Wanderers of the Silent Season (Heartbeat of the World Book 2) Page 36

  “The dream world is real, the spiritual world is real, and neither are things that should be so easily dismissed,” Kechua answered, scowling. “You claim to be able to share your insights, but you can’t, not fully. I can see it in your face, beyond the warmth you feel when you describe your teachings. You remember a victory, yes, but it is a mixed victory.” Kechua leaned in to the man. “I see your frustration. I feel it raking against your heart; beating against your brow. I can hear the break in the way you talk when you speak of teaching them, the faintest trace of agony over not being able to ignite them in full. You deny your nature because you cannot define it fully.” Kechua stood tall again. “You are a Blessed, Professor James Berret. You have a role and destiny, even if you choose to deny it.”

  The man sat down a moment. “You say ‘blessed’ as if it had some further weight to it.” He looked at the boy sideways.

  Kechua produced the smaller of his clubs and proceeded to cut himself daintily across his palm. A small trickle of blood dropped from it.

  The professor sat in his chair, watching; unswayed.

  Kechua wiped the blood away, christening the sleeve of his shirt with red, and showed the palm to the man below. There was a mark, but it had stopped bleeding.

  “Yes, which is why I would very much like a sample of your blood.” The professor nodded. “It can be isolated, to help and empower—”

  “You have seen things, in your dreams; in your perceptions,” Kechua warned gravely. “There is something out there, in the darkness, or in the depths of this school. It is an Aspect of some dark thing from the human unconsciousness, brought to life in the spirit world and born into the Silent world we see ourselves in. It will seek you out, if it hasn’t already. It will seek to master you, to steal and strip your power from you. I don’t know how, but it will come. If you ignore it, it will come and it will suckle at your soul until there is nothing left of you.”

  “Nonsense. I have heard many reports of strange creatures in the darkness, certainly, yet do you see any here?” He made a wide gesture at the room around them.

  “I hear it. I hear something dark inside your school. I feel it every second I stand upon this white clay. How can you—”

  “You come here . . . you come here speaking nonsense, boy!” The man stood and slammed his hands upon the desk. “Save me your Shamanism, your silly superstition and spirituality!”

  “Y—” Kechua tried to speak but was stifled by the man’s fury.

  “You want me to deny any triumph in my life as my own, to deny me the victories I have made against the hardships against me. You would claim my intelligence to be magic; my work to be perceptions born into me. You would cheapen everything I have done and everything I do now! I dreamed of machines in this place—the great machine under us. I dreamed of this time, in vagaries and dark omens, but every dream I have had was based on reality and experience. Every dream woven in my sleeping mind had a rational basis, offering reasonable insights into the world I exist in!

  “What exactly would you have me do? To bow down to your ways and leap from the school? Abandon everything in this place”—the professor paused, sneering—”because you want me to be ‘free?’ Free to run around the wastes like a vagrant, with no direction or aim or sense? I have lived a remarkable life, bountiful in gifts and wonder, I will concede that. But to ascribe my life to being ‘blessed’ renders it meaningless,” he repeated, closing his eyes with frustration and gripping the front of the desk to steady himself.

  Kechua—without anger, without fear, devoid of anything but practicality—sliced the top of the professor’s hand with a surgical deftness.

  The man across from him merely gave a glancing smile. There was a sound of something in the room, footfalls sheltered from his mind by the everlasting scream. He heard the sound of something humming, a pair of releasing clicks, and a growing blue glow from somewhere in the darkness raised, not fully visible.

  “No, Lyssa. It’s fine, he’s just punctuating a point.” The man smiled, the smile of concession and an exhausted defeat. “There.” James wiped off the top of his hand, revealing a lighter mark that disappeared before Kechua’s eyes. “That was what you wanted to see, wasn’t it?”

  “Come with me. I will help you. We can take whatever you fear, whatever you’ve seen in the wastes or below here, and I will stand with you,” Kechua said, his anger replaced with an exhaustion equaling the man confronting him.

