Nightpeople (19 page)

‘You poor thing.'

Saria rushed back to the hut and seized a water-skin and the remains of her meal. She was carrying them back to the animal before she realised that she was still reaching into the dog's mind.

The animal lapped greedily at the nozzle of the water-skin as Saria held it to his mouth. In a couple of minutes it had drained the whole bag. It was less interested in the food, so Saria left the scraps there while she went in search of more water. There was no more in the hut, but she spotted the well through the open doorway.

Quickly, she made her way across to the low stone wall, aware all the time of the gentle contact between the dog's consciousness and her own.

Around the well the ground was muddy – a thick red paste where people had slopped their buckets while decanting water. A long, knotted strand of rope made from various lengths of cloth and leather, lay coiled on the ground. To one end of this was tied an old tin bucket sealed with some sort of gum, and the other end was firmly knotted around a couple of large, heavy stones, an anchor that would take two men to move.

The wall around the hole was the height of Saria's knees. The stones it was made of had been fitted together and cemented with red mud. Leaning over the parapet, Saria stared down into the well.

The sensation was uncomfortably like looking into Dreamer Baanti's eyes. The round, dark hole seemed endless as it dropped deep into the Earthmother.

A few small red pebbles littered the ground and Saria picked up the biggest and dropped it in. The splash was a long time coming, but told her all she needed to know.

The dog's thirst was still an insistent pressure overlaying her own senses, and without further hesitation she picked up the tin bucket and lowered it into the hole as fast as she dared. It bounced a couple of times against the walls of the well shaft, and she feared that the echoing ‘clang' which resounded up from the hole would attract someone's attention.

Nobody emerged from the surrounding huts, though, so she kept feeding the rope down and down until it abruptly went slack in her hands.

For one horrible, panicky moment she thought that the bucket had come untied, and imagined Dariand's response when he found out. Then the rope slowly went taut again, and she realised she'd simply reached the water and the bucket took a little time to sink.

After giving it what she thought would be enough time to fill completely, Saria hauled back. The weight of the now laden bucket came onto the line, and she realised her mistake.

Full, the bucket was far heavier than she could manage on her own. After just a couple of pulls her arms were burning, and the rope started to slip through her hands.

She gritted her teeth, set her jaw, and held on.

If there were some way to spill some water from the bucket down below, she might be able to lighten it. But it was all she could do just to hold the rope and pull it upwards, let alone jerk it around enough to splash water from it.

Sweat poured from her forehead as she pulled again and again. When, after what seemed like an age, she looked at the line coiled on the ground around her feet, there was a disconcertingly small amount of it there. She stopped pulling and, as carefully as she could, lowered her hands until the stone lip of the well took some of the weight from her arms.

With a start she noticed that she'd lost her reach to the dog's mind. It had vanished somewhere during her struggle with the bucket. She was on the point of letting go the rope and rushing back to check on the animal when Dariand leaned over her and took the rope from her burning hands.

‘I thought I told you to rest.' There was a trace of anger in his voice, but he controlled it as he concentrated on pulling the bucket up.

‘I ran out of water.'

‘Really?' He stopped pulling long enough to raise one unbelieveing eyebrow in her direction. ‘You must have been thirsty. I left you a skinful.'

‘I was.'

He pulled on the rope a little longer, and finally the bucket sloshed up from the darkness.

‘There.'

She picked up the empty skin and tried to fill it, but ended up slopping more water on the ground than into the container.

‘Let me.' Dariand took the bucket and skin from her, and filled it expertly, quickly pressing the swollen water-skin into her hands. ‘Now, get back to the hut and sleep. I'll be in soon.'

She watched him go. He was so confident she'd obey him that he didn't even glance back to make sure of it. Saria considered following him, but then remembered the dog.

Back in the shadow of Dariand's hut, she was relieved to find that the animal was fine. It was still collapsed in the dust where she'd left it, but was much less distressed. The first lot of water had clearly had a positive effect, so much so that it was chewing vigorously on one of the bones she'd left.

