Bloodmind (19 page)

‘It should be done now,’ Glyn Apt said to the other woman. ‘See to it. I don’t want another failure.’

Goat-girl touched her forehead, presumably in acquiescence. More hints of animal-human crossbreeding: I’d never seen or heard of anything like Goat-girl before. But maybe the eyes were
just implants, some local affectation.

I did not like the sound of what Glyn Apt had said, and what I saw next, I liked even less. Goat-girl touched a strap set into the wall, tugging at it. The wall opened and out of a wide slit, a
thing like a mortuary tray glided forth. A row of scalpels and other instruments stood in a holder along its side. On it, unconscious and stripped of his lynx-fur cloak, though not his slickskin,
was Thorn Eld.

Was he dead? I couldn’t tell. I wondered how soon it would be before the missing bird was discovered – and the missing prisoner. I didn’t know how good a chance Eld and I had
of getting out of here alive, nor just what the Morrighanu were planning to do with captured vitki and Skald. I didn’t feel like waiting to find out, either.

Dropping over the rim of the gallery, I snatched up a scalpel and seized Goat-girl, placing the weapon at her throat. The Morrighanu gave an inhuman squeal of shock and struggled; she was
strong, but I kicked her feet from under her and pricked her skin with the point of the scalpel. A drop of dark blood oozed out, slow as tar, and strong-smelling. Glyn Apt stared at me with pallid
impassivity. I gestured to Eld.

‘Let him go. Or I’ll kill this one.’

Goat-girl opened her mouth and hissed at me, displaying very un-goatlike pointed teeth. ‘Kill me, then,’ she spat. ‘See what that does for you.’ I did not think she was
bluffing. I made a swipe at my captive’s throat, hoping to draw Glyn Apt off guard, but she did not move. The feint, however, bought enough time for the apparently unconscious Eld to surge up
off the couch and clip the Morrighanu commander across the back of the neck. She turned just a little too late and folded like a falling sapling soundless to the floor. I put Goat-girl under as
well and turned to face Eld.

‘Any clearer ideas as to where we are?’

Eld’s pale face was even whiter than usual. ‘I still have no idea. This is one of the Morrighanu strongholds, but I don’t know which one.’

‘Then who are these people?’ I gave Goat-girl a shove with the toe of my boot.

‘Vali, I don’t know. They look like something out of myth. I’ve never seen anything like them before.’

But I thought of the forest outside Hetla, the creature tied to a tree that then blazed up, taking the thing shrieking with it. There seemed to be a lot of odd things living in the forests of
Darkland – including Skinning Knife.

‘Whatever she is, we have to find a way out.’

I pocketed the scalpel. My weapons were gone and we would waste time in finding them. ‘Come on, then,’ I said. We slammed the heavy door of the laboratory behind us. I hoped it would
seal the pair in before they had a chance to wake and sound the alarm, but I did not hold out a great deal of hope. Eld and I ran back up a flight of stairs to the gallery and then along the
corridor, finding the arched doorway and the room where I had awoken. We went out again, and located another door. We went through into a corridor.

‘Glyn Apt seems to be taking quite an interest in you,’ Eld said.

‘Not as much as she was taking in you. After all, you were the one on the slab.’

But Eld did not reply. By now we had reached a higher-ceilinged section of the corridor. A fine mesh was set into the wall and beyond it, a light was visible. A spiral stair led up into a wide
chamber, made of the same black stone containing the ghosts of ferns. To my surprise it was also lined with windows. But they did not show the snowy wastes of Morvern, or the blight of Sull. They
looked out onto stars. I saw Loki hanging close, his craters and meteor scars clearly visible.

‘That’s got to be an illusion,’ Eld said. I agreed.

A console stood in a basalt column at the far end of the room. When we came close, I saw that it contained nothing but a swirl of shadows. There had been no further sign of the white data birds
and this worried me: surely my absence would have been noted by now. A moment later, I discovered I was right.

