Daygo's Fury (40 page)

Intermingled among the grass fields were large expanses of crops that Liam did not recognise. There was an occasional small patch of a vividly red flower that Liam’s eye was drawn to.

They spoke little on the ride from the city. Vara seemed a quiet, sturdy man. Ensio, who had come across as so domineering and dangerous within the gaolhouse, seemed to loosen up on the open road, engaging both Vara and Liam in conversation as much as possible and steering towards light topics and silly jokes. His angular face often split wide into a smile, and he had a habit of looking at Liam from the corners of his eyes, as though seeing some hidden joke behind his words. In this roundabout, friendly manner he cajoled more from Liam than he had intended to give.

However, Liam never lost the feeling that he could turn deadly at the drop of a coin, if the situation warranted it.

Finally, Liam decided to ask Ensio how he had ended up in the gaolhouse, though he could nearly guess. Ensio looked at him from the corner of his eye, considering, before he answered, glancing across at Vara as he did so. He told Liam that he had been taken there after the city watch had been alerted. A troop of their men had happened on the scene and found Liam as the sole survivor, lying unconscious amidst the blood and torn limbs. Not knowing what else to do, they had taken him to the gaol and incarcerated him. As the city watch did not generally get themselves involved in the slums unless there is a particularly bad blood bath, as there was, they felt the situation sufficiently resolved. They would hold Liam until the gang came to pay the proper bribe for his release. Only the swordbearer had arrived first. He had been forced to pay almost three times that which he believed the gang would have had to pay. None of it really surprised Liam, though he now wished he had not asked. It confronted him with what he had done, with what had happened.

Ensio looked at him sharply as he finished, but Liam simply turned his head away silently, staring back out over the fields.

He had told Ensio that he tortured them because they killed Racquel. But in truth he did not know why. He could barely remember doing so and the memories he had seemed more like dreams than real memories, there was a surreal gloss to them. Liam still did not know if they were actually his memories or if they were nightmares he had dreamed up in the cell. Until the swordsman had told him of the torture, he was not sure if he had done it.

He remembered the flames. He remembered kneeling before them. He remembered … what that meant to him, at that time; the terrible, terrified certainty that he had come to. He remembered the man’s words, as he had walked towards him.
Your bitch is as dead as you.
The snide, cruel expression. The sadistic glee that lit up in his eyes. Then a cloud, a sense, a completeness. An openness, becoming one with all that he was, a pureness of expression, undiluted, unadulterated and unlike anything he had known.

That was all that he was left with. A sense of it, an imprint of emotion, like a red mark left on his vision without remembering the light that had caused it. A general feel of what had happened and vague, gruesome flashes; images that somehow did not seem real. And a sense of foreboding. What had happened? What had he done? What had he become?

It was a chilling thought, one that he kept from his mind, but it lurked, like a repeated, inaudible whisper of something he should not know, something that he tried not to hear, tried to ignore; afraid that if he listened too closely, he might decipher its meaning.

They were only two hours outside the city when they called a halt. They would spend the night out in the open, on top of the hill facing Teruel, with the Belvoir forest to either side. Once the horses had been unsaddled and tethered and the bedrolls spread, Ensio commanded Liam to kneel.

“Now I want your oath,” he said as Liam did so. “You are a believer of the Sevi Natan, am I correct?” Liam nodded. “Then repeat after me. I swear by Levitas and by Daygo, all that is and all that ever can be, by the flow of life, movement and time, on my hope of rebirth, of contentment within the Daygo stream, on fear of fire and damnation. I swear on myself and all I hold dear, that I will not break this sacred bond. That I will pledge myself to the service of the swordbearers and the Keisland nation until so released, and that I will live in service to, and under the rule of, Ensio Fahme, until such service commences or, in the lack of, for two years henceforth.” Once Liam had finished repeating the words sentence by sentence, Ensio unsheathed his sword and put the flat tip underneath his chin. “Now you have spoken the words, do you know their meaning?”

“Yes.”

“And do you now, once more, under no duress, swear to abide by them?”

“Yes.”

“You swear?”

