Pilgrim.
The Wayfarer Redemption.
Sara Dougla.s.s.
Prologue.
The lieutenant pushed his fork back and forth across the table, back and forth, back and forth, his eyes vacant, his mind and heart a thousand galaxies away.
Sc.r.a.pe . . . sc.r.a.pe ... sc.r.a.pe.
"For heaven"s sake, Chris, will you stop that? It"s driving me crazy!"
The lieutenant gripped the fork in his fist, and his companion tensed, thinking Chris would fling it across the dull, black metal table towards him.
But Chris" hand suddenly relaxed, and he managed a tight, half-apologetic smile. "Sorry. It"s just that this . .
. this ..."
"We only have another two day spans, mate, and then we wake the next shift for their stint at uselessness."
Chris" fingers traced gently over the surface of the table. It vibrated. Everything on the ship vibrated.
"I can"t b.l.o.o.d.y wait for another stretch of deep sleep," he said quietly, his eyes flickering over to Commander Devereaux sitting at a keyboard by the room"s only porthole. "Unlike him."
His fellow officer nodded. Perhaps thirty-five rotations ago, waking from their allotted span of deep sleep, the retiring crew had reported a strange vibration within the ship. No mechanical or structural problem ...
the ship was just vibrating.
And then . . . then they"d found that the ship was becoming a little sluggish in responding to commands, and after five or six day spans it refused to respond to their commands at all.
The other three ships in the fleet had similar problems - at least, that"s what their last communiques had reported. The Ark crew were aware of the faint phosph.o.r.escent outlines in the wake of the other ships, but that was all now. So here they were, hurtling through deep s.p.a.ce, in ships that responded to no command, and with cargo that the crews preferred not to think about. When they volunteered for this mission, hadn"t they been told that once they"d found somewhere to "dispose" of the cargo they could come home?
But now, the crew of The Ark wondered, what would be disposed of? The cargo? Or them?
It might have helped if the commander had come up with something helpful. But Devereaux seemed peculiarly unconcerned, saying only that the vibrations soothed his soul and that the ships, if they no longer responded to human command, at least seemed to know what they were doing.
And now here he was, tapping at that keyboard as if he actually had a purpose in life. None of them had a purpose any more. They were as good as dead. Everyone knew that. Why not Devereaux?
"What are you doing, sir?" Chris asked. He had picked up the fork again, and it quivered in his over-tight grip.
"I..." Devereaux frowned as if listening intently to something, then his fingers rattled over the keys. "I am just writing this down."
"Writing what down, sir?" the other officer asked, his voice tight.
Devereaux turned slightly to look at them, his eyes wide. "Don"t you hear it? Lovely music . . . enchanted music ... listen, it vibrates through the ship. Don"t you feel it?"
"No," Chris said. He paused, uncomfortable. "Why write it down, sir? For who? What is the b.l.o.o.d.y point of writing it down?"
Devereaux smiled. "I"m writing it down for Katie, Chris. A song book for Katie."
Chris stared at him, almost hating the man. "Katie is dead, sir. She has been dead at least twelve thousand years. I repeat, what is the f.u.c.king point!"
Devereaux"s smile did not falter. He lifted a hand and placed it over his heart. "She lives here, Chris. She always will. And in writing down these melodies, I hope that one day she will live to enjoy the music as much as I do."
It was then that The Ark, in silent communion with the others, decided to let Devereaux live.
The speckled blue eagle clung to rocks under the overhang of the river cliffs a league south of Carlon. He shuddered. Nothing in life made sense any more. He had been drifting the thermals, digesting his noonday meal of rats, when a thin grey mist had enveloped him and sent despair stringing through his veins.
He could not fight it, and had not wanted to. His wings crippled with melancholy, he"d plummeted from the sky, uncaring about his inevitable death.
It had seemed the best solution to his useless life.
Chasing rats? Ingesting them. Why?
In his mad, uncaring tumble out of control, the eagle struck the cliff face. The impact drove the breath from him, and he thought it may also have broken one of his breast bones, but even in the midst of despair, the eagle"s talons scrabbled automatically for purchase among the rocks.
And then . . . then the despair had gone. Evaporated.
The eagle blinked and looked about.
It was cold here in the shadow of the rocks, and he wanted to warm himself in the sun again - but he feared the grey-fingered enemy that awaited him within the thermals. In the open air.
What was this grey miasma? What had caused it?
4.He c.o.c.ked his head to one side, his eyes unblinking, considering. Gryphon? Was this their mischief?
No. The Gryphon had long gone, and their evil he would have felt ripping into him, not seeping in with this grey mist"s many-fingered coldness. No, this was something very different.
Something worse.
The sun was sinking now, only an hour or two left until dusk, and the eagle did not want to spend the night clinging to this cliff face.
He c.o.c.ked his head - the grey haze had evaporated.
With fear - a new sensation for this most ancient and wise of birds - he cast himself into the air. He rose over the Nordra, expecting any minute to be seized again by that consuming despair.
But there was nothing.
Nothing but the rays of the sun glinting from his feathers and the company of the sky.
Relieved, the eagle tilted his wings and headed for his roost under the eaves of one of the towers of Carlon.
He thought he would rest there a day or two. Watch. Discover if the evil would strike again, and, if so, how best to survive it.