Goat-eyed Morrighanu troops poured out of the walls, shouldering their way through fronds of ferns that were suddenly real, as if the walls had melted and left us standing in a forest. Their
slitted eyes glittered, their jaws gaped, and their hands were adorned with long, artificial talons. Behind them stalked a tall figure whom we’d last left lying on the floor of an
interrogation chamber. Commander Glyn Apt did not look pleased.

I spent another day or so in the vicinity of Moon Moor, trying to find the underground place. But those mountains – the blue ice that crowned them, the way the light
shadowed the snow, the pattern of high and distant rocks – were still calling to me, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist. Winter was coming. I had to make for the mountains while I
could.

I did not see the four strange people again and I was glad of it. But it did suggest that what I had seen, or thought I’d seen, beneath Moon Moor hadn’t merely been the product of
the dreamcallers’ manipulations – unless those ancient dreams had somehow become preserved here, trapped by the lines of the land and held in the fabric of the moor; unless I was
already mad.

I followed a snaking track up the mountain, made by wild mur. There was no sign of the animals, either, and I kept a sharp look-out. Whatever the way of things, I did not fancy meeting my death
by being torn to pieces by a herd. But only the ravaged turf, a remnant of the passage of their clawed feet, remained. Soon, I had reached the first of the foothills, and kept going. The air bit
into my lungs, wonderfully fresh and scented with the fragrance of the scrub, rising up from the Moor. At the top of the highest ridge before the mountain slopes, I stopped and looked back across
the expanse of the Moor. There was the place where I had found the cave, clearly visible. I thought I saw something moving around it, a pale shape, but my eyesight wasn’t what it used to be
and though I squinted, I couldn’t make out the shape. An animal, perhaps – but it looked too tall and that suggested one of the half-humans. I waited, but it had gone behind the ridge
and did not emerge, and so I turned and went on.

But if I thought I had left the half-humans behind by going up into the mountains, I was mistaken.

It probably was a foolish thing to do. But then again, I had come out here to die, and let the world choose the manner of it. I had neither reason to
complain, nor any reason to expect that I’d live through it.

I first knew something was wrong on the morning of the third day up in the mountains. After sleeping amongst the rocks and cairns as usual, I walked through most of the day for as far as I could
before I grew too tired. On the evening of the second day, however, the weather turned warmer – an unseasonal day of sunlight, summer’s borrow, as we say – and after a few hours of the
sun on my face, the clouds drifted down and brought rain, not snow, in their wake. By that time, I was already camped for the night, secure, or so I thought, in the greatcoat, wrapped against the
chill. I got only a little damp, and for someone raised on the coast and accustomed to storms, I didn’t think anything of it.

In the morning, however, I woke to a thick mist. I decided not to push on, but I needed to light a fire. When I stood up to go in search of sticks or moss, assuming any had survived dry through
the night, my head felt light and there was a faint singing in my ears, as though the wind was whistling through me. I sat down again, abruptly, with my back against a rock, and my sight dwindled
to a small dark point. That was that for the next few hours. When I came round, the mist had rolled away, leaving a perfect, cloudless sky and a bitter chill. By this time, I was shaking and cold
to the bone. I tried to stand, and couldn’t get up. Some kind of bone fever, brought by the wet cold. My chest hurt with every breath. I huddled in the coat, staring at the mountains and
thinking:
so, this is it.
I was not too sad at the way of it. Bone fevers are nasty but quick, and it would soon be over.

I don’t know how long I lay there. I remember growing colder and colder, and then I was warm again – feverish by hot – and I knew this meant I was close to the end. I heard
voices and I thought that they were the spirits of Eresthahan, who had come to bear me to the land of the dead. I hoped the pregnant warrior of Moon Moor was among them, and maybe my sister
also.

But the voices faded in and out, and the darkness above me changed to a dull blue glow. I felt something cold and sharp touch my arm; there was a moment of intense clarity, and then blackness
again.

