The Soterion Mission (8 page)

Another Magus appeared in the doorway. “The High Father says it is your doing. You must tell us where they are.”

By now Taja and Cyrus were wide awake and on their feet. “Wait a moment,” said Cyrus, wiping the sleep from his eyes and running his fingers through his tousled brown hair. “You yourselves removed Roxanne and Corby, Navid’s dog, and now you ask us where they are…Is this some kind of joke?”

The Magus who had been first to enter made a scornful sound through his teeth. “The Children of Gova do not joke. We are serious people and –”

“I want my dog!” shouted Navid, rushing over to the man and grabbing the front of his robe. “Where’s Corby? Tell me!”

Cyrus and Taja pulled him back before he could harm the startled man, and the second Magus resumed the explanation. “The heretic, the Zed woman you know as Roxanne –”

“She’s not a Zed!” interrupted Cyrus. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

The Magus gave him a look that was part apprehension, part contempt. “You do not know, but the High Father had decreed that the heretic should die this morning –”

Cyrus opened his mouth in disbelief. “What did you say?” he growled, striding up to the man and almost spitting the words in his face. “Repeat those words, you freak – if you dare!”

The two Magi stepped back and glanced nervously at each other. “Violence is not the way of Gova,” stammered the first.

“Hang your Gova! Hang him on that evil fence of yours!” yelled Cyrus, finally giving voice to the thoughts that had been building from the moment the gate had slammed behind them. “You’re mad, all of you! Do you hear? You’re twisted! More like Zeds than true Constants!”

“Take heed lest you too fall into the pit of heresy, Cyrus,” said a familiar voice from outside the door. It was Ozlam. “Control your fury and hear the High Father of the Children of Gova,” he continued, coming into the room and standing next to the Magi. “I will enlighten you.”

Taja, who until this moment had kept quiet, urged Cyrus and Navid, for all their sakes, to hold back until they had heard what Ozlam had to say. He thanked her and resumed his explanation.

The previous evening, when glorious Gova had retired to sleep, Roxanne had been taken to the prison chamber to await her sentence. Yes, as the Magus had said, she would have been executed in the morning.

Cyrus swore. “Sanctimonious liar!” he went on. “And you said no violence. Huh! I promise you, if she hasn’t got out and you really have killed her, it’ll be your turn next. As painfully as I can manage, too!”

Ozlam remained curiously unruffled. Resuming, he said that, contrary to Cyrus’ accusation, he had not lied when he said no violence would be used against Roxanne: burying alive – “interment” he called it – would simply have involved shovelling earth on to her. That was hardly a violent act, was it?

“So what happened?” asked Cyrus, still shaking with rage.

This morning, Ozlam said, before the rising of Gova, a pair of Magi had gone to the chamber in which Roxanne was being held. She was not there. The door remained locked, but she had vanished. Shortly afterwards, they found Corby was also missing. If the other members of the mission had not freed the heretic, she must have managed somehow to get away on her own and was now making her way back to rejoin the Zeds. She was taking them a present, too: a fine hunting dog named Corby.

A stunned silence followed Ozlam’s speech. All three Tallins struggled to make sense of it. Cyrus felt it most deeply. He was pretty sure Ozlam was lying and that Roxanne and Corby had both been secretly done away with. But what if the story were true? If Roxanne had managed to get out of the prison, wouldn’t she also have tried to release them? The fact that she hadn’t might mean Taja’s suspicions had been right all along: Roxanne really was a Zed spy, a traitor who had deliberately entrapped him. It was too painful to contemplate.

In the end, Cyrus realised, it didn’t matter which version of events he believed. Whether she was dead or had run away, Roxanne had gone. That intense, fleeting joy, the most powerful emotion he had ever felt, was over. The smile that had stirred his heart, the kindly light behind those glorious green eyes, the laughter as she had tried to teach him to read, the hand in the darkness…None of it ever again. No more Roxy.

As if battered by physical blows, Cyrus covered his face with his hands and crumpled to his knees. What had he done? He had abandoned his community and most of his friends, thrown away a promising career, broken the principles he had sworn to uphold – for an insubstantial dream. For nothing.

