There was a commotion in the middle of
the camp.
‘Up, up!’ screamed Viola in the old tongue, trying to stand but
struggling against her blankets, ‘enemies
are near! Foul and powerful enemies!’
Hardacre dropped his
cup. The lukewarm coffee split out over the ground. The others sprang up from
their meals and stared over at her, transfixed by her words.
‘Who?’ asked Hardacre,
getting to his feet, ‘what enemies?’
‘The serpent slayer with the parched soul – she approaches…’
Viola looked out
beyond Hardacre to a patch of bracken. Her eyes were blank. There was nothing
there. A buzz of fear swept through the camp. Everyone was picking up clothes
and rations and shoving them into whatever containers they could find. They
were all getting ready to run.
Viola was standing
now, draped in her blankets and unsteady on her feet. Potentilla ran up to calm
her friend. She held her still and upright; studied her carefully and then lifted
her hand up to the others.
‘It’s alright!’ she
shouted, ‘she’s still asleep’
Kath grunted at her.
‘Well, Tillie, I hate
to have to say this again, but I think you may be missing the point…’
Kath ran for her
pack; the other followed behind her rapidly. All eyes were scanning round the
camp edges. They were hardly reassured that
they could see nothing. It looked like it was definitely time to leave.
Viola started forward
and then woke. She slipped out of Potentilla’s grasp and sprawled on to the
ground. Her lieutenant knelt to aid her.
‘Bad dream’ Viola said, apparently addressing
the soil, ‘very bad dream’
‘What did you see?’
asked Hardacre, stooping to help Potentilla lift her up.
Viola stood up,
unsteady on her legs. She looked at Hardacre blankly. Everyone was waiting for
her response.
‘What?’ she finally
said
‘The dream’ he
repeated. His voice was hoarse with tension.
Viola shook her head.
For her the last few seconds had evaporated away.
‘Was
I asleep?’ she asked, brushing her sweaty hair from her eyes. Kath rushed over
and handed her her pack. She hugged her.
‘You had a nightmare
– some sort of warning. I think we need to move out as soon as we can’
Viola stepped out of
Kath’s embrace and smiled in a puzzled way. She took the pack without any clear
idea of what she was meant to do with it. Hardacre and Dom kicked over the
traces of the fire.
‘As Kath just said, we
need to move on quickly’ said Hardacre. Then he turned to talk to Kath, ‘and I,
for one, take Viola’s dreams very seriously’
Viola’s smile began
to fade. She slung her bag over her shoulder. Reality returned in the shape of
a growing apprehension.
‘What dream?’ she
asked warily.
By now all of the
humanoid members of the group were standing in a rough circle around her.
‘She can’t remember a damn thing’ Kath muttered in Ethian, ‘I’m beginning to hate that bloody Quiena’
Hardacre shot her a
disapproving look, but Viola seemed either not to hear what she had said or she
had not fully understood it. Dom shifted his gaze from Viola to Hardacre.
‘If we need to escape from enemies, which way
should we go?’
‘What enemies’ asked
Viola, finally catching up.
‘Bea, it seems, from
your dream message…’ replied Hardacre
‘And so…?’ continued
Dom
‘We must move as fast
as possible away from her – we have no resources to combat her. Our only chance
is to escape’
Kath scanned round
the edge of their camp one more time. Her voice was tremulous. She could remember
the nocturnal false-panthers all too clearly. She had no wish to meet their
mistress.
‘But where are we? We
have no idea where the enchanted path has led us’
‘True’ said Hardacre,
‘so we must go back along it and hope to sneak past her’
Viola gazed intently
down the path for several seconds, apparently through miles of blocking
vegetation. She shook her head.
‘I see her – right on
the edge of my vision and I can feel her through my feet. She is not alone; I
sense a great amassing of power. I think we will not get past her that way’
‘But we can’t go on’
murmured Dom, ‘we’ll lead her straight to the city’
Viola continued to
stare down the road but now when she spoke her voice was calmer.
