Path of Revenge (65 page)

DUON LED THE SOLDIER, the cosmographer and the Omeran through a landscape every bit as jumbled and broken as the wasteland of his mind. In Punta province, the fatherback land of his birth, the hills were tame, ordered by rain and run-off. Not so here in the Had Hills to the fatherwards of Marasmos. Were it not for the winding path he had located and followed, he doubted they would have found their way through the hills. But finally, a month fatherwards of Marasmos, an arduous month, he had brought them through the hills to the fatherback edge of Nomansland, and to the edge of sanity.

Dryman had decided their direction, driving them fatherwards with the intensity of his will. A mystery, since the Amaqi expedition had been eviscerated, and the safety of Talamaq lay fatherbackwards. The soldier insisted they travel fatherwards, but would not offer any argument, and even Duon could not stand before him. It almost came to swordplay, there on the twice blood-hallowed site of old Marasmos, with the others watching silently, unable to comprehend what Dryman hoped to achieve. But after looking into Dryman’s resolute eyes Duon decided not to press the issue.

So silent were the cosmographer and the Omeran during the interminable footsore weeks, for a time
Duon thought they had lost the use of their voices. The dark-skinned man and the pale woman seemed to have put everything aside to focus on placing one foot in front of the other. Like him, they had been broken by the Valley of the Damned and the city of Marasmos. Certainly neither had been exactly sane even before the expedition had begun; now, Duon doubted whether they could be of any further use to anyone. Of course, he had the same doubts about himself.

Nevertheless Dryman drove them on, guarding the Omeran and the cosmographer as though they were the most important pair in the world. With Duon he was less careful, sending him on excursions to look for water, game or firewood. The captain knew he could escape at any time, but found himself bound to the others by cords of duty and guilt. As Dryman knew well.

Duon had seen disturbing signs on these journeys. Evidence that people lived in these barren coastal hills. More, a suspicion that someone shadowed them. The smell of smoke, the occasional footprint, a feeling between the shoulder blades that could neither be explained nor denied. A sense no professional explorer could afford to ignore. As though someone made sure they continued their journey away from Marasmian lands. Odd, then, that the travellers came in contact with no one as they made their way through the scrublands.

Though the true desert lurked inland, hinted at by a shimmering on the daughterward horizon, the coastal hills were trial enough. It seldom rained in this broken country, the regular sea fogs supplying the spindly trees and sparse, spiky grasses with the water they needed. There was actually less potable water here; most of the deep wells were to be found inland, where the meltwater from the alpine heights emerged from a thousand-league journey sonwards. None of the meltwater came this close to the coast, where the few
wells were small and brackish. They sufficed. Duon felt, and Dryman agreed, that neither Lenares nor Torve were in good enough condition to risk the desert.

While not exactly plentiful, food was relatively easy to come by, reducing the need for water. In the second week they came across a tangle of wild melons ripening nicely amid a snarl of leafy vines lying on the sand. Dryman bade them gather as many as they could carry, though this cost them an unpleasant afternoon later in the week when their improvised cloth bags were soaked by exploding overripe fruit.

Dryman stood beside Duon and together they gazed over Nomansland. The Had Hills had finally come to an end, and now nothing but a long, gradual downward slope separated them from the beginning of the badlands maze that lay across their path.

‘Ideally we should seek out and hire the Nehra to ensure our passage,’ Duon said.

‘And how many lap-boxes of gold are we to offer them?’ Dryman’s temper flared regularly; Duon tried not to let it affect him.

‘More than we have,’ he answered, spreading his hands wide to indicate emptiness. The Nehra, the only people who knew the twisted badlands everyone called Nomansland, lived many leagues to the sonback. They would guide people through the maze, but only for gold. They could charge what they pleased, as there was no way around Nomansland, which stretched across Elamaq from the sonwards coast to the mountainous daughterwards spine. Unguided venturers usually vanished without trace in the complex jumble of ridges, box canyons and dead-end valleys. There were no landmarks within Nomansland by which to orient oneself: all the summits were congruent, their tops flat, the valleys between them carved out of a relict plain by some ancient wandering river.