The yards of the slaughterhouse situated a half-league west of Tare were in chaos. Two of the slaughtermen had been outside when Shed"s mid-afternoon despair struck. Now they were dead, trampled beneath the hooves of a thousand crazed livestock. The fourteen other men were still safe, for they had been inside and protected when the TimeKeepers had burst through the Ancient Barrows.
Even though mid-afternoon had pa.s.sed, and the world was once more left to its own devices, the men did not dare leave the safety of the slaughterhouse.
Animals ringed the building. Sheep, a few pigs, seven old plough horses, and innumerable cattle - all once destined for death and butchery. All staring implacably, unblinkingly, at the doors and windows.
One of the pigs nudged at the door with his snout, and then squealed.
Instantly pandemonium broke out. A horse screamed, and threw itself at the door. The wooden planks cracked, but did not break.
Imitating the horse"s lead, cattle hurled themselves against the door and walls.
The slaughtermen inside grabbed whatever they could to defend themselves.
The walls began to shake under the onslaught. Sheep bit savagely at any protuberance, pulling nails from boards with their teeth, and horses rent at walls with their hooves. All the animals wailed, one continuous thin screech that forced the men inside to drop their weapons and clasp hands to ears, screaming themselves.
The door cracked once more, then split. A brown steer shouldered his way through. He was plump and healthy, bred and fattened to feed the robust appet.i.tes of the Tarean citizens. Now he had an appet.i.te himself.
Behind him many score cattle trampled into the slaughterhouse, pigs and sheep squeezing among the legs of their bovine cousins as best they could.
The invasion was many bodied, but it acted with one mind.
The slaughtermen did not die well.
The creatures used only their teeth to kill, not their hooves, and those teeth were grinders, not biters, and so those men were ground into the grave, and it was not a fast nor pleasant descent.
Of all the creatures once destined for slaughter, only the horses did not enter the slaughterhouse and partake of the meal.
They lingered outside in the first of the collecting yards, nervous, unsure, their heads high, their skin twitching. One snorted, then pranced about a few paces. He"d not had this much energy since he"d been a yearling.
A shadow flickered over one of the far fences, then raced across the trampled dirt towards the group of horses. They bunched together, turning to watch the shadow, and then it swept over them and the horses screamed, jerked, and then stampeded, breaking through the fence in their panic.
High above, the flock of Hawkchilds veered to the east and turned their eyes once more to the Ancient Barrows.
Their masters called.
The horses fled, running east with all the strength left in their hearts.
At the slaughterhouse, a brown and cream badger ambled into the bloodied building and stood surveying the carnage.
You have done well, he spoke to those inside. Would you like to exact yet more vengeance?
Sheol tipped back her head and exposed her slim white throat to the afternoon sun. Her fingers spasmed and dug into the rocky soil of the ruined Barrow she sat on, her body arched, and she moaned and shuddered.
A residual wisp of grey miasma still clung to a corner of her lip.
"Sheol?" Raspu murmured and reached out a hand. "Sheol?" At the soft touch of his hand, Sheol"s sapphire eyes jerked open and she bared her teeth in a snarl.
Raspu did not flinch. "Sheol? Did you feast well?" The entire group of TimeKeeper Demons regarded her curiously, as did StarLaughter sitting slightly to one side with a breast bared, its useless nipple hanging from her undead child"s mouth.
Sheol blinked, and then her snarl widened into a smile, and the reddened tip of her tongue probed slowly at the corners of her lips.
She gobbled down the remaining trace of mist.
.7.
"I fed well]" she cried, and leapt to her feet, spinning about in a circle. "Well!"
Her companions stared at her, noting the new flush of strength and power in her cheeks and eyes, and they howled with antic.i.p.ation. Sheol began an ecstatic caper, and the Demons joined her in dance, holding hands and circling in tight formation through the rubble of earth and rocks that had once been the Barrow.
They screamed and shrieked, intoxicated with success.
The Minstrelsea forest, encircling the ruined s.p.a.ces of the Ancient Barrows, was silent. Listening.
Watching.
StarLaughter pulled the material of her gown over her breast and smiled for her friends. It had been eons since they had fed, and she could well understand their excitement. They had sat still and silent as Sheol"s demonic influence had issued from her nostrils and mouth in a steady effluence of misty grey contagion.
The haze had coalesced about her head for a moment, blurring her features, and had then rippled forth with the speed of thought over the entire land of Tencendor.
Every soul it touched - Icarii, human, bird or animal - had been infected, and Sheol had fed generously on each one of them.
Now how well Sheol looked! The veins of her neck throbbed with life, and her teeth were whiter and her mouth redder than StarLaughter had ever seen. Stars, but the others must be beside themselves in the wait for their turn!
StarLaughter rose slowly to her feet, her child clasped protectively in her hands. "When?" she said.
The Demons stopped and stared at her.
"We need to wait a few days," Raspu finally replied.
"What?" StarLaughter cried. "My son -"
"Not before then," Sheol said, and took a step towards StarLaughter. "We all need to feed, and once we have grown the stronger for the feeding we can dare the forest paths."
She cast her eyes over the distant trees and her lip curled. "We will move during our time, and on our terms."
8 .
"You don"t like the forest?" StarLaughter said.
"It is not dead," Barzula responded. "And it is far, far too gloomy."
"But -" StarLaughter began.
"Hush," Rox said, and he turned flat eyes her way. "You ask too many questions."
StarLaughter closed her mouth, but she hugged her baby tightly to her, and stared angrily at the Demons.