Daywards (21 page)

‘What do you reckon that might be, eh?'

The object was a large rectangular box. The small amount of light that came in through the cavemouth gleamed against the smooth metal sides. Slowly, they walked around it, carefully feeling their way in the dark. As far as Dara could tell, the black metal was unmarked and unadorned. The only feature on those surfaces was a tiny green light, no bigger than her smallest fingernail, which glowed in the middle of the face that looked away from the cavemouth. The light was so dull as not to cast even the slightest corona.

Eyna made as if she was about to reach out and touch it, but Ma Saria's hand floated out of the dark, gently restraining her.

‘Careful, girl. If you can't reach it you shouldn't touch it. Can't you feel that thing?'

‘That's what I was about to do,' Eyna replied, confused.

‘Not with your hands.'

‘But you told us not to reach,' Dara interrupted.

‘You don't need to reach to feel the skyfire in this thing.'

Dara stepped a little closer to the black cabinet, and the strange buzzing in the back of her head increased sharply, setting her teeth on edge.

‘What's it for?' she asked.

‘No idea,' Ma Saria replied. ‘Nightpeople tech's a mystery to me, for the most part. That thing could be sending them everythin' we say right now, or it could be just measuring the temperature in here. Could even be somethin' to knock us out so they can come an' collect the three of us. Whatever it does, I don't much want to find out.'

Both girls were in full agreement, and so the three of them backed away to the cave entrance. Outside, the fresh air washed over them. Now that she was aware of it, the skyfire buzzing of the box still nagged at the edge of Dara's mind, diminished a little by distance but not entirely gone.

‘Where next?' Dara knew the answer before she'd even finished asking, and, sure enough, Ma nodded towards the uphill trail.

The situation was exactly the same in the sleeping caves – nobody and nothing left there, apart from another black cabinet that emanated the same menacing buzz as the first. They continued on up the trail until the bulk of the sentinel stones emerged from the cloud ahead. Stepping between them, they stopped for a few moments to catch their breath. Below, the saltwater forest was hidden, and a few steps away the plateau forest began. Only the nearest trees were visible, and even these were wreathed in fog.

‘We going to the Eye?' Eyna asked, and Ma nodded.

‘We gotta be certain.'

‘Then what?'

‘Then we head daywards.'

With Dara in the lead, they stepped into the shadowy forest and onto the path to the Eye, which was now significantly wider and more travelled than it had been during Dara's original visit here. All the low-hanging foliage had been cut right back, the ground was scored with deep track marks that had widened the trail considerably, and there were even dull-glowing solar lights mounted on small poles every hundred metres or so. None were bright enough to cast any real illumination, but they at least showed the way, a thread of pinpricks winding through the forest. When she saw them, Ma Saria shook her head and made an odd ‘tch!' sound with her tongue.

‘Bloody Nightpeople. Gotta tech up everything they touch. Even a forest.'

They hiked up the trail with relative ease, slowing only when the familiar orange glow of the Eye appeared ahead.

‘Looks like they've taken their big lights down, at least,' Dara remarked, absurdly grateful. She hadn't been looking forward to the prospect of having to step out into that unforgiving whiteness again.

At the edge of the clearing they stopped, hidden in the shadow of the trees, and Dara stared in disbelief.

The Eye still crouched there, the blockhouse squat and square in the middle of the clearing, its single antenna stretching up into the night. Otherwise, everything was gone.

The glowing domes, the large solid buildings, the silvered walkways, the forest of towers atop the blockhouse – all vanished, as though they'd never been there. She almost doubted her own memory, so absolute was the change.

But then she noticed the small differences. The patches of dead grass which mapped precisely the location of the various buildings and their interlinking walkways. The indentations in the earth where hummers had settled into the soft topsoil. The small pile of discarded metal and other waste, flung into the scrub at the edge of the clearing near the base of one of the solar lamps. The absence of the Nightpeople and their tech made the clearing feel almost as strange as their presence.

‘They've shot through, all right,' Ma Saria observed.

‘And taken everyone else with them.'

The old woman nodded sadly.

Eyna walked out into the orange glare before stopping and looking around, her skin sallow in the dirty light.

‘It's quiet,' she said.

