Daywards (25 page)

The days and nights quickly fell into routine. They'd rise each morning with the sun, gather their gear, and start walking daywards, always daywards. Sometimes Ma Saria would lead them north or south for a while to avoid difficult terrain or to find water, or for some reason known only to herself, but their route always tended daywards again sooner or later.

Several days into the journey, they climbed slowly down from the plateau, their path taking them south along a valley for hours until they emerged onto the coastal plain, and then turned daywards again, following a meandering watercourse that opened out into a shallow, marshy lake, which took days to skirt around.

In the late afternoons, Ma Saria would call a halt and they'd set up their camp, hunt, find firewood, and eat.

They spoke little. All were aware, without saying so, that they were walking from their old, comfortable, secure life into something … new. Something unknown. And at nights Dara would fall asleep beside the fire, staring up at the vaultlights and enjoying the soothing throb of earthwarmth below her aching legs and feet. Sometimes she and Jaran would sleep back-to-back, just as they had as children. More often, though, it was Eyna who'd curl up beside her brother, the two of them sharing their warmth as the nights grew steadily colder.

Often, Dara would wake in the small hours to find Ma Saria sitting silently with her eyes on the fire, her stare fixed and her mind a long way distant. During the days the old woman walked steadily and without complaint, her gait easily matching that of the other three. But Dara suspected, from the tired droop of her shoulders and the careful way she eased herself to the ground at each rest break, that the walk was costing the old woman much more than she was prepared to admit.

Around them, the landscape changed slowly but inexorably. The ground underfoot grew drier and less pliable, the large, majestic trees of the forest gave way to scraggly, wind-bent shrubs, the dense undergrowth replaced by thorny, dried-out patches of desert-brush. The rich greens and browns to which her eyes were accustomed slowly became reds and ochres and even the sky itself took on a different hue – paler, more distant.

Through all this, the one constant – always there below her – was the earthwarmth. Several times a day Dara would stop, draw it up into herself and then reach, down and out into the Earthmother, reassured by the amount of life she'd find around them and, of course, by the comfortable, familiar sparks of Ma, Eyna and Jaran. This last one, though, she always treated hesitantly now, allowing herself only the barest awareness of his consciousness before pulling back again, retreating into her own mind and closing it around her again like a protective cocoon.

If Eyna and Ma were aware of what she was doing, neither gave any indication.

Time stretched and blended, each day so similar to the previous and the following one that Dara began to lose track of how long they'd been walking. They'd been travelling for a lot longer than even her walk to the city with Jaran when, mid-morning one day, Ma Saria stopped abruptly.

‘Look.'

She pointed ahead to where the horizon turned white – a long, gleaming smear of reflective brightness that stretched all the way from the south to the north.

‘What is it?' Eyna asked.

‘Dunno,' said Ma. ‘Guess we'll find out soon, eh? Not a lot of life there, though.'

Dara closed her eyes and reached, and, as Ma Saria had observed, there was a definite line of … not nothingness but of strange emptiness ahead.

‘Is it the Darklands?'

‘Nah.' The old woman shook her head. ‘You'll know when we get there, girl. Trust me on that. This place is just … empty land.'

They continued towards the white line, the ground growing hard and crisp and the vegetation becoming increasingly sparse, until they found themselves walking across a broad, empty plain of glittering, hard-packed sand.

Gradually, the white line resolved itself into a series of sand dunes, the long, curved ridges incredibly high and uniformly wind-carved. Soft, vertical waves of sand ran down from the peaks, and the white sand reflected the sunlight so effectively that Dara found she needed to shield her eyes from the glare.

‘We going through?' she asked

Ma nodded. ‘Don't see any other way.'

‘How far do they go?'

‘You can't feel it for yourself?'

But reaching on that scale was too much for Dara to even contemplate. She'd have to open herself right out for that, and with Jaran there watching …

She shook her head. ‘No.'

Ma Saria raised one eyebrow but didn't comment, and Dara looked away.

‘Let's … look … up.'

Jaran started climbing the first dune, and the girls followed. It took ages to get up the slope to the razor-edged peak, which they peered over, expectantly.

‘Shi!' Dara exclaimed.

On the other side, a sea of sand, one undulating dune after another, each as high as the one they were on, and each a windshaped echo of all the others, stretched over every horizon.

‘We'll never get through that,' Eyna whispered, but Jaran smiled.

‘Not … too bad. Three days … at … most.'

The thought of three days spent in the middle of that lifeless ocean sent a shiver through Dara, but there didn't seem to be any choice. Sliding back down to the base of the dune, where Ma Saria waited patiently, she glanced at the other two. Eyna still seemed concerned, but Jaran had a serene expression on his face.

‘Big?' Ma Saria asked, and all three nodded.

‘It's … not too … bad … though,' Jaran said. ‘We … have water, anyway.'

This was true. They'd refilled their flasks a day earlier at a small spring, and if they were careful it would last three days.

But then what?
Dara wondered.

She didn't get a chance to voice her concern, though, because Ma Saria was already away again, following the line of the dune until it dropped low enough for her to make her ponderous way over the crest and into the first of the inter-dune valleys. In this way, they wound back and forth for hours, single file through the trackless, white wasteland.

‘How do you know which way to go?' Dara asked at one point, and Ma Saria smiled.

‘Done this before. Long time ago, though, and in different country to this. Still, sand is sand, I reckon.'

‘What … country?' Jaran asked, and the two girls stared at him in surprise. Even after the weeks they'd been walking, Jaran still remained silent for the most part.

