The thing’s eyes swivelled toward my blade. “I do not know.”
“Then who told you to come for her?”
“I am newly emerged. Something communicates with me but I do not know what it is, only that I must obey it in order to secure good status in my society.”
“I’ll be civilised up to a point,” I said, “but I’ll kill you rather than allow you anywhere near her.”
“That is unfortunate. It means we must fight.”
The Blood God lunged at me. I stepped back and slammed the door in its face, quickly sliding the bolts home. For some time, the thing pounded and scraped at the portal, then at the windows, but it eventually gave up and departed.
Five more times the creatures came to the house and five more times I denied them entry. When the sixth visitor arrived, I didn’t bother to leave my chair. The door rattled beneath the onslaught but held firm. Then a muffled shout reached me. “Why the blazes won’t you let me in! I know you’re in there! Indeed I do!”
Recognising the voice of Baron Hammer Thewflex, I strode to the door, and, with my sword drawn, opened it a crack. Thewflex was indeed on our front steps.
“Show me your hands,” I demanded.
He did so. They were steady.
“How do you feel?”
“Absolutely fine, old chap,” he replied. “I only wish I could say the same of my colleagues!”
“Come in.”
“The confounded Blood Gods are everywhere,” he said as he entered. “I was practically tripping over the blessed things all the way here.”
I closed the door after him, called for Clarissa, then said, “It is a peculiarly tranquil invasion. Are your people putting up no resistance at all?”
“The City Guard are doing what they can, but the disease has knocked the population sideways. I’ve seen more Guards staring into space than swinging their swords. The situation is thoroughly catastrophic!”
Clarissa stepped from the laboratory with Father Clutterfuss, and Thewflex reported, “I came to tell you that Lord Brittleback and Father Reverie have just been taken. The House of Lords and Council of Magicians are in disarray. The Heart of Blood isn’t yet a quarter risen, and already New Yatsillat’s Aristocrats are dwindling so fast that we’ve lost all influence over the Working Class. Do you know where I might find Father Yissil Froon, Miss Stark?”
Clarissa handed a small flask of liquid to our visitor. “Drink this, Baron—it’s the cure. We’ve just perfected it. No, I haven’t seen Yissil Froon in a long while. Apparently he’s sequestered himself somewhere in order to meditate. Why do you want to see him?”
Thewflex removed his mask, swallowed the formula, and replaced his face covering.
“The protection provided by the Magicians simply isn’t working. I was hoping Yissil Froon could advise me. Indeed I was. Indeed! Indeed!”
“Father Clutterfuss has two bottles of this cure,” my friend said. “You and he should go and ensure that every remaining Aristocrat receives a dose. Treat the Magicians first. The stuff isn’t Dar’sayn, but it might, at very least, give them a little more strength.”
“Rightio, but I fear it’s come too late, Miss Stark. The outlook is bleak.”
The two Yatsill went to the door. Thewflex turned back and said, “You are one of the very few Servants left, Mr. Fleischer. Do you hope for release?”
“Most certainly not,” I answered.
“Then guard yourself well.” He gave a nod of farewell and, with Father Clutterfuss, departed.
I addressed my companion. “I’m more concerned with guarding you. The Blood Gods appear intent on taking you into the sea.”
“Then you’d better sharpen your sword,” she responded, “because we have to leave the house.”
“It’s too dangerous! Those infernal creatures are everywhere!”
“Maybe so, but Baron Thewflex was right—we have to find Yissil Froon. As Father Mordant Reverie suggested—and Clutterfuss has since confirmed—he’s survived a great many cycles of Ptallaya’s yellow and red days, and if there’s any way we can help the Yatsill to survive this invasion, he’s the one to tell us how. We must go to where the shield emanates from the fishing village. I feel positive that Froon is its source.”
I hesitated. More than anything else, I wanted to keep my friend safe, but she was right—we couldn’t stay in the house forever. There were already deep cracks appearing in its walls. Like every building in the city, it was falling apart.
“Very well—but keep your dagger drawn and don’t leave my side.”
