Path of Revenge (63 page)

One of the children stepped forward. The tallest one, a boy, now with the stick in his hand. He pointed it at each of them in turn—the cosmographer, the Omeran, Dryman and the captain—and Duon found himself flinching away from it as though it were a poisonous snake. Then the child made a beckoning motion.
Follow us.

Dryman shrugged, then began to walk towards the children. Duon followed: what other choice was there?

The remnants of the night seemed to last forever, slowly fading into dawn, a never-ending sequence of rock and sand in shades of grey. At one point they passed the Marasmian camp, just outside the ring of sentries. Duon saw the fires and the stakes and the squirming figures with the increasing detachment of the chronically exhausted. He sensed the presence in his head watching everything with an avid interest.

Some time later the cosmographer collapsed. Asleep, unconscious or dead, Duon could not tell and couldn’t make himself care. Dead, it looked like, the way her head lolled in the Omeran’s arms. The voice in his mind expressed regret, a sentiment Duon was too tired to share.

Lenares awoke to the sound of murmuring voices and a head-splitting ache in her temples. She probed her awareness as gingerly as a tongue exploring a rotted tooth, and was surprised to find that, even though she had been transported through space—and possibly through time—by some device, and had subsequently lost consciousness, she remained centred.

She was not sure how this was possible. Her spatial awareness, as Mahudia would have called it, retained its clarity. She could visualise exactly where she was on a map of Elamaq; the image of a circular map of bronze
flashed through her mind, and she found she could locate her position on it also. Had the Daughter done something to her? Or did the map itself exercise some arcane power? It felt to her as though she emitted some unseen light in all directions, which returned to her complete with a numerical description of where it had been. It made Lenares feel as though she was the centre of the universe.

A new talent? A result of her close encounter with the hole in the world? An accidental overlay of numerical data? She would observe herself with care. She feared losing control of herself more than anything.

Torve and the soldier called Dryman were engaged in an intense conversation. Knees together, heads almost touching, they talked in undertones. Torve looked pale, his half-healed scars from the sun standing out on his cheeks as though they had been painted on chalk.

‘She’s awake,’ Dryman said, and the two men separated. ‘Remember what you’ve been told,’ the soldier cautioned Torve, to which the Omeran nodded unhappily.

Lenares glanced around her. She lay on a rectangular mat, woven from all manner of bright colours. Twenty-six different shades, her mind told her. She ignored it: the interminable calculating was becoming increasingly irrelevant. She did not know whether to be disturbed or comforted by this change. The mat lay in turn upon solid rock, a shining green marble polished, she guessed, by many generations of people and their rugs. A wall behind her was of the same rock, though much more angular; above her the rock extended in a small outcrop, to which a pale awning was attached, held outstretched by two gnarled poles set into cracks in the rock.

Apart from herself, Dryman and Torve were the only others in the alcove.
Three,
she told her mind,
challenging herself to explain the significance of the number.
Numbers don’t tell me everything,
she admitted to herself.
I know how many people are in this room, but not why Captain Duon is missing.

As if summoned by her thoughts, the captain entered the alcove, carrying a large platter of food and a waterskin. Immediately every other thought was submerged by a rush of hunger and thirst.

‘Just a little, Lenares,’ Torve cautioned, but his words made no headway against her body’s desires. She heard his warning, would remember it after an afternoon of emptying her stomach amid virulent cramps, but at the time it didn’t touch her. That night she ate and drank more carefully, having learned an important lesson about the limits of her self-control.

‘What is this place?’ she whispered to Torve after their evening meal, again served by Captain Duon, as if he were their servant and not their master. ‘Where are the children?’

‘They are not here,’ Torve replied, his voice low, not so much a whisper as a melancholic rasp. ‘They have made camp some distance away, and are discussing what they should do with us.’

‘Why should they do anything with us?’ Lenares asked. ‘Why not let us go on our way?’ Not that she knew which way they ought to go.

