‘It is not a wagon now,’ he said to himself. ‘It is a vessel.’
The winged vessel slid along the ice on its long staves, gathering speed until it seemed they were truly flying. And though the wind was still blowing from the East, miraculously, they were flying North.
The diggers were perching either side of the vessel at the prow, watchful. Every now and then one of them would suddenly run round the rim and scale the awning frame or one of the long poles sticking up above it to make some change.
Zluty felt guilty that he could do nothing to help. He could only admire the diggers’ agility and their mastery of the vessel. He could hardly take his eyes from the billowing, fluttering sails. He had thought they were red because that was the colour of the bags that held them, but once unfurled and seen in daylight, they had proven to be a wonderful golden colour. He marvelled at their terrifying speed, for surely even Redwing had never flown across the land so fast.
But his delight was tempered whenever he looked at the mountains.
‘I swear I will find you both, Bily, no matter what it takes,’ he whispered.
‘Your heart would have the knowing if badness happened to Bee-lee,’ Semmel said, startling him.
He watched her make another adjustment to the largest wing, and wished he could take comfort from her words. But Bily had been in trouble in the past when they were apart, and he had not always had a feeling about it. Unless Semmel had meant that Zluty would know if Bily had been hurt or killed. He shivered at the thought, but some of the sick fear left him, too, because he was sure he would know those things, and since he didn’t know, Bily must be alive and well.
Bily was dreaming that the egg voice was whispering to him again.
‘I chose you because you are small and soft. Large, powerful things do not pay much heed to small soft things. I chose you and your brother because it is your nature to cleave to one another. Only remember that a key that opens a door can also lock it . . .’
When Bily woke, the words of his dream were clear in his mind.
Then he realised he could not move. He could feel rope cutting into him on all sides, even his head and ears, though there was something soft under him. He struggled and then gave a cry of fright when a creature he had never seen before held up a lantern and leaned near to peer into his face.
‘Do not be afraid little fluffy thing,’ it said in a kindly voice.
Bily saw with a shock that it was a small Monk.
‘You hit your head on the mountain,’ it went on.
‘Will you untie me?’ Bily asked, for despite the creature tying him up, it seemed not to mean him any harm.
‘You are not tied up,’ it said, sounding amused. ‘You are in a safesling. Sicklings are carried in them if they are not strong enough to cling and swing. The Great One has been carrying you in it since you fell, but you may ride with me on her back now that you are woken. You will easily fit for you are small enough to be my youngling.’
‘Youngling . . .’ Bily said, bemused, and realised that this Monk was a she Monk.
I am Seshla,’ said the she Monk.
‘I . . . my name is Bily,’ Bily stammered. ‘I did not know there were any she Monks. I thought he Monks came from metal eggs like me and my brother, Zluty.’
Seshla did not seem surprised at his words, but her dark eyes grew suddenly sad. ‘You speak of the lostlings – the he Monks of Stonehouse who are our brothers and sons and fathers, though they have no memory of us.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Bily said.
‘In obedience to the Makers plan, we surrender almost all he Monk younglings to their service, but their memories of us might unsettle them, so they must be taken from them.’
‘Because their sadness would muddle the Makers metal, and then they might refuse to do the things the Makers want them to do . . .’ Bily murmured, wondering if the Makers had found out that emotions affected the power of their metal.
Seshla tilted her head and gave him a bright, interested look. ‘That is true. The Makers do not trust she Monks because our metal is unawakened so that we can bear younglings. We could not do that if our metal was bound. They need us to bear younglings, but they fear our influence over the he Monks, so we must be hidden away and forgotten.’
Bily tried to sit up in the safesling and discovered with a sick lurch of his stomach that he was suspended over a sheer drop. He could not see what lay below because of the mist, and it was the same when he looked up.
‘Where is the Monster?’ he asked with sudden alarm.
‘Monster?’ Seshla said, then her eyes widened. ‘Ah, that is how you name the Changebringer. The Great One is watching over him.’
‘The Changebringer?’ Bily echoed. ‘The Great One?’