We donned our coats and stepped out into the peasouper. The vapour glowed redly around us. Driving would have been perilous in the extreme, especially with the roads being littered with abandoned vehicles and rubble, so we walked to the avenue and made our way down it. I kept my hand on my sword’s hilt, expecting at any moment to see a Blood God come writhing out of the roiling murk. What few of the Working Class we passed were unclothed and docile. There was no sound other than the occasional rumble and clatter as buildings collapsed.
“This place was built on my memories,” Clarissa muttered, “and has crumpled into nothing. Is my past so flimsy?”
I touched her hand. “Your remarkable mind may have given form to New Yatsillat, but do not judge yourself by what’s happened to it. It’s become what it is through the actions of beings entirely alien to us.”
“Exactly as my life on Earth was ruined by a being utterly alien to my working-class background—an aristocrat. I sometimes think I’ll forever be denied a place where I feel I belong.”
“I hardly think the Aristocrats here are responsible for this chaos. They’ve been invaded by an evil predator.”
“Evil, Aiden? We shall see.”
We continued on down the steep and wide thoroughfare, stepping carefully over networks of cracks and deep fissures, passing from the fourth level to the fifth, on to the sixth, then across the muddy seventh. Through the fog, we saw that parts of the defensive wall had subsided, and when we came to the gate, its six guards didn’t even challenge us—they were staring into space, oblivious to all.
The eighth terrace was devastated, having for the most part slipped onto the ninth. Two Blood Gods were squirming through the mud and debris, vague forms in the haze, heading toward the sea. I stopped Clarissa and we stood motionless until the things had passed.
A crash echoed from far off—yet another building tumbling to the ground.
“By heavens!” I exclaimed. “The magnitude of destruction is incredible! The city is deteriorating as fast as it was built!”
Clarissa pointed to our right. “The emanation is coming from over there.”
We reached the lowest part of New Yatsillat and found it half-buried by rubble from above. Abandoned boats floated aimlessly in the bay. Thousands of Yatsill had taken to the water and were feeding much as seals do, diving from view and bobbing up a few minutes later with fish in their mouths. It was hard to believe these creatures possessed a language, let alone that they’d been capable of creating a civilisation.
“Look!” my companion cried out. “What is that?”
I followed her pointing finger and saw an orange light sliding along beneath the surface of the water. We watched until the fog swallowed the illumination.
“Some sort of machine?” I speculated. “How many more mysteries can we deal with?”
We moved on.
Clarissa led me northward, steering past some heaps of fallen masonry and clambering over others. She put her fingers to her temples. “This telepathic transmission is strong, but it does at least drown out my obsessing over those blessed blueprints.”
“I thought you’d stopped thinking about them.”
“Maybe. I can’t tell. I suspect they’re still knocking around inside my skull, but their racket has been thoroughly muffled.” She pointed ahead to where the terrace abutted the high cliff face. “If Yissil Froon is the source of the psychic protection, we’re very close to him.”
/>
We continued on until, finally, we came to a row of warehouses—mostly still standing—that had been erected against the cliff. Clarissa entered a narrow gap between two of them.
“I’m blind as a bat,” I grumbled a few moments later as we were engulfed by pitch darkness.
Clarissa took my arm. “I can see clearly. There’s a cave just ahead.”
Beneath my feet, I felt the cobbles give way to bare rock.
“It’s a natural tunnel,” my companion murmured. “Put a hand on the wall to your left. Let it guide you.”
The passage wound from side to side, gradually sloping upward.
After many minutes had passed, Clarissa said, “It looks like it opens onto a large space. Not far to go now.”
I squinted into the blackness but saw nothing.
A few paces later I heard trickling water and jumped as a quavering voice, speaking Koluwaian, called to us from somewhere ahead. “Welcome. I’m glad to meet you at last. Come sit with me.”
“Who is it?” I hissed.
“An elderly woman,” Clarissa answered softly.
“Please,” the voice said. “Come! Come!”
Clarissa tugged my arm and whispered, “She’s sitting in the centre of a cave. There are mushrooms and some sort of lichen growing all around the place. The water you can hear is a stream falling from a niche in one of the walls. My goodness! The woman is very old! She’s emaciated, and—and she has yellow eyes!”
We moved a little further forward then stopped and Clarissa pulled me down to the floor. I sat cross-legged and waited patiently.
Just in front of us, the thin reedy voice said, “I greet you, Clarissa Stark, Aiden Fleischer. Heh! Heh! My name is Pretty Wahine. The Yatsill call me the Saviour.”
