‘And then in yours.’
‘Aye.’
Frey whistled quietly. ‘Anyone else know about this?’
Outside of the Sammies? You and me.’ He cackled. ‘That’s why they slung me in solitary. Didn’t want me talkin’. I don’t s’pose they reckoned anyone would come lookin’, either.’
‘I wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t managed to get stuck with that damn thing,’ Frey complained, pointing at the relic that Ugrik still held in his brawny arms.
‘Funny how things work out, eh?’ said Ugrik.
‘Hilarious,’ Frey agreed, his eyes narrowing.
‘At least you got cursed by the best,’ said Ugrik, scratching at his cheek.
‘That’s a good point, actually.’ Frey brightened as he looked at his gloved hand. ‘This is an Azryx curse,’ he said with some pride.
‘There you go, then,’ Ugrik said.
Frey returned his attention to the scene below them. ‘You know what this information would be worth to the right people?’
‘You got optimistic all of a sudden,’ Ugrik observed with some surprise. ‘How about we concentrate on sorting out the mess you’re in, first? Sun’s going down.’
He was feeling optimistic. He’d found the place where the relic had come from. Everything seemed possible now. He began to believe there might be a dawn.
Ugrik waved a hand. ‘Down there, by the lakeside. That’s where I found it. We’ll have to skirt round the Sammies, but there’s patrols all over, so be careful.’
Frey couldn’t see the exact building, but he didn’t need to. It didn’t seem all that far. All they had to do was get past the Sammies and put the relic back.
Easy.
Later, they found the eye.
By then they’d made their way downslope, and were nearing the outermost limits of the city. Ugrik had taken to muttering under his breath in Yortish again. They’d both put their shirts back on, warned by the purr and whine of insects that exposed flesh would end up bitten. The foliage rustled with birds and small wildlife. Frey was wondering if there was any danger of encountering big wildlife when he suddenly pulled up short next to a cliff that rose up on their left.
‘Is that an eye?’ he asked.
‘Aye.’
‘That’s what I said. An eye.’
‘And I said aye.’
‘Yes! An eye!’
‘Aye! Aye meaning yes! Aye, it’s an eye!’
‘Oh.’
It was as big as Frey, smooth and white, staring emptily from within a mass of vines. It was set high off the ground, tilted at an angle, without brow or lid. In fact, it was hard to know how he recognised it as an eye at all. Perhaps he’d sensed the proportions of the surrounding face, which he’d mistaken for a cliff at first, masked as it was by trees and creepers. Or perhaps it was because it felt uncomfortably like it was watching him.
Now he had the eye, it was possible to estimate the rest of it. It was the same bone colour as the buildings in the city. He made out the outline of a heavy jaw, sunk into the earth. There seemed to be no nose, whether by design or by the ravages of time, and there was a muzzle of some kind. No human face, then. The head lay askance, half-buried, and it was truly colossal.
‘That,’ he said, he salsquo; is one big statue.’
Ugrik gave a noncommittal grunt. Frey tried to see if the head was attached to a body, but he was foiled by the undergrowth. ‘They had some ugly-arse gods, huh?’ he commented.
When he looked back, Ugrik was holding up a pocket watch and pointing at it impatiently.
‘Oh, right! My imminent death!’ said Frey, slapping his forehead in mock-astonishment. ‘Totally slipped my mind.’
‘I don’t plan on gettin’ caught by the Sammies a second time,’ Ugrik growled. ‘Someone needs to fly me out o’ here when we’re done. And I doubt your crew’d be all that welcomin’ if I came back without you.’
Frey looked him over. ‘You’re not half as crazy as you pretend, are you?’
‘I’m not crazy, nor pretendin’ to be,’ he said. ‘If I was crazy, I’d have told you where we were goin’ when you asked. You’d have booted me off your craft right then, curse or no curse.’
Frey had to give him that. Until a short while ago, he’d been certain the Azryx were entirely made up. ‘Come on, then,’ he said.
They left the statue behind and headed further down the slope.
‘What’s your interest in this, anyway?’ he asked, keeping his voice low. ‘Shouldn’t you have gone to tell your father about this place? Why’d you want to come back?’
‘Need the relic so they believe me,’ he said. ‘You weren’t gonna give it back to me, I reckon. So I’m helpin’ you, until you’ve got that black spot off your hand.’
‘You want the relic?’
‘Aye,’ said Ugrik. ‘Soon as we put it back, and that curse o’ yours is lifted…’ He stopped and grinned. ‘I’m gonna nick it again.’ Then suddenly his face turned grave. ‘That’s the price, by the way, Cap’n Frey. When we’re done here, I get the relic.’
Frey was taken aback. ‘You’re negotiating this now?’
‘Think you’ve got time to find where it came from before the moon’s up?’ Ugrik countered.
Frey had to respect his enterprising nature. ‘You’re welcome to it,’ he said. ‘Might be worth a fortune, but I’m damned if I’m keeping hold of that thing. It’s given me nothing but trouble.’
‹?n="justifont face="Times New Roman"›‘Shouldn’t mess with what you don’t understand,’ Ugrik advised.
‘Thanks for the advice,’ Frey said sarcastically. ‘Just in time. I almost did something stupid.’
Ugrik gave him a flat look and started walking again.
‘How did you know not to touch it, anyway?’ Frey asked, keeping pace. He swatted at a dragonfly that seemed intent on landing on his nose.
‘I didn’t,’ said Ugrik. ‘The curse is written on the blade.’
‘You can read Azryx?’
‘No. But I can read Old Isilian.’
They forged on through the foliage for a while.
‘Okay, you’re gonna have to tell me what that is,’ said Frey eventually.
‘All the languages we know – Yortish, Vardic, Samarlan and the rest – they all have their roots in one dead language from way back. Old Isilian. Couldn’t read much of what was on that relic, but there’s enough similarities so I got the gist. Don’t touch. The thing was in its case when I found it, so I never took it out.’
‘Strikes me that was probably the sensible thing to do,’ Frey said.
‘Aye, well, we can’t all be sensible, can we?’
Frey looked glumly at his hand. ‘Apparently not.’
They’d picked their way down to the edge of the city. The undergrowth was broken by glimpses of walls and doorways, and it was almost possible to make out nearby thoroughfares. They were staying well away from the excavated area that was swarming with Sammies, but Ugrik was cautious anyway, and Frey took his cue from that.
He was feeling more confident now he had a grasp on the situation. At last he knew what had happened to him, and why, and what he could do about it. All he had to do was sneak past the Sammies and put the relic back where Ugrik had found it. It sounded easy when he said it to himself. Time was short, but he’d had closer shaves. There was still a good hour till sunset, and no sign of the moon.
Ugrik held out a hand to stop him. ‘Ssh,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t making any n-’
‘ Ssh! ’
Frey shut his mouth, peeved. Ugri? peeved. k was listening attentively. Frey did, too. He heard nothing but the repetitive cry of some exotic bird.
‘I reckon someone’s followin’ us,’ said Ugrik.
Frey belatedly remembered what Crake had told him just before the crash. That someone was tracking the relic. It had gone right out of his head when the Ketty Jay went down, and Crake had been concussed and in no state to elaborate. Ugrik had been there too. Frey wondered if the Yort had forgotten, if he hadn’t been paying attention, or if he just didn’t think it mattered.
Suddenly, it came to him. He knew who’d planted that signal. He should have figured it out straight away. And if he was right, then there really wasn’t much point running at this stage.