And after that, I was awake. I was in a forest, but it wasn’t like any forest I’d ever seen in the north. Instead of the crimson trunks and black leaves of satinspine, these trees
were cloudy and grey, like smoke. There was the pungent smell of burning in my nose, but the air around me was cold, almost as chilly as the mountains in which I had lain down to die. I looked down
at myself. I still wore the greatcoat, but my clothes were a lot cleaner than they had been over the last few days. My hands were still wrinkled, the veins roped across the thin skin of my
knuckles, but there was no pain, no difficulty, in moving and I knew that this meant I was dreaming. Maybe this was hell, after all. But there was no one there to greet me. I stood still like a
fool for a time, and then I thought that I might as well explore the place a little, see whether there was anyone else there. I started walking, forcing my way through undergrowth that was as thick
and thorny as that of Moon Moor, but which shortly turned to powder as I made my way through it. I walked on ash, seeing bushes and trees that seemed intact until I touched them, whereupon they
crumbled. The ash rose up in clouds, releasing heat, and coating my skin with its dust. I started to cough.

A clearing. In it stood a house – an odd-looking thing, with a low gabled roof, made out of logs. The door was open, and warily I went up to it. I couldn’t feel any house defences
sizzling under the earth, nor anything else, for that matter – no metal, or water, only endless stone under the coating of ash. This was a place without landlines, a land that had died. I
stepped inside the house.

Now I knew that this probably was Eresthahan after all.

The blue glow, the voices – those had been my death, and now my spirit was walking in the land of the dead. Soon, no doubt, I would begin to grow younger, here in this hunting lodge.

I knew it to be a lodge because of the bones. They rattled along the ceiling, twisting in the breeze from the thin chains that held them. Some looked animal, though I couldn’t have said
what kind they were. But some were human – there was a pelvis, and over here, sitting on the desk, a skull. Not large, either – whoever used this place had been hunting children. That
wasn’t acceptable, but it happened – and maybe here in the land of the dead, it didn’t matter anyway.

All the bones had been polished in the traditional manner, and some of them were tipped with metal to give an ornamental effect. It reminded me very much of a lodge I had seen in the satinspine
forests north of Essedura, high along the coast. I’d spent a pleasant few days there years ago, in the company of two other huntresses from other settlements. So the place had a comforting
air of familiarity, for all that it was filled with death.

It was well governed, too. There was a spit on the fire, and the ashes had been cleaned from the grate. Two cooking pots were placed by the side of the hearth. A table bore traces of herbs
– again, ones that I did not know – and there was a low bed covered with animal pelts along one wall. Someone lived here, or at least had been staying for some time, and was clearly
making a good job of it.

I’d have been quite happy to stay. If this was the land of the dead, I’d seen a lot worse. The lodge was clean, functional, and cared for. I found a chair, started to pull it up by
the grate, with thoughts of heading back out to locate the wood store.

But something was tugging at me. Something insistent, buzzing, like an insect that had lodged inside my skull and was trying to battle its way out again.

‘Leave me alone!’ I said.

A voice replied, ‘I think she’s coming round.’

‘Make sure her hands are secured. Are the bonds still holding?’

I didn’t like the sound of that.

‘It’s all tight. It’s old, but it still works. You saw that last year.’ That voice sounded odd: furred and lisping, like the voices of the half-humans I’d seen on
the Moor. But I could understand what this one was saying, though I couldn’t see anything apart from a thick blackness. It felt as though they’d blindfolded me. I struggled a little,
hearing an exclamation of alarm from my captors, but the bonds were indeed holding. Pity. All I could do then was to wait.

They’d already interrogated me once, so they didn’t bother to do so again, except to check how I’d managed to break out of their cell. Glyn Apt tried to
wring it from me, but this time fatigue and stress turned out to be my friends and I simply fainted during the mind ’ride. I remember feeling smug as I passed out.

Then, I didn’t know how much later:
‘Vali.’
Someone was whispering my name.

‘Who’s there?’

My voice caught in my throat, as though snagged on thorns.

‘Vali, this is Eld.’

‘Thorn,’ I said, and it made me laugh.

‘Vali, remember the Skald? Tell me about the Rock. Tell me what they make you do, in the early morning meditation sessions.’

‘I don’t go to those,’ I said. I stared up at a black glass ceiling. We were in the same cell. ‘It’s for the acolytes.’