The Emerald Forge (Pilgrennon's Children) (33 page)

Rajesh let out a sharp exclamation. “Without one of us? She’s not an experienced rider. A fall could kill her.”

“I can’t ride a horse!” Dana interjected.

“Dana, you should have the ability to interface directly to the horse.” Jananin turned to Rajesh. “She will not fall if she is in control of the animal. It doesn’t matter that she is not trained to ride.”

“Please, at least let me ride with her. Or accompany her yourself.”

“No. The horse will be swifter with only one rider.”

“No, let someone come with me,” Dana pleaded. “Either of you, I don’t mind who. I don’t know how to control a horse.”

“You just controlled a wyvern as you call it, did you not? And in that instance, there was much farther to fall. How is this different?”

“The wyvern was my friend. I wasn’t
controlling
it. It let me ride on it; it wasn’t just doing what I told it to.”

“There is no time for any more discussion. This is what is happening, and if you are not ready for it, you had better prepare yourself now. Rajesh, give me the console for this horse and send out a call for help.”

Rajesh unfastened the band from his forearm and gave Jananin a disapproving glower as he handed it over. He walked back to the car with what looked like a big mobile phone held to his ear. “Mayday, mayday.”

“I’m going to disconnect the horse from this interface now, and I need you to make the connection and synch yourself to it. Ready?”

Dana did not like this idea, but she could think of no other, and the birds were coming, and all around in this wood she could feel the conspiracy against her. She nodded, her mouth dry.

Jananin pressed a button that switched off the armband, and simultaneously she put her hand to the armour on the horse’s forehead and adjusted something. Another signal appeared, searching for something to connect to. Dana hesitated for a second, and then adjusted the frequency of her concentration to mesh with that signal.

Consciousness shifted. She could feel damp soil and leaves under her feet, the heavy beat of a powerful heart and breath in great lungs. She could hear the drone of flies in ears that twitched and turned restlessly and see the world in a flat, panoramic rendition that encompassed both sides of the horse and was oddly drained of the red portion of the spectrum. The horse didn’t filter which parts of its experience of the world were shared with her as the wyvern did.

“Ready?”

Dana let out a shuddering gasp, and nodded again.

Jananin offered her the stirrup. “Put your left foot in here and hold on to the saddle at the front and back.”

Dana did as she was told. Jananin caught her right leg and pushed it up over the horse’s back, and now she was sitting up high with the horse’s long neck and twitching ears in front of her. Jananin hurried to adjust the stirrups and get Dana’s feet into the right position. She pressed a leather strap into Dana’s hands. “You may not be able to use the reins, but try to keep hold of them or they’ll cause problems if they go over the horse’s head and get in the way. Don’t stop until you get to Site Twelve. Now go!”

Jananin gave the horse a push and it began to move down the bank, its body swaying with each stride. And with each step it took, Dana began to understand more of it, what each group of muscles felt like and what it did. Jananin was right. With this connection, even though it had a mind of its own, the horse was an extension of her own body, the same as any unliving device or machine.

She felt for it, finding the point in its neural connections that would trigger the thought of moving faster. The horse was accustomed to taking instructions, if not normally in this way, and responded. Increasing pace to a trot brought an uncomfortable bounce to the horse’s pace, although now with Dana able to anticipate the rhythm of it through the horse’s muscular memory, it was less jarring than it had been when Rajesh had controlled it. Dana pressed her knees in tight and urged the horse faster. They came upon a clearing in the trees and the horse broke into a rolling canter. Dana aimed for a gap in the trees, planning to stick to the wood to hide them from the skies for as long as possible.

The horse thundered through muddy ground wet from the recent rain, splattering its legs and undercarriage, and charged up into the trees. A rush of adrenaline hit home. This animal exulted in running. It was what it had been born to do, what it was alive for. The horse had by now accelerated to a flying gallop that shook Dana’s eyes in her head so much the view ahead became a blur. Shafts of light between the trees flashed by, sending her eyes into blinking spasms. The breath rushing through the horse’s nostrils, the pounding of its hoofs and its green-blue view of the trees rushing past on either side were overwhelming, and Dana struggled to keep focus on the sensations from her own body and to hold on and duck from the branches passing overhead.

