Empire of the Saviours (Chronicles of/Cosmic Warlord 1) (58 page)

‘There are people in the houses, I expect, but they’re all dying,’ Jillan said. ‘It’ll be worse where we’re going, because the southern part of town had most of the old and poor. They always get sick first, and are hardly ever strong enough to recover.’

‘Er … okay. Say, you look like you’re managing well enough now, Jillan. I was thinking …’

‘Sure, Ash. I’ll see you later. Go join the others in the inn. If you can’t convince them to flee before the Saint gets here, then maybe you can entertain them with a song.’

The woodsman shifted his weight from foot to foot, hesitating. Jillan kept trudging on.

‘I’ll bring you some bread and a drink from the inn,’ the woodsman called hopefully.

Jillan nodded without turning back and listened to Ash walk and then run back the other way. He couldn’t blame him. He’d have wanted to do the same thing himself. To sit in a warm inn with a foaming ale and merry company. As a child, it was something he’d always dreamed his life would be. As an adult, he now realised it was something people did precisely to forget their lives. Brief moments of happiness and long moments of forgetting – all adding up to a sort of contentment and a way of getting by. It wasn’t so bad. It was just a shame that such simple lives and pleasures didn’t have a way of holding back plagues, armies, the fall of gods and oblivion. Such a shame. But he couldn’t blame them. The streets and the world outside the inn were dark, scary, horrible places. Who in their right mind ever really wanted to leave a comfortable seat next to the warm hearth? No one, for oblivion lay just beyond the door. The vast hungry darkness of the void crouched, waiting for the innocent and unwary.

Which begs the question, dopey, of just what you’re doing. Careful! There are more of those kids about, and they’re closing in on you, herding you, I think. You don’t think they’ve turned to cannibalism for want of food, do you? I bet they have sharp and pointy little teeth
.

‘One of my friends is out here,’ Jillan explained. ‘I have to find him. Otherwise, what sort of friend would I be?’

Er … an alive one? You’d be an alive friend. I’m sure your friend wouldn’t want you as a friend if you were a dead one. Besides, he can probably find his way on his own
.

‘Actually, I’d already be dead if it weren’t for him. Taint, payment is due.’

There was a silent gasp.
Where did you hear that phrase?
the taint asked shakily, but fled before Jillan decided whether to answer or not.

Jillan moved into the wide Gathering Place in the centre of Godsend and walked over to the Meeting House. He’d heard the patter of small feet behind and to either side of him, but they’d broken off abruptly as he’d left the narrow street. There was no cover in the large square for his stalkers to use, and they clearly lacked the courage to attack him out in the open.

‘Hello, my friend,’ Jillan said as he looked down at the chained and drooling Samnir. The once always clean-shaven soldier had an unkempt grey beard, which made him look far older than Jillan remembered. Yet Samnir did not look as gaunt or filthy as Jillan had feared he would. Had someone been feeding and cleaning him? There was a good blanket beside him too, which must have been why he wasn’t yet dead of exposure.

‘I’ve come to return your sword, Samnir, for I have had good use of it and do not need it any more. Let me see. What did you say when you first gave it to me? Ah. It is freely given and therefore yours to command.’

Jillan used the sword to cut his friend’s chains and then laid it in his lap. He took a deep breath and called magic to him. As the storm began to eddy and swirl around him, power rose in answer from his core. ‘Not to kill!’ Jillan breathed to himself and gently trickled power into his friend.

After a few long moments, Samnir’s body was completely suffused and sparks of excess energy danced in the air around his skin, but the soldier’s eyes remained empty. What was wrong? Any more power would kill the old soldier. Jillan began to shake and sweat with the strain of the conjuring. If he didn’t find an answer quickly, he might end up killing them both.

The taint sighed.
Can’t have you killing yourself over something so silly, can I? The problem’s with his mind, not his body
.

Mind? Mind! The Saint had disconnected Samnir’s mind from his body. Rushing, but with little other choice, Jillan ran power through old synapses, saving, reforming and reshaping where he could. Breaking off, he fell back with a gasp. He prayed he had done enough.

He watched Samnir’s dead grey eyes. Was that a flutter or a reflection of falling snow? Then a slow blink. A spark of life and intelligence.

‘Saviours be prai— The gods be praised,’ Jillan breathed.

