Nightpeople (9 page)

The face that swam into view was old, light-skinned and scarred. Saria found herself staring up into eyes almost completely empty of colour Around the dark pinprick pupils were pale circles which lent the man's stare a disconcerting, almost hungry, look.

Frightened, she struggled to her feet and tried to back away, but was drawn up sharply by the bite of a leather thong which had been knotted tightly around her wrists, holding them together in front of her The thong was attached to a leash held by the scarred man.

‘Pssht!' He gave the leash a sharp pull, jerking Saria a half-step towards him, and grinned. All of his teeth had been filed down to points. He was completely hairless, his bald pate as pale as the rest of him, and the overall effect was disconcertingly animal-like.

‘You take it easy, girl.' The man's voice was soft and surprisingly high. Despite his warning, Saria continued to struggle, until he lost patience and tugged the leash so hard she was pulled completely off her feet and fell forwards onto the dirt.

She rolled and tried to rise, but the man crouched and pinned her to the ground by planting one boney knee in the middle of her chest.

‘You gotta name?'

When she didn't answer, his eyes narrowed.

‘You answer when I ask you a question, girl. What's your name, eh?' The knee dug more sharply into her, driving air from her lungs.

‘Saria.'

She tried to say it defiantly, but even to her own ears she sounded scared.

The man nodded. His sharpened smile returned.

‘Saria. So that's what they called you. I always thought Dreamer Wanji had you stashed out there somewhere.'

Abruptly he stood, releasing his weight.

‘Get up!'

He tugged the thong viciously, pulling her back to her feet.

‘You don't make trouble and we'll have no problems, eh?' The old man grinned again. The skin across his face was stretched and Saria could make out the bones of his cheeks and jaws. His eyes were sunk in hollows so deep they were thrown into pools of shadow, adding to the skeletal effect.

Back on her feet, Saria was able to look around. They stood in the shade of a couple of ragged shrubs. The remains of a fire smouldered in a stone circle nearby, and various bundles were strewn on the dirt around it. Off to one side the bodies of six or seven creatures which looked like large rock-hoppers lay in a bloody pile.

All of this she took in in a second, but what grabbed her attention most were the others. Standing in a rough circle around them was a group of perhaps ten people, men and women. All appeared old, like Dreamer Gaardi or perhaps older, and all watched her silently with expressions that betrayed nothing.

‘What're you doin' out here, eh? All on your own in the middle of the Darklands?'

‘I was going to Woormra.' Distracted by the implacable stares of the group, she answered without thinking.

‘Woormra?' The pale man nodded. ‘Figures. And I don't imagine you'd be walkin' on your own, so who's takin' you there?'

Saria hesitated a moment too long before replying. ‘Nobody.'

The old man's hand flew like a snake striking, delivering a stinging blow across her face before she had time to dodge.

‘Don't try me, girl. I can do a lot worse things to you than that. Now, who?'

Saria tried to glare at her attacker, but before the pale stare of the old man her eyes fell to her feet.

‘Dariand.'

‘The nightwalker. Of course Dreamer Wanji'd send him. Where is he?'

Saria thought furiously, recalling Dariand's comment from a couple of nights earlier:
If you're lucky, you'll collapse from hunger or thirst, or you'll get bitten by a snake. If you're unlucky, someone else will find you before I do.

‘I don't know. I got separated from him in the dark, and was wandering for a couple of days.'

The man grabbed her by the chin, his bony fingers digging into the soft skin of her cheeks.

‘Don't lie, girl.' The eyes were mesmerising; they seemed to grow and glow and Saria felt herself sinking into them. ‘You ent been out here more than a day, or you'd be nothing more than a burnt-up stick. So where'd you run off from that nightwalker?'

It took everything Saria had in her not to drop her eyes, and every last scrap of control she could muster to think of an answer. She wouldn't tell them the truth – that much she knew. She wouldn't tell them about the soak. Instinctively she knew that her only hope now was for Dariand to rescue her, and the further away these people thought he was, the greater his chances of catching up with them.

‘I don't know. We came across this black strip, sort of a path, and were camping in a cave in some rocks.'

Behind her, one of the women said something Saria didn't understand and the pale man nodded.

‘That'll be it. It's a bit further off than I'd have thought, but still, we'd better get movin', eh? Dariand's got good landsense and he's probably close already.'

He held her face a moment longer then dropped his hand. Around them, Saria was only vaguely aware of the group dispersing and starting to gather their bundles together The old man raised a threatening finger, pointing it right in her face.

‘Don't give me any trouble and we'll have no problems, right?'

Reaching up, it took him only a moment to tie his end of the leash onto the tree beside them, high above Saria's reach.

‘You stay here while I get this bunch movin'.'

Saria glanced at where he'd knotted it.

‘That won't come undone in a hurry, an' if you pull at it you'll only make it tighter, but we'd better make sure you don't try, eh?'

He put two fingers to his lips and whistled, and Saria gasped. The sound was instantly familiar and ran through her like cold water. A clench of remembered terror gripped her as a dirty, skinny, sand-coloured dog came skulking towards them from somewhere beyond the campsite. It approached cautiously, slinking low, ears down, teeth bared, and a soft growl rumbling in the back of its throat. Saria knew it immediately. It was the same beast she'd reached into outside Olympic.

The old man muttered at the animal, which flattened itself to the ground in front of Saria.

‘You don't move now, you hear me?' he said to her. ‘He'll have your throat out if you do. Stay real still.'

He grinned his pointed smile again and strode away.

As soon as he was gone, Saria concentrated on letting as much earthwarmth as possible flow up into her, but she was too distracted and nervous to manage it immediately. All the same, after a few moments she sensed the beginnings of the familiar tingle and, closing her eyes, she tried to surrender herself into it until she felt confident enough to probe out towards the dog.

