The smile she flashed him almost made him hesitate, but before he could call out something inviting and possibly improper she was riding after the others.
Damn! Smiles like that don’t land on me every day.
Scowling, he ordered his Ve’Gath round and then set off on the back trail.
The Hunters and drones fell into his wake.
One of the tiny birds tried landing in Stormy’s beard. His curse sent it screeching away.
BOOK THREE
TO CHARGE THE SPEAR
And now the bold historian
Wields into play that tome
Of blistering worth
Where the stern monks
Cower under the lash
And through the high window
The ashes of heretics drift
Down in purity’s rain
See the truths stitched in thread
Of gold across hapless skin
I am the arbiter of lies
Who will cleanse his hand
In copper bowls and white sand
But the spittle on his lips
Gathers the host to another tale
I was never so blind
To not feel the deep tremble
Of hidden rivers in churning torrent
Or the prickly tear of quill’s jab
I will tell you the manner
Of all things in sure proof
This order’d stone row –
Oh spare me now the speckled fists
This princeps’ purge and prattle
I live in mists and seething cloud
And the breaths of the unseen
Give warmth and comfort to better
The bleakest days to come
And I will carry on in my
Uncertainty, cowl’d in a peace
Such as you could not imagine
CHAPTER EIGHT
Whatever we’re left with
can only be enough,
if in the measure of things
nothing is cast off,
discarded on the wayside
in the strides that take us clear
beyond the smoke and grief
into a world of shocked birth
opening eyes upon a sudden light.
And to whirl then in a breath
to see all that we have done,
where the tombs on the trail
lie sealed like jewelled memories
in the dusk of a good life’s end,
and not one footprint beckons
upon the soft snow ahead,
but feel this sweet wind caress.
A season crawls from earth
beneath mantled folds.
I have caught a glimpse,
a hint of flared mystery,
shapes in the liquid glare.
They will take from us
all that we cradle in our arms
and the burden yielded
makes feathers of my hands,
and the voices drifting down
are all that we’re left with
and shall for ever be enough
TO SLITHER BENEATH THE FISTS OF THE WORLD.
Her name was Thorl. A quiet one, with watchful, sad eyes. Bursting from the cloud of Shards, her screams sounded like laughter. The devouring insects clustered where her eyes had been. They lunged into her gaping mouth, the welters of blood from shredded lips drawing hundreds more.
Saddic cried out his horror, staggered back as if about to flee, but Badalle snapped out one hand and held him fast. Panic was what the Shards loved most, what they waited for, and panic was what had taken Thorl, and now the Shards were taking her.
Blind, the girl ran, stumbling on the jagged crystals that tore her bared feet.
Children edged closer to her, and Badalle could see the flatness in their eyes and she understood.
Strike down, fists, still we slide and slither. You cannot kill us, you cannot kill the memory of us. We remain, to remind you of the future you gave us. We remain, because we are the proof of your crime.
Let the eaters crowd your eyes. Welcome your own blindness, as if it was a gift of mercy. And that could well be laughter. Dear child, you could well be laughing, a voice of memory. Of history, even. In that laugh, all the ills of the world. In that laugh, all the proofs of your guilt.
Children are dying. Still dying. For ever dying.
Thorl fell, her screams deadening to choking, hacking sounds as Shards crawled down her throat. She writhed, and then twitched, and the swarm grew sluggish, feeding, fattening.
Badalle watched the children close in, watched their hands lunge out, snatching wallowing insects, stuffing them into eager mouths. We go round and round and this is the story of the world. Do not flee us. Do not flee this moment, this scene. Do not confuse dislike and abhorrence with angry denial of truths you do not wish to see. I accept your horror and expect no forgiveness. But if you deny, I name you coward.
And I have had my fill of cowards.
She blew flies from her lips, and glanced at Rutt. He clutched Held, weeping without tears. Beyond him stretched out the terrible flat waste of the Glass Desert. Badalle then turned back to study the Snake, eyes narrowing. Torpor unsuited to the heat, the brightness of the sky. This was the sluggish motion of the exhausted. Your fists beat us senseless. Your fists explode with reasons. You beat us out of fear. Out of self-loathing. You beat us because it feels good, it feels good to pretend and to forget, and every time your fist comes down, you crush a little more guilt.
In that old place where we once lived, you decried those who beat their children. Yet see what you have done to the world.
You are all beaters of children.
‘Badalle,’ said Rutt.
‘Yes, Rutt.’ She did not face him again, not yet.
‘We have few days left. The holes of water are gone. We cannot even go back – we will never make it back. Badalle, I think I give up – I – I’m ready to give up.’
Give up. ‘Will you leave Held to the Shards? To the Opals?’
She heard him draw a sharp breath.
‘They will not touch Held,’ he whispered.
No, they won’t, will they. ‘Before Held became Held,’ she said, ‘Held had another name, and that name was Born. Born came from between the legs of a woman, a mother. Born came into this world with eyes of blue, blue as this sky, and blue they remain. We must go on, Rutt. We must live to see the day when a new colour finds Held’s eyes, when Held goes back to being Born.’
‘Badalle,’ he whispered behind her.
‘You don’t have to understand,’ she said. ‘We don’t know who that mother was. We don’t know who the new mother will be.’
‘I’ve seen, at night …’ he faltered then. ‘Badalle—’
‘The older ones, yes,’ she replied. ‘Our own mothers and fathers, lying together, trying to make babies. We can only go back to what we knew, to whatever we remember from the old days. We make it all happen again, even though we know it didn’t work the first time, it’s all we know to do.’
‘Do you still fly in your dreams, Badalle?’
‘We have to go on, Rutt, until Held stops being Held and becomes Born.’
‘I hear her crying at night.’
Her. This is her story: Born becomes Held, Held becomes Mother, Mother makes Born, Born is Held … And the boys who are now fathers, they try to go back, back inside, every night, they try and try.