Those who survived here invariably claimed that routes would open and close like doors. A canyon could be entered, they said, and then surround a traveller on all four sides with steep talus slopes that collapsed on anyone foolish enough to try to climb them. Feeble excuses for those unable to navigate the badlands, most people thought. Not Duon. He had passed through Nomansland twice, both difficult traverses even when well equipped and with the help of their knowledgeable guides.

‘Would they entertain a generous percentage of our wealth paid on our return fatherbackwards?’

‘The Nehra would likely kill us for asking,’ Duon said. ‘What wealth could the four of us bring back, they would say.’
So the man is motivated by riches. Thirty thousand of us might have wrested riches from the Nehra; four of us will earn only our deaths.

‘What wealth did the Emperor command you to seek, Captain?’

Duon hesitated before answering. As he was about to speak a low rumble came from somewhere to their left. Thunder, or something like it. Duon scanned the cloudless sky in vain.

‘The earth is uneasy,’ Dryman said as Torve the Omeran reached the crest of the slope beside them, assisting the cosmographer. ‘I have felt small shakes over the last week.’ The soldier’s eyes widened slightly, giving the impression he was making ready to do battle.

As they watched, a rolling curtain of dust approached them from the sonback.
No,
Duon corrected himself, his nervousness growing,
it is a wave. The ground heaves as though some burrowing animal approaches, throwing up sand…

The wave arrived, a man-height distortion moving incredibly fast. With a heave it tossed them off their feet. Duon found himself dumped on his back amid a dust-cloud. Something thumped across his legs, a
body, the Omeran. A hiss and the sand came down on top of them, followed by a sudden silence.

The soldier came striding into Duon’s field of vision, his teeth bared as though facing down an opponent. ‘Get up,’ he said unfeelingly. ‘We have a long way to go today.’

What was Dryman? A mercenary seeking his fortune? A madman? Or a magician holding his three followers in thrall? What did he hope to achieve by continuing this hopeless venture? Mercenary, madman, magician: the possibilities rattled through Duon’s head as he stood in obedience to the soldier’s command.

The Omeran got to his feet and stumbled away, rubbing at his shins.

Another rumble, accompanied by an embarrassingly gentle shake, sat Duon on his rump. Dryman laughed, then hauled him to his feet. ‘The gods seek to unsettle us,’ the soldier said.

‘The Emperor doesn’t believe in the gods,’ Duon said automatically.

‘Does he not? He ought to. He would, if he were here.’

‘Dryman, why are we throwing our lives away?’

‘Ah, the worm has a voice.’ They walked towards the other two, who stood together, holding each other for support.

More than one voice, actually. The cause of my problems.
‘Why not return to Talamaq?’
One last try before we die.
‘Surely the Emperor will raise another army? With you at its head, a guarantee of wealth and renown.’

‘Oh? Will I be as successful as the rich and famous Captain Duon?’

At this Duon snapped his mouth shut. In the back of his head, a light flashed white.
I keep telling you, you are a fool. Keep your mouth shut and I might just be able to guide you through this.

Weary and soul-wounded, the captain offered no reply.

Misery wrapped itself around Lenares. She kept counting her steps, though she knew the total was more of an estimate than an accurate reflection of where she was. Just a reflexive habit. As were the steps themselves. She didn’t need the numbers. Out here in Nomansland nothing seemed to have a point. She had lost the ability to tell what was most important, and the world around her had become nothing more than an endless numerical swirl of information.

She knew why. Her centre had changed. Instead of being tied to a place—Talamaq—she was now tied to a person. Torve. It had happened without her consent, something done by her subconscious mind in an attempt to…what? Preserve herself? Hold onto love? Why had she never centred on Mahudia, if the latter was the truth? It angered her that her mind and body could so betray her.

And that was another thing. How could her numbers mean anything if truth didn’t stay still? A small part of her was excited by what she was learning: in the face of love, a love that could be both right and wrong, Lenares could no longer settle for her former belief in the old binary of absolute truth and falsehood. But the larger part of her was adrift, floundering in a sea of meaninglessness. She wondered if she might be rejecting both centres, the old truth of the Empire and the new truth of Torve’s love.