‘Because Captain Duon and…and Dryman are here with us. The desert people are afraid of them. Something is wrong in both of them, so the children say.’

‘Say? You understand them?’

‘No, but they communicate their unease very clearly. When we first arrived they would not go near either man. I do not understand what Duon has done to earn such mistrust.’

Lenares took a locust from the platter and dipped it in a sweet, sticky fluid. The taste burned itself on her
tongue, drawing an astonishing wave of pleasure from her mouth that spread throughout her body.

‘Wonderful, are they not,’ Torve whispered. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

‘They are my ancestors,’ he said, and looked at her, a yearning in his eyes. He wanted her to understand something. ‘They are not Omeran; they are the people we Omerans changed from.’

‘How do you know this?’ His words had triggered a cascade of images and numbers in her head.

‘They know my Defiance,’ he said, ‘and have shown me from whence it sprang.’

‘They do look a little like you, though they are much more handsome.’ Belatedly she realised that her words might hurt him, so she softened them by extending her hand and taking his.

‘What were you talking with Dryman about?’ she enquired.

He jerked involuntarily, as though Lenares had tweaked a string tying him to something. ‘I cannot tell you,’ he whispered. ‘Please do not ask me about him.’

‘Why? Why can’t I ask? What is wrong, Torve?’

‘Please,’ he begged her. ‘If you press me, I must refuse you.’

Lenares released his hand and sat back, surprised at the depth of hurt she felt at his words. What could be so secret that he must keep it from her? Her mind swirled with speculation; she could no more stop thinking about it than she could stop breathing. But underneath her mind’s frantic activity lay a newly created hollow place, which, until his words, had been filled with love.

The only person without a wall erected to keep her out, the one man open to her scrutiny, a good man, not an animal as she once had thought, a man who loved her; but now with a secret. The knowledge that he could not share everything with her meant that,
against her wishes, her mind shifted him from the category of one to the category of everyone. He was no longer special.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and reached for her hand. She pulled away from him.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she found herself saying, and the hollowness within her expanded with the words, a hole in her own world.

The next day the Desert Children, as Torve had taken to calling the tribe, came to visit them. For the occasion they hitched up the sides of the alcove, letting the sun warm the cold marble wall, so the Children could see their guests.
Their captives,
Lenares thought, though there was nothing to suggest they could not just walk away.

The Children formed a line, thirty or more strong, then all sat down on their haunches. The three Amaqi sat under the awning. Halfway between the two groups knelt Torve, waiting for whatever was to come. Lenares could see the similarity between him and the Children, could read it in the shape of their eyes, the set of the forehead, the width of the nose, though there were also differences. They had darker skin, finer features, more expressive movements. Indeed, everything they did was a dance.
They could well be his ancestors.

Her mind drifted for a moment, imagining him finding kinship with the Children, deciding to stay with them, bidding her a sad farewell as she, Captain Duon and Dryman headed out into the desert. The thought drenched her in misery.
Why can’t I let him have a secret?
She did not know the answer, but wished bitterly she did.

Two of the Children and an adult came forward and mimed horror at Dryman and Captain Duon. Torve did not understand, so she called out from where she sat. He beckoned her forward. She knelt beside him
and it felt so right it was all she could do to stop herself bursting into tears.

The mummers continued their display, and their actions were as clear as if they spoke in the Amaqi tongue. ‘They are frightened of Dryman and the captain,’ she said to Torve. ‘The two men are fruit that looks good on the outside but harbours worms within. They ask us whether these men belong to us and, if not, want to know if they can kill them.’

A groan came from behind Lenares. ‘Why? What is wrong with me?’ Captain Duon’s question sounded sincere, not an assertion of innocence. ‘Can they tell?’

‘Better hope they can’t,’ Dryman said, his voice as relaxed as it ever had been.

Torve tried to tell the Children that yes, the two men were known to them. After some confusion Lenares was satisfied the message had been understood.