They reached the edge of the wood and the horse galloped out into an open space. Dana forced it to slow to give her a chance to reorient herself and get a better seating. They’d reached a meadow of grass going to seed, teeming with purple-crested thistles that blended into a lavender haze over distance. Insects buzzed and chirped in the warm sun. Dana looked over her shoulder, up into a still blue sky. Nothing. Perhaps they hadn’t followed her after all.

Then a dark cloud reared behind the trees, and she sensed signals. She turned her head, trying to locate their source: one in front and two either side and slightly behind, coming in to converge on her. She shouldn’t have stopped. Dana gave the signal for the horse to run again, aware it would bring them towards one of the signals, but unable to think of any alternative. As it charged forward, a russet shape somewhere between a dog and a cat leapt from the thistles in front of them. Dana flinched but the horse didn’t shy or balk — it ran straight into the fox and trampled it. A stringy electric fence was fast approaching, and Dana had no time to compose herself before the horse jumped over it. She fell forward in the saddle and had to cling to the horse’s mane while she struggled to get her legs back into position and recover her seat in the saddle. No sooner had she regained control when the horse jumped a stream and landed running in a grassy field. The speed seemed dangerously out of control, but she couldn’t risk going slower. Dana leaned forward over the horse’s neck, trying to lower her centre of gravity and reduce the wind whipping past. As they passed what she calculated to be the halfway point between the wood Jananin and Rajesh had been trapped in and Site Twelve, the horse galloped along the bank of a river, and it was only now she stopped feeling overwhelmed long enough to notice the grass rushing past a long distance below and felt able to chance a look over her shoulder.

The sky behind had fallen dark, not with clouds or an oncoming night, but by the shadows of an innumerable number of birds.

Dana urged the horse faster. Jananin had told her not to stop, and she’d been right. The open field was running out, and more woods approached. She crouched lower as the horse’s course plunged them into the shadows between trees. There was no proper path here, and pushing up a steep slope through nettles and undergrowth slowed the horse. Their pursuers in the air would face no such impediment. They emerged from the woods at a summit that sloped down through fields of crops, to the distant vineyards and orangeries bordering the squat, fortress-like monstrosity that was Site Twelve, with the shining glass pyramids behind it.

The horse charged down the edge of a field of wheat. As they reached the end and jumped through a gap in the hedge into a vineyard, Dana became aware of a pressure on her ears, from the beating of thousands of wings, and a draught behind her despite the wind in her face generated by the horse’s speed. She kicked and clung on as the horse ran for the concrete cliff rising ahead. She struggled to think past the signals of animosity, to find the nearest entrance to Site Twelve and work out the fastest way to it. She mustn’t look back, not now. It took all her concentration to stay balanced and keep the horse at speed.

They turned into a grove of genetically modified figs, and there in front of her stood the heavy metal gate she’d only left this morning with the wyvern. Two men in uniform stood behind it. “Open the gate!” she bellowed over the horse’s head as it galloped towards them. The gate didn’t open, and the horse struggled to slow as it reached the road. Gravel sparked under its iron-shod feet.

Dana kicked her feet out of the stirrups and slid to the ground. “Let me in!” she shrieked, running for the gate. The men were gawking at the enormous flock of birds behind her. The rush of wings behind her was louder now, and mixed with it were the shrill voices of the birds, growing closer.

“This is private property and you’ve no permission to come in here,” one of the men told her.

There was a sign on the gate, something about the Official Secrets Act, rather similar to the one Dana remembered on Gallan Head. She didn’t have time to read it. “Please, let me in. These birds are dangerous. I’m here on Jananin Blake’s instruction. She and Rajesh Rajani are trapped in a wood.”

The two men exchanged glances.