8. Gods
I uttered a cry of astonishment. The Yatsills’ god was alive!
“You’ve been made an Aristocrat,” Clarissa observed, then said to me, “She has the little bumps over her eyes.”
I squinted and strained to see but couldn’t make out a single thing. The lack of light was total.
“Yes, my child. As have you. Life on Ptallaya is strange! Heh! Heh!”
My friend asked, “You came here from Koluwai?”
Pretty Wahine didn’t respond immediately. She wheezed in the darkness—the respiration of an ailing, ancient body.
She said, “There is a hole over the island. We know that to be true—don’t we?—for we fell through it!”
“We did,” Clarissa agreed.
“I was a young woman when it took me—walking in the hills with my husband, Yaku—dear Yaku! How I loved him all that time ago! How he changed!”
“He was transported with you?”
“He was. We were sucked into the sky and awoke in a forest. Oh! We were afraid to move—we didn’t understand where we were—but I became thirsty, and saw fruit around us, so I cut into one and drank its juice. Yaku warned me not to. He said it might be poisonous. But I did it anyway.”
“Dar’sayn,” Clarissa murmured.
The old woman cackled—an uncanny dry rustling that sent prickles up my spine. “Heh! Heh! And you know what it does, yes?”
“It alters the mind.”
“That’s right! Heh! Heh! We slept, and when I awoke I could feel that, far away, there were people. Yaku was frightened to look for them, but I told him I would go. He could come with me, or stay alone. He came!”
She laughed again but it developed into a fit of coughing. We waited patiently while she recovered, then Clarissa asked, “They were the Yatsill?”
“Yes! Yes! Not people at all! We walked and walked until we found them—and when we did, Yaku tried to run away, but I knew they wouldn’t harm us, so I made him stay, and we travelled with the Yatsill on a Ptall’kor to a valley, where we ate the meat of Yarkeen. I had a vision. I saw people of Koluwai being consumed by demons. Yaku also dreamed things, but he would not tell me what, and afterwards he became quiet and different.”
I felt anchored to reality only by the touch of Clarissa’s hand where it rested on my arm, and suddenly realised that I was succumbing to a mesmeric power that radiated from the old woman. I spoke, hoping that by engaging with the conversation I’d overcome the effect. “In what way different, Pretty Wahine?”
“He was keeping secrets, my boy.”
Again she paused and struggled for breath. As Theaston Vale’s vicar, I’d sat at the bedsides of the elderly on many occasions. I recognised the sound of impending death when I heard it, and—Pretty Wahine’s psychic power notwithstanding—I was hearing it now.
Perhaps two minutes passed before her voice pierced the darkness again.
“At the end of the valley, we entered a cavern where I fell into a pool, and it gave me these bumps over my eyes. After that, all the Yatsill could speak my language. The same happened to you, yes? Heh!”
Clarissa made a sound of acknowledgment.
“Funny creatures!” the old woman exclaimed. “Like children! Copy, copy, copy! They brought us to this bay, drove the animals from the trees, and built villages in the branches, just like the ones I’d grown up in. Home! Home! Heh! Heh!”
“Animals?” my companion asked. “Do you mean Quee’tan?”
“Quee’tan, yes. Shoo! Shoo! Shoo! Away with them all!”
“How long ago was this, Pretty Wahine?”
“Oh, very much time has passed, my child. Very much time! Dar’sayn makes me live forever! Heh! Heh!” She stopped, wheezed, and went on, “Things then were not as they are now. All the Yatsill were Wise Ones. There were no Shunned.”
“Now they call themselves Aristocrats and Working Class,” I interjected.
“Heh! They pluck the words from Clarissa Stark. Right out of her head! Copy, copy, copy!”
“And they call the Koluwaians and their descendants Servants.”
“Pah! There were none before. None of my people. Just me. Just Yaku. We lived with the Yatsill until—Oh!—the red sun rose and the demons came. Blood Gods! They entered the Yatsill and killed them all. Yaku and I hid in this cave while the horrible things tried to escape into the sea. Heh! Before they reached the water, they died. No more Blood Gods. No more Yatsill.”
