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Authors: R. J. Davnall

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BOOK: I Can See Clearly Now
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Clearsight
spreading around his eyes was ice, but it failed to soothe the ache
just behind them. The two sensations warred over Rel’s
consciousness as he tried to pull Van Raighan’s Witnessing from his
memory. Images came and went; Rissad’s hungry face, Dora’s eyes,
still diamond-hard but wide with pain and fear, a group of Wildren
talking to the younger Van Raighan.

There were
other pictures too, either too strange to recognise or gone too
fast to place, but Rel pushed his groaning brain through the haze
and confusion, chasing Rissad. His eyelids tightened, fighting to
close against his flagging drive to keep Seeing. Then he caught
Rissad’s trail in a glimpse of the man walking through a ruined
city. By the language on the signs, not old Federas.

The image
skipped along as Rel tried to force his way forward in time. In
fits and jerks, Rissad moved through the city, in through the
shattered glass doors of a monolithic concrete tower, down into the
basement. And from the basement into a cave. Rel could see the
outline of the huge rift through the stone of the passage Rissad
took; it ran clear under the city, thousands of feet deep, miles
long.

Rel’s head
pounded. His eyes felt like they were about to burst. Dimly, he was
aware of stone against his cheek; he must have fallen over. In the
Clearviewing, Rissad turned a corner and a Wilder, a brutish
four-legged creature Rel didn’t recognise, grabbed him around the
waist. Rissad kicked and thrashed, but the Wilder didn’t even
flinch. Silence made the struggle comic.

There was a
second Rissad in the thing’s arms, too; one that hung limp and
compliant, smiling. Still nothing told Rel when this was happening,
but the Wilder had to be taking him to the strange door. Rel pushed
forward again, but his mind was numb, a useless lump of damp fluff
refusing to break new ground.

He changed
tack, pulling back in time, searching the city for clues. None of
the old clocks worked, of course, but there were weeds grown to
large bushes whose leaves were bright green with new growth;
Clearsight picked out a lone daffodil growing in a park as Rissad
walked past. Spring. But spring was just hovering on the edge of
breaking, and Rissad couldn’t have survived starving for ten
months.

Further back,
and the pounding in his head became a thrashing, writhing thing,
knifing between his frontal lobes. He couldn’t feel his eyes
anymore. He couldn’t see anymore. No, he had his hands clenched to
his face, holding his eyelids apart. But he pushed back, and
suddenly he was seeing the ruined city from the crest of a low
hill, the sun rising behind it, and Dora skipping - skipping?! -
down the hillside towards it. She turned as if listening to someone
out of sight, and laughed.

He fought for a
last moment of focus as his brain tried to escape his tortured
skull, but there was a swirling distortion around Dora that stacked
image on top of image to a depth beyond even what Clearsight could
sort out. A single detail remained; Dora’s hair bounced and swung
from the crown of her head in a ponytail, bound by a bright yellow
ribbon.

Dora had never
had hair that long. Everything he’d seen was the future. How had
Van Raighan Witnessed it?

Logic fatigue
became a saw, rasping through the centre of Rel’s skull, and he
released his eyelids. The end of the Clearviewing was a hammer to
the forehead and a kick to the guts all at once, and still blessed
relief for all that. He rolled onto his back, clutching at his
head.

It took a
minute before he could open his eyes again, and even then light was
all prickle and heat. The grey shapes around him might have been
the dark stone of the battlement and walkway, but he felt like he
was standing on air with a wall at his back. Which way was up? The
fragile image of the Court as a building shattered as Rel’s
internal logic failed.

He squeezed his
eyes shut again, and sensation ceased. At least if he couldn’t feel
anything, he couldn’t feel the chaos around him. Even the feeling
of sinking below the murky waters of sanity faded and he became
nothingness. Stable.

Without using
anything so substantial as hands, he found a short rope. It hovered
in the void where Rel should be, and he began tying knots in it,
looping one end over-then-under the other. The first thing any
Gifted learned; tying a Four Knot. The first three knots were easy.
You tied them just like you would in the First Realm. The splitting
ache hovered at the edge of consciousness as he manipulated
first-realm logic into those first three knots.

The last knot
was pure Second Realm, though. You tied it backwards, then pulled
the whole thing through itself, and somehow the ends of the rope
joined inside the knot. What remained was a loop of rope with four
knots in it that could never be untied, short of cutting. You made
a four knot to summon the Four Knot. Dora would come for him. She
was in the Second Realm anyway. Nearby. Rel let Rel go and waited
for the Sherim to carry him back to himself.

Dim awareness
marked time poorly, but suddenly there was a second nothing next to
the first. The dividing line was the skin between two pairs of
eyes, one flint-grey and hard, the other green but icy cold.
Someone knew something about those eyes. They looked a bit like his
sister’s.

But the eyes
looked nothing alike, so whoever the sister was, it wasn’t either
of them. Besides, none of these eyes glittered with malice. No, the
malice was in the Van Raighans, and he needed to stop Rissad.

