The Heretic Land (3 page)

‘An amazing city,’ Bon said. ‘I’ll tell you all about it one day.’

‘No need,’ Leki said lightly. ‘It’s in the past now. So, what were you afraid of for Venden?’

‘I was afraid they’d send him down into the depths,’ Bon said. ‘You do know the story of why New Kotrugam is new?’

‘Of course. The fireball from the gods. Shore and Flaze combining to punish Kotrugam for its sins, wiping it from the world, seeding New Kotrugam as a perfected model of the old, tainted city.’

‘Yeah, the gods,’ Bon said. He watched Leki as he did so, but there was no reaction. ‘Something fell from the sky, from the space beyond the world, and wiped out the ancient city. You can see evidence all over. What do you think the city walls are? Why is New Kotrugam so much lower than the surrounding landscape?’

Leki only shrugged.

‘The city lies in an impact crater,’ Bon said, and verbalising the forbidden story gave him a thrill. He glanced at the priest across the hold, head bowed, apparently sleeping. Another man leaned close to listen, and Bon no longer cared. They were all criminals here. ‘The city walls are where the ground was rippled from the blast, rocks and dust and the smashed remains of Old Kotrugam thrown up and landing in concentric rings around the hole it made in the world. I’m certain that’s the truth, though it’s hidden. That’s what happened, though it denies the Fade. So people are scared of the truth.’

‘You’re
talking very loudly,’ Leki said.

‘Does that scare you?’ Bon asked. He leaned in close enough to smell her for the first time.

‘Where were you afraid that they would send your son?’ she asked quietly.

‘Down. Beneath the city, into the catacombs. It’s said that whatever annihilated Old Kotrugam is buried down there still, and sometimes senior Fade priests choose an exceptional child from outlying communities to venture down and commune with it. The story they reveal is that they’re communicating with the gods. But they know.’

‘You’re suggesting that they lie,’ Leki said.

‘Of
course
they lie, about everything! Isn’t that why you’re here? Because you doubt the lie?’

Leki blinked slowly. ‘You feared for Venden,’ she prompted.

‘They send them down, and when these people finally surface again they’re dying, skin boiling, flesh melting. The priests write down all their mad ravings and translate them as messages from the Fade. And I thought … I thought Venden might be chosen.’

‘But he wasn’t,’ Leki said. ‘So what
did
happen to him?’

‘He was accepted into the Guild of Inventors,’ Bon said.

‘Even
I’ve
heard of them.’ Leki sounded impressed, but her voice remained uncertain, balanced. She already knew that this tale did not end well.

‘He was as pleased as me. He was still a child really, even at thirteen, because he spent more time inside his own head than outside with friends or girls. A tutor was assigned him, and once every moon this man made the trip from New Kotrugam to Venden’s school in Gakota. He set Venden tasks, which he completed easily. He asked him for research contemplations on some of the constructs and devices being investigated by the Guild, and more than once the tutor told me some of
Venden’s ideas had been incorporated. But all the while, his true interest lay elsewhere. He didn’t want to invent, he wanted to investigate. And he did, every chance he had. Investigating Skythe, and the Skythian War, and he believed
nothing
he was being told.’

‘Strange, a boy so young interested in something so old.’

‘Perhaps,’ Bon said. He fell silent, closing his eyes and remembering one of the last times he’d set eyes on his son. Venden had been sitting at the table in their small kitchen, a construct in pieces before him. He was placing each piece precisely in size order, from the smallest washers, to gasp valves, to steam cells and stark gills, concentrating so hard that he had not noticed his father watching. And beside the deconstructed device – Bon never had known its intent, and had never seen it remade – was a single, old parchment, little wider than Venden’s hand. The designs were a mystery to Bon, but Venden moved his finger just above the parchment and whispered unknown words. He was not translating, but reading. Bon coughed. Venden stood and knocked the chair over, and snatched the parchment from the table. Even when he saw that it was his father, he hid the thing behind his back.

‘The Guild found out,’ Leki said.

‘The next day Venden walked to school on his own, without even saying goodbye. I’d missed those morning walks along the river with him, but he was growing older, and … and a boy and his father, they drift apart. You understand? Independence is a lonely thing.