No, he rejected me. His is a false centre. I cannot trust him. Just as I cannot trust Talamaq and the Emperor.

Whenever she thought on this, the image of the bronze map shone in her mind. It had been centred on the house of the gods, but she had the impression its centre could move. Was the bronze map the truth, or merely a representation of truth? The truth from one
point of view? One perspective? Lenares knew she was special, able to think in ways no one else could, but even so this thinking taxed her, pulling her mind in uncomfortable directions. The problem rearranged itself in her head: her eyes beheld truth, but she did not see everything. She saw from one perspective only. The bronze map, though, was an attempt to see everything. Even so, the view from above, from the eye of the god, was still only a single perspective. Things remained hidden even from the godlike gaze.

And now a word Mahudia had once taught her slipped into her consciousness.
Omniscience.
The ability to know everything. But such an ability must also involve the talent to see from
every
perspective
all at once.
Out of every pair of eyes in the world at all times. Then, if that were not impossible enough, to make sense of what was being seen. And that did not include the things that no one could see.

The gods could not be omniscient. They just thought they were.

Most frightening of all, Lenares wondered what might happen to her if she did not soon discover something to centre her life around.

‘Lenares?’ Torve’s gentle voice cut across her thinking.

She turned to him, angered; for a moment she had felt on the verge of some flowering of knowledge. ‘What?’

He flinched at her tone.

‘Look at the mist,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t feel right to me.’

They had descended the slope and were now approaching the first of the badland canyons, a narrow opening between two ochre-stained stone ridges. Nevertheless, they could still see some way across the crazed jumble of ridges stretching into the distance; though their field of vision was shrinking. A strange pale mist began to rise from all about them, thicker in the distance, gossamer-thin nearby. The ridges vanished.

‘Just what we need,’ Duon said from some distance in front of them, already little more than a grey outline.

The ground rumbled ominously below them.

Lenares glanced upwards to see the sky directly above her describing a blue oval, surrounded by mist. She turned: the path they had travelled was also obscured.

Her numbers screamed at her.

She grabbed Torve’s hand. ‘It’s
not right.
Look! The hole in the world hovers above us!’

From behind them came another rumble, and the earth cracked and heaved. A fifty-foot-high ridge reared up like a wave of the sea right across the path they had taken, rocks breaking like foam from its crest. The ground dropped away beneath them; for a moment Lenares thought they were about to be swallowed, but the whole valley floor fell sharply, perhaps one pace, possibly two, and the travellers landed together in a tangle of limbs.

Lenares dusted herself off, and reached again for Torve’s hand. He might not be truth, he might not even be her centre, with his lies and deception, but he offered her comfort.

Around them boulders rattled as they rolled down uneasy slopes. The mist closed in; they could hear rather than see the rocks come to rest. Silence spread over Nomansland.

‘The hole in the world is here,’ Lenares said. Something to focus on.

‘I rather think we had worked that out,’ Duon said stiffly. Dryman grunted, stifling a laugh.

‘Press on,’ the soldier said, but his next words were lost in a groan from somewhere in front of them. The valley floor jerked upwards twice as far as it had recently fallen. Lenares bit her tongue hard; the taste of blood blossomed in her mouth. She was sure she
must have bruised Torve’s fingers, but he did not let her go.

They entered a world of insanity. In Nomansland, with the hole in the world hovering directly above them, tracking them, all natural rules seemed to have been suspended. The land around them and the earth beneath their feet was in constant motion, and they made their way through it as though navigating across a choppy sea. They might enter a valley only to see it close behind them, might search for a way out and watch, bemused, as a wall collapsed, revealing an opening to another canyon.

Eventually it became clear to them that they were being shepherded. Some vast power opened and shut the valleys of Nomansland, forcing them to go where they were directed. Dryman resisted the unseen power at work. He turned them around, forced them to climb unstable mounds of rubble in an effort to retrace their steps. It did them no good. Within a short time all four of them were bruised, and fortunate not to have broken limbs. The soldier became more and more angry, enraged at powers beyond his control.