‘Here.' She crouched beside the animal with the new water. To her surprise, it cringed back from her, a low rumbling growl forming at the back of its throat, its forepaws closing protectively around the bone.

‘It's okay.' She reached for it again, and touching its mind was filled with the creature's fear – fear that she was going to try and take its food.

She wasn't sure how to reassure it. She wasn't even certain that she could. So slowly, gently, Saria withdrew from its mind and left it there chewing greedily in the shadow of Dariand's hut.

It was still early, the sun barely above the horizon behind them, when Saria met Dreamer Wanji on the nightwards edge of the township. He greeted her as he had every morning.

‘Mornin', Saria. Ready to do some reaching?'

‘Yeah.'

‘You feel the Earthmother this morning?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Good. Let's go.'

She followed him out into the desert, away from the town and wondered what he had in store for her today. Since they'd started the lessons he'd never put her through the same thing two days in a row. Sometimes he'd lead her out into the plains until the sun was high and then let her lead them both back to town. At other times he'd find a creature, usually a skink or a dust devil, and she'd have to reach into it; but she'd have to do it from a distance, or without looking at it, or any one of a hundred other variations. On other days they'd just walk, all day, seemingly without direction at all, while he pointed out various features in the land and the sky.

This morning they walked almost directly nightwards, away from the sunrise. Dreamer Wanji led, not in his usual gentle ambling gait but with purposeful strides. Saria was impressed that an old man could manage such a pace. Even Dariand would have had trouble keeping up.

As usual, they walked in silence. Once she was certain Dreamer Wanji's attention was elsewhere, Saria cast her mind out a little and sure enough, as always, there was the dog, shadowing them just over a small crest to their left. It sensed her reaching towards it and started to open its own awareness back, so she withdrew quickly again. She didn't know whether Dreamer Wanji or Dariand knew about the animal and for the moment she wanted to keep things that way.

The sun continued rising, higher and higher, and still they walked. Saria knew that complaining about the increasing heat would be futile, so she simply pulled the hood of her robe up against the glare and kept her footsteps even with that of the old man. Below her feet the sand grew hotter and for a moment she wished for her shoes, but quickly pushed that thought to the back of her mind as a waste of energy. From the first morning, when he'd roused her from her sleeping mat, Dreamer Wanji had insisted she walk barefoot, just like him.

‘Can't expect to reach the Earthmother properly if you go putting barriers between yourself and her.'

The further they walked, the more sparse became the surrounding landscape. The sofly undulating dunes that surrounded Woormra gave way to flat, hard-packed sand. The occasional patches of scrub that dotted the dunes became fewer until eventually there was nothing but emptiness out to every horizon. Finally, Dreamer Wanji stopped.

‘This'll do.'

Sinking to the sand, he unslung a water-skin and took a long draw from it before passing it to Saria. As she drank, she risked reaching quickly outwards. The dog was still there. Without the protection of the dunes, it had fallen further away, but it still ghosted along behind, just out of sight.

‘Alright then. Somethin' different today.' Dreamer Wanji gestured to her to sit beside him. ‘Today, we're gonna see how strong you really are, eh?'

‘How?'

‘Today, you're gonna do the reaching, just like normal, but out here there's nothin' for you to reach into. Right? That's why we've come this far into the plains. Nothin' living out here ‘cept for you and me. And I won't be letting you reach me in a hurry. Close your eyes now, girl.'

Saria did as she was told.

‘Good. Now just do like you normally do. Concentrate on findin' the earthwarmth and letting it flow up into you. Then you can start to reach, but this time you're not reaching out to anything specific. Just reach out. Got it?'

Behind, the dog's mind beckoned her, bright and willing. It took a conscious effort not to simply slide into those eager, open senses.

‘You're holding back.' Dreamer Wanji broke into her concentration. ‘How come?'

