Dust of Dreams

  Words held the magic of the breathless. But adults turn away.

  They have no room in their heads for a suffering column of dying children, nor the heroes among them.

  ‘So many fallen,’ she said to Saddic who remembered everything. ‘I could list them. I could make them into a book ten thousand pages long. And people will read it, but only so far as their own private borders, and that’s not far. Only a few steps. Only a few steps.’

  Saddic, who remembered everything, he nodded and he said, ‘One long scream of horror, Badalle. Ten thousand pages long. No one will hear it.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘No one will hear it.’

  ‘But you will write it anyway, won’t you?’

  ‘I am Badalle, and all I have is words.’

  ‘May the world choke on them,’ said Saddic, who remembered everything.

  Her mind was free. Free to invent conversations. Free to assemble sharp knuckles of quartz into small boys walking beside her endless selves. Free to trap light and fold it in and in and in, until all the colours became one, and that one was so bright it blinded everyone and everything.

  The last colour is the word. See it burn bright: that is what there is to see in a dying child’s eyes.

  ‘Badalle, your indulgence was too extravagant. They won’t listen, they won’t want to know.’

  ‘Well, now, isn’t that convenient?’

  ‘Badalle, do you still feel free?’

  ‘Saddic, I still feel free. Freer than ever before.’

  ‘Rutt holds Held and he will deliver Held.’

  ‘Yes, Saddic.’

  ‘He will deliver Held into an adult’s arms.’

  ‘Yes, Saddic.’

  The last colour is the word. See it burn bright in a dying child’s eyes. See it, just this once, before you turn away.

  ‘I will, Badalle, when I am grown up. But not until then.’

  ‘No, Saddic, not until then.’

  ‘When I’ve done away with these things.’

  ‘When you’ve done away with these things.’

  ‘And freedom ends, Badalle.’

  ‘Yes, Saddic, when freedom ends.’

  Kalyth dreamed she was in a place she had not yet reached. Overhead was a low ceiling of grey, turgid clouds, the kind that she had seen above the plains of the Elan, when the first snows came down from the north. The wind howled, cold as ice, but it was dry as a frozen tomb. Across the taiga, stunted trees rose from the permafrost like skeletal hands, and she could see sinkholes, here and there, in which dozens of some kind of four-legged beast had become mired, dying and freezing solid, and the wind tugged and tore at their matted hides, and frost painted white their curved horns and ringed the hollow pits of their eyes.

  In the myths of the Elan, this vista belonged to the underworld of death; it was also the distant past, the very beginning place, where the heat of life first pushed back the bitter cold. The world began in darkness, devoid of warmth. It awakened, in time, to an ember that flared, ever so brief, before one day returning to where it had begun. And so, what she was seeing here before her could also belong to the future. Past or in the age to come, it was where life ceased.

  But she was not alone.

  A score of figures sat on gaunt horses along a ridge a hundred paces distant. Wrapped in black rain-capes, armoured and helmed, they seemed to be watching her, waiting for her. But terror held Kalyth rooted, as if knee-deep in frozen mud.

  She wore a thin tunic, torn and half-rotted, and the cold was like the Reaper’s own hand, closing about her from all sides. She could not move within its intransigent grip, even had she wanted to. She would will the strangers away; she would scream at them, unleash sorcery to send them scattering. She would banish them utterly. But no such powers belonged to her. Kalyth felt as useless here as she felt in her own world. A vessel empty, longing to be filled by a hero’s bold fortitude.

  The wind ripped at the grim figures, and now at last the snow came, cutting like shards of ice from the heavy clouds.

  The riders stirred. The horses lifted their heads, and all at once they were descending the slope, hoofs cracking hard the frozen ground.

  Kalyth huddled, arms tight about herself. The frost-rimed riders drew closer, and she could just make out that array of faces behind the serpentine nose-guards of their helms—deathly pale, bearing slashes gaping deep crimson but bloodless. They wore surcoats over chain, uniforms, she realized, to mark allegiance to some foreign army, grey and magenta beneath frozen bloodstains and crusted gore. One, she saw, was tattooed, bedecked with fetishes of claws, feathers and beads—huge, barbaric, perhaps not even human. But the others, they were of her own kind—she was certain of that.