Dara had become accustomed to the total absence of life around the Nightpeople, so she hadn't noticed it, but, when Eyna pointed it out, she realised that the forest around them was just as still and silent as it had been when the Nightpeople were still camped there. The ‘dead zone' was still in place, even after those who'd created it had vanished.

‘Don't worry about that. Life'll come back,' Ma Saria told them, her voice unusually quiet. ‘Might take a while, but life likes to live, eh?'

Slowly they made their way towards the Eye. Outwardly, nothing about the building seemed to have been altered, but as they drew closer Dara stiffened as the hard buzz of skyfire intruded once more into her awareness.

‘You think they left another one of those boxes in there, Ma?' she asked.

‘More'n likely, I'd say. Sounds like the sort of thing they'd do.'

The ground underfoot, which had been disturbed by various bits of equipment and by the buildings themselves, was mushy and soft and on several occasions Dara's feet sank ankle-deep into the heavy clay, which had been churned into thick, glutenous mud. The first time it happened she shuddered, revolted by the alien absence of earthwarmth in the dead earth. It felt like sinking into plascrete.

Halfway across the clearing, they stopped.

‘You think we can get inside?' Dara asked.

‘I'm not sure there's any point,' Ma replied. ‘We'd just find a whole lot of tech we can't use.'

‘There might be things we could take for the walk, though. Food or firekits or stuff.'

To her surprise, Ma Saria laughed softly.

‘You don't know how to start a fire without a firekit?' she asked.

‘Yeah, of course I do, but …'

‘And you like the taste of prosup, eh?'

‘No.'

‘Then why worry about it? The Nightpeople've got nothing we need. They never did have.'

Dara understood. In the drizzling night they stared at the angular, unnatural shape of the Eye, until finally Ma Saria turned back to the forest.

‘Come on, girls,' she said, ‘I reckon it's time for us to head daywards.'

She set off without a backward glance and Eyna followed. Dara, however, lingered, reluctant to leave the place where her world had fallen apart without some sort of gesture. Nothing came to her, though, and with a sigh she started towards the others, who were waiting beside the treeline.

She'd only just begun to move when the door of the Eye slid slowly open and a lone figure stepped out into the night.

‘Jaran!'

Her brother retreated backwards into the brightly lit Eye.

‘Dara?' Jaran's voice, usually so confident, was so tentative that she could barely hear him over the rustle of the forest canopy around them. She took a few steps towards him before she was stopped by an increase in the buzzing intensity of the skyfire.

‘Hey, brother! Yeah, it's me.'

A wave of relief swept over her. She'd assumed he'd been found and taken with the rest, that the drones had picked him up the moment he came near to the Eye. So when his familiar silhouette appeared in the doorway, and despite everything that had happened between them, it was like having some tiny fragment of her life returned to her.

‘Where …' Jaran turned his head left and right, clearly still night-blind.

‘Over here.' She took another half-step towards him, but again the grinding hum of the power emanating from the building stopped her.

‘Can't see you. Can't … what?'

‘Jaran? Are you all right?' She was aware that Ma Saria and Eyna had left the shelter of the forest and were now standing behind her. ‘I can't come any further. There's some sort of energy field which hurts.'

‘Shi.' He took another step backwards into the bright light. There was something unsteady about his movements. ‘No field. Nothing here. Can't. Nothing.'

‘Jaran, listen to me, you gotta come with us. Me and Ma Saria and Eyna. We're all here, but we're not staying.'

‘No.' He shook his head and almost fell over. ‘Trick. They took … everyone. Saw them. Saw them take you, too.'

‘I got away. And they never got Ma, or Eyna. They're right here.'

‘Come on out, Jaran,' Eyna coaxed. Her voice caused Jaran to stumble even further into the light.

‘Uncle Xani said … wait. Said to wait every night.'

Dara shot a worried look at Ma. The old woman's face gave nothing away, and when she spoke her voice was whip-sharp: ‘Come out here, boy.

Jaran flinched slightly, as if the words had hit him physically, like a slap. But to Dara's amazement he stepped forward and tottered unsteadily down the steps. On his arm, a wristband, just like Da Janil's, gleamed briefly in the light.

At the base of the stairs, he stopped until he could make out the three figures standing in the drifting fog.

‘Over here,' Ma ordered, her voice still sharp and, as if he was being pulled in on a string, Jaran walked towards them in a daze, stopping only when he was a metre or so from Dara.