‘Wait,’ said Seshla, and climbed up out of sight, taking her lantern and leaving Bily dangling in darkness. A moment later, the rope sling gave a jerk and she was hauling him onto a ledge covered in cold fluffs. There was a dark cave open in the side of the mountain, and he could just see the Monster stretched out asleep by the light of the lantern.
The Monster was not moving and Bily’s heart began to pound with alarm. He fought to get free of the net, until Seshla bid him be still and used her long deft fingers to free him.
As soon as the rope sling fell away, Bily crawled into the cave. He stroked the Monster’s tufted ears and kissed its nose, but it did not stir, nor could he reach its mind.
Frightened, he laid his cheek against its flank and listened. With relief, he felt its heart beating steadily and strongly, though rather too slowly. But it was hot, too, which was a good sign. He examined its body as best he was able, but could find no injury. Was it possible there was something wrong inside it because of the way the Nightbeast had carried it? Or was its metal beginning to sicken again now that the potion was wearing off?
‘What are you?’ asked a great breathy voice in his mind.
Even before he lifted his head, Bily realised that what he had thought to be the immense darkness of the cave was the Nightbeast. His knees trembled as he looked up into its narrowed, gleaming green eyes.
‘Its name is Bily, Great One,’ Seshla said, coming to sit beside Bily and wrapping something thick and soft around his shoulders. ‘You are a he, aren’t you?’ she whispered to Bily.
Bily nodded, unable to find his voice.
‘Why did you capture us?’ he managed to ask at last, though his voice sounded small and rather shaky.
‘The wise ones sent me to find the broken Listener they call Changebringer,’ the Nightbeast said in its vast sighing voice. Like the Monster and the Cloud Monster it spoke aloud at the same time as inside his mind. ‘The Listeners gave me his scent in a dream and that is how I tracked him. I smelled you clinging to him, little Softling, but I thought you were his rider as Seshla is mine.’
Bily was shocked that the Nightbeast spoke of the Monster as a He, but the diggers in the encampment had done the same, and he had resolved to try to follow their customs.
‘What will you do with us?’ he finally asked, tremulously.
The green eyes flashed with amusement. ‘I do not propose to do anything with you or to you, for I did not bring you. You brought yourself.’
‘I could not just let you take the Monster,’ Bily said softly. ‘It . . . he is sick, you see. I have been looking after him.’
The eyes narrowed. ‘Do you serve him out of love, or because you fear the anger of the Listeners or the wrath of the Makers?’
‘I just wanted to help the Monster,’ Bily said. Then he added truthfully. ‘I was afraid of it . . .him to begin with, but he was in such pain, and after a while we became friends.’
There was a pause during which those enormous green eyes seemed to look through Bily’s skin and bone. ‘Then it is as I supposed when I scented you – you are a true rider.’
Bily said, startled, ‘I don’t ride the Monster.’ He had ridden on the Cloud Monster. But that had been an emergency.
&
nbsp; ‘A rider is not only one who rides. It means one who shares a mutual bond with another, and where each of them carries the other in their heart as a beloved burden,’ Seshla said. ‘The Great One is saying that you share the same bond of love with the Changebringer as I share with her.’ She paused. ‘You smell hungry.’ She turned to rummage in a bag she carried over her shoulder and chest, just as he carried his forage bag. Then she crowed with triumph and handed Bily a round, heavy, slightly greasy lump that smelled sweet. She took out another lump and bit into it.
Realising all at once how dreadfully hungry he was, Bily nibbled gingerly at his lump. It was like bread dough that had not been cooked, and it was terribly sweet, but he was grateful to be eating anything.
Seshla finished her lump and rummaged again in her bag, this time producing a gourd of water, from which Bily drank thankfully, when she offered it.
‘What about the Nightbeast?’ he asked, returning the gourd to her.
The she Monk showed her teeth to the Nightbeast in a rather ferocious grin, and made a chittering noise, before looking back at Bily.
‘That is a fine name for her, but you need not worry about her being hungry. She ate well in preparation for this journey. She will only slake her thirst with snow before we go on.’