  They reined in before her and something drew Kalyth’s wide stare to one rider in particular, grey-bearded beneath the dangling crystals of ice, his grey eyes, set deep in shadowed sockets, reminding her of a bird’s fixed regard—cold and raptorial, bereft of all compassion.

  When he spoke, in the language of the Elan, no breath plumed from his mouth. ‘Your Reaper’s time is coming to an end. Death shall surrender his face—’

  ‘Never was a welcoming one,’ cut in the heavy, round-faced soldier on the man’s right.

  ‘Enough of that, Mallet,’ snapped another horseman, one-armed, hunched with age. ‘You don’t even belong here yet. We’re waiting for the world to catch up—such are dreams and visions—they are indifferent to the ten thousand unerring steps in any given mortal’s life, much less the millions of useless ones. Learn patience, healer.’

  ‘Where one yields,’ continued the bearded soldier, ‘we shall stand in his stead.’

  ‘In times of war,’ growled the barbaric warrior—who seemed preoccupied with braiding the ratty tatters of his dead horse’s mane.

  ‘Life itself is a war, one it is doomed to lose,’ retorted the bearded man. ‘Do not think, Trotts, that our rest will come soon.’

  ‘He was a god!’ barked another soldier, baring teeth above a jet-black forked beard. ‘We’re just a company of chewed-up marines!’

  Trotts laughed. ‘See how high you’ve climbed, Cage? At least you got your head back—I remember burying you in Black Dog—we looked for half the night and never found it.’

  ‘Got ett by a frog,’ another suggested.

  The dead soldiers laughed, even Cage.

  Kalyth saw the grey-bearded soldier’s faint smile and it transformed his falcon’s eyes into something that seemed capable of holding, without flinching, the compassion of an entire world. He leaned forward on his saddle, the horn creaking as it bent on its hinge. ‘Aye, we’re no gods, and we’re not going to attempt to replace him beneath that rotted cowl. We’re Bridgeburners, and we’ve been posted to Hood’s Gate—one last posting—’

  ‘When did we agree to that?’ Mallet demanded, eyes wide.

  ‘It’s coming. In any case, I was saying—and gods below you’re all getting damned insubordinate in your hoary deadness—we’re Bridgeburners. Why are any of you surprised to find that you’re still saluting? Still taking orders? Still marching out in every miserable kind of weather you can imagine?’ He glared left and right, but it was softened by the wry twist of his lips. ‘Hood knows, it’s what we do.’

  Kalyth could hold back no longer. ‘What do you want with me?’

  The grey eyes settled on her once more. ‘Destriant, by that title alone you must now consort with the likes of us—in Hood’s—your Reaper’s—stead. You see us as Guardians of the Gate, but we are more than that. We are—or will become—the new arbiters, for as long as is necessary. Among us there are fists, mailed gauntlets of hard violence. And healers, and mages. Assassins and skulkers, sappers and horse-archers, lancers and trackers. Cowards and brave, stolid warriors.’ He hitched a half-smile. ‘And we’ve found all manner of unexpected . . . allies. In all our guises, Destriant, we shall be more than the Reaper ever was. We are not distant. Not indifferent. You see, unlike Hood, we remember what it was to be alive.
We remember each and every moment of yearning, of desperate need, the anguish that comes when no amount of beseeching earns a single instant’s reprieve, no pleading yields a moment’s mercy. We are here, Destriant. When no other choice remains, call upon us.’

  The ice of this realm seemed to shatter all around Kalyth and she staggered as warmth flooded through her. Blessed—no, the blessing of warmth. Gasping, she stared up at the unnamed soldier as tears filled her eyes. ‘This . . . this is not the death I imagined.’

  ‘No, and I give you this. We are the Bridgeburners. We shall sustain. But not because we were greater in life than anyone else. Because, Destriant, we were no different. Now, answer me as a Destriant, Kalyth of Ampelas Rooted, do we suffice?’

  Does anything suffice? No, that is too easy. Think on your answer, woman. He deserves that much at least. ‘It is a natural thing to fear death,’ she said.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And so it should be,’ grunted the one named Cage. ‘It’s miserable—look at my company—I can’t get rid of these ugly dogs. The ones you leave behind, woman, they’re waiting for you.’