‘It's … you!' he exclaimed, sounding genuinely surprised.

‘Of course it is, you stupid shi. Who'd you expect?'

Jaran simply shook his head, as though unable to believe either his eyes or his ears. He looked terrible. Heavy bags hung below his eyes and his skin was sallow. The moisture in the air was already clinging to him, lending him a wretched appearance. Even after their father had gotten exposed, Jaran hadn't allowed himself to fall into such a state. Then he'd been all strength and determination.

Now he looked as though someone, or something, had simply deflated him, sucked all the pride out and left behind a sort of Jaran-shell. A hollow echo of her brother.

Dara glanced at Ma Saria. The old woman's back was ramrod-straight and her eyes glittered like those of a snake as she appraised the bedraggled boy.

‘Where'd you come from, then?' she asked, and silently Jaran gestured back towards the Eye.

‘Before that.'

‘I …' Jaran started to speak but his legs buckled under him and he folded to the ground in a limp heap. A faint sigh escaped his lips as his eyes rolled back in his head. Then he lay in the mud with the light rain forming rivulets on his cheeks and forehead.

Dara moved to help him, but Ma's restraining hand clamped around her upper arm. The old woman's hands felt like pincers, digging into her flesh.

‘Don't,' she commanded, and despite herself Dara stopped.

‘He needs help,' she argued.

‘So did you, when he locked you up in that old city.'

‘Ma …' Dara began, but the old woman wouldn't be moved.

‘Just wait. I can't feel that boy, even though he's half buried in the mud. The Earthmother's got no sense of him, and until I know why that is we don't touch him.'

Despite Ma Saria's earlier warning, Dara looked down at her brother and tried reaching. The earth around the Eye was so dead, though, and the skyfire so strong that she wasn't able to reach more than a tiny way into the Earthmother. Even so, she expected that Jaran, whose spark she knew as intimately as anybody's, wouldn't be difficult to locate, not with him right there in front of her.

But there was nothing. Only cold, dead ground.

‘Jaran …' The words escaped her in a whisper. ‘What have you done?'

On the wet earth her brother groaned softly and returned to consciousness. He attempted to rise, but only half succeeded before collapsing again with a splatter of mud.

‘Dara.' He looked up at her and his eyes, so familiar, were now different – vacant.

Shaking off Ma's restraining hand, Dara crouched beside her brother and reached out to touch him, resting her fingertips lightly on the skin of his forearm.

He was cold. Not just the cold of someone lying in the rain, but a deeper, more internal cold – the same sort of lifelessness she'd felt when Raj had touched her, Dara realised.

With sudden understanding, Dara knew what had happened to her brother.

‘They did it to you, didn't they? That probe thing? They …' She choked back the words and struggled as a mixture of hot anger and cold dread caused her to recoil involuntarily from her brother's prone form.

‘Dara?' Eyna was beside her in an instant, her touch hot and alive after the dead-fish crawl of Jaran's flesh.

‘It should have been me.' Dara shook her head in disbelief. ‘If I hadn't escaped …'

‘Quiet, girl!' Ma Saria snapped, more sharply than she'd ever addressed Dara before. Then the old woman crouched beside Jaran and carefully rested a hand against the side of his neck. Even from where she was standing, Dara saw her struggle to resist that same wave of revulsion that had forced her to withdraw her own touch so quickly.

‘Ma … sorry.' Jaran struggled to get his mouth around the words and Ma Saria's rigid expression softened. Without replying, she glanced back over her shoulder at the two girls.

‘You reckon you can help me get him up?' she asked Dara.

‘I think so.' Now she knew what to expect, Dara hoped it'd be easier. She feigned confidence as she grasped one of Jaran's arms.

‘Here, Ma, let me.' Eyna moved to his other side and the two of them lifted him back to his feet, supporting him between them as he swayed unsteadily.

Despite being prepared, Dara had to struggle against the swamping emptiness of her brother, and she threw her cousin a curious look.

‘Can't you feel it?'

Eyna nodded. ‘Of course. It's like there's nothing there.'

‘It doesn't bother you?'

‘Yeah, it does. But look at him, Dara.'

