The Fade

17

Peering through the hide flap of the wagon I get my first glimpse of Farakza from the outside, as we bump and jolt away. The walls seem enormous from here, and though they're crumbling at the edges and battle-scarred, they don't look like they'll be coming down anytime soon. The fort crouches in the centre of its rocky island, solid and unadorned in contrast to the Gurtas' usual delicacy. It's built of the same black stone as the island, its interior buildings speckled with lighted windows.

The shinehouse at its centre is the highest point, casting the shadows of the watchtowers outward, splaying dark fingers across the island and the river beyond.

Feyn and Nereith join me at the back of the wagon, moving carefully to avoid disturbing anything. I can practically smell their adrenaline; even Feyn is excited now. As we are carried further from the walls, the oppressive weight of the prison lifts from me. Suddenly I feel more alive than ever. I feel unstoppable.

The guards on the battlements are watching the wagon as we go, eyes drawn to the movement. The ground has been chthonomantically flattened around the fort, to provide clear ground for archers to take down any troops that approach the walls. But beyond that, the island returns to its usual state: scrubby crevasses and thin ridges, a pile-up of stone crushed together by some ancient subterranean peristalsis.

'If we get no further than this,' Feyn whispers, 'then what you have done is wonderful.'

His words and his tone provoke a flood of warmth. Without thinking, I reach out and gently clasp his upper arm. 'We're going much further than this.'

He lays his hand on top of mine.

'What about him?' Nereith asks quietly. He's looking at the corpse of the man I killed. There's a strange hunger in his gaze, and I realise he hasn't had anything palatable to his kind since he's been here. Now he's faced with a fresh dead body, blood still cooling in the veins. Nereith wants to eat him.

'Pick him up,' I say. 'Carefully. Keep it quiet.'

'We're throwing him out?'

'In a few minutes we'll be at the bridge. You want them to find a dead body inside?'

'The driver will realise he's not here.'

'They won't raise the alarm for one missing worker. If we're lucky, the driver will go back and look for him.'

'The guards can see us from the walls,' Feyn points out.

'There's a dip in the road. I saw it from the tower balcony. We'll be out of sight for a short time. That's when we get off. Now help me.'

Nereith and I manage to lift the body off the metal rods with only a small amount of noise. If the driver hears, he doesn't care.

The terrain has become rocky again by the time the wagon tips into a slope and the road rises behind us, blocking our view of Farakza. Then we push open the back flaps of the wagon and drop him out as gently as we can. The dull thump of the corpse hitting the road is barely louder than the creaking of the wheels.

The three of us follow him, dropping to the road as the wagon climbs out of the dip and heads towards the bridge. Our driver is none the wiser as to the passengers he carried.

The road is simply a smoothed path, scattered with pebbles. The island stretches away to either side, its black skin pleated and folded in innumerable valleys and gullies. We've been carried past the flattened zone by our wagon, and now we're free to slip along the hot, secret kinks in the land. I motion to Nereith to lift the corpse, and we hide it.

'Follow me,' I tell them, and they do, though Nereith casts one last hungry look at the body before he abandons it for good.

The terrain provides good cover, but sharp rocks catch at my clothes and score my skin. Fungi caps suck themselves back into their stems at our approach. There are chi-rats here, their huge eyes red points in the gloom. They scuttle away with a clicking of claws and chitin armour as we approach, dragging their segmented tails behind them. It's not the little scavengers that worry me, it's the larger predators that follow them. But though we hear haunting wails in the distance, we're not troubled by anything bigger than vermin.

I take us away from the road and the bridge towards the river, heading for a point where our crossing won't be observed. We can hear the crack and grind of spume rock as we get closer.

It's here that our escape stands or falls. The part I couldn't plan for in the slightest. We make it over, or die trying.

The rock gullies give out onto the lip of a cliff. I look down and there it is: a river of spume rock, scalding, the heat pushing against me.

This is never going to work, I say to myself, but it has to. There's no choice now. My heart sinks as I think of the task we have ahead of us. It's so much worse than I thought.