‘I know from his few friends that he reached the school. And after that, I know nothing. Venden vanished. The school could tell me nothing, other than he’d been growing more distant and difficult to communicate with. His teacher told me she’d put that down to his Guild involvement.’

‘And the Guild?’

‘I wrote
to them many times. No reply. I made three journeys to New Kotrugam to visit them. Each time it was the same – two days riding there, two days waiting in one of the Guild’s contact offices with no result, two days back. They never even acknowledged to me that Venden had been one of their students. I was invisible to them.’ Bon shook his head and leaned back against the bulkhead.

‘You never found …?’

‘His body? No. But the Guild would have disposed of him well.’

‘And since then you’ve been following his research.’

‘I found a box in the wall of his room. It was filled with books, parchments, maps and testaments. And other things, dangerous and rare. There was even …’ He trailed off, shaking his head gently. The ship jarred as a heavy wave struck, and people around them cried out in fear. But this was only the sea.

‘You can trust me,’ Leki said.

‘Like I trusted my friends?’

‘You were betrayed?’

Bon nodded and sighed. ‘As a young man, I was a bookbinder, but I’ve been interested in history, too. Skythe’s especially. The histories we’re told, and those that others claim to be true. They fascinated me. And so following what Venden had been researching felt like the right thing to do. A way to honour him. Everything I did was dedicated to him, and I continued his notes from where he’d left them, transcribing accounts in the old Skythian tongue, analysing stolen secrets that smelled old but still persisted. I was never …’ He waved a hand dismissively. ‘Never quite as dedicated as him, perhaps. I would go through phases of study, and longer periods when the box was shut away again and I barely even existed.’ His voice had grown weak, swallowed by those dark, lethargic times.

‘And then?’

‘A stupid
mistake. I left the box open and its contents spread to view. I received a visit from a volunteer for the local Fade church. I’d never seen her before; just bad luck. She was knocking on doors.
Do you believe enough? Do you pay homage as you should?
’ He trailed off again, anger stealing his voice.

‘She saw something she shouldn’t have.’

The story needed no ending, and Bon felt sick from the recollections. He wished the sea would whip into a storm and make him vomit. Wished the spineback would return and carve the ship in two, giving him a reason for his sadness, his hopelessness. They were familiar wishes. Often, he contemplated his own death with nothing but relief.

‘You’re not convinced he’s dead, are you?’ she asked.

‘Of course not,’ Bon whispered. ‘What sort of a father would I be if I just gave up?’

Leki placed her hand on his leg and squeezed, and her warmth was a shock to him. It was a tender contact, friendly, not sexual. He took great comfort from it.

‘So what about you?’ he asked.

Leki’s eyes glimmered in the candlelight. But she did not reply.

‘Leki?’

She leaned her head on his shoulder, hand still resting on his. Her warmth bled into him.

‘My story is complicated, and for another time,’ she said. ‘For now, we have a harsh night ahead of us.’

What do you mean?
Bon thought, but he did not ask. He had no wish to discuss with her what harshness might come. Right then, he was living the closest thing to a calm, perfect moment that he had experienced for years.

He closed his eyes and relished the time.

* * *

All through
that terrible night, Bon Ugane wondered just how Leki had known.

The seas rose, hurling the ship into the valleys between waves, crashing down upon it, water pouring into the holds through deck gratings. With the water came stinging things, hand-sized crustaceans bearing whip-claws that scuttled across the floor, clicking and hissing. One old man was stung on the foot and he started screaming, hacking at his appendage with a knife in an attempt to open it up and let out the scorching pain. The prisoners started a stomping dance. Shells crunched. The screaming continued until the man fainted away, and another man started tending his wounds.

On deck, there was more screaming as the crew and guards tackled the results of wave after wave. Candles were extinguished. The ship rolled, and in the darkness more people were stung.

Bon and Leki stayed closed, pressed together when they could, trying to hold hands if they were flung from their seats. They did not talk for most of the night, because the sea’s roaring was too loud, and the need to speak too slight. Touch was communication enough.