A rumble penetrated the darkness—a building collapsing somewhere close to the mouth of the tunnel—reminding me that outside, under the onslaught of the fiery red orb, New Yatsillat was rapidly disintegrating.
Clarissa’s fingers, still wrapped around my forearm, tightened slightly.
“The big sun set,” Pretty Wahine said, “and the little suns rose. No night on Ptallaya! And the Yatsill children came out of the nurseries and went away. We lived by ourselves, and—Oh!—I was scared. Yaku was not Yaku. I feared him. He knew things but would not tell me. Heh! Heh! I knew things, too! Yes I did! Yes! Yes! The Dar’sayn had changed me. I felt the children returning! I knew they weren’t the same! They went away with no more brains than Quee’tan—driven to the Pools of Immersion by instinct, just like animals—but came back Wise Ones! Heh! Heh! And the tree houses were filled, and life was as it was before.”
“Until the Heart of Blood rose again,” Clarissa murmured.
Another cackle. Another coughing fit. Painful gasping. Then: “My child! My child! You know what Dar’sayn can do! You know! You know! Before the yellow suns set, I sent a Yatsill to the forest to fetch more of the juice! Yes! More! More! It made me strong! With it, I could use my mind to stop the demons.”
Pretty Wahine suddenly lowered her voice to a barely audible whisper. “But don’t tell Yaku! Oh no! Secret! Where is he? Where? Where? He mustn’t have the power. He will misuse it. Only Yissil Froon knows!”
“Yissil Froon?” Clarissa and I exclaimed.
“It was he I sent to the forest. He drank Dar’sayn and helped me protect the Yatsill. Only a few fell. And, again, the Blood Gods that came died before reaching the sea. Heh! Heh! Dead! Dead!”
She drew a long, shuddery breath and emitted a long, eerie moan. I flinched away
from the sound. There was madness in it.
“Another cycle. Heh! Now there were adults to take the children to Immersion, and Ptall’kors to hasten the journey. Yes! And Yissil Froon went for more Dar’sayn. But—Oh! Oh!—he found Koluwaians! They had fallen through the hole. My Yarkeen dream! Food for the Blood Gods, to replace the Quee’tan! Oh! Poor people! Poor people! And I was very afraid because Yaku was happy. Happy! Why? Why? When he left the cave to meet the islanders, I drank more Dar’sayn and used my mind to hide away from the Yatsill—and even from my husband! I couldn’t trust him any more. I didn’t understand him. He had become very strange and secretive! Now only Yissil Froon knew how to find me. The rest forgot this cave. They forgot me!”
“Not entirely,” I noted. “They consider you a god. They call you the Saviour.”
“They remember only that someone once changed them!” she answered. She fell silent for a moment before going on, “The demons came again. I stopped many, but still some possessed the Yatsill. Some, yes. Oh! Oh! It was as I’d foreseen—the Blood Gods fed on the people and escaped into the sea. Every cycle now, the same! For a long, long time! More Koluwaians came to Ptallaya!”
She sucked at the air, her lungs creaking, and said, “Always, at the rising of the two suns, Yissil Froon brought me more Dar’sayn. Heh! I think he wanted it. Him! Ha! I controlled his mind. I would not let him keep it all for himself! I made him share it with a small number of Wise Ones and I sent my power through them to protect the Yatsill. The Blood Gods always took a few but not many. Not enough to eat all the Koluwaians, and so children were born, and families lived in the tree houses. But I hid! I hid! Heh! Heh!”
By heavens, how old was Pretty Wahine? For how many generations had she survived like a hermit, hidden away in this cave? Was Clarissa, who’d also taken Dar’sayn, now endowed with such an extended lifespan?
“Heh! Heh!” the woman crowed. “Change! Change! Always change! Now, at Immersion, some of the Yatsill children were Shunned.”
Clarissa interrupted. “Do you know why?”
“No, my child. No! Maybe Yissil Froon knows—Dar’sayn has made him a clever one, oh yes!—but I have not spoken with him. He started to conceal Yaku from my senses. It is not good! So I hid myself from Yissil Froon, too. Oh! Oh! Where is Yaku? Where? Where? Dead by now, surely! Dead and turned to dust. But not me! I have been in darkness for so long—Alone! Alone!—eating the mushrooms and the moss. Growing older and older.”