‘When I was a girl. Back home in the Darklands. When my dad took me from the valley, we spent a few days walking through sandhills like this lot. Red sand there, though.'

‘You can still remember it?' Dara asked.

‘Course I can, girl. Just like you'll always remember the colour of the rocks and trees back at the escarpment. You never lose your home country. Once you've tasted it, reached it, then it's a part of you. That's something you never lose.'

That night they camped in a deep valley. There was no wood for a fire and nothing to hunt, so they simply walked until well after sunset and then settled on the cold sand, chewing on some dry meat and a handful of nuts and washing it down with careful sips from their water flasks.

Three more days of this!
Dara thought as they settled down to sleep.

She lay listening to the moan of the wind between the dunes and the rumble of Ma Saria's snoring, and tried hard to ignore the itching sensation of the sand, which had managed to seep in to every nook and cranny of her clothes and body.

Sleep refused to come, and eventually she sat up, hugging her arms about herself against the chilly breeze and watching the night. Around her, the dunes were painted silver by the moonlight. If she looked closely, she could see a glittering shimmer on the surface of the sand. Idly she traced her fingers through it, feeling the cool sensation of it running, water-like, between her fingers.

She slid to her feet and, leaving the other three slumbering, climbed carefully up the side of the nearest dune, digging her fingers and toes deep into the soft sand and sending gentle cascades slipping away below her. At the peak she flattened out a space to sit, and stared at the silver-tipped dunes rising out of dark troughs in every direction like a frozen, spectral ocean.

Dara felt lost. Dislocated. When Da Janil had died and Ma Saria had first presented the idea of travelling to the Darklands, it seemed natural and obvious. But now she was sitting in the middle of a sandy wasteland, in the middle of the night, far from everything she knew and loved, and Dara wasn't certain any more. Her brother – her twin – had turned against her and then been damaged, and even Eyna, who'd always been so stable and grounding, even she was different out here. Someone else.

A soft sigh escaped her lips and she closed her eyes.

‘Can't sleep?' The sudden sound of Jaran's voice made her jump.

‘Shi, Jaran! You scared me!'

‘Sorry. Didn't … mean to.'

He sat down beside her.

‘Not … your fault, you know.'

‘What isn't?'

‘M … me. This …' He waved his hand at his mouth. ‘Nightpeople did … this. Not … you.'

‘I know that,' she snapped, sounding more churlish than she'd intended.

‘No … you don't.' He took her arm in his own and leaned against her. ‘You think … should have been … you.'

‘Can you reach?'

The abrupt change of topic earned her a quizzical glance.

‘Like … you?'

‘Eyna thinks you can.'

‘Do you?'

Dara looked away. ‘I don't know. I've never considered it.'

Beside her, Jaran was silent, a thoughtful expression on his face. ‘Perhaps,' he finally replied.

‘That's not an answer,' Dara retorted. ‘You either can or you can't.'

‘Sometimes I … just … know. Where things … people … are. Is that … it?'

‘It might be. I don't know. You should ask Ma.'

‘Perhaps. But … rather ask … you … sis.'

‘Look.' Dara pointed up into the sky, where a silver pinprick of light was trailing quickly from the nightwards to the daywards horizon, the line of its route inscribing a perfect arc across the night. ‘Sky … eye,' Jaran said.

‘Do you think they can see us?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘That's your favourite answer at the moment, isn't it?'

That earned her a grin, but it quickly faded.

‘Would you … mind?' he asked.

‘Mind what?'

‘If … I could … reach.'

‘Of course not!'

He didn't reply, but his expression spoke for him, and Dara gave the question more thought. Would she mind? If she was being honest, then possibly she might. Reaching was the one thing she could do that Jaran couldn't. If that was gone, then she'd be just the same as him. No longer special.

She met his stare. ‘Okay, then. Perhaps. But it wouldn't matter.

His expression indicated that this was an answer he was more prepared to accept.

‘Try … me.'

‘Try reaching you?'

He nodded, staring hard at her. ‘Please.'

‘Ma Saria says it's dangerous, if you don't know what you're doing.'

‘You know … Try.'

Dara chewed on her bottom lip. Around them, the night and the sand were motionless, as though they were trapped in some small bubble of time. Only the progress of the sky-eye across the heavens gave any indication of the wider passage of time.

‘You sure?'

‘Jaman.'

Carefully, Dara reached towards her brother's neck, and Jaran stayed completely still, his eyes half-hooding over as he made a conscious effort to relax into himself.

His skin was hot to the touch and, the moment she felt that spark of contact, almost against her will Dara felt herself slipping out, earthwarmth pounding from somewhere below the cold sand and into her, and her mind gliding gently, inevitably, towards the spark of Jaran's consciousness, which now filled the night around her.

There. Told you.

His voice in her head. Normal, like before. No more stuttering or forced pauses. Now his thoughts were her thoughts.

Around them the horizons slid away, just like the first time Ma Saria had reached through her. Around them was cold sand, then warm earth, then water, trees, and … something else. Something new. Air.

Air?

I can feel the rocks!
Jaran's surprise intruded into her own awareness, and she could taste his shock.

You can't usually?

No. Just the sky.

Somewhere, sky knew how far away, a nightbird pounded its way between the trees of a coastal forest. Dara gasped as she felt the swift whirl of its passage through the insubstantial air, the weaving of it between tree trunks as solid as stone.

Further away a cloud bank, warm humidity rising high above the cold land below, built like a wave rising thousands of metres above the coastal fringe.