Snow, Bily thought. That was the word the Makers used for cold fluffs.
‘The Changebringer is broken,’ Seshla went on, glancing at the Monster’s sleeping face. ‘I doubt he could carry you.’
‘He couldn’t,’ Bily agreed, though he did not like to hear her say the Monster was broken. ‘He can’t walk. That is why we were pulling him in the wagon. We were trying to bring it . . . him to the Velvet City where he can be healed.’
The Nightbeast gave a low rumbling growl. ‘That healing would come at a high price. And the wise ones say your Monster has no wish to return to the Velvet City.’
‘I don’t know how they can know that. But he must go back, else die,’ Bily said. Then he hesitated. ‘But isn’t that where you mean to take him?’
‘I will carry him to the wise ones in the Hidden Place,’ the Nightbeast said, rather haughtily.
‘But who are the wise ones?’ Bily asked.
‘They are very old she Monks. They will take care of the Changebringer and instruct him, if he will listen,’ Seshla said.
Instruct him in what? Bily wondered.
But before he could ask, the Nightbeast rose in one huge soft movement, almost invisible against the darkness. Bily saw again the flash of the metal about its neck, and wanted to ask about it, but Seshla was standing up, too.
‘It is time to go,’ she told him.
‘You may go with us, Softling, if you wish,’ the Nightbeast said, again speaking inside Bily’s head.
‘I will go with the Monster,’ Bily said firmly.
Seshla gave the little bobbing nod that seemed to mean something more than merely agreement. ‘The wise ones will be curious about you. Not one of them has foreseen you.’
‘Probably because I don’t have Makers metal in me,’ Bily murmured.
‘Though you are small, you cannot have come through the sky crack by chance, and no one could survive that journey without Makers metal in them,’ Seshla said. ‘Your metal must be unawakened like mine or damaged like the Great One’s.’
Bily looked at the Nightbeast. ‘Your metal is damaged?’
‘The Makers sent me through the sky crack as a cub to serve as a guard of the borders of the Hidden Place, to keep the she Monks imprisoned there,’ the Nightbeast said. ‘My metal was supposed to awaken and bind me to the Makers machines as soon as I was within the ice peaks surrounding the Hidden Place, but it did not bind. Being a cub, I knew nothing and near died of cold and hunger, wandering near the Long Pool in the end days of Winter. But the world’s dream came and the she Monks found me by its light. When they understood what had happened, they bade me patrol the perimeter so that the Makers would believe I was bound to their metal, for Makers hate things that do not work as they are meant to. They might be puzzled that they could not track me, but as long as I did what I was meant to do, they would think the fault was a small one. They would never know I was not bound to their metal. And that is how it came that the she Monks are not truly imprisoned.’
Seshla gave Bily a glimmering, wicked wink, then she said more seriously, ‘I did not come through the sky crack. I was born here of a she Monk, as was my mother and her mother before her. My brothers, too, though they do not remember it once they leave the Hidden Place. I have Makers metal inside me, as do all younglings born of those with Makers metal. But because I am a she Monk, my metal was never woken.’
‘It was not woken so you could have younglings,’ Bily remembered.
‘Exactly. But because I am not bound, I do not have to follow the Makers plan. I chose not to have any younglings so that I could serve as first rider to the Great One. The Makers do not know this. If they did, I would not be allowed to live, for our ability to bear younglings is the sole value of a she Monk to the Makers.’
Seshla rose and stretched her long furred arms.
‘In the beginning, a Makers metal barrier kept us imprisoned. The Hidden Place cannot be seen by the world and we could not venture beyond its icy borders, save when we came to the mainland to tithe. The Makers controlled the metal barrier and watched us closely to be sure all the she Monks that went out also returned. But over time, she Monks disappeared. Most likely they perished, but it alarmed the Makers, and that is why they sent the Great One to guard us and prevent any other creature coming near the Hidden Place. Instead, our prison has became a secret refuge.’