‘Jillan!’ Samnir rasped. ‘Look at all the trouble you’ve caused! I’ve a good mind to put you over my knee.’

‘Samnir!’ Jillan cried in delight and hugged the old soldier.

‘Oof! Careful. You’re either stronger than you look or I’m weaker than I should be. I’m absolutely frozen. And I’ve got piles to boot.’

Jillan felt hot tears on his cheeks, but they were good tears, tears that washed some of the pain and horror from his eyes, tears that blurred his vision kindly so that the world looked a little less grimy. ‘And Hella?’ he dared ask Samnir softly.

Samnir nodded. ‘Who else do you think it was kept me alive? Ugh! What’s that smell? It’s me! Come on, Jillan lad, let’s get you home and the two of us cleaned up. We should try to look presentable, or Hella will be turning us away from her doorstep before I can properly thank her or she can properly recognise you. I think you’ll have to help me up. I’m stiff as f … er … a plank. Easy! Ow!’

They hobbled out of the Gathering Place towards Jillan’s old home.

As they went, Jillan noticed nearly every door in the southern part of town had a big white cross painted on it as a mark of the plague. The doors and windows were shut up tight, some from the outside. There was no one to be seen except for an emaciated mongrel that was eating something red, and that growled as they passed.

‘At least the odd chimney is showing smoke,’ Samnir coughed. ‘Otherwise, I’d think we walked through a graveyard.’

‘The pagans from the mountains have left them alone, at least.’

‘The pagans are no doubt fearful of the plague too. It’s probably prevented most of the rape, pillage and looting that would otherwise have gone on.’

‘I don’t think Aspin’s people are like that.’

Samnir gave him a wan smile and shrugged. Jillan noticed the old soldier was leaning quite heavily on him now that his cheeks had lost their brief flush of colour and he was beginning to shiver.

‘Nearly there. Here we are,’ Jillan said as they ducked the low overhangs of roofs and zigzagged between the old cottages, water butts and lean-tos near the southern wall. ‘Oh.’

The door to Jillan’s home hung forlornly from one hinge and bore the scars of where the Heroes who’d come to arrest his parents had kicked it in. Snow had drifted inside, and it seemed far smaller than Jillan remembered. For a second or two he was convinced that they’d come to the wrong place, that they must have got confused in the maze of streets. The top of his head had never brushed the door lintel like that, and he’d never had to turn his shoulder slightly to avoid knocking it on the jamb. And that was surely a toy version of his father’s great wooden armchair. No, this wasn’t his home. It was too dark and pokey. Far too cold, somehow colder than outside. It was … broken. He felt a lump in his throat, felt sick.

‘Don’t worry, lad. We’ll have it set to rights in no time, you’ll see. Look, there’s wood piled there. I’ll get the place warmed up. You go get us a bucket of water from outside. Jillan! Come on, lad. Do as I tell you. Put me down here. Go on now.’

Jillan blinked, standing stupidly with a full bucket of water in front of Samnir. He didn’t remember having gone outside to get it, but he’d apparently done so. Hadn’t he had to break through a layer of ice? There were grazes on the knuckles of one hand, which stung.

‘Fill the kettle there and we’ll get it on the fire. Give me a beaker of the cold stuff first though. I’m dying of thirst.’ Samnir was slumped in the chair nearest the hearth: it seemed that just getting a few weak flames going had taken everything out of him.

Jillan did as Samnir told him and then went to the cupboards, most of which stood open. It seemed that some of his neighbours had been in and picked over his mother’s winter stores before she was even properly … His sightless hands closed on a couple of pieces of hard bread that the thieves had missed, or didn’t have the teeth to tackle. The bread had a pale mould covering it but would have to do. He dunked the pieces in water to soften then, skewered them on a toasting fork and then balanced them next to the kettle.

He breathed, watching the bread turn a darker green and then black. It smoked and popped. He didn’t see it any more. He rested his forehead against the warm bricks of the chimney and closed his eyes for a moment, a blessed moment. You know what you have to do, he told himself.

His eyes came open and he pulled the bread out of the fire before it was completely lost. Soft snores came from Samnir’s chair. Jillan was not about to disturb him, instead placing the bread on the corner of the table so that it would be within reach of the soldier when he awoke.

