Nights of Villjamur

TWENTY-NINE

She could turn stone into lava, seawater into ice sculptures, could make plants grow rapidly to the height of a building. She could create devices to flood the land with fire, and just as quickly quench it.

But she could not find Dartun Súr, Godhi of the Order of the Equinox.

Papus sat in the darkness and silence of her stone-built chambers, her fingers steepled, brooding over the situation whilst staring at the floor.

She hadn’t disclosed her full concerns to the red-eyed commander regarding what Dartun had been up to. He was clearly the one responsible for raising the dead. The real questions were how many of these walking dead were there, and what were the consequences?

Papus had known about Dartun for most of her life, because ever since she joined the Order of the Dawnir, rumours had persisted about his lifestyle, his abuse of Dawnir technology. She herself was the most skilled of all at using relics – or that was what she honestly believed, up until Verain’s visit. For years she had climbed through the ranks, watched others around her misuse the technology and die in accidents – her own great love, with whom she had hoped to abscond, included. It was all about maintaining image, being a cultist, and her whole family had belonged from time immemorial to the same, ancient order, the oldest of the cultist sects, a line stretching back generations. Most of her remaining kin were now in retirement on Ysla, well isolated from the rest of the Empire. But she was still here in Villjamur, still driven and still working and still competing.

Still Papus loved her work. What made her feel alive was the thrill that she might discover something completely unknown on any day, that she might then understand the universe better than anyone, that she might occasionally assist the advance of civilization in some small way.

And all the time, in the background, Dartun was quietly making a mockery of her.

People whispered about the Equinox. They gave cultists a bad reputation. There were questions regarding their ethics. But, knowing how Dartun liked to perpetuate his own myth, she had ignored the tittle-tattle up to a point.

Now he had gone too far.

He’d tampered with the fabric of life, and it was now a public affair. If he was indeed raising the dead, he had to be stopped soon. If what the girl, Verain, had claimed was true, then he was messing with basic universal configurations. There were codes of behaviour as old as the city, amongst the cultists, insisting that they should consult each other on controversial matters.

If Dartun’s order wouldn’t respond to her demands that he divulge any activities to do with raising the dead, then it would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

There hadn’t been strife between cultists for thousands of years, ever since the original disagreements that had spliced them into their separate orders.

Things were suddenly looking complicated.

She sighed. This was not like in her youth, all those years ago on Ysla. The cultists’ isle had been unlike any other island in the Archipelago in geological, botanical, or entomological terms. Its climate was warmer, for a start. But then it had been augmented so much by the various cultists inhabiting it using their relics that it no longer much resembled the island the original Dawnir had created. Lush green meadows, ridges of igneous rocks, crescents of beautiful white beaches, deciduous trees budding and shedding in rhythm with the artificial seasons. And those open blue skies always visible from the hilltops. All the cultist orders were entitled to have use of land there. Their different divisions possessed lodges scattered around, or gathered in village complexes, where their members were able to interpret relics in comparative solitude.

It now seemed a world away.

Her mind drifted back to Dartun, and then she made her decision. His tampering with the forces of life and death was simply wrong, and his reckless opening of doors to new worlds posed a risk to all these islands lying under the light of the red sun. Clearly, it was her responsibility to bring him to justice.

Through the dark alleyways, where the city’s snow-scrapers hadn’t yet ventured with their shovels, she marched with the letter she had resolutely composed. No lanterns around these parts of the city, but it was a clear evening, and the twin moons illuminated the treacherous snow clearly. Glowing paths stretched in front of her. Although not particularly late, there was no one else visible, few footprints. There were obviously better places to be than out in the cold. One hand was buried in her pocket, wrapped around her ultimatum. She had to present it in person, alone, but several steps behind her were other members of her order, armed with sterkr relics. She was not quixotic about this business. She wanted some protection, but did not want her arrival to seem intimidating. Not yet.

Papus reached the inconspicuous entrance, knocked several times before a hatch slid back aside and a frosty welcome was muttered.

‘I want to see Dartun Súr, as a matter of urgency,’ she demanded.

‘Not gonna happen without an invitation,’ came the response.

‘If you don’t let me see him urgently, it will mean a massive rift between our orders,’ she said, and slipped the missive through the bars.

‘Hang on,’ the voice murmured, then whoever was behind the door was no longer there. Papus waited in the cold, reflecting that Dartun was probably on some far-off island as Verain had suggested.

Eventually, the door opened, and one of the Equinox stood facing her.

‘He’s not here,’ he said, her letter visible in his hands.

‘Where is he then?’

In the poor light of the doorway she barely perceived his shrug.

‘I want some bloody answers. Maybe you can help me instead.’

‘Listen, lady, I don’t know what you’re after. I told you, I’ll give him your message when he returns.’

‘You’re not following,’ Papus snapped, discreetly dropping a relic from her sleeve into her hand. ‘I’m not going anywhere until someone senior from your order talks to me.’

‘I just told you…’ he began menacingly.

Papus thrust the relic towards him, a bolt of purple light crackling around his body, an electrifying net.

His mouth opened wide, displaying a scream, but no sound came out. After a moment he collapsed onto the floor in soundless agony.

The letter of warning drifted down beside him as she leaned over his body and pulled the door behind him. Then she slid the ultimatum underneath it, as bolts of energy continued to skim around the rival cultist. By now, members of her own order exited the deep night and hooked ropes around the fallen man, and dragged him back down the snow-filled alley, all the time sparks of purple light radiating about his writhing form.

‘An eye for an eye,’ she said with satisfaction as, at the narrow opening of the alleyway, she crouched to deposit another device that fired a single sheet of purple light across the ground. The light disappeared to leave the snow untouched, deleting all marks of their presence there.

Snow continued to fall leisurely as if it had all the time in the world.