  ‘But without judgement,’ said the grey-eyed soldier.

  The one-armed one was nodding, and he added, ‘Just don’t expect any of ’em to have lost their bad habits—like Cage and his eternally sour bile. It’s all what you knew—who you knew, I mean. It’s all that and nothing more.’

  Kalyth did not know these people, yet already they felt closer to her than anyone she had ever known. ‘I am becoming a Destriant in truth,’ she said in wonder. And I no longer feel so . . . alone. ‘I fear death still, I think, but not as much as I once did.’ And I once flirted with suicide, but I have left that behind, for ever. I am not ready to embrace an end to things. I am the last Elan. And my people are waiting for me, not caring if I come now or a hundred years from now—it is no different to them.

  The dead—my dead—will indulge me.

  For as long as I need. For as long as I have.

  The soldier gathered his reins. ‘You shall find your Mortal Sword and your Shield Anvil, Kalyth. Against the cold that slays, you must answer with fire. There will come to you a moment when you must cease following the K’Chain Che’Malle; when you must lead them. In you lies their last hope for survival.’

  But are they worth preserving?

  ‘That judgement does not belong to you.’

  ‘No—no, I’m sorry. They are so . . . alien—’

  ‘As you are to them.’

  ‘Of course. I am sorry.’

  The warmth was fading, the snow closing in.

  The riders wheeled their lifeless mounts.

  She watched them ride off, watched them vanish in the swirling white.

  The white, how it burns the eyes, how it insists—

  Kalyth opened her eyes to bright, blinding sunlight. I am having such strange dreams. But I still see their faces, each one. I see the barbarian with his filed teeth. I see scowling Cage, whom I adore because he could laugh at himself. And the one named Mallet, a healer, yes—it is easy to see the truth of that. The one-armed one, too.

  And the one with the falcon’s eyes, my iron prophet, yes. I did not even learn his name. A Bridgeburner—such a strange name for soldiers, and yet . . . so perfect there in the chasm between the living and the dead.

  Death’s guardians. Human faces in place of the Reaper’s shadowed skull. Oh, what a thought! What a relief!

  She wiped her eyes and sat up. And a flood of memories returned. Her breath caught and she twisted about, finding the K’Chain Che’Malle. Sag’Churok, Rythok, Gunth Mach . . . ‘O spirits bless us.’

  Yes, she would not find Kor Thuran, the K’ell Hunter’s stolid, impervious presence. The space beside Rythok howled its emptiness, shrieked his absence. The K’Chain Che’Malle was dead.

  Scouting far to the west, out of sight—but they all felt the sudden explosive clash. Kor Thuran’s snarls filled their skulls, his rage and baffled defiance—his pain. She found she was shivering, as bitter recollections assailed her. He died. We could not see who killed him.

  Our winged Assassin has vanished. Was it Gu’Rull? Had Kor Thuran committed a transgression? Was the Hunter fleeing us all and did the Assassin punish him? No, Kor Thuran did not flee. He fought and he died guarding our flank.

  Enemies now hunt us. They know we are close. They mean to find us.

  She rubbed at her face, forced out a broken sigh, the echoes of the K’ell Hunter’s terrible death still crowding her mind, leaving her feeling exhausted. And this day has only begun.

  The K’Chain Che’Malle faced her, motionless, waiting. There would be no cookfire this morning. They had carried her through most of the night, and in her exhaustion she had slept like a fevered child in Gunth Mach’s arms. She wondered why they had set her down, why they had not kept going. She could feel their nervous impatience to be off—away—the disaster of failure stalked this quest now, closer than ever before. As huge and imposing as they were, she now saw them as vulnerable, insufficient to this task.

  There are deadlier things out there. They brought down a K’ell Hunter in a score of heartbeats.

  Yet, as she rose to her feet, a new assurance filled her—gift of her dreams, and though they might be nothing more than fanciful conjurations, false benedictions, they seemed to give her something solid, and she could feel her frailty falling away from her soul like a cracked seed husk. Her eyes hardened as she regarded the three K’Chain Che’Malle.

