Кэтрин Фишер - Sapphique

We fear it. We would do anything to avoid it. Before your eyes, you will see the dead live.’

‘No.’ Attia gasped. ‘Keiro …’ Keiro sat still. ‘No chance. He’s got us.’ Rix’s face was flushed in the red light; his eyes bright as if with fever. ‘I will release her! I will bring her back!’ With a whipping slash that made her gasp the sword was raised, and at the same time Keiro’s voice, acid with scorn and deliberately conversational, came from the darkness behind her.

‘So tell me, Rix, since you seem to think you’re Sapphique.

What was the answer to the riddle you asked the dragon?

What is the Key that unlocks the heart?’

Jared was sure he was still delirious. Because he lay in a ruined stable and there was a fire, crackling loudly in the silent night.

The rafters were a mesh of holes above his head, and in one place a barn owl stared down with wide astonished eyes.

From somewhere water dripped. The splashes landed rhythmically just beside his face, as if after some great rainstorm. A small pool had formed, soaking into the straw.

Someone’s hand lay half out of the blankets; he tried absently to make it move, and the long fingers cramped and stretched. It was his, then.

He felt disconnected, only vaguely interested, as if he had been out of his body on some long and tiring journey.

As if he had come home to find the house cold and comfortless.

His throat, when he remembered it, was dry His eyes itched. His body, when he moved it, ached.

And he must be delirious because there were no stars.

Instead, through the broken roof of the building a single red Eye hung huge in the sky, like the moon in some livid eclipse.

Jared studied it. It stared back, but it wasn’t watching him.

It was watching the man.

The man was busy. Over his knees he had some old coat — a Sapient robe, perhaps — and on each side of him rose a great stack of feathers. Some were blue, like the one Jared had sent through the Portal. Others were long and black, like a swan’s, and brown, an eagle’s plumage.

‘The blue ones are very useful: the man said, without turning. ‘Thank you for them.’

‘My pleasure,’ Jared murmured. Each word was a croak.

The stable was hung with small golden lanterns, like the ones used at Court. Or perhaps these were the stars, taken down and propped here and there, hung on wires. The man’s hands moved swiftly. He was sewing the feathers into the bare patches of the coat, fixing them first with dabs of pitchy resin that smelt of pine cones when it dripped on the straw. Blue, black, brown. A coat of feathers, wide as wings.

Jared made an effort to sit up, and managed it, propping himself dizzily against the wall. He felt weak and shaky.

The man put the coat aside and came over. ‘Take your time. There’s water here.’ He brought a jug and cup, and poured. As he held it out Jared saw that the right forefinger of his hand was missing; a smooth scar seamed the knuckle.

‘Only a little, Master. It’s very cold.’ Jared barely felt the shock to his throat. As he drank he watched the dark-haired man and the man stared back, a rueful, sad smile.

‘Thank you.’

‘There’s a well just near here. The best water in the Realm.’

‘How long have I been here?’

‘There’s no time here, remember. Time seems to be forbidden in the Realm.’ He sat back, and there were feathers stuck to him, and his eyes were steady and obsessive as a hawk’s.

‘You are Sapphique,’ Jared said quietly.

‘I took that name in the Prison.’

‘Is that where we are?’ Sapphique pulled plumage from his hair. ‘This is a prison, Master. Whether it’s Inside or Out, I’ve learnt, is not really important. I fear they both may be the same.’ Jared struggled to think. He had been riding in the Forest.

There were many outlaws in the Forest, many woodwoses and madmen. Those who couldn’t bear the stagnation of Era, who wandered as beggars. Was this one of them?

Sapphique sat back, his legs stretched out. In the firelight he was young and pale, his hair lank with the forest—damp.

‘But you Escaped,’ Jared said. ‘Finn has told me some of the tales they tell about you in there, in Incarceron.’ He rubbed at his face and found it rough, faintly stubbled. How long had he been here?

‘There are always stories.’

‘They’re not true?’ Sapphique smiled. ‘You’re a scholar, Jared. You know that the word truth is a crystal, like the Key. It seems transparent, but it has many facets. Different lights, red and gold and blue, flicker in its depths. Yet it unlocks the door.’

‘The door. . . You found a secret door, they say.’ Sapphique poured more water. ‘How I searched for it. I spent whole lifetimes searching. I forgot my family, my home; I gave blood, tears, a finger. I made myself wings and I flew so high the sky struck me down. I fell so far into the dark that there seemed no ending to the -abyss. And yet in the end, there it was, a tiny plain door in the Prison’s heart.

The emergency exit. Right there all the time.’ Jared sipped the cold water. This must be a vision, like Finn had in his seizures. He himself was probably lying delirious now in the dark rainy woodland. And yet could it be so real?

‘Sapphique .. . I must ask you...’

‘Ask, my friend.’

‘The door. Can all the Prisoners leave by it? Is that possible?’ But Sapphique had gathered the feathered coat and was examining its holes. ‘Each man has to find it himself, as I did.’ Jared lay back. He tugged the blanket around him, shivering and tired. In the Sapient tongue he said softly, ‘Tell me, Master, did you know Incarceron was tiny?’

‘Is it?’ Sapphique replied in the same language, his green eyes as he looked up lit by deep points of flame. ‘To you, perhaps. Not to its Prisoners. Every prison is a universe for its inmates. And think, Jared Sapiens. Might not the Realm also be tiny, swinging from the watchchain of some being in a world even vaster? Escape is not enough; it does not answer the questions. It is not Freedom. And so I will repair my wings and fly away to the stars. Do you see them?’ He pointed, and Jared drew in a breath of awe, because there they were, all around him, the galaxies and nebulae, the thousands of constellations he had so often watched through the powerful telescope in his tower, the glittering brilliance of the universe.

‘Do you hear their song?’ Sapphique murmured.

But only the silence of the Forest came to them, and Sapphique sighed. ‘Too far away. But they do sing, and I will hear that music.’ Jared shook his head. Weariness was creeping over him, and the old fear. ‘Perhaps Death is our escape

‘Death is a door, certainly.’ Sapphique stopped threading a blue feather and looked at him. ‘You fear death, Jared?’

‘I fear the way to it.’ The narrow face seemed all angles in the firelight. It said, ‘Don’t let the Prison wear my Glove, use my hands, speak with my face. Whatever you have to do, do not allow that.’ There were so many questions Jared wanted to ask. But they scuttled away from him like rats into holes and he closed his eyes and lay back. Like his own shadow, Sapphique leant beside him.

‘Incarceron never sleeps. It dreams, and its dreams are terrible. But it never sleeps.’ He barely heard. He was falling down the telescope, through its convex lenses, into a universe of galaxies.

Rix blinked.

He paused, barely for a second.