‘If think that if she
has found the road then it is probable that she will find the city. So, I
believe that we must carry on. We stand a much greater chance of avoiding her
in the complexity of the ruins. I don’t think that she can have seen us yet.
Even with the humans we are much less conspicuous than them’
‘You must be joking…’
Kath said, her voice fading as she spoke.
‘But, major, what
will we do when we get there?’ asked Hardacre, ‘any way that you frame this it
feel like we are walking into a trap…’
‘At the very least I
need to warn the naga’ said Viola softly. She had made up her mind.
‘Warn her about
what?’ asked Dom
‘That Bea is coming
to kill her’
***
They hurried on down the road, running
from their invisible pursuers. At first they were travelling so fast that it
was counter-productive: they tripped over roots, walking through soggy ground
and slashing themselves on thorny shrubs. After a few minutes of this they
slowed down to less of a mad scramble, but all the time they imagined Bea’s
Outer Void panthers pursuing them through the rough countryside until they
caught them and tore them apart.
Viola was at the back, constantly turning to
look for any sign of their enemies. There was nothing she could see now, but
her fear had, if anything, grown – perhaps it had been better when she could
sense them near; at least that meant that they couldn’t be ambushed.
Viola shouted
instructions to Dom, but they were nonsense, as he was leading and he, of
course, knew exactly where he was going.
Dom was terrified by the pursuit but he grateful for this little charade
– it reassured him that Viola was keeping his secret, at least for a while. Also, he was a lot faster along the hidden
track than she was, so it all worked out well enough.
Within twenty minutes
they stumbled on the gates of the city. There
was no interruption to the scattered trees and scrub that they had been
travelling through – the path just stopped and there they were.
In front of them now were
two interlocking arches, five times the height of a tall human, and each arch
held a huge black door. Away from the gate on both sides ran a red brick wall, about
twice eye level but without battlements. They couldn’t see very far, but
everywhere the wall had been co-opted by plants – trees grew up by its side,
climbers squirmed up its stone face and shrubs struggled on what once had been
walkways above. But in not one place had a root, branch or bough penetrated the
fabric of the wall.
‘Now that’s not
something you see all that often’ murmured Kath, intrigued despite her fears.
No-one took any notice
of her; they were all too busy looking at Viola, who had strode forward to the
doors and, apparently without giving it any thought, had moved to press a hand
against the hard surface of each door simultaneously. Then she whispered
something that no-one else could hear.
‘Wait!’ shouted Kath,
but it was too late. Viola looked back at her with unfocused eyes. She seemed
to be working to some internal compulsion invisible to everyone else.
The doors swung open.
Kath shook her head
wearily.
‘I just thought it
might be worth checking that it was safe’ she said softly. They stared though
the doors.
The city was lit up
by the summer sun. Everything in it was a shade of green, except where flowers
clustered in splashes of red, blue and yellow. None of them could see clearly where the
vegetation ended and the city began; but, just as with the walls, there were no
ruins. There was no way to tell whether it had always been like this or whether
the plants had simply learned to live with the city harmoniously. Without a second thought Viola strode through
the doors. The other followed more cautiously into the strange hybrid
place.
Akenopteryx flew on
to Hardacre’s shoulder. She spoke with considerable relish.
‘I told thee that our
Lady Viola is an architect, did I not?’
‘Yes, you did’ he
responded, ‘I am sorry that I doubted thee’
‘So, you see’
continued the little bird, her voice full of hope, ‘we are in safe hands’
Hardacre murmured
noncommittally but said no actual words. He had begun to consider what he would
do if he was confronted by Bea or by Vala again – she would undoubtedly be
there too. At that moment he had no answer but he had to think fast; it could
happen at any moment. He could only hope to outrun the pursuers for long enough
to allow them to escape or to summon help. Neither possibility seemed very
likely now. He just hoped that their little scout was right.
No comments:
Post a Comment