  ‘If they find us, they find us. We cannot run from . . . from ghosts. Nor can we trust in the protection of Gu’Rull. So, we drive south—straight as a lance. Gunth Mach, give me your back to ride. This will be a long day—there is so much, so much we must now leave behind us.’ She looked to Rythok. ‘Brother, I mean to honour Kor Thuran—we all must—by succeeding in our quest.’

  The K’ell Hunter’s reptilian eyes remained fixed on her, cold, unyielding.

  Sag’Churok and Gunth Mach rarely spoke to her these days, and when they did it seemed their voices were more distant, harder to make out. She did not think the fault was theirs. I am dwindling within myself. The world narrows—but how is it I even know this? What part within me is aware of its own measure?

  No matter. We must do this.

  ‘It is time.’

  Sag’Churok watched Gunth Mach force her own body into the configuration necessary to accommodate the Destriant. The heady, spice-drenched scents roiled from her in tendrils that spread like branches on the currents of air, and they carried to the K’ell Hunter echoes of Kor Thuran’s last moments of agony.

  When the hunter became the hunted, every retort was reduced to a defiant snarl, a few primitive threat postures, and the body existed to absorb damage—to weather and withstand all it could as the soul that dwelt within it sought, if not escape, then a kind of comprehension. A recognition. That even the hunter must know fear. No matter how powerful, no matter how superior, how supreme, sooner or later forces it could not defeat or flee from would find it.

  Domination was an illusion. Its coherence could only hold for so long.

  This lesson was a seared brand upon the memories of the K’Chain Che’Malle. Its bitter taste soured the dust of the Wastelands, and eastward, on the vast plain that had once known great cities and the whisper of hundreds of thousands of K’Chain Che’Malle, now there was nothing but melted and crushed fragments, and what the winds sought they could not find, and so wandered for ever lost.

  Kor Thuran had been young. No other crime belonged to the K’ell Hunter. He had made no foolish decisions. Had not fallen victim to his own arrogance or sense of invulnerability. He had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And now so much was lost. And for all the Destriant’s noble words—her sudden, unwarranted confidence and determination—Sag’Churok, along with Rythok and Gunth Mach, knew that the quest had failed. Indeed, it was not likely that they would survive the day.

  Sag’Churok shifted his gaze from Gunth M
ach as she suffered her transformation in runnels of oil that dripped like blood.

  Gu’Rull was gone, probably dead. Every effort to brush his thoughts had failed. Of course, the Shi’gal Assassin could shield his mind, but he had no reason to do so. No, two of the five protectors were gone. And still this puny human stood, her soft face set in an expression Sag’Churok had come to know as defiant, weak eyes fixed on the undulating horizon to the south as if her will alone could conjure into being her precious Shield Anvil and Mortal Sword. It was brave. It was . . . unexpected. For all that the Matron’s gifts were fading from the woman, she had indeed found some kind of inner strength.

  All for naught. They would die, and soon. Their torn and broken bodies would lie scattered, lost, their great ambitions unheralded.

  Sag’Churok lifted his head, drank in the air, and caught the taint of the enemy. Close. Drawing closer. Threat oils rising between his scales, he scanned the horizon, and finally settled on the west—where Kor Thuran had fallen.

  Rythok had done the same, and even Gunth Mach’s head had swivelled round.

  The Destriant was not blind to their sudden fixation. She bared her teeth. ‘Guardians,’ she said. ‘It seems we need your help—not some time in the future, but now. What can you send to us? Who among you can stand against that which my companions will not let me even see?’

  Sag’Churok did not understand her meaning. He did not know whom she was addressing. Was this the Matron’s madness, or Kalyth’s very own?

  The Destriant’s gait was stiff with fear as she walked up to Gunth Mach, who helped the woman on to the gnarled saddle of scales behind her shoulders.

  Sag’Churok faced Rythok. Hunter. Slow them down.

  Rythok stretched his jaws until they creaked, and then drew the edges of his blades against each other in a singing rasp. Tail lashing—spraying thick droplets of oil that pattered the ground—the K’ell Hunter set off at a run, head dipping in the attack posture. Westward.

  ‘Where is he going?’ Kalyth shouted. ‘Call him back! Sag’Churok—’

  But he and Gunth Mach sprang into motion, side by side, legs scything the air, taloned feet snapping as they kicked them forward, ever swifter, the pace building until the broken ground blurred beneath them. South.