Mark Newton - The Book of Transformations

How can he know such things? she thought, trying to follow his gaze and seeing only the empty landscape.

‘They are from this world.’

That offered some consolation. They wouldn’t, at least, be facing the horrors that they’d just left behind them. Dartun seemed to sniff the air. His mannerisms startled her, but his sudden smile was vicious. ‘They were sent to track us, possibly to even kill us. I would like to see them try.’ Dartun waved them on again, the dogs hauled forward, ropes snapping tight, their paws kicking up puffs of snow as they slowly dragged the sleds on. Verain continued to worry about the changes to Dartun: since returning he had not so much as held a relic in his hand, had not once harnessed the technological wizardry of ancient races.

Come to think of it, where are the relics? When she expressed her concern to Dartun, he barely acknowledged she had spoken. This was a far cry from the man who had plucked her from her life as an orphan, who had chosen her for her skills with relics, who had taken her into his great Order of the Equinox, his inner sanctum, then his heart, and shown her great tenderness. Now, he was as cold to her as the wind that whipped across her face.

The landscape was punctuated only by a cluster of shattered shacks, broken villages and torn-down church spires. The weather was brutal. Bitterly cold, the ice was blinding, and the wind felt raw upon Verain’s skin. Occasionally, when her hood blew back, she had to close her eyes and hunch double to shelter from the pain of the elements.

It wasn’t long before Verain’s legs buckled and she tumbled face-first out of the sled into the snow…

*

The world seemed a blur — a haze of images, nothing more. She came to her senses to find Dartun crouching over her pouring hot fluid into her mouth.

Minutes passed and all she could do was stare up at him. They had paused to make camp near where she had fallen. Canvas wind-blocks provided shelter and a fire was burning.

Dartun regarded her, and she felt like an object of his investigations under his gaze. ‘Your strength should return soon,’ he said — more a statement of fact than words of encouragement. ‘I was foolish to push us so hard. I suspect one thing I have learned is that where I walk, others will suffer.’

‘W-what d-does that mean?’ she replied.

‘Only that when we were there — through the gate — what was done to me has enabled me to survive much, whereas the rest of you… Well, of course, you remain unchanged.’ He seemed almost delighted at that last statement.

‘I wouldn’t say we remain unchanged,’ one of the other cultists muttered — Tuung, a bald man whose attitude was dour even before they went through the gates. ‘I’m now cold, probably suffering from frostbite, and starving. And I’m mightily pissed off. I wasn’t like that before, I can tell you.’

Dartun laughed at them like they were charming, naive children.

‘Still,’ Tuung continued, peering down into the flames. ‘Least we’re alive.’ The look he gave Verain said: Remember how the others died, right? Remember what they suffered, the hideous brutality they faced?

‘Why were we set free, Dartun?’ Verain asked, shivering.

All that could be heard was the wind groaning as it drifted across this landscape.

‘Because’, Dartun said, ‘we have work to do on their behalf. Temporarily, we are working for them.’

And now she remembered. The patches of memory were starting to slot together to form a narrative in her mind.

Like visual echoes:

Images of the genocide across Tineag’l, before the cultists stepped through the Realm Gates the first time. Villages with blood-trails through the snow, the corpse in the bath, dead bodies of the very old and very young left strewn behind buildings like waste outside a tavern. Then she had thought it just brutal warfare — that they had been the innocent victims of an invasion. Now she knew why people had been taken by the creatures made from blackened shell, now she understood why the island had been cleansed. And she wished she didn’t.

Humans were considered to be a finite but necessary resource in the other world. For one of the indigenous cultures there humans were organic, living ore; nothing more, nothing less. They were subjected to death factories, to diabolical bone merchants, a utility to be used and discarded as necessary for furtherance of a war that wasn’t their own.

So it begged the question, if humans were so valuable a resource — why had their small group been set free?

*

The next morning the cultists from the Order of the Equinox continued on their journey south. The horizon was unperceivable. The sun broke through the cloud to tint pink the surrounding. Shadows presented themselves, giving away the location of unknown objects across the snowscape.

And unknown people.

Dartun pulled the reins and the dogs slowly slipped to a halt. In the distance, he pointed out a cluster of figures moving slowly northwards and, as Verain squinted, Dartun stepped off the sled and knelt by one of the dogs.

A cream-coloured beast with a dash of grey across its face, it didn’t yip excitedly like the others, and there was something almost mechanical about its movements. Dartun held his head against the animal’s and whispered something and suddenly the dog became startlingly active. It sprinted towards the figures in the distance, claws turning up little plumes of powder across the ice.

Dartun stood casually, shading his eyes with one hand, watching its progress.

*

This much was obvious:

Papus was going to kill him. And here she was, weeks away from comfort, weeks across the Archipelago, and still no closer to her victim. Papus cursed the weather, cursed the island of Tineag’l, and cursed the Empire. Most of all, she cursed herself. Why had she not ignored her determination to get one over on Dartun? Why had her competitive drive overwhelmed her sensibilities, and landed her all the way out here?

No, I’m doing a good thing, she reminded herself.

Dartun had made corpses walk across the island of Jokull, and his band of cultists had constantly threatened her own group, the Order of the Dawnir, the most ancient and largest sect of cultists, of which she was Gydja, the most senior member. Dartun needed to be stopped, but sometimes she thought maybe… maybe he couldn’t be stopped.

She had brought thirty of her own order across the seas to Tineag’l, and they had come prepared. Longships had been anchored four day’s travel to the west, on loan from the Empire — Imperial authorities wanted him stopped as much as she did. Well, maybe not as much. But there was no doubt: this was a big mission, to bring Dartun Sur to justice, dead or alive. It was her determination and competitiveness that kept her going.

They had passed through decimated villages. Front doors had been kicked in, central monuments had been demolished, windows were smashed in, and taverns wrecked. They were scenes of horrors. Blood still remained from whatever massacre had occurred.

Now, after weeks of following Dartun’s trail, with only relics for warmth, she felt they were getting closer. Cloud broke, leaving sunlight bleeding across the snowy wastes. She peered from beneath her dark furs at the horizon, and pulled out her Finna relic. It was a brass compass to the casual observer, but this was not an instrument to find directions. Once activated, minute lightning bolts flickered across its surface — and the device could locate any relic activity, point in the direction of anyone harnessing the power of the ancients, within vast areas. And the ancient power of the Dawnir left echoes, indicated by the intensity of light on the dial. There had been a moment a week ago which panicked her greatly — when there had been little activity at all, as if Dartun and his cultists had simply… vanished. Then two nights ago, the Alf flared up again, purple webs aggregating with ferocity, and her worries over its effectiveness abated.