Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

Bull looked at the walls. ‘There’s no way back out to the lake.’

‘Yes there is, we just can’t see it, is all.’

Bull unlocked the craft and tossed out any loose objects that could be dislodged and make a noise falling, prepping for silent running, then emerged to adjust the screws at the back of the craft. ‘We’ll be running light, as gentle as a lady’s fan at a playhouse. Just enough thrust to push us out into the currents of the Shedarkshe.’

‘How capable is a seed ship’s sonar?’

‘Not so good,’ said Bull, ‘from what I’ve seen. Down here, we’ll probably be deep enough to avoid them, but on the river — well, at least we’ll be running with the flow of the Shedarkshe at our back.’

The enormity of the risk they were taking was beginning to sink in. Bull was following the fires of his avarice, but what in the Circle’s name was she following? Was this her dead father’s dream, her dream?

‘The Daggish aren’t so sharp underwater,’ said Bull, thinking the professor was about to change her mind about departing with the crown. ‘They can’t absorb fish or river lizards into the hive, only creatures of the land and the air. That’s why they rely on seed ships on the Shedarkshe’s surface rather than a navy of sliporaptors. Maybe that green muck of theirs don’t work so well down here, or perhaps Tree-head Joe’s commands don’t get passed on as clear in the deeps. We’ve got a chance.’

Amelia bit her lip and ducked under the bathysphere to enter the submersible. The crown of the Camlanteans rested on her lap, so light as not to be noticeable. That was the best she could hope for, then, that the drones of the Daggish Empire hadn’t learnt to swim properly. On such a premise did the fate of their continent rest. Kammerlan had only just begun spinning up the expansion engine when the burning light overtook them, dwindling away to be replaced by the cool, dark waters of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo.

It was unusual for the Stalker Cave to be filled with such a low noise — a keening more appropriate to the funeral feast of one of the lashlite flight escaping the beaks of those who waited motionless. It was even more unusual for one of the great seer’s attendants to slip out of the inner cave without taking time to wash away the sins of the future-revealed in the pool that lay to the side of the holy of holies.

The four seers of the crimson feather looked up as one, uncrossing their legs and standing, the tallest lighting the small brazier of slipsharp oil that lay in the corner. His beak opened to blow out the match, fixing the attendant with his lizard’s eyes. ‘The great seer has seen true?’

‘I fear so.’ The attendant raised his hand to cover the nape of his neck and his true eye. A superstitious gesture, lest his seeing orb pollute the vision of those with greater sight than he himself possessed.

‘And in her seeing, what stands revealed?’

The attendant hesitated, still too dumbstruck by what he had been ordered to do.

Reaching out, the seer of the crimson feather shook the other lashlite. ‘I do not have the luxury of three days to undergo the cleansing rituals and ablutions to pass through to the Stalker Cave. You must tell us what has been said, now .’

‘You are bid to enter the great seer’s chamber,’ said the attendant. ‘Without the cleansing rituals. To enter immediately.’

Their beaks hung open in astonishment. Abandon the rituals they had been raised to honour? Just walk into the great seer’s chamber? Such a thing had never been sung of, not once in the memory of any of the people of the wind’s poems. They would risk polluting her sight forever.

The attendant fell nervously to his knees in supplication and indicated the passage they were to take. The four members of the crimson feather reluctantly did as they were instructed. They were the great seer’s disciples, what other choice did they have? The attendant fell in behind them, taking a torch from the wall to illuminate the darkness. Each time they passed one of the pools of meditation they faltered, resisting the instinct to fulfil their ancient rituals. To wash the dust of the cliffs from their feathers. To still their noisy minds. The air grew warmer the deeper they walked into the mountain, until at last a breeze like a sigh blew over their clawed feet, and the four members of the crimson feather and the attendant found themselves in the blackest of caverns. A darkness that was splintered by the attendant’s torchlight glittering off mineral veins as he strode forward, a thousand quartz stars twinkling in the vast space. The four disciples waited by the entrance, feeling soiled for having forsaken the cleansing pools. Advancing, the attendant dipped his torch into a lake of oil and it erupted into flames, the light running up the cavern wall and, high above, revealing the great seer’s wings stretched out from her perch in the rocks, moaning as the heat banished the rheumatism in her ancient hollow bones.

‘Advance, children of the crimson feather,’ she whistled.

They formed a line in front of the cavern’s lake, their wings furled and wrapped around them to ward off the heat of the fire.

‘Septimoth has fallen!’ said the great seer, her voice reflected by the walls.

The four seers of the crimson feather quivered in shock at her words.

‘Why did it have to be a miserable exile that was chosen?’ moaned one of the seers, recovering his composure enough to speak. ‘Why not a warrior of the flight? Why not a champion?’

‘Septimoth still lives,’ explained the great seer. ‘But he dwells in the shadows of the bright realm, as does his companion from the race of man. Soon there is to be desolation, desolation everywhere — for the waters of the lake of the past have finally been parted. Our future is to be decided in the kingdom beyond the waves.’

Sensing her four disciples’ trepidation, the great seer added, ‘There is still hope. The future is disturbed. There are many paths narrowing to a beggarly pair. One path is the end of our people, the terrible chimneys of the dark wind, the end of everything. The other … the other might yet be bought with our blood and our bravery.’

‘And what else is there, Mother-Future of the Stalker Cave?’

She flexed a weary talon in the direction of the attendant below. Her servant walked to the side of the chamber, across an undecorated rock floor worn smooth by the clawed footsteps of hundreds of his predecessors. He knelt by a wooden chest and undid its latch, laying four long, cloth-wrapped objects onto the floor — rolling out the fabric to reveal spears. Long shafts of golden metal, cast by a smelting process long forgotten, their heads so sharply edged it was said they could be cast at a boulder and pass completely through without a scratch.

Still kneeling, the attendant solemnly passed one across to each of the four seers of the crimson feather as they advanced to receive their gifts. ‘For the mountains of the north and the wind to warm your wings. For the mountains of the east and the wind to speed you across barren ground. For the mountains of the south and the wind to lift you across the dunes. For the mountains of the west and the wind to carry you across the sea.’

They stood there a moment, clutching their spears, overwhelmed by the enormity of what they were expected to do. There were songs of times such as these. When the spears made from the fallen star were distributed to the seers; but they were ancient songs, so old the verses had been made liturgy by their repetition. To be told that they were now living in such times … that they were living in legend …

One of the seers raised his spear and the other three followed suit, joining their tips in the centre of the great seer’s cavern. There was silence, broken only by the sound of the oil burning in the lake.