‘I … don't know.'

‘You gotta let go. Part of reaching is using the Earthmother to give power to your own senses. Then you don't need to find animals every time you wanna touch her Now, try again.'

Once more, Saria let the earthwarmth flow and tried to just expand her senses out, but again the easy lure of the dog's mind was too much to resist and instinctively she started falling into it.

‘What's wrong?' Wanji's brow creased in consternation as she pulled back again.

‘Nothing. It's just … too hard, that's all.'

‘Shouldn't be. Most Dreamers find this one easy, especially the ones with a lot of power like you've got. Out here most Dreamers can just reach right out through the Earthmother herself. I don't understand why you can't. Unless …'

Abruptly, the old man's eyes closed and Saria sensed as much as watched him pulling earthwarmth into himself. It took him only a couple of seconds before he opened his eyes again and nodded back to where the dog lay hidden.

‘What is it?' he asked.

‘A dog. I didn't call it or anything, it just followed me.'

‘From Woormra?'

‘Before that. From Olympic, I think.'

‘Olympic?'

‘I reached into it there. The first time I was there with Dariand. And then Dreamer Baanti used it to guard me while he had me tied up and …'

‘Dreamer Baanti's dog? Skinny yellow bugger?' A look of concern crept across the old man's features.

‘Yeah. At least, I think so.'

‘It's been following you all this way?'

Saria nodded.

‘You been feeding it?'

‘A bit,' she admitted. ‘It was so hungry when it came in from the desert.'

‘And it's been following us every day?'

‘Pretty much.'

Dreamer Wanji shook his head.

‘Tell you what, girl, you got the reaching like nobody I've ever met. Never been a Dreamer who could lure another man's dog from him. Not that I've heard of, anyway. Bloody amazing. Call it.'

‘He might not come.'

‘Try anyway. Reach for him when you do it, eh?'

Saria reached for the dog a third time, and as their minds touched she shouted, ‘Dog! Come here!'

The animal's pleasure at her summons flooded through her and she felt it launch itself towards her and Dreamer Wanji. Pulling back into her own mind, she opened her eyes just in time to see a shape detach itself from the landscape and trot steadily across the hard dirt.

‘Bloody night spirits,' Dreamer Wanji muttered as the dog came closer. ‘That's Dreamer Baanti's beast, alright. And you reckon he's been following you since Olympic?'

‘I think so, yeah.'

‘Never seen anything like it.' Dreamer Wanji shook his head as the dog stopped just a few steps away and regarded the old man warily. ‘Give him some water, then. Poor thing's gotta be thirsty after that walk.'

Saria squirted some water into the palm of her hand and the dog lapped it up gratefully then retreated again.

Dreamer Wanji turned his attention back to Saria. ‘This makes your job harder, but we didn't walk all the way out here for nothin', eh?'

‘Okay.'

‘Good. You're gonna have to just block him out, if you can. When you let the earthwarmth flow through you, try to just let your mind out past his. Don't let the edges of his world be the edges of yours. Right? You gotta let your mind go out further, around the dog, right out through the Earthmother, get under her skin, so to speak.'

‘I'll try.'

With the dog so much closer, she expected that reaching would be more difficult than before, but now Dreamer Wanji knew of the dog's presence she found she didn't have to fight so hard to avoid its mind, and, as the old man had suggested, she just let her own consciousness slip past it. Immediately, a warm wave rushed through her.

Dreamer Wanji noted immediately her sharp intake of breath. ‘There, that's it!' He nodded encouragingly.

She barely heard the old man's praise. Reaching through the Earthmother directly was something else again, something … huge. It was finding the most enormous mind in the world right there, all around her. The size of it almost swamped Saria.

‘Steady now.' Dreamer Wanji's hand on her arm was as insubstantial as the fluttering of an insect's wings against her skin. ‘Just keep breathing deep and get used to it. Don't go rushing in.'