  “I will not leave here, not ever. I will not leave those who need me, those who rely on me for this place. We will continue growing our crops. We will continue holding our lamps against the dark, to offer shelter for those willing to come and work with us. Guidance and trade for those who need it.” The professor sat down again, his hands upon the arms of the chair.

  “You deny your real responsibilities then,” Kechua accused.

  “To even try to frame it as responsibility . . . ” The man trailed off and slumped into his chair, shaking his head. “I don’t even know what else to say to you. This is my home. This is my responsibility.”

  “You realize that the Aspect confronting you, the thing you were born to oppose . . . It is somewhere, tangible, and hurting people who can do nothing to fight it.”

  “I’ve heard enough.” The professor raised his hand in dismissal, clean of any lingering wound.

  “You want to wait here, clinging to these trappings of the material world. You feel the pull of the spiritual world. You must have. You must feel it even now, even if you try your hardest to deny it. You deny your responsibilities, somehow fighting against your very nature. You cling to this building, built on the screaming corpse of some other thing, something you cannot explain to your own satisfaction,” Kechua growled.

  “If we lose these things, these ‘trappings,’ as you say . . . ” the professor said, matching the angry growl. “If hot water, lights, the niceties of life cannot be maintained here, against the impossibilities, against whatever force of nature has brought us to this strange world, then they are without meaning. If civilization itself cannot be held now, if reason and science cannot endure, then they are nothing.”

  The professor held one of the blue lanterns in the palm of the healed hand, its blue glow radiated with the faintest throbbing hum. “I will hold the light against the darkness. I think it is time to go, back into the darkness, without my light to guide you.”

  Kechua turned his back on the professor and walked away. “Amelie,” he offered and felt the man pause.

  “Fair enough, but it is still time for you to go. There hasn’t been any sign of your staff man, by the way. No word from those passing through either.”

  Kechua nodded, his back to the man. “I will return in two days. If you have not come to your senses by then; if you still refuse to accept your fate or let me speak to this Amelie, then I will kill you and take your burden from you.”

  “I will look forward to our next meeting. You will give me blood then,” the man answered with hoarse anger. “Two days then. You know the way out.”

  CHAPTER 16:

  Musings, Merging Rhythms

  Kechua didn’t so much as spare a glance back into the dark as he stormed down the stairway, his own footfalls coming close to drowning out the needling shriek of the school. He paused at the entrance to the first floor, glancing down with a sneer and a near spit, his hands itching against the carved wood on his hips.

  The burning blue of the boy’s staff broke him from the spell, and he proceeded through the door, avoiding his eyes. Kechua returned to the doors, almost savoring the gnawing electricity against his calves as he went. When he reached them, his head swam dizzily for embracing it.

  “He’s fine,” Kechua growled, though caught the thirsty feeling in his throat before he vomited on their pristine floor. He pursed his lips, forehead damp with sweat as he slipped the pack onto his shoulders.

  “No, I . . . ” The girl didn’t dare touch him. Her eyes glanced to the floor before lowering to the fa
r wall. “The tower.” She nodded. “The one not the professor’s.”

  “Wait, no.” The boy’s heart broke from its tired rhythm, and he shifted to the stairs.

  “Do you really think it’s still safe here?” she hissed at him and gave a trembling glance up, only to slam her eyes closed. “It’s just a matter of time for her.” She quietly added, “For us.”

  The boy slid into his spot, the staff clinking against the floor, but he remained silent.

  “There’s a girl, a newcomer, staying there. Take a peek in the daytime, through the big window back there, or in the tower if you can get a good angle. She talks but doesn’t go out. Tiny little thing.”

  “Take me,” he growled, spinning to head up the tiered blue stairs.

  The boy lowered the burning staff in Kechua’s path, and the girl’s hand held him back, her fingers digging into his arm.

  “Locked, and would be rude to wake her anyways,” the girl muttered disinterestedly. “What happened to doing no harm, or whatever?”