Carefully, with Ma Saria leading the way, they walked across the muddy ground until they were standing once more on the firm, leaf-littered forest floor. As they retreated from the immediate vicinity of the Eye, the teeth-grinding buzz of the skyfire faded, much to Dara's relief. The cold circle of Jaran's arm around her neck, though, still made her skin crawl.

As they stepped into the twilit shadows of the canopy, Ma Saria stopped for a moment, scratching her head, then took Jaran's arm in her hand, examining the silver band of metal looped around his wrist. Dara wondered if it was the same one he'd had in his pack during their trip to the city, but that one had been too narrow to fit over Jaran's hand, and had no visible hinge or seam, so she couldn't see how he could have put it on.

Jaran stood passively, still supported by the girls, while Ma took the band gingerly between the fingers of her right hand. The old woman closed her eyes and Dara could almost feel the effort it cost her to draw up earthwarmth this close to the Eye. Then Ma's face contracted briefly with strain, before she opened her eyes and dropped the hand.

‘Looks as though we'll have to do this the other way,' she muttered and then addressed the girls.

‘You wait here. If I'm not back in ten minutes, take him and go.'

‘Where are you …'

But Ma was already stepping back out into the orange glare of the clearing and making her way towards the Eye, her gait grimly determined.

The two girls watched her progress. Dara fancied that she could see the moment when Ma Saria reached that invisible, humming line of energy that now held the Eye separate from the surrounding forest. The old woman's step didn't falter but there was suddenly a slight stoop about her neck and shoulders, as though she was walking under the burden of a heavy weight. A moment later she disappeared up the steps and into the Eye.

Between them, Jaran slumped again into a shallow faint and they eased him carefully to the ground, arranging him below a broad-leafed shrub that would keep some of the drizzle from his face.

Not that Jaran would have noticed.

Looking at him, Eyna shook her head sadly and then directed a penetrating stare at Dara.

‘What did you mean when you said it should have been you?'

Around them, the forest seemed preternaturally silent. Even the wind had died, and the question hung between them for a long moment.

‘They were going to do … something … to me. Some sort of interrogation, Drake called it. They wanted to know where you and Ma Saria were, and even though I told them I didn't know, they wouldn't believe me. They said if I didn't help they'd force the information out of me and that the process could … damage me.'

‘So you think they did it to Jaran, instead?'

Dara stared down at her feet. ‘It looks like it.'

‘I thought you said they wanted us all. Us kids.'

‘That's what they told me.'

‘Then why'd they leave him behind? Why not take him, too?'

Dara was unable to find any sort of explanation. The only sound was the steady drip of a thousand droplets falling from the canopy above. Then Jaran's voice, weak, unsteady and clearly struggling, floated up from the ground.

‘Left … a message.'

Both girls stared down. Jaran met their eyes as best he could.

‘Message … Dara and Ma Sar …' His words were slurred and indistinct. Dara and Eyna crouched on either side of him.

‘What message, Jaran?' Dara prompted.

His eyes began to roll in their sockets, but with a visible effort he pulled himself back for long enough to deliver Drake's words.

‘Me. I'm … the … message.'

Then he was gone again.

‘What does that mean?' Eyna looked at Dara, who could only shrug helplessly.

‘I don't know.'

‘Doesn't matter, anyway.' While they'd been crouched over Jaran, Ma Saria had returned, unnoticed, from the Eye. Now she too fell to the ground, looking spent but vaguely triumphant. ‘We got no interest in anything those shi have to say to us. No interest at all.'

‘Are you all right, Ma?'

‘Fine, girl. Just give me a moment here. In the meantime, use this on your brother, eh?'

She threw a piece of tech at Dara, who caught it reflexively. It was a flat, narrow scanner of some sort, which fitted neatly into the palm of her hand.

‘What do I do with it?'

‘Jus' touch that wristband. Should work automatically.

Dara did as she was told and the moment the scanner came into contact with the metal band it popped free with a barely audible ‘click', opening up along an invisible seam and falling onto the forest floor. The moment it left his arm, Jaran let out a deep sigh and, even though he was still unconscious, his body took on a subtle change, relaxing slightly.

‘Good girl,' Ma said, grinning. ‘You feel that?'

‘What?' Dara stared at Ma Saria, but before the old woman could reply, Eyna answered.

‘He's back!'

And Dara realised that, fluttering and weak though it was, her brother's familiar, connected spark was right there again beside her.