Other things boarded the ship. Bon heard them against the sides of the hull, a thud followed by the splintering of wood as they climbed from the sea up onto deck. Shouts, running, scampering, fighting, it soon became impossible to distinguish one noise from another. And all the while the sea roared against the hull from all sides, its endless noise bearing witness to events no one could see.

In the darkest part of the night, when clouds blocked the pale moonlight and the ship dropped from wave to wave, something caressed the back of Bon’s hand. He thought it was Leki, so he reached out. He touched something wet and hard, and then a piercing pain erupted in the fleshy part of his thumb.

Bon screamed
as his vision turned white with agony. He reached for his knife, because to remove his hand was the only escape from this pain, surely, the only way to remove the fire?

Something knocked him sideways. He fell from consciousness, and the ship faded away.

In Bon’s dreams, his son Venden – older now, almost an adult – waited with a giant, unnatural shadow at his back.

‘Bon,’ the voice said, and it was calm and confident. ‘Bon, we’re almost there, and if they fling you into the sea like this, you’ll drown.’ He kept his eyes closed for a little while longer, enjoying the darkness that hid away everything that might have happened.

Then the pain in his hand kicked in, and he had to open his eyes.

‘That hurts so much I think I’m going to puke.’

‘Puke now, then. Get it all up. We’ve got a long swim ahead.’

‘Swim?’ He looked up at Leki where she must have been sitting beside him ever since he’d passed out. Then he glanced around the hold at the other prisoners. They were afraid, expectant, alert, their eyes wide and heavier clothing tied into clumps at their feet. All but the priest, who remained in the same place and pose as before. ‘Swim?’ he asked again.

‘You think they land us on the island?’ a young man close to the hatch said. ‘I’m amazed they’ve gone in this far. Lillium’s tits, half of us won’t make it to the beach.’ Someone in the shadows gasped, though at the man’s blasphemy or his prediction, Bon could not tell.

‘Come on,’ Leki said. ‘They’ve got to deal with the other hold first.’

‘What about the other hold?’

Leki helped him
to his feet without answering, examining his hand, then tugging at his heavy jacket. The less they wore, the easier it would be to swim. Several had stripped completely, and they stood pale and vulnerable in the weak light.

‘Something got in,’ the young man said when no one else answered. ‘We heard it. Heard
them
.’ He shook his head and reached up for the hatch, rattling it in its frame. Eager to get out, move on.

Bon caught Leki’s eye, and she looked grim.

His hand was bound tightly in a soft white cloth, wound several times then tied in a knot. It throbbed beneath the binding, sending warm waves of pain up his arm to nestle in his shoulder.

‘Sorry I hit you,’ Leki said.

The hatch rattled open, and Bon grabbed his loose jacket and boots. She’d knocked him out to stop him cutting off his own hand. Then she’d sat and tended him. As the guard shouted down at them –
Up you come, bastards, paradise awaits!
– he could not help but wonder why.

There was a pile of corpses on deck. The surviving prisoners from the other hold stood at the railing, huddled close together and shivering in their nakedness. There were only six of them left. The corpses were swollen and blackened with poison, and some of them showed evidence of something having chewed at them. Above the corpses, three spiky shapes hung from the rigging. The killers, Bon guessed. Sea creatures as large as a man, with sharp limbs and stinging things, liquid eyes and mandibles still caked with the dried blood and flesh of their victims.

‘Over there!’ one of the guards shouted, pointing at the prisoners at the railing. ‘Get them off! What are you waiting for, the Fade’s blessing? Get them
off
there!’

North of the anchored ship, waves broke against a rocky shore. It was
a rugged, seemingly uninhabited coastline, stark and windswept, and the few trees Bon could see were skeletal and tall, their branches whipping the air with long spiked leaves. Two dark shapes moved back and forth across the beach, but from this distance he could not tell whether they were human. Behind the beach the land rose steadily inland, and a veil of mist hid whatever lay beyond.

Two guards edged closer to the huddled prisoners, swords drawn, and started nudging them over the side.

Bon gasped, and a chill went through him. A woman shouted an objection, and the guard in charge stormed forward, leaning down to press his face close to hers, forcing her back against the cabin wall. ‘You swim with all your limbs, or we hold you down and cut one off, and
then
you swim. You decide.’