‘He’ was a good
start, he knew. He had a sister, with green eyes. And a... friend?
Could eyes that hard ever be friendly? No, Dora was a friend,
definitely. Not a nice one, but a friend. Just like his sister was
a sister but not a nice one. Even if she did have nice hands.

Somewhere in
the tension between Dora and Pevan, Rel found himself. Slowly, he
began sifting the jumble of mental noise for sensations that
belonged to him. The splitting headache was obvious, and the damp
cheeks felt right, too. Gritty eyes went with that. Overusing
Clearsight tended to make you tear up. There was a stiff ache in
his neck and something uncomfortably pointy poked into his
cheek.

He brushed
water off his face - more than just tears - and opened his eyes.
They immediately filled with rainwater and left him blinking and
spluttering. It was hammering down; he could hear the splashes and
trickles up and down the cliff he was apparently lying at the
bottom of.

Wherever he
was, it wasn’t anywhere near the Sherim. He lay on the gravelly
bottom of a narrow gorge, his boots and calves in the swelling
stream. The sky above was grey, dark with fading light. Dora lay
half on top of him, her head on his chest and her leg tangled with
his. Her hair, normally so wild, was plastered flat against her
skull, and her robe was dark with moisture, almost black in this
light.

“Dora? Where
are we?” Gently, Rel touched her shoulder.

She lifted her
head and their eyes met. Rel’s headache flared and his eyes stung
as they widened; where Dora’s eyes had been grey, now they were
closer to silver. Even in the dim gorge, her irises shone gently,
revealing a tracery of red on white. She’d been crying too.

“Rel?” her
voice was hoarse and thin. “Your logic... Does it hurt?”

“What?”

She blinked at
him and lifted a hand to his face. She touched his forehead, and
jerked her hand back. More firmly, but still distant, she said,
“Your head. Right.”

“Dora, what’s
going on? Where are we?”

She looked to
one side, then back at him, and quickly pushed herself up to
half-sitting. Her head jerked nervously as she looked around. “I’m
not sure. How did we get back to the First Realm?”

Rel frowned,
“You don’t know? You did it.”

“I..?”

“I went to the
Court for another Clearviewing, but fatigue got the better of me. I
managed to tie the knot, but I was nothingness by the time you
came.” As Rel spoke, he watched Dora’s lips thin with a sinking
heart.

To his endless
relief, she said, “As soon as we know what’s going on, we are going
to have words about that, young man.” As if she was his mother. Her
eyes flashed in the gloom - literally - and she snapped, “Don’t
give me that look, Relvin.”

“Just provided
you wait until we’re safe,” he grumbled, pushing to his feet. His
head swam, and he let himself lean against the cliff. “There must
be a Sherim somewhere nearby, and it’s nearly night.”

“Rel, I didn’t
take us through a Sherim.”

“That’s
impossible. You have to have done.” Frowning made the headache
worse, but he couldn’t help it.

“I can’t
remember much after I got to the Court, but I know I was in no fit
shape to handle a Sherim.” She pushed herself to her feet and put a
hand on his shoulder, “Besides, I think I know where we are.”

“Where?”
Standing was getting easier, but Rel didn’t quite dare let go of
the cliff wall. He blinked water out of his eyes and tried to see
past the end of the gorge. It really was getting dark quickly.

“We’re out
beyond Nursim. I went walking in these hills a few times when I
went there for training.” She frowned, her eyes flicking down to
her hands and back to his. “There’s no Sherim nearer here than
ours.”

“Impossible.”

“I know. Come
on, if we hurry we can make it into town in time to grab some
food.”

Rel nodded. He
let her take his hand - her skin was slick with water, but warm -
and stumbled after her down the gorge.

 

***

 

About
the author

R. J. Davnall
has been telling stories all his life, and thus probably shouldn’t
be trusted to write his own bio. He is currently studying for his
PhD in philosophy, at least when he can be dragged away from
writing. He lives on
the
Penny Lane, in an attempt to
channel any of the inspirational genius that might still be
lingering there. When not writing or messing around on Twitter, he
can usually be found playing piano, drumming with his band, or
being dangerously obsessive about videogames.

 

R. J. Davnall
at Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/RDavnall

On Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/eatthepen

On Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/RJDavnall

On Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/rjdavnall

Blog:
http://itsthefuture.blogspot.com/

 

Also by
R.J.Davnall:

Heaven Can
Wait

What is the
Non-Agency?

Who are the Men
Who Aren't There, and what do they want with Tom, newly dead and
just learning that life as a ghost has its perks? When Tom falls in
love with Mary, the daughter of his murderer, and decides he'd
rather stay with her than go towards the light, the Non-Agency has
to teach him something else; there are worse things than
dying...

 

"I love the
premise and the main character is just fantastic. In fact, all of
the characters are." A.M. Simpson

 

"From start to
finish, absolutely wonderful." A.J. Aalto

BOOK: I Can See Clearly Now
13.42Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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