After more graceful miming, Lenares reported: ‘The Children were willing to offer us shelter, but because the bad men are with us, they must take us to the borders of their lands and see us leave. They say that they nearly decided to kill us all, but the True Man—that’s you, Torve—and the Woman who Sees—me—should be allowed to live. They say that, should we return without the bad men, they would welcome us into their clan and allow us to stay for a time. However, should they encounter the bad men ever again, they will kill them without discussion.’

‘If they could,’ Dryman muttered.

‘Do they say what is wrong with the two men?’ Torve asked.

‘They do not know,’ said Lenares. ‘I think they might be like me. They sense much about a person from their smell, their…taste, but that’s not what they mean. They can tell something is wrong, but not what.’

‘I have a question,’ Dryman said, raising his voice. ‘How have these Children survived for so long without being found by the Amaqi?’

The Children mimed at length. ‘The Amaqi cannot find their nose with their finger,’ Lenares said eventually, and Captain Duon barked a laugh. ‘This is the Children’s land, bountiful and good, and the thick-heads—their name for us—can continue to live in the badlands.’

‘Do these Children know they are animals?’ Lenares heard the perverse delight in the question, the desire to wound, but she asked it anyway.

To her surprise, the adult nodded. ‘Yes! They say they are like the deer and the monkeys and the water buffalo, all children of the…of the
giant.’
Her voice tailed off as memories of her dream came crashing back into her mind.

‘Oh,’ she said, images pounding her brain. ‘Oh, oh!’

‘Lenares? What is wrong?’ Torve hovered close, but she could not spare any of herself to formulate an answer. The memories came fast and hot, their power seizing her muscles and her mind.

The giant strides the land, scattering stones, creating the desert, the cradle of all life…the children of the giant gather at the waterhole and decide to search for their god…finding the giant, they transform him into their god by their worship…the children quarrel, killing each other, and refuse the god’s help…he makes a daughter and a son out of a woman and a man, but still they refuse to listen…his Son and his Daughter betray the god and drive him out of the desert…his absence creates a hole in the world…the Son and the Daughter contend for control…

She did not realise she had acted out the powerful memories until she heard a rumbling chorus of agreement from the assembled Children. It took her
some considerable time to explain to Torve what had happened.

Dryman growled audibly behind her. ‘From what source did this bastardised legend spring? Is this a belief of these animals here, or is it your own, cosmographer?’

Something about that last word, about the way Dryman said it, stroked a memory in Lenares’ mind, but she did not have the leisure to pursue it.

‘Neither,’ she snapped. ‘It is the truth.’ But, even as she said it she sensed the inadequacy of her assertion.
It is
a
truth,
her numbers told her.
You have the sum, but there are more than two factors, more than one way of arriving at the correct answer.
‘It is true,’ she corrected herself.

And it is filled with information, with clues to what is happening in the world.
Now all she needed was leisure to examine the memories Dryman’s question had freed. Leisure, and the will to make her mind focus on anything but the frightening hollowness inside her, or the sudden overturning of her belief in one absolute truth.
More than one way to get a correct answer? Could a question have two true answers? Or more?
She felt…she felt as though she were a building cracking and breaking up in an earthquake. No, more like a building being destroyed and rebuilt.

Their time with the Desert Children could not be measured in hours or days. Here—wherever here was, exactly—the days seemed to pass differently; not so much at a different speed, Duon reflected, but without any speed at all. It was the difference between sitting on a camel and passing a man on the side of the road, and being that man and watching the camel pass. Like the man by the road, he seemed outside of events. Time passed, the sun rose and set, but without touching him.

Perhaps it was his preoccupation with propitiation. If the first time he had run from his command, abandoning his expedition to torture and death, had scarred him, his second enforced abandonment left him numb. For all his despair about his venal behaviour, he had not struggled when Dryman drew him away to the secret portal of the Desert Children. False, his despair had been, a façade intended to ease his own conscience.