Just like last time, the animal's mind proved surprisingly simple to find, and she was able to reach into it easily. Despite its aggressive stance and rumbling growl, the dog's mind was passive, resisting her not at all as she gently touched its senses with her own.

Around them the group was all activity and bustle. In the dog's perceptions, people moved as bright shadows. The brightest of them all stood still in the middle of the movement, and Saria guessed it was the pale-eyed man. The people gathering up the slaughtered rock-hoppers also featured brightly; the possibility of food offered by them dominating the dog's thoughts.

Slowly, Saria probed outward, using the dog's senses of smell and hearing to search further away, out into the sand, hoping to find Dariand and Dreamer Gaardi waiting there somewhere, following to rescue her.

A little way away, over a small ridge on the other side of the fire, a series of large, dull shadows moved restlessly. Saria had no idea what they were, but as far as the dog was concerned the creatures were little threat, despite their obvious size, so it paid them no real attention.

Apart from that, there was nothing. Only vast, dead, empty plains.

Slowly, gently, Saria withdrew her mind from the dog's, dissolving the link between them gradually until she was once more completely within her own senses. Then it was everything she could do not to sink immediately into despair. What had she done? All Dariand's cautions and warnings from the last few days came flooding back, and tears started to well at the corners of her eyes.

She choked them down.

I can't let them see me crying,
she told herself, though she wasn't sure why not.

The dog still crouched on the sand at her feet, but as her tears cleared she had the sudden notion that something was different about it. The creature remained as still as before, teeth bared and ears back, but something had changed, something almost imperceptible in the way it regarded her

Then she realised.

The creature's tail was wagging. Not much, just the slightest hint of movement, right at the black tip of its long, scrawny tail. Not constantly, either, but a faint twitch of movement every few seconds. Something about that twitch worked against the aggression the dog was displaying in every other part of its body.

Saria watched the tiny wagging tip for a couple of moments and thought about reaching again for the creature's mind, but before she had a chance, her captor came scurrying back and without a word unknotted her from the tree.

‘Come on.'

Behind him, one of the old women disappeared over a small undulation on the other side of the camp. She returned a few moments later leading five of the strangest creatures Saria had ever seen.

These must have been the pale shadows the dog had been so unconcerned about. From the way they followed the woman placidly into the centre of the camp, it was clear that what they lacked in aggression, they made up for in size.

The animals were enormous, bigger even than Dariand. They loped lazily across the sand in a kind of steady rolling movement, each roped to the one in front. All were covered in dirty reddish-yellow fur. At the end of their long necks were angular, boney heads, all teeth and nose, and a large, misshapen hump rose in the middle of each beast's back.

The old woman stopped them by tugging on the halter-rope and immediately the lead animal knelt in the dirt, all four legs folding under it so that it collapsed onto the ground. Straightaway, all the other old people began loading the beast, taking up the various bundles piled around the fire and slinging them on either side of the hump. The rock-hopper carcases were wrapped in some kind of cloth and lashed across the creature's rump.

When the first animal was loaded, the second was moved forward and so on, until all that remained of the camp site was a dead fire-pit and a few areas of scraped ground. Only one beast was left kneeling and wordlessly the pale-eyed man pulled her towards it.

The group watched silently, parting to let them through. As they approached the beast, Saria slowed. Even though the dog had shown her clearly that the large creature was nothing to be concerned about, the sheer size of it as it loomed above her was daunting.

Immediately, the old man gave her leash a savage tug, almost pulling her off her feet.

‘Hurry up, girl. We ent gonna hang around all day.'

‘Eh, Dreamer, I reckon she's scared of the camel.'

Saria didn't see the speaker – it was just a voice from the crowd – but his words raised a shallow chuckle among those gathered. Even the old man allowed a quick smile to crack his face, briefly revealing his sharpened teeth.

‘I reckon you're right. Don't matter to me, though. Hurry up.' Another jerk on the leash.

‘Dreamer?' Saria couldn't stop herself asking. ‘Like Dreamer Gaardi?'

Around her, there was a sudden intake of breath as the assembled group froze. Her captor whipped around.

‘What was that, girl?' There was menace behind his question. The pale eyes narrowed to slits. ‘What'd you just say?'

Immediately, Saria realised she'd made a mistake. Another one. She knew she had to be more careful what she revealed to these people, so now she bit her tongue and didn't reply. The old man stepped closer, holding her leash short so she couldn't back away.

‘Dreamer Gaardi. That's a name I ent heard in a long time. How'd you know it, I wonder? Could be there was more than just Dariand taking you over to Woormra, eh?'

He waited, expecting an answer. Saria stayed quiet, grimly determined not to say anything further about herself, or Dariand and Dreamer Gaardi, for that matter. After a second or two, Pale-Eye's expression hardened still more.

‘Not gonna talk?'

When this didn't draw a response, he nodded at somebody behind her and before she had a chance to turn she was grabbed firmly. Once she was secure, the old man dropped the other end of the leash and reached towards her. Saria thought he was about to grab her throat and choke her, but instead the old man's fingers pressed lightly against the sides of her neck.

‘We'll see about that.' For a moment nothing happened except for an odd sensation of something hovering around the two of them, then Saria gasped as earthwarmth suddenly poured out of his fingertips. At the same time, his mind, cold and probing, pushed into her, riding the earthwarmth and forcing its way into her mind like a hard, sharpened wedge. The pain was excruciating; bright intense flashes leapt across the back of her eyes. Her head felt as though it was swelling and at the same time being crushed, slowly and inexorably, as unbearable pressure built and built inside her.