Then Jillan went outside and pulled the door gently closed behind him. He went to the nearest house with a white cross on its door and smoke coming from its chimney. He knocked several times and waited.

The Peculiar sat in the middle of the crossroads, one minute a picture of beatific contemplation, the next a brooding gargoyle. He’d been away from the world for too long, he knew that now. Time was as much a place as features of the landscape and its ridiculously short-lived people. It was incredible to think that the people of this world ever achieved anything, to be honest. How did they even manage to survive? Why did they bother? Probably because they didn’t know any different, and because the elseworlders kept them blissfully ignorant of where everything was heading. If the people were to know, of course, they’d want to undo themselves rather than suffer the alternative. And that would be that: no more people, no more world and no more Geas. The elseworlders would suffer a moment of annoyance, but then be free to move on to the next realm and Geas, immediately forgetting the loss. For the loss would mean nothing to them; unless every realm they visited started to undo itself in the same way, meaning the elseworlders never recouped the energy they’d spent in spreading through the realms of the Geas, such that they became overstretched and thinned to the point of non-existence. But the odds of that happening were so remote as to be … well, non-existent, which just proved his point anyway.

He’d withdrawn from the world because he had expected the elseworlders to have it all over and done with quite quickly. Yet the stubborn and wilful nature of this people and Geas meant everything had become tediously drawn out. The world had remained in limbo, balancing between succumbing to the elseworlders on the one hand and tipping into suicidal oblivion on the other. Much to his surprise, neither had yet occurred. The world would teeter one way and look like it was about to fall, but then something unexpected would catch them all out and the world would rock back the other way. How long could it remain so unstable and still survive?

Was it chance that the world still survived? The elseworlders didn’t believe in chance, of course, only complexity. The Peculiar differed from them in that, naturally, for was he not the Lord of Mayhem? For him there were no absolutes, although he conceded there were many near certainties, such as the way the formidably manipulative elseworlders had made particular eventualities inescapable. And the apparent certainty that nothing on this world could contend with the cosmic force that was the elseworlders, nor redirect their intent. Yet, just as the gods could not be omnipotent, so there could be no absolutes. Just as there were gods, there was sun-metal. Just as there was control, order and civilisation, there was himself, the Peculiar.

It was curious – no,
telling
– that he had been drawn back into the affairs of the world. He was still bound to this world and essential to it, it would seem. Either this signalled nothing was about to end or all the competing powers were finally colliding and about to settle things once and for all. All he knew was that he would either be bound here forever and lack the power to break free unless he secured sufficient amounts of sun-metal or, alternatively, he might manage to claim the Geas for himself, which wasn’t entirely outside the realms of possibility, especially if he could keep the fragile Freda and unreliable Jillan alive long enough to do so.

He sighed. And so he crouched here at the crossroads. He pondered the dust patterns on the road. The raindrops that had formed the patterns were transitory, and yet they also left signs of their passing, signs that could interrupt the flow of that which came after. He was about to drag a nail through the dust when the ground trembled. At last.

Freda pulled herself up out of the ground and blinked as she looked around.

‘Ah, there you are, my little mole.’ The Peculiar smiled in welcome. ‘I began to worry when you weren’t there to help our friends at the gates.’

Freda’s face remained as blank as stone, but he knew she’d be feeling a pang of guilt at his words. ‘Is friend Jillan all right?’ she asked. ‘All the heavy men have marched out of the city. Where are they going? Chasing friend Jillan?’

‘Precisely so. We should go to help him, yes?’

‘I promised to take him to Haven.’

‘Did you now? That’s nice of you, dear one. Pretty stones around your neck, by the way. Very becoming. They bring out the colour of your eyes. Your boyfriend gave them to you, did he?’

Freda looked at her feet, kicking the road. He watched her for a moment and sighed.

‘What’s wrong? If I’m to take you and Jillan to – how many more temples is it? – then we’re going to be together for quite a while. We shouldn’t be keeping secrets from each other. Otherwise, it will be difficult to be friends, won’t it? I presume you
were
going to mention to me that you found the temple of Wayfar, weren’t you? That’s where you were, wasn’t it, while the rest of us were risking our lives helping Jillan? So come, dear one, tell me what’s wrong. I promise I won’t be mad.’