Ian Esslemont - Blood and Bone

‘No.’

‘You saved my life.’

‘I did?’

‘You most certainly did.’

Jatal tried to tear some meat from the dry carcass. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘“The stream!” You shouted that right away. I hadn’t thought of it. But running back to the stream saved us.’

‘What stream?’

Scarza bent and dug up a handful of clotted mud and ash. ‘This one.’

‘Ah. I see.’ He felt his tattered robe and shirt. They were damp. He touched the back of his head where only bristles of hair remained. ‘All I remember is that flash. Like the world ending. Golden light.’ He did not mention that when they were running he thought he saw another bright gleam of light. It had come from the western horizon and had flashed a vivid emerald green.

He glanced up to the sky, squinting. The Visitor still glowed there, fat and monstrous, like a gibbous moon behind the thick churning black clouds. He pushed himself to his feet. There was no sense hanging about here. Nothing to eat or drink; they would only weaken — better to do that on the march. He struggled past Scarza who watched him go, his face falling into a deepening frown.

‘You are in such a hurry to die?’

‘Live or die, it matters not.’

Scarza called, ‘There is nothing left of him!’

Jatal halted, peered back. ‘No. He still lives. I am sure.’

The half-Trell rose, rubbing his jowls, and followed. ‘How can you be so sure?’

‘I am.’

They walked a nightmare landscape of blasted jungle and sludge-choked streams. Everywhere lay the flash-seared fallen trunks. Ash smothered everything. It still fell from the roiling clouds in great flurries that cloaked the distances. Jatal tore off a strip of cloth and tied it over his nose and mouth. It was like the sandstorms they sometimes endured in their homeland. Scarza merely tramped on, uncomplaining, brushing the powdery layer from his arms.

The trees, Jatal saw, had all been flattened in one direction — roughly angled from the southeast — the point of impact, he realized. If the demon were to be found anywhere, he imagined, it would be there. He started following the line marked by the fallen trunks.

‘And if we find him?’ Scarza asked much later that day. ‘What then? I wanted to kill him. But now I’m tired of it. I’d rather just have a drink.’

Jatal ached with thirst as well, and he hungered. Such urges, however, were mere demands of the flesh — brute expectations of continued existence. An expectation he did not share. Sometimes he fancied he could see her face in the swirling clouds of ash. She was smiling down upon him.

Soon, my love. Soon. I shall give myself to you .

*

Saeng started awake from a strange dream; a sensation of drowning, oddly enough. Not since she was a child had she dreamed of drowning. Yet it hadn’t been water she’d been slipping into — it had been a strange glowing liquid more like molten gold or some other white-hot metal.

Aside from the nightmare of that struggle, she felt physically rested, renewed even. Better than she had since leaving home. She stirred and opened her eyes: she lay in what she recognized as the temple grounds. Dirt covered everything, and over that lay a pillowy layer of ash. White drifting flakes still fell in a light snow. All was eerily silent. Her ears rang with the quiet after the constant cacophony of the jungle.

She tried to stand and reached out to steady herself. Her hand rested on a hump next to her that felt familiar. She brushed the ash and dirt away to reveal Hanu’s gleaming mosaic of inlaid armour. She rushed to clear his helmed head.

‘Hanu!’

She listened, her breathing heavy, but he did not answer.

‘ Hanu — speak to me! ’ she sent to his thoughts.

Still he was silent. She ran a hand down his chest to find a sticky layer of congealed ash and dirt. Her hand came away smeared.

Oh, Hanu … I’m so sorry …

She gently lowered her head to his side and wept.

After that she slept again for a time. When she awakened once more she kissed his helm on its forehead and pushed herself up. She’d been wrapped in a loose cloak, and this she adjusted as best she could. She remembered, vaguely, that there had been others as well — the Thaumaturg mage, Pon-lor. She looked back to the main temple: it had collapsed into a heap of cut stone blocks. So, he too. I am sorry, Thaumaturg. I misjudged you .

She turned away to trace her route back. Her sandalled feet pushed through the thick blanket of ash. The pale flakes dusted her robes, hair and eyelashes. Soon, she came to a trail through the heaped layers. She followed it to one of the colonnaded walks of the temple complex that led to a hall and an arched opening facing west. The arch was tilted rather alarmingly, and the stone floor was uneven, the stones having been pushed up here and there. Sitting in the threshold of the pointed arch, facing away, was a familiar figure: the Thaumaturg himself.

‘Pon-lor!’ she called.

He did not respond. She came up behind him. Still he did not move. Close now, above and behind him, she believed she saw why. The entire left side of his head was a misshapen mess of weeping fluids caked and crusted in blood and dusted in ash.

Slowly, she came round him to stand before him. His eyes were open but no recognition lit them. Indeed, nothing inhabited them. They stared sightlessly, inanimate, like painted orbs on a statue. Tentatively, she reached out to touch his chest. He breathed still, and his heart beat. But he was no longer present. She had seen such things before in her village. Severe fevers had left their victims like this. Then, the only answer had been the mercy of a swift gentle death.

Something she could not bring herself to do. Yet what could she do? She couldn’t just walk away. She sat down next to him, took his cold unresponsive hand in hers, and thought about it.

She looked to the west as well. What had drawn him here? Some atavistic memory or urge? What had he been searching for, or looking at?

Far off, the dense black clouds had dispersed. Only much higher, thinner clouds remained. The light pale ash was falling from these. It was late afternoon; the sun was now on its way down into the west. Its heat passed through the intervening high cloud cover to press against her face. The Visitor was still present, of course. But diminishing now. On its way back to wherever it had come from. Its baleful glow was nowhere as strong as it had been just days ago. Close by rode the moon as well. A pale smear hardly visible through the thin clouds. Soon, things would return to normal and it would be the brightest object in the night-time sky once again.

And then she knew just what she could do.

She stood in the archway and raised a hand. She formed a circle with her fingers and thumb that she held up to the moon where it hung in the sky. She raised her power and it came smoothly now, naturally, as if somehow melded with her as it had never been before.

And she sent a summons, casting it afar, urging: ‘ Come .’

* * *

A poke to his shoulder awoke Murk. The first thing he noted was the worst headache in recent memory. He squeezed his head in his arms and groaned. Through slit eyes he peered about: he was lying against a tree, a light dusting of ash covering him and everything. Peering down at him was Sweetly. The twig stood straight out from his clamped shut mouth. The scout jerked his head to indicate he was wanted and in what direction.

Some things, it seemed, remained just the same.

Stretching and rubbing his brow, Murk walked across a litter of fallen branches. Aside, a confab of some sort was shaping up. Yusen together with Burastan faced the mercenary leader K’azz and his second, a short wiry woman he knew by reputation as Shimmer.