Bily thought there were gaps in the she Monk’s telling, and he said, ‘She Listeners have younglings, even though they are not bound to Makers machines.’
‘They are a different kind from Monks, as are you and I, little Softling,’ the Nightbeast said.
‘Listener’s metal is bound to a Makers machine,’ Seshla said. ‘But theirs is a very subtle binding made to hold the minds in thrall, rather than the body. It does not affect their metal – unless a Listener transgresses in some way. Such as going far from the Velvet City. The binding will then kill the Listener slowly, so that they will die without knowing why.’
‘And if they come to understand that they will die if they do not return to the Velvet City?’ Bily asked anxiously.
‘I think the Makers would not want such a Listener to return to the Velvet city,’ Seshla said, and gave the Monster a thoughtful look. ‘But if they went back, I think the metal would cease sickening.’
Bily longed to ask what the wise ones wanted with the Monster, but instead he asked, ‘Where is the Hidden Place?’
‘Northmost,’ Seshla said. ‘It is the hot secret heart of the ice maze. Soon you will see it. Now, will you ride with me on the back of the Great One, or be carried in the safesling?’
‘I would ride,’ Bily said, with a stab of anguish that again he would be going where Zluty could not follow. The she Monk must have felt his hesitation, for she merely continued to look at him expectantly.
‘It is my brother, Zluty,’ he explained. ‘The Nightbeast took me from him and our digger friends and they will be frantic with worry for us. If only I could let them know we are safe.’
‘I know the longing for a brotherblood,’ Seshla said sadly. She considered and then clapped her big soft hands. ‘Once I have brought you and the Changebringer to the wise ones, the Great One and I will travel back to seek out your brother and his companions. We will let them know you are safe and bring them to you, if they desire it.’
‘Oh, that would be wonderful,’ Bily cried. He looked at the Monster, who lay unmoving, and frowned. ‘Why doesn’t it . . . he wake? Is it his metal sickening?’
‘His metal is sickening, Softling, but the Changebringer sleeps because I bit him using a venom that would calm him, so he would not struggle and hurt himself,’ said the Nightbeast. ‘He is not truly sleeping, but lost in memories, y
et he will wake as from a dream.’
Bily reached out with helpless love to stroke the Monster’s paw, wanting to say something about how much it had slept and how ill it had been, but the Nightbeast was moving like a great soft dark shadow to the mouth of the cave. It struck Bily that despite her immense size, the Nightbeast was similar in kind to the Monster, with her pointed ears and long tail.
‘The sleep bestowed by the Great One will not harm your Monster,’ Seshla said. She patted Bily’s head kindly, then ran out of the cave on all fours and leapt without hesitation onto the Nightbeast’s mane. Catching two great handfuls of fur, she climbed up onto her broad back, then she lowered her long tail to Bily. He took hold of it gingerly.
‘Hold tight,’ Seshla said, and lifted him without difficulty to sit behind her. Bily wrapped his arms about her middle and felt the wiry strength of her under her soft pelt, as she leaned forward against the Nightbeast’s neck.
The Nightbeast bent her head to lap at the cold fluffs piled up on the ledge. When she had had her fill, she reached into the cave to take up the Monster in her jaws and set off once more along the narrow ledge.
Bily tried hard not to think about how narrow the ledge was.
‘You need not squash the life out of me to prove how strong you are,’ Seshla protested, smiling over her shoulder at Bily to show she was joking.
Embarrassed, Bily loosened his grip and tried to relax.
It was certainly more comfortable riding on the Nightbeast’s wide warm back than clinging precariously to the Monster’s leg.
The wind gusted icily, but at least it cleared away the clouds, and for the first time Bily could see the stars. He looked down, desperate to see fire or a flash of the red awning that would tell him Zluty was heading North, too, but the thick grey mist made it impossible to see anything.
As the night wore on, the wind pushed the cloud away and thinned the mist, and when day dawned, Bily finally saw the sky. It was the palest blue, and under it the vast white land stretched from the mountains to the Eastern horizon. But there was no sign of the wagon, nor of a fire.