  “Fine,” Kechua bit against the shrieking blaze. “Fine.” He winced, staggering back and feeling the cold glass catch him.

  “Two days.” He opened the doorway. “Two days, and I will be back, but I won’t be asking anymore. I will see them both. I will help them both.” Spittle shot from his wince.

  He strode into the dark, turning sharply left. Only when he was sure the door had no angle to see, he collapsed on the ground and vomited into the sand. Sugared berries and meat, mixed into a bitter and soured slurry, came forth with ashen and fine soil. It repeated twice more and he stood again, kicking some flimsy dust over the mess and staggering towards the grove of moonlit trees. Nothing to drink, his stomach clenched and his throat chapped with the thirsty acid.

  Dizzy, he stumbled into the presence of a stand of trees, leaves boldly rustling in the dark above. He slumped down, head against his pack, and trembled in tickling chill.

  “Didn’t go well?” The laughing growl made the yearling wood tremble.

  He produced the skin and sucked at it, draining the barest of mouthfuls. The echoes of the school reached from the white clay, nipping at him with poisoned teeth. Rising to his feet with the clinging help of the young bark, the touch of living wood helped quench the burning hate in his stomach.

  He took a few steps on watery legs, slamming his shoulder against another of the young trees. “Going to the tower,” he mumbled through his seared throat. “Need to see, at least.”

  The hum of the clay returned, even with a distance kept from the curve of the tower. He followed it, not wanting to glance at the black ribbon above or look out from the base, else a wall of red eyes would possibly challenge back. He lurched towards the tower as the base abandoned the sight of the trees, and he overcorrected himself, twisting and falling hard on his shoulder. He rose again, refusing to so much as grace the white clay, and continued his staggering progress.

  Wolf trotted in front of him, only glancing back when he was well away from the tower and quite ahead of Kechua’s path. He stood there in the open void of sand, standing between the structure and the beginnings of the broken white jawline.

  “What’s the matter, boy? Making a damn fool . . . ” The words began in a growl, but the great beast stumbled and trailed away. A spotlight of shining red flashed upon Wolf, and he stood there, unmoving, glaring up. The blotting figures peeled away from the tower, shuffling onto and around the grey beast.

  The peeling blackness poured out, engulfing Wolf’s form. When they settled, they sat around him, a cautious circle. Somehow, Kechua had been left from their attentions. The line flowed out like beams of light, with him glad to be in the shadow, merely watching.

  “What are they doing?” he called in a whisper above the heads of the things. He struggled to keep his feet but had to steady himself against the clay, only to be shocked back away from it.

  “They think they have me trapped,” Wolf rumbled. “Idiot things. Speaking of idiot things,” the creature continued, his gaze snapping to the tower above. “I suppose that’s your damsel.”

  “Not necessarily a damsel, but is she there?” Kechua whispered, wobbling in place. “I can’t see.” He coughed.

  “Tiny little creature, walking with a tired old fool of a thing. Wearing the hide of a cat, it seems,” Wolf said with the subtlety of breath.

  The rhythm of cautious feet, bobbing with a silent grace, tapped upon the earth and began the dance. They shuffled beneath Wolf’s gaze, but he caught them. He snapped at the boldest intruders, a rumbling snarl setting the tapping back, but not silenced.

  “They’re still moving,” Kechua hissed. “Where you aren’t looking . . . ”

  Wolf turned and with a leaning half lunge, snapped three of the closest intruders in his jaws. Quicksilver exploded outwards and dribbled down his mouth like some godlike rabid drool. Yet this served only to churn the tapping drumbeats of feet into a unanimous chorus of movement.

  They shifted together, taking wing and shaping themselves into a snake, rearing to strike at him. The striking head of the formation hovered above Wolf, who glared as the snake’s body formed and more of the crows joined the game.

  Wolf gave a snarl, and it vibrated against Kechua’s aching skull, silencing the singing memory of the white clay a moment.