What happened during the rest of the day, he neither noticed nor cared. Ozlam and the Magi went out and the door was rebarred. Later, he was aware of Navid coming over and speaking to him. Shortly afterwards, the door opened and Navid left. All this time, Taja said nothing. He was conscious only of her sitting quietly beside him.

By mid-afternoon, Cyrus was beginning to focus his thoughts again. He was hungry and wolfed down the plate of bread and fruit brought by the Magi. After that, as his head gradually cleared, he talked to Taja. He started by asking where Navid was. Had they taken him off to be buried alive next to Roxanne?

The truth was, if anything, worse. Devastated by the loss of Corby and the failure of the mission, Navid had decided to become a Child of Gova. At first, Cyrus couldn’t believe it. Then he remembered his friend’s trance-like expression when listening to Ozlam and what he had said about living in this settlement if there were no Roxanne or Corby…

Cyrus’ thoughts turned to Salama, Navid’s wedun back in Della Tallis. She might have had their second child by now. How would she feel if she knew what had happened? The only consolation was that, when she agreed to Navid going on the mission, she must have known there was a good chance he would never come back. Even so, Cyrus hoped she never learned the true reason for her man’s disappearance.

The more they talked, the more Cyrus’ hatred of Ozlam and his Children of Gova grew. The Zeds were wicked, yes, but in a different, direct way. Their cruelty, though despicable, was straightforward. In this place, evil was hidden beneath a cloak of goodness, which somehow made it worse. Navid, the true and honest friend he had known all his life, the man who had previously put his duty to the Constant cause before everything else, had been lured away by ridiculous talk of magic and Gova and polishing the panel. It was shameful, truly shameful.

Cyrus’ thoughts went back to Roxanne. She had known the truth about this place, hadn’t she? Perhaps that was why she…No, it was impossible.

“Taja,” he asked eventually, looking up at his one remaining companion, “what do you think really happened to – well, you know who?”

“Roxanne?”

“Yes, Roxanne.”

“I’m sorry to say it, Cyrus, but I was probably right all along.” She spoke so reluctantly, with so much understanding, that for the first time Cyrus wondered whether he should have paid more attention to her from the beginning. Her judgement had generally been sound on previous occasions.

“You don’t honestly think they’ve buried her, do you?” Taja continued.

“That Ozlam’s capable of anything.”

“Maybe. But don’t you think those Magi who came here this morning sounded genuine?”

“Perhaps. Yet what if Ozlam had lied to them?” Cyrus saw where her line of reasoning was leading and was trying not to follow.

Taja shook her head. “That little group, Ozlam and his Magi, seem to run the place. The only other people we’ve seen helping out were those boys who ran off with our weapons. They’re probably future Magi under training.” She sighed. “No. The only real possibility is that your friend found out what she wanted – about us or about this place – and is now passing it on to Timur.”

The mention of Timur reminded Cyrus of what Roxanne had said in her sleep on the day she arrived in Della Tallis. He couldn’t imagine for one second that she had anything but detestation for the
leader of the Grozny Zeds. On the other hand, might he have some sort of unspoken hold over her? Could she have agreed to act as his spy to avoid further torture? Even the bravest human beings have their breaking points…Poor Roxy! It was just possible, he supposed. Anything was now possible.

“You remember how she told you not to touch the gates, Cyrus?”

“Of course.”

“Well, that was after those bits of plastic had been thrown over the fence, wasn’t it?”

“I’ve thought of that,” said Cyrus. “She understood the power of the fence, didn’t she? There’s something she didn’t have time to tell us.”

“Which means she may have worked out how to escape.”

Cyrus shook his head, still refusing to accept Taja’s cruel logic. “She was locked in a room. How did she get out of that?”

Taja shrugged. “No idea, Cyrus. But we don’t have to worry, do we? It’s just you and me now. Like it was before.” A smile flickered across her face. “Just you and me.”

Cyrus looked into her black eyes. There was one matter he had to get straight. “Taja, tell me honestly why you joined this mission.”

She tossed her curls of ebony hair and laughed. “I’ve told you, Cyrus. I didn’t trust Roxanne and…” She paused, expressionless, staring him straight in the face.

“Go on.”

“You know the answer. I came to be with you.”