“I swear.”

Ensio turned the sword underneath Liam’s chin so that the sharp end of the blade touched the skin. Liam could almost feel his skin splitting to the razor edge. “Then hear this, Liam. You remember what I said to you earlier today.” It wasn’t a question. “Every word was the truth. I did not need to come to you. I did not need to pay for your release or to take you from that despot behind you. I have given you life where there was none. You are in my debt. I will not ask of you anything that is not within your own benefit to do or which is not an honourable request. I am giving you a chance for a
real
life, not what you had in there.” His eyes flicked towards the city behind him once more. His eyes turned back to Liam with steel in them, the hard lines of his face spoke of hard and simple truth. “You betray this gift, you betray your oath. You fail to live up to your part of the bargain and I
will
kill you, before the day is done.” He paused.

“Look at me,” he said, “and know that I speak the truth.” Liam looked at him and knew it for true. Every muscle in the man’s body spoke of stern, unbending resolve. The sword turned and spun upwards from Liam’s neck with a flick of his wrist that seemed impossibly swift, and Liam had a sudden image of it coming down with equal, easy speed to slice his head from his shoulders. He glanced at the blade, wishing for a moment for it to fall, but Ensio turned the sword and sheathed it with smooth efficiency.

“Now rise,” he said, with a smile that Liam found off-putting. He grasped Liam’s shoulder as he stood up. “And be ready to live again.”

Liam waited for him to relinquish his grip and, once he did, he turned and walked to his bedroll, uncaring of the life he had pledged himself to or any life at all.

******

His eyes shot open suddenly …
be riding that bitch of yours … I’ll be riding that bitch of yours tonight …
He did not move an inch; he was frozen in terror as though he had seen a beast venture into their campsite. His body was covered in a cold sweat.
I’ll be riding that bitch of yours …
The words echoed around and around in his head. Was this a dream or was it real? Is that what he had shouted at him, or had he just now dreamt it up? Was this his mind, playing a terrible trick on him? All of a sudden he was back there again, in front of those flames.

His heartbeat quickened. He could feel panic and anxiety bubble up within him. He had seen the flames, their home burning high into the sky. He had left Racquel within, that was the last place he had seen her. She had a badly hurt leg. She would not have been very mobile. Could she have gotten out? Would they have just set it alight without looking? Would they have set it alight with her inside? She was beautiful. She was worth more than that. Did they take her?

Why had he been so certain that she was dead, why did he think her inside, burnt alive? Did he even have time to think? It was just a gut reaction, a first instinct. He had known! He had known! And the man had said it, the words,
your bitch is as dead as you!
That was confirmation surely, was it not? She was dead and he would be next.

But it did not fit, it did not make sense, it was not the gang’s way. They used everything, they exploited everything. But he said she was dead! And the flames, the house! It was gone, it was dust!

I’ll be riding that bitch of yours …

“Noooo,” he screamed out into the open night. “Noooooo!”

“Liam?”

He lifted his hands up to the side of his head and pulled at his hair and ears. It was a dream. It was a bad dream. He had not heard what he said. If he had heard, he would have heard! But the words seemed sure, they were there, right there, like a certain memory.

He turned his head to look back to the city, the slums; dimly flickering lights. He could not go back. He could not. She was dead. How could he wish for her to be dead? But she was, surely! What if she’s alive? She’s there, thrown in to some Lev-forsaken whorehouse, doing Lev knows what … But he cannot go back! He can’t face it. Those words were false. But they felt true.

What could he do anyway? He could never rescue her. Ensio said he would kill him. She was probably dead anyway. How could he wish that? Would she leave him—ever? He couldn’t … He couldn’t …

Get the money and be gone, get the money and be gone …

Tears streaked down his face. His body trembled and shook. He curled up into a ball, his eyes wide, watching the flickering lights of Teruel. The inner city shone brightest, the outer city slightly dimmer, the slums barely at all, almost lost in the blackness.

******

Ensio nudged him awake with the tip of his toe. Liam’s eyes opened slowly on his still body.