  The snakehead struck down at the beast, the body forming up, and the line near Kechua thinned enough that he watched in silence. The blackness enveloped Wolf, drowning him in striking bodies of the untapped blanket of waiting figures in the night.

  The ribbon peeled away, splitting in a chaotic set of four, then eight, then tearing into raggedly retreating ribbons, desperately clinging to the idea of the greater form. Wolf leapt with his jaw wide open, snapping and gnashing and tearing with claw and fang. He met their clumsy dance with a maniacal joy, ripping at the fleeing ribbons in turn and landing on the sand, only to strike at the body of the snake itself. He tore through that too, a geyser of silvered blood pouring out from the mocking wound. He skidded onto a rink of painted silver upon the earth, the grounded black bodies parting.

  Their song hastened, their flying numbers doubled, and the serpent’s body thickened and grew spiked thorns. Wolf met their dance and tenfold more, growing larger and more jagged himself, slick and shining with the baptism of whatever blood drove them.

  For the first time, an honest respect trickled into Kechua’s mind. Perhaps there was something to be said for raw ferocity; strength for strength’s sake. He wondered if he could ever have seen this in Talah, if they had been born upon the ancient memory of Glalih.

  After another gaping wound against their thickened bodies, the synergy and form they clung to shattered. The blackened bodies remaining upon the earth flew up, drawn by a unanimous decision, and the night was clear.

  Wolf stood alone, a shining beast upon a shimmering lake of silver.

  “Play!” Wolf roared, glaring at the tower, his voice trembling in Kechua’s bones again.

  “Play!” The hot rage fired again, and the glass above trembled along with Kechua’s skull. “Play or I will find a way to you, little newt.”

  Kechua shifted closer, standing underneath where Wolf looked to, but wary of the burbling flow of silver.

  Through the night, a single song drifted from on high. He couldn’t quite place the instrument, and it drifted downwards like drizzled desert rain, tickling the ground only to rise again.

  Wolf stood there, eyes closed, the precious blood cleaning itself from his fur at the touch of the music. Kechua tried to grasp at the music swaying the creature’s heart, but he could only taste the bitter ache of the screaming clay in his senses.

  He listened. Somewhere woven in the song was hope, inklings of renewal. The song sung of a blooming desert, of a dried aquifer painted blue and teeming with life, only to fall to death once more.

  He stumbled out as the last of the silver trickled into the ground, eroded by the song, and stared up. His feet grew strong upon the wet ground
and he strode to Wolf’s side, the great beast panting heavy and hot, but clear of whatever magic had been woven.

  He saw her, framed within a single pane of glass, high above. She seemed tiny, if not for the little white blob beside her, which she towered above.

  “Amelie. Is that your name?” he muttered, sure that the words were lost. She shifted to the little creature, the fine points of her features lost to him. Her hair was light brown, probably short, and that could certainly be the cat M’grevor mentioned.

  She turned back and he gave a wave, only to have her glance back at the cat before returning his wave.

  “Are we finally going to storm this place?” Wolf snarled, his eyes closed.

  “Two days.” Kechua coughed and retched.

  Wolf glanced at him sideways, craning his neck upwards at the waving figure.

  “Two days before we come on your terms, with fist closed. I’m out of patience for the people here, whatever their intent.” He coughed again.

  He gave a nod, repeating “two days” to the figure above, not that she could hear him. He squinted at the white blotch beside her, little eyes glowing red, staring into him. Something felt so familiar there, something reaching to him even through the grinding buzz saw of the school’s memory.

  “I’m going home,” he declared, slipping into the night with Wolf at his side.

  He flowed along the road with the marching memory of steps. At first, every landed foot cried out in agony, every whip back of his legs groaned with dry ache. The rhythm drowned it all out, the fading memory of the school behind him. By the time he reached the apex of the yawning abyss below, he felt as though he was flying rather than running. The lightened feel clung to him as the whirlpool’s lip tried a final grip on his legs, and the last of the white teeth shot by his sides. He ran, completely lost in the pulse of the world.