Dana turned around. The sky overhead was dark with bodies, and the birds were falling from the sky towards her. The rising pressure in the air broke over her like a tidal wave. Light feathery bodies pounded against her back and sharp beaks and claws flurried around her head. She covered her face with both hands, but something struck her cheek and drew blood. Dana crouched down and tried to cover her head with her arms. She reached within herself, trying to find a horrible memory, and she recalled how she’d felt after Abigail had hit her and she’d found out there was a device implanted in her brain: shame and hopelessness and incomprehension. She forced the feeling outwards and pushed the birds back, but she couldn’t hold them off for long. Somewhere nearby the horse whinnied, and she caught sight of it rearing and thrashing, birds swirling around it.

A woman had come out of the building to the gate. She gesticulated, her eyes wide.

“Tarrow!”

“Dana!” Tarrow reached through the gate and grasped Dana’s hand. “Why are you all wet? Open the gate!” she shouted at the guards.

One of the men pulled out a device. “I’ll just call the supervisor and ask.” He began tapping the screen hurriedly.

“Supervisor my arse! This is the Meritocracy! Open the gate man, can’t you see those birds...”

Tarrow’s voice trailed off. She stared up past Dana into the sky, her face filled with horror.

Dana turned to see what it was. Way up in the glare of the sun, a huge shape that must be a bird of prey plunged earthwards, cleaving the flock in two like a sword through a billowing sail. She threw herself to the ground, face down in front of the gate, waiting, imagining the feel of sharp talons raking into the flesh of her neck and shoulders.

There came a heavy rattle of metal on metal, and someone grabbed Dana by the upper arm. She raised her head to find the gate open, and Tarrow pulling her in towards the building. She scrambled to her feet and the two of them rushed for the door. Just as they reached it, Dana looked back to see the big bird, surging up, carving the flock into disarray. Could it be the wyvern? Surely she would sense its signal from here if that were so. And it definitely looked like a bird, with a blunt bird tail and short neck. It must be a wild hawk that had happened upon the swarm of birds by coincidence.

Or
...

She had seen one bird like that before. Prendick’s eagle.

-15-

T
ARROW
led Dana back into the building where the metal in the walls blocked out the signals from the birds.

“Please get someone to bring the horse in. Jananin and Rajesh are stuck in a car that’s broken down...” Dana began.

“There’s someone gone out to get them, and someone will sort out the horse. Come in here and sit down.” Tarrow pushed open the door to the medical ward. Dana sat on the bed and Tarrow wiped the scratches on her cheek with a wad of cotton wool wet with an alcohol-smelling substance that stung the raw wounds.

“Dunno what the hell Blake thinks she’s doing, dragging you into whatever’s going on and sending you home on your own.”

Dana wanted to argue, but the chase had exhausted her, and she didn’t know what she could say that would be believable while at the same time not revealing anything about the history she shared with Jananin.

“Now you get some rest. I’ll go and sort out a drink and some dinner for you.” Tarrow fished some pyjamas out of a drawer and lobbed them at Dana. She threw the cotton wool into a bin as she went out the door.

Dana got changed out of her wet clothes and rearranged the pillows on the bed so she could sit up against the wall. She needed to wait until Jananin and Rajesh got back. Cale would now be in the Emerald Forge. She had to do something. Yet her body ached from staying in place on the back of the horse, and her mind was numb from the strain of concentration. Try as she might to focus, she was sliding towards sleep, heavy muscles slumping and eyes refusing to stay open. If she could close her eyes and rest for just a
moment
...

*

You’re in a dark room with the drone of a fan, and with a sinking feeling of dread, you realise you’ve seen this before.

“They tied me to the bed again.” My voice is a plaintive whimper. “I wouldn’t take the medicine they tried to give me.”

I flex my arms, strain my legs and arch my back with all the strength left in me, but it’s all to no avail.

Don’t think about it,
you tell me. There’s nothing else you can do. The straps binding us to the bed are made of leather, not electronics, and you can’t affect them.

“I don’t know what time it is. I don’t know how long it will be until they will come and let me off the bed!” Panic rises, overwhelming.

Do you remember when I said this world didn’t need to be real? That we could make another world that’s more real?

“Yes.”

We can do it, and we can hide there. Close your eyes
.