“Time to go,” came Ensio’s gruff voice. The dawn light was peeking over the horizon behind Liam. It still had not quite found the city spread out before him. The night now felt like a long, terrible dream, but Liam knew that it was not.

He was slow to rise. By the time that he did, Ensio and Vara had their small camp cleared up, their movements brisk and efficient, performed with practiced confidence. Liam took a few steps from the camp, leaving his bedrolls on the floor. He looked out over the city before him.

“Hey! We’re not here to clear up after you! Roll that up or walk to Darwin!”

Liam ignored Vara’s dull voice.

“Did you hear me?”

From there, he could see that the slums were easily as large as the city proper itself, spread-eagled wide and haphazardly around the walls. The Great Roads were just visible from the hill they stood on, separating the sprawling mass, the only sense of order within it.

He glanced to his side, at the forest that lay there, surprisingly sparse. There was no unbroken ceiling of leaves, branches and flowers for him to walk beneath. The trees seemed to show as much reluctance to embrace as people, shunning one another instead in their climb to the blue light overhead. If he could but climb too.

He heard rushed footsteps behind him and then a hand on his shoulder, pulling him around roughly. Liam barely glanced at the angry-faced Vara as he walked, with a push, back towards his bedroll. A flick of his eyes saw Ensio leaning against his horse’s rump, watching him silently.

He rolled up his bedroll, tying it with the straw-like material sewn into its end. He hefted it onto his shoulder and walked to his pack animal, tying it onto the front of the saddle horn silently. He then lifted himself onto the wide animal and waited, teeth clenched, eyes straight ahead. Ensio stood watching him for a moment longer before he turned his head and nodded to Vara. They mounted their horses and left Teruel behind them in the dust.

Seventy-five generations of time, Niisa thought, as he opened his eyes and looked around the cave at the humming priests, lost within their commune. And is there no ending in Daygo? Is there no change? Niisa smiled.

“Return to nature,” he said softly. “You were lost. Be found again. Your suffering is at an end.”

He sat for a moment longer, staring into the green eyes of a panther.

When he left the cave, he left only peace. The water trickled tranquilly. The walls were damp, they were calm, content; they were stone. The ground was grass, rock, soil. The air was thick, warm, heavy with moisture; it was air. The leaves of the trees rustled gently on branches that swayed in the breeze, growing slowly from the trunk that rooted into the soil of the ground. It rose to the sun and grew green with its light. It was a tree. A leaf fell off and it was a leaf, no longer a tree, it would become soil, perhaps rock, or water.

Niisa smiled. He was a man, but more than a man. He held his palms out to either side of his shoulders and faced the sky. He stood open, for a time, bidding farewell to the space he had lived on.

In the southern lands, he would start a new order. An order dedicated to learning and greater knowledge, dedicated to uncovering all the mysteries of Daygo and the red moon. He looked up at the sky. He did not know how many years it would be, but he knew that Daygo would guide him to ultimate success. And then he might watch the grass grow again, until such a time as he died and was reborn. Then they could all live in silent serenity. Together, with large numbers, they could discover the fifth stage of communion, and the sixth, until wisdom and knowledge presented a solution to a problem Niisa did not yet understand.

He had changed since the killing of his sister. He was grateful for all that she had offered him, for all that he had learned through her life. He missed her on occasion, especially as he woke in the mornings and there was still a residual desire to stretch with her, to follow a routine he had known since birth. But for that, too, he was grateful, for it furthered his understanding of his fellow man. Through her death he had learned something of what loss was, what grief and the ensuing sadness was for many of his species. It was the loss of routine and habit, the loss of familiarity, the loss of company and support, the loss of things that one had become accustomed to. But to mourn change was an affliction of the self, an affliction of ignorance. Daygo, life itself, was change.

It was time. They had served their purpose. Ignorant of it, their lives, the lives of the countless forebears before them, had brought them this far, to teach him, so that he was now as he was, ready to move forward. They had brought him to where he needed to be. They could rest now. They were returned to the source, joined in peace with the all-thing, of nature.

First, he would visit that centre of learning talked of by the priest, the city of Darwin.

~~~~