Slowly, Saria sank into the land. Gradually, as she let her awareness expand, she began to sense things, further and further: tiny clicks and pinpricks of life dotted across the plains; cold fingers of water trickling deep through the rocks below the surface; the searing touch of the sun.

Daywards, a bright cloud shimmered – a concentration of life – Woormra. And below it, the caverns and tunnels of the council chamber formed a cold, empty maze snaking deep into the earth.

‘Don't push yourself too far.' Dreamer Wanji's voice seemed to slide into her thoughts like a dream, distant and disembodied. ‘Just take it slowly.'

But she couldn't resist the pull of it, the immensity of power that pulsed through the ground, and Saria let herself stretch even further out.

She had no idea how far she'd reached when she hit it.

Nightwards, like a cold, deep, gnarled scar, a patch of the earth was dead. Beyond it she could feel the vaguest hints of trickling earthwarmth, but what grabbed her attention was the expanse of nothingness that blemished the surface and reached deep into the bedrock. Just brushing her senses against the distant coldness sent a convulsion through her, and instinctively she pulled away, falling back into herself in a rush.

Suddenly she was back in the empty plains with Dreamer Wanji and the dog, her world reduced in an instant to her own limited horizons.

‘What happened?' The old man crouched anxiously beside her. ‘You alright, girl?'

‘There was … something. Out that way.' Saria pointed nightwards. ‘Something cold.'

‘Out there?' The old man followed the direction of her finger. ‘How far?'

‘Don't know. A long way. Much further than Woormra is behind us.'

‘You reached Woormra?'

She nodded.

‘And you felt something nightwards, too?'

‘Yeah.'

Dreamer Wanji was incredulous. ‘Only thing out that way between here and the Darkedge is the Shifting House.'

Saria was trying to clear the fog that had settled in her head.

‘It was so … dead.'

‘That'll be it for sure. The Shifting House. Night spirits, girl! That's two days walk from here. Even I can't reach that far.'

‘Why couldn't I feel anything there? It was so empty.'

‘It's an empty place. It's where the Skypeople used to do their burning. There's nothing at all left there – no life. Just a shell of earth so burned out it's like a hole in the world.' He passed her the water-skin. While she drank he continued to regard her with astonishment. ‘I seen a lot of things in my time, Saria, but I've never known anyone, not a single Dreamer, who could reach two days through the Earthmother.'

‘What do you think it means?'

‘Don't know, girl. But if there's gonna be a Dreamer who'll be able to find a way across the Darkedge, I reckon it'll be you.' He hauled himself slowly to his feet. ‘We'd better be gettin' back to Woormra, if we don't want to get caught in the dark.'

They began retracing their steps daywards, the dog padding steadily beside Saria. As she walked, she tried to recall the energy of touching the Earthmother, but her thoughts kept coming back to the horrible coldness of the Shifting House. When they were close to Woormra, and twilight was stretching over them from daywards, she turned to her companion.

‘Dreamer Wanji?'

‘Yeah?'

‘Why hasn't that place – the Shifting House – started to heal like the rest of the land? How come it's still so empty?'

Dreamer Wanji sighed. ‘Sometimes, when you burn a place too badly, when you pull too much earthwarmth out of it or push too much into it, you kill its life. Just like with people.'

‘People?'

‘It's why you gotta be so careful reaching people. You push too hard against them and you can just burn them right out of their own minds. ‘Specially if they're not strong-minded in the first place.'

Saria stopped in her tracks.

‘What is it, girl?' Dreamer Wanji threw a concerned glance in her direction. ‘You okay?'

‘But …'

For a brief moment Saria's face was a mask of horror, and then she was gone, running as fast as she could towards the lights of Woormra, the dog at her heels. Dreamer Wanji watched her go, puzzled, before he realised the implications of what he'd just told her

‘Ah, crap,' he muttered, then set off behind her as fast as his old legs could manage.