The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It was unusual for the Stalker Cave to be filled with such a low noise — a keening more appropriate to the funeral feast of one of the lashlite flight escaping the beaks of those who waited motionless. It was even more unusual for one of the great seer’s attendants to slip out of the inner cave without taking time to wash away the sins of the future-revealed in the pool that lay to the side of the holy of holies.

The four seers of the crimson feather looked up as one, uncrossing their legs and standing, the tallest lighting the small brazier of slipsharp oil that lay in the corner. His beak opened to blow out the match, fixing the attendant with his lizard’s eyes. ‘The great seer has seen true?’

‘I fear so.’ The attendant raised his hand to cover the nape of his neck and his true eye. A superstitious gesture, lest his seeing orb pollute the vision of those with greater sight than he himself possessed.

‘And in her seeing, what stands revealed?’

The attendant hesitated, still too dumbstruck by what he had been ordered to do.

Reaching out, the seer of the crimson feather shook the other lashlite. ‘I do not have the luxury of three days to undergo the cleansing rituals and ablutions to pass through to the Stalker Cave. You must tell us what has been said, now.’

‘You are bid to enter the great seer’s chamber,’ said the attendant. ‘Without the cleansing rituals. To enter immediately.’

Their beaks hung open in astonishment. Abandon the rituals they had been raised to honour? Just walk into the great seer’s chamber? Such a thing had never been sung of, not once in the memory of any of the people of the wind’s poems. They would risk polluting her sight forever.

The attendant fell nervously to his knees in supplication and indicated the passage they were to take. The four members of the crimson feather reluctantly did as they were instructed. They were the great seer’s disciples, what other choice did they have? The attendant fell in behind them, taking a torch from the wall to illuminate the darkness. Each time they passed one of the pools of meditation they faltered, resisting the instinct to fulfil their ancient rituals. To wash the dust of the cliffs from their feathers. To still their noisy minds. The air grew warmer the deeper they walked into the mountain, until at last a breeze like a sigh blew over their clawed feet, and the four members of the crimson feather and the attendant found themselves in the blackest of caverns. A darkness that was splintered by the attendant’s torchlight glittering off mineral veins as he strode forward, a thousand quartz stars twinkling in the vast space. The four disciples waited by the entrance, feeling soiled for having forsaken the cleansing pools. Advancing, the attendant dipped his torch into a lake of oil and it erupted into flames, the light running up the cavern wall and, high above, revealing the great seer’s wings stretched out from her perch in the rocks, moaning as the heat banished the rheumatism in her ancient hollow bones.

‘Advance, children of the crimson feather,’ she whistled.

They formed a line in front of the cavern’s lake, their wings furled and wrapped around them to ward off the heat of the fire.

‘Septimoth has fallen!’ said the great seer, her voice reflected by the walls.

The four seers of the crimson feather quivered in shock at her words.

‘Why did it have to be a miserable exile that was chosen?’ moaned one of the seers, recovering his composure enough to speak. ‘Why not a warrior of the flight? Why not a champion?’

‘Septimoth still lives,’ explained the great seer. ‘But he dwells in the shadows of the bright realm, as does his companion from the race of man. Soon there is to be desolation, desolation everywhere — for the waters of the lake of the past have finally been parted. Our future is to be decided in the kingdom beyond the waves.’

Sensing her four disciples’ trepidation, the great seer added, ‘There is still hope. The future is disturbed. There are many paths narrowing to a beggarly pair. One path is the end of our people, the terrible chimneys of the dark wind, the end of everything. The other … the other might yet be bought with our blood and our bravery.’

‘And what else is there, Mother-Future of the Stalker Cave?’

She flexed a weary talon in the direction of the attendant below. Her servant walked to the side of the chamber, across an undecorated rock floor worn smooth by the clawed footsteps of hundreds of his predecessors. He knelt by a wooden chest and undid its latch, laying four long, cloth-wrapped objects onto the floor — rolling out the fabric to reveal spears. Long shafts of golden metal, cast by a smelting process long forgotten, their heads so sharply edged it was said they could be cast at a boulder and pass completely through without a scratch.

Still kneeling, the attendant solemnly passed one across to each of the four seers of the crimson feather as they advanced to receive their gifts. ‘For the mountains of the north and the wind to warm your wings. For the mountains of the east and the wind to speed you across barren ground. For the mountains of the south and the wind to lift you across the dunes. For the mountains of the west and the wind to carry you across the sea.’

They stood there a moment, clutching their spears, overwhelmed by the enormity of what they were expected to do. There were songs of times such as these. When the spears made from the fallen star were distributed to the seers; but they were ancient songs, so old the verses had been made liturgy by their repetition. To be told that they were now living in such times … that they were living in legend …

One of the seers raised his spear and the other three followed suit, joining their tips in the centre of the great seer’s cavern. There was silence, broken only by the sound of the oil burning in the lake.

‘This is what there is,’ said the great seer, though the words were surely passed in turn to her by the whisper of the winds and the grace of the gods. ‘I have spoken.’ The great seer furled her wings, her attendant stilling the fires in the lake beneath with the throw of a golden blanket, its threads woven from the rare star metal. The four seers of the crimson feather followed the attendant back towards the light of the first cave.

Alone once more in the darkness, the great seer let the emptiness of the future fill her soul. ‘Oh, aweless throne, oh, all the cleverness and hopes of man.’ A tear left the great seer’s eye unseen, falling towards the lake below. ‘Oh, Camlantis.’

As the four seers of the crimson feather gained sight of their eyrie’s entrance the winged creatures broke into a sprint, leaving a short interval between each runner and the seer that followed. On the opposite cliff, the heads of a class of young flightlings looked up from their ledge, the shaman teaching them their tone poems irritated at being interrupted. Each seer fell from the peak, arrowing down until their wings extended to full width with a deafening crack. There were gasps from the children as the golden spears glinted in the sunlight. Their people’s most ancient songs were always those that were taught first, but perhaps only the shaman teaching them truly understood what they were witnessing.

From the ledges of the nests above and below came whistles of alarm, more and more of the flight coming out of their cliffside dwellings to see what the commotion was.

Catching an updraught, the four seers of the crimson feather spiralled up above the line of mountains and broke formation. To the north. To the east. To the south. To the west.

To war.