barely knew shit about them.”
“We can still find the others,” he said in a flat weary voice, starting back down the trail. “You’ll go with them . . .”
“No.” She was emphatic, unmoving. “No. You need me to activate the crystal. If they remember . . . then we’ll just have to hope the crystal conveys sufficient understanding for them to hear a heart-felt apology.”
* * *
• • •
“Do we climb?” Kriz asked, her voice betraying an ill-concealed reluctance as she gazed up at the granite flanks of the mountain. A thick mist concealed the summit and, although the cliff-face before them featured numerous ledges and cracks, Clay found the prospect of climbing it distinctly unappealing.
He glanced around at the jungle canopy surrounding the low, grassy hill where they stood. Once clear of the jungle the air took on a clammy chill adding to the sense of exposure. The clouds that seemed to linger constantly over the mountains could conceal any manner of threats and Clay was beset by a persistent sense that a dark-winged shape would come swooping out of the white sky at any moment.
“No,” he said, unslinging his pack. “We’ll camp here tonight. Keep moving south come the morning.”
“There’s no cover,” she pointed out, casting a hand at the sky.
“That’s kinda the point. We want to be found, remember?” He set his pack down, resting a hand on the bulbous shape within. Come a long way, young ’un, he thought, smoothing his palm over the egg’s grainy shell. Hope your kin are pleased to see you.
They took turns on watch through the night, which proved uneventful if somewhat tense. Like all jungles this one generated a nerve-straining chorus of combined animal chatter and creaking branches. The only potential sign of a drake came during Clay’s watch in the small hours when the night was blackest. The clouds parted for a short time allowing a patch of moonlight to play over the jungle. Clay gazed at the pale blue light playing on the tree-tops, making them glitter as it caught the innumerable leaves, then started as a swift shadow swept across the scene. His gaze jerked upwards, honed instincts making one hand reach for his revolver whilst the
other went to his wallet of product. He checked himself and forced his hands back into his lap, eyes roving the sky as the clouds closed in again. He heard no drake call, nor flap of wings but the feeling of being observed raised a prickle to his skin.
“I know you’re up there,” he whispered, hearing the quaver in his voice. “Why not come say hello?”
His hand went to the vials around his neck, the fruits of his sojourn in the enclave beneath the ice. White blood and Black heart-blood, the existence of which he had chosen to keep from Captain Hilemore. He hadn’t explicitly told Lizanne either but, given her facility for trance communication, it was possible she already knew. Once again, the notion of drinking White played through his mind.
It might show me where to go, he thought. Where to find them. The vial’s contents were dark, catching only a marginal gleam from the camp-fire. With no plasmologist dilutions to preserve it the blood had congealed, making it appear a thick, oily sludge he knew would be the foulest thing he had ever tasted. Only when everything else has failed, he decided, letting it fall from his grasp and turning his gaze on the vial of heart-blood.
It was similarly congealed but even darker. The pain of drinking the Blue heart-blood still lingered in his mind. Also, he knew now the connection was not inevitable. This was not a magic potion from some fable that would cast a spell over any drake he chose. It allowed the joining of minds and his control over Jack had been possible only because the drake’s mind had been fractured and susceptible to remoulding. Miss Ethelynne had forged a connection with Lutharon but he had been an infant at the time. Somehow he doubted a sane adult Black would present an easier prospect.
Another last resort, he concluded, concealing the vials beneath his shirt and looking at his pack and the round shape within. Looks like it’ll be down to you, young ’un.
* * *
• • •
They moved on come the morning, Clay following a course that would lead them into the heart of the Carnstadts. The jungle was similar to the country east of Krystaline Lake, though the trees were less tall and the ground-level vegetation thicker. He was wary at first, recognising this as perfect Green country and walking with his revolver drawn. He holstered it after trekking for several hours during which he saw no claw tracks on the jungle floor or any of the markings Greens habitually left on tree-trunks to mark their territory. Not Green country, he thought, peering up at the sky through the canopy. They steer well clear of this place. This is Black country.
“So, what was it called?” he asked Kriz when they paused in a clearing some miles on. “The city that used to sit here?”
“Devos Eluzica,” she said, speaking in her own language as they both did most of the time now. “It means ‘The Divine Tree.’” She gave a wistful sigh as she gazed around at the enclosing wall of jungle. “It was beautiful, Clay. An entire city built by a subsect of the Devos Caste. They chose to build without the aid of any crystals, in fact shunning their use entirely, believing the Benefactors had sent them as a test rather than a gift.”
“A test?” Clay asked. “Of what?”
“It’s all a little confused,” she said, drinking from her canteen and frowning in remembrance. “But then I always had trouble comprehending the vagaries of the Devos. It had something to do with our worthiness, our value as a species. They felt we had lessened ourselves by using the crystals, become as pampered children in the eyes of the Benefactors. Only by rebuilding our civilisation with our own hands could we win back their favour; otherwise, they were sure to punish us with a great cataclysm of some kind.”
“Maybe they had a point, given what was coming and all.”