“Oh, Taja!” he sighed, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t have done it, should you?”

“Why not? I’m not made of wood, Cyrus. Yes, there are some things I can’t control. Besides, it was worth it. I’ve got you all to myself now, haven’t I?”

Cyrus turned away and said nothing. Her tone alarmed him more than her words. It had sounded so confident, so sure of itself, almost obsessed. Shocked, he realised it reminded him of another voice he had heard a lot of recently.

Never had Cyrus felt this low. Everything he had set his heart on had crumbled away. He was in agonies of loss and uncertainty over the disappearance of Roxanne, wary of being by himself with Taja, and depressed by Navid’s desertion and the failure of the Soterion Mission. Had he been left in this state, imprisoned and deeply sad, the suffocating blanket of his depression may have enfolded him entirely.

As it turned out, he was not alone with his melancholy for long. In the middle of the night, the door of the room where he and Taja were held opened silently to admit a most unexpected visitor.

Jumshid’s geographical knowledge proved more accurate than Sheza’s. After he had fed his rival to the crocodiles, he advanced quickly up the bank of the No-Man until, rounding a bend, he found himself staring at the broken ruins of the bridge with its central span of two rusting rails.

The Captain scratched his head. What were his orders? Break the bridge down or shoot anyone trying to cross. That should be easy enough, even though there was now just one of him. First, he’d have a go at destruction. If that didn’t work, he’d position himself on the other side of the river and shoot dead anyone who set foot on the bridge. He grinned, congratulating himself on having picked up Sheza’s bow. Timur would never know what had happened to its owner – and all the glory would be Jumshid’s!

Choosing a comfortable tree to sleep in, the Captain settled down for the night. He would start work on the bridge in the morning.

While Jumshid was preparing to destroy the mission’s escape route, Timur was supervising the other element of his plan. He was cheered by the discovery of Zavar’s body, already rendered unrecognizable by the scavenging of birds and wild animals, because it told him he was now tracking four Constants, not five. That would make things easier when it came to a fight.

The settlement of the Children of Gova, which Timur came across shortly after they had found the remains of Zavar, presented a fresh problem. His dogs had picked up human scent near the edge of the canyon. He pondered the significance of this. Might it be Roxanne and her Tallin companions? Possibly. Well, if they had gone inside that murderous fence his quest was over and he could turn his mind to other matters. No one who passed through those shining gates ever came out again. On the other hand, the chances of his Constants having found the remote colony were slight. Even if they had, they were almost certainly too sensible to enter.

No, he concluded, whether the scent was that of the group he was after or not, it must be still ahead of him. Nevertheless, as a precaution he ordered two men to stay behind and report back to him immediately if they saw anything unusual. It wasn’t a sensible plan. Having hung around the perimeter of the ravine for several days and seen nothing untoward, the men eventually wandered off with the intention of re-joining their tribe. Hopelessly lost, they died of thirst two weeks later.

Pressing on past the Gova settlement, Timur had spread the rest of his men out like a net, sweeping across the landscape. If the Constants got wind of where he was and tried to double back or flee to the side, his warriors would intercept them. With every moment that passed, the closer they came to the river and the tighter they drew the net. This time, he told himself, there would be no escape.

Nevertheless, getting Zeds to do anything other than fight was no easy matter, and keeping them in some sort of straight line was taxing Timur’s leadership skills to the limit. Whipping those who strayed slowed the operation down too much. He had greater success rewarding those who stayed in line with a night among the breeding slaves. The idea worked as an incentive but an orgy of violation left the men slow and listless the following morning.

Nor was Timur helped by the absence of Sheza and Jumshid. Both of them, although far from bright, would have been capable of taking control of part of the line. Still, the situation gave others an opportunity to show their mettle, and no one benefited from this more than Giv, the willing youth who had first come to the Malik’s notice beside the stream.

Words are not exactly Giv’s strength, Timur reflected one hot afternoon as they combed through an area of scattered thorn bushes, but he’s loyal and keen. Somewhere, deep inside his thick skull, he probably has a brain, too. Quite a sharp one. Why, if Sheza fails me, I might do worse than train up Giv as my successor. In fact, I might prepare them both. Nothing like a bit of rivalry to keep a Zed on his toes.