The river is a jigsaw of stony plates, crammed together, sliding inexorably past us. The slow-moving, brittle surface floats on the sluggish, viscous liquid beneath, tugged along by it. Spume rock hardens on contact with air, turning crisp and black; but underneath it's molten, hot enough to kill through proximity alone. The surface creaks and snaps noisily, and every so often a plate splits and a geyser of steam blasts into the air. The river glows with its own red light, shining up through the cracks, lighting our faces from below.

But there's more. We're not alone here.

How anything can live and thrive in this kind of environment is beyond me, but Reitha has told me of many species, not least the Craggens, that exist in environments far more hostile than this. I'd already seen the spike-rays from afar, hanging on the thermals, dipping and banking in the semi-dark. Their manta-shaped bodies end in deadly, barbed tails which they use to impale their prey before carrying it off to be eaten.

But now I can see why they've gathered. The near wall is a cliff, dropping about thirty spans to the river. And it's covered in tarracks. Six-legged things, the size of an infant, built like spiders but armoured like crabs. They're squat and silvery. In place of a head, there's only a bulge at the junction of their thick limbs. The pointed tips of their claws are strong enough to punch a hole through a breastplate, and their acidic venom dissolves internal organs, causing an agonising death. I should know; I've employed it once or twice.

The venom is not their only defence, however. I read about tarracks, back when I was studying poisons. They can stun their prey with some kind of energy charge, paralysing victims long enough to inject them. The naturalists don't quite know how it works, but they know its effects well enough. A big tarrack can knock out a full-grown man.

They're using the heat from the river to foil the spike-rays' thermal vision. The spike-rays know that they're here, through some other sense that I can't explain, but they can't quite find them. This is a nesting-ground. Sticky pods adhere to the crevices in the cliff-face, incubating the tarracks' young within. To even get to the river, we'll have to climb through.

Nereith looks down, his bald head trickling with sweat. 'I assume, knowing as I do of your unparalleled experience in these matters, that you accounted for the possibility of lethal wildlife?'

'I thought I'd send you in as decoy, then we sneak past while they're eating you,' I reply.

'Very enterprising. I wondered why you'd had me along.'

I stare at the river, trying to think my way round this, but I can't come up with anything. Then I pick up the heaviest rock I can find and heft it over the edge into the river. Two spike-rays swoop at it, reacting instinctively, alerted by the motion; at the last moment, they bank away, realising it's not prey.

The rock lands on one of the plates of solidified spume rock and cracks it a little. But the plate holds. We watch as the rock is slowly carried away from us.

'Think it'll take our weight?' I ask Nereith.

'I think so,' he replies. 'You two are lighter than I am. I should go last.'

I give him a look. 'Don't fancy being the decoy, then?'

'It was your idea,' he replies with a fang-mouthed grin.

I look over at Feyn, who has hunkered down next to us. 'I will go first,' he says to me. 'You are more heavy.'

'If ever you get to Bry Athka University, Feyn, remember this: never tell an Eskaran woman how heavy she is.'

Nereith guffaws, but Feyn only gives me a puzzled smile. He doesn't get it.

'I'll go first,' I tell him. He nods, and in those black, black eyes I get the impression that he understands something I don't. He has a curious way of making me feel like I'm always learning something he already knows, like he's seen right through me and he's waiting for me to catch up. Patient, indulgent. The longer I know him, the older he seems. He might have the body of a youth, but he has a calm wisdom belonging to someone three times his age.

I edge to the lip of the cliff.

'Wish me luck,' I say, seized by an inappropriate playfulness in the face of what's to come.

'Khaadu don't believe in luck,' says Nereith.

'What is ''luck''?' Feyn asks.

I shake my head. 'You two are useless.'

I start to climb. In ordinary circumstances, I'd be down this cliff in a couple of minutes, if that. It's an easy surface: solid handholds, an abundance of places to wedge my feet. I'm used to climbing sheer walls. This is simple.

But the tarracks tense up the moment I set foot on the cliff face. They stop their slow creeping. They know I'm here. So when I descend, I do so very deliberately. No sudden moves. If I alarm them, they'll go for me.

I climb sideways for a short while, to avoid a pod right below me. The tarracks move back, keeping their distance. They don't quite know how to deal with me yet. I can hear the clattering of the spike-rays overhead, calling to each other. They've noticed me too, and are similarly confused.