“They were hypocrites. The city they built here was small at first. Just a series of interlinked houses crafted to sit amongst the tree-tops in supposed harmony with nature. But as time went on it grew taller, coming to resemble a great tree itself, adorned with glowing baubles when night fell. But they would never have been able to build it without the engineering knowledge acquired since the dawn of the crystal age. And, as the decades passed, successive generations crafted convenient sophistry to enable them to use crystals, eventually forgetting their heresy altogether, and the great tree grew ever taller. In my time, it rose higher than some of the mountains.” She paused, voice becoming sombre and her fond smile fading. “It must have been quite a sight when it fell.”
Clay was about to ask more then stopped when his gaze alighted on something in the gloom beyond Kriz’s shoulder: the fire-light playing on the outline of a crouched figure. He scrambled to his feet, drawing his revolver, Kriz doing the same. “What is it?” she whispered, moving to his side.
“Company.” Clay trained his revolver on the outline, eyes flicking left and right for any sign of another intruder, seeing only darkened jungle. After several long seconds in which nothing happened he began to discern the unnatural stillness of the crouched figure. Even a Spoiled couldn’t sit still for that long, he decided, nevertheless keeping the revolver aimed at the figure as he crept closer.
“Seer-damn statue,” he muttered in relief as the figure came fully into view. The statue was cracked and mostly covered with vines. However, enough of its original form remained to make out the shape of a kneeling man, hands clasped together but head raised to stare directly ahead.
“Spoiled,” Clay said, running a hand over the statue’s scaled features, feeling the stunted spines on its forehead. He was no scholar of the arts but there was something familiar about the way the stone had been worked, the sharp angles and blockiness of the statue putting him in mind of the hidden city near Krystaline Lake. But there were also subtle differences, a more curved line than he had seen before and, as a quick inspection of the statue’s base confirmed, it had been decorated with a markedly different form of writing. The characters adorning the statues in the hidden city had a flowing, almost organic quality whilst these were much more regular and dense, almost like words in a printed book.
“Miss Ethy might’ve been able to read it,” he murmured, running a hand over the inscription.
“Who?” Kriz asked.
“Friend of mine. She died. And I was too dumb to look at her note-books when I had the chance.”
“Oh.” She reached out to smooth a hand over the statue’s upper arm. “Finely worked. Whoever made this was very skilled. But there was nothing like it in my time.”
“Yeah, I guessed it didn’t come from your holy tree city.”
Clay straightened as something occurred to him. Where there’s one there’ll be more. He extracted a vial of Green from his wallet and drank a small amount, casting his gaze about at the revealed jungle. “There,” he said, pointing as his enhanced gaze picked out another crouching figure some twenty yards away. A brief inspection revealed it to be mostly identical to the first one, albeit with a greater level of damage. Further investigation revealed another two statues farther on, each spaced at what seemed to be precisely the same distance.
“And there’s another one,” Clay said, nodding to the next figure in what was clearly a long line of statues. “Looks like we got a trail to follow come the morning.”
* * *
• • •
They counted over two hundred statues by the time the trail ended in a broad clearing about three miles from where they had camped. They changed in form as the trail continued, the kneeling figures rising to a crouch, then standing, then with arms stretched out in front. Clay began to suspect they were in fact looking at a sequence depicting the same Spoiled captured at different stages in some kind of ritual. The final statue was the most damaged of all. The head was gone and half the figure’s vine-enmeshed torso had tumbled into dust long ago. One outstretched arm remained, however, the hand closed into a fist with a stunted finger extended.
The Artisan’s memory, he realised, following the direction of the pointed finger. They were in the same clearing from the memory Lizanne had s
hared with him, but instead of the statue pointing to a jagged outline above the tree-tops, it pointed only at empty sky. “Must’ve fallen to ruin since,” he murmured.
“What must have?” Kriz asked.
“A temple,” he said, starting forward. “This way . . .”
He staggered as a gust of wind swept down from above, raising enough dust to blind him whilst his ears were assailed by the roar of an enraged drake. A shudder ran through the ground as a large Black descended directly to his front, wings spread wide and mouth open. More shudders followed in quick succession, Clay whirling to see two more Blacks landing to their rear.
“The crystal,” Clay said and Kriz immediately reached into her pocket. The Black to their front let out a squawk of alarm at this, lowering itself into a crouch, smoke rising from its nostrils.
“Hey!” Clay raised both arms, presenting his empty hands to the Black, hoping to buy time for Kriz to activate the crystal. “We’re friends! See, no weapons! And we brought a gift.”
He unshouldered his pack, swiftly undoing the ties and extracting what was inside. “Peace offering,” he said, setting the egg down in front of the Black. Its aggressive posture didn’t change, though it did lower its gaze a fraction to take in the sight of the egg. Letting out a suspicious grunt, the Black dipped its head to sniff the egg, huffing in what Clay took for recognition. “Young ’un needs a new home,” he said. “Brung him a long way to find it.”
The Black’s eyes narrowed, a low, guttural rumble sounding from its throat as it enclosed the egg in its claw, dragging it back as it hissed in warning. Clay watched as the beast’s gaze tracked from him to Kriz where it lingered, narrowed further then flared into a deep angry recognition. Shit! he thought, turning and dragging Kriz into a protective huddle as the Black roared and unleashed its flames.