Shit, I hate this. I can't remember the last time I felt so helpless. All I can do is hope that either the spike-rays or the tarracks decide not to kill me. When I die, I want it to be my choice, or at least my fault. I can't stand this feeling of having no control, trusting my life to a bunch of animals.

The heat is becoming desperately uncomfortable. My back is slick, clothes clinging to me. Out of the corner of my eye I spot one of the tarracks quivering, doing minute and rapid press-ups. I'm no expert on animal body language, but I'm pretty sure that isn't good.

I want to be here even less than you want me here, I tell it silently. Leave me alone and I won't bother you.

The tarrack takes a few experimental steps closer and resumes quivering. Testing me.

'Back away!' Feyn says from above. 'This is his… his-' he fights for the word, and hits on the right one '-his territory.'

I begin moving to the side. It brings me dangerously close to another pair of tarracks who have positioned themselves between me and their pod. They start to become as agitated as the first, and my aggressor, emboldened, takes another few steps towards me.

'I'm going, you persistent little fucker!' I snap at it. The effect is negligible.

I keep climbing down. There's nothing else to be done. Maybe if it thinks I'm leaving its domain it'll-

Two of them come for me at once, as if at a signal. One from each side. I look down, desperate, but I daren't drop. Not onto that surface. The river glows forbiddingly beneath me.

'Stay still!' Nereith cries. Instinctively I press myself against the rock, and suddenly there's a blast of wind and something large thunders past my head. One of the tarracks is ripped up and away, trailing like an anchor from the tail of a spike-ray. The other one has stopped dead, about a span from my shoulder.

'Forgot about them, didn't you?' I murmur spitefully, dredging up a seam of defiance.

The remaining tarrack quivers next to me. I can smell it from here, dry and musky, and taste the metallic tinge in the air that surrounds it.

Something clicks and thumps down the cliff-face to my right. A large stone, dropped by Nereith. The tarracks all freeze again. He's trying to create a distraction.

My aggressor isn't buying it. Slowly, slowly, it creeps forward. I can't do a thing as the first of its armoured limbs presses onto my shoulder blade, and it walks three of its legs onto my back.

I fight down the urge to throw it off. The touch of the tarrack appals me. It's straddling the nape of my neck, supporting its weight with the three legs still gripping the rock. I gather in my increasing panic, begin my chants, slowing my heart, relaxing my muscles. Better play dead, or I'll be dead.

For a long, long time it stays there, unmoving, trying to decide what I am. I'm barely breathing. My chants cycle relentlessly in my head, but I find I can't concentrate on them. I'm thinking of a conversation I had with Jai, long ago, just after he'd failed the tests to become Cadre. I'm thinking I wish I'd done things differently, that I'd been stronger back then, said the right words. Maybe, if I had, I could have died in peace now, knowing that Jai was safe and happy. But I can't die with things as they are. And that makes the fear so much more bitter.

The tarrack moves, shifts its position so that it's over my head. One leg is still resting on me, ready to plunge if I should move. My eyes are squeezed shut. I can feel the weight of it, its underside pushing against my hair. Something's moving against my scalp, something underneath the body of the tarrack.

Mouthparts.

The realisation comes an instant before pain stabs through my skull, a white-hot blaze of heat. Wetness trickling onto my shoulders. It's bitten me.

And still I don't move. I might have reacted spasmodically if I weren't half-buried in a trance, but when someone trained in the chua-kin arts plays dead, you can stick a sword in their arm and they won't even twitch.

I wait for the second bite in dreadful anticipation. Sweat is running into the bite wound, mingling with the blood, stinging. The tarrack is still again.

Come on! Do it, if you're going to!

But it doesn't. Instead, it steps off me, moves away a little. I make no outward reaction, but inwardly I'm sobbing with relief. I suppose it doesn't like the way I taste.

'Orna! Are you hurt?' Nereith calls from above, as loud as he dares. But as he leans over the edge, he dislodges a small shower of pebbles, which bounce and scatter down the cliff face towards me. I see the tarrack tense, feel the air suddenly tauten and the fine hairs on my arms stand up. Then there is an almighty snap and my body bucks like I've been kicked, and the last thing I realise before I lose consciousness is that I'm going to fall, and I'm going to die.