‘But the eyes were the strangest thing of all – blue like the sky had been dripped into them. And Sear says the Citizen gods have different coloured eyes: some green like grass or brown like wet bark, but none yellow like ours.’
Merlin licked her lips, remembering how her eyes had looked yellow in the puddle of water. And she had assumed the firelight had turned Ford’s eyes yellow. She had never heard of people having yellow eyes. If a lot of time had passed, it was possible eye colour had altered. But why were her eyes that colour?
The voices were silent on the subject.
‘I talked to him, too,’ Ford said, still caught up in his memories of the captured Citizen. ‘I wanted to ask him why they had come out of the forbidden city after so long. He was half-mad, screaming and cursing. Said he’d die without the shiny skin. He died the next day.’ Ford shrugged.
Merlin nodded, understanding from this that the radiation suits protected the Citizens from something in the atmosphere to which Ford and presumably she too were immune. She made no attempt to fit that into her theory of suspended animation. It was easier not to try to fit anything she had encountered into her memory of the world.
‘Have . . . have you been inside the dome . . . bubble?’ Merlin asked. She realised she had made a mistake when Ford stared at her narrow-eyed.
‘What do you mean? If I had been inside, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you, would I? Are you trying to be funny?’
Merlin let him make of her silence what he would. Finally he spat disgustedly into the fire. ‘I suppose it’s because of you coming from so far off. You wouldn’t joke if you came from an Inland clan.’
Merlin took up a twig and poked at the ashes, avoiding his eyes. The silence lengthened and she racked her brains for something to say.
‘I know more than most about the Citizen gods and what I know does not make me want to laugh.’ Ford sounded subdued. Merlin looked up warily, but he was staring fixedly into the flames. ‘It is not a good thing to want to know so many things. I’ve been told that all my life. Curiosity killed the clansman.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Yet not all children are made for obedience. Even as a child, I always asked too many questions. Yet, sometimes, the hunger to know is like the green mushroom – it claws at your belly from the inside.’
Fascinated, Merlin waited, but Ford said nothing more, preoccupied with his queer alien thoughts. But, alien or not, she understood what he meant. Her own insatiable need to understand what had happened to her was a kind of hunger too. It startled her to find this similarity between them, and for a moment she forgot her loneliness.
‘I know what you mean,’ she murmured.
Ford looked at her sharply, as if he suspected her of mocking him. Seeing her expression, he sighed. ‘I don’t meet many people who think that knowing and wanting to know are worthwhile things. Even the wardens who are supposed to be so wise, only care about being well fed and safe. Wanting to know is sometimes dangerous.’ Ford smiled suddenly. ‘But not among the scatterlings. You will like Sear. He is hungry for knowing too, though he wants only to know the secret of the Citizen gods’ magic.’
He fell silent, as if this depressed him.
Merlin was surprised at his willingness to talk so freely to a stranger. But perhaps he already saw her as a member of the scatterlings.
She started when Ford jumped to his feet without warning, stiff with tension. She opened her mouth to speak but he shook his head urgently, motioning her to silence. Like an animal scenting danger, his nostrils quivered.
‘Quick. The fire,’ he hissed.
Merlin responded to the urgency in his tone, shovelling dirt over the flames and smothering them. Ford reached over and dragged her roughly to her feet and into the trees. ‘Eyeball,’ he whispered, apparently in explanation. A few metres back in the trees, he pushed her down and sank to his knees beside her. She stared back through the trees, trying to fathom the danger.
‘See . . .’ Ford breathed in her ear, pointing.
Merlin squinted in the darkness. She heard a slight metallic whine and then she saw a small oval-shaped metallic object glide through the air and hover directly over the remains of the fire.
‘It will think it started itself,’ Ford whispered. ‘It’s too stupid to work out that people lit it, and might still be around. It would be a different story if it were Citizen gods inside a flier.’
‘Can it hear us?’ Merlin whispered.
‘We don’t think so. If they can, it doesn’t seem to help them find us.’ The floating oval rotated slowly, then glided away.
‘I guess we’d better not light the fire again,’ Ford said. ‘We might as well get some sleep. We’ll start early in the morning. It’s safest to travel before the middle hours. That’s when the Citizen gods come out in force.’ Ford rose and they both went back to the clearing.
‘They won’t come back, will they?’ Merlin asked anxiously.
Ford shook his head, yawned loudly, then stretched himself out on the ground where the fire had been. ‘They can’t find us on body heat of less than three. The fire made three. Haven’t you heard the saying two’s company, three’s dead?’
‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd,’ the mechanical voice corrected.
‘Come on, while it’s still warm,’ Ford said exasperatedly. Merlin swallowed, before lying down beside him. She jumped when he pulled her roughly nearer, her back curving against his stomach.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked a moment later. ‘You’re shaking. Are you sick?’
Unable to trust her voice, Merlin shook her head and wished she had kept the rock. She was suddenly frightened of what the primitive youth might do to her. Ford yawned again and sighed heavily. Moments later, he was snoring softly into her hair.
Merlin lay awake beside him, slowly relaxing. It was cold but shared body heat kept her warm. Shamed by her suspicions, Merlin knew she had been a fool to imagine that Ford intended to molest her.
Drifting to sleep at last, she dreamed she was peering through thick black smoke, which suddenly became dark glass. She tried to break though the glass. For some reason it was vital she reach the other side, but the glass was impregnable. Faintly she could hear a voice calling to her, muffled by the wall of glass.
Gradually, she recognised the whispering William voice. ‘Merlin, do you hear me?’ She struggled to answer, but could not utter a sound.
When she woke, it was still night. The moon was very bright and she looked up at it wondering about the voices in her mind. The words she kept hearing were memories, she was certain of that, but they were strangely clear and seemed to rise in response to her own thoughts. She was able to repress them with an effort, especially the mechanical instructing voice, but it was easier to ignore them. Besides, it was possible they might be the beginning of her memory coming back.
She wondered who William was or had been. Odd that his voice was so clear in her mind, yet she had no idea what he looked like. He was no more than a voice whispering to her, and sometimes, she felt, to himself. Strangely, she never remembered her own responses to his words.
With a sigh, she rolled over to find herself face to face with Ford. He seemed younger than he had awake, and she studied his sleeping expression, remembering the wistfulness in his voice when he had spoken of his hunger for knowledge.
Suddenly he opened his eyes.
‘Are you afraid of me?’ he asked softly, his lips close to her forehead.
Merlin was too startled to answer.
Ford smiled. ‘I don’t know how things are done among the Sea Region clans, but among the Inland clans, the mating heat is not a thing to unleash lightly.’
Merlin felt her face burn.
‘You will find us unlike traditional clans. Our lives are harder, but we have more freedom. We choose our own mates and our own tasks without the advice or interference of the wardens. We are not bound by traditions. It is a good life, or would be, if the Citizen gods had not come out. But, without them, there wou
ld be no scatterlings,’ he added philosophically.
He was silent for a long while, and Merlin thought he had gone back to sleep, but presently he said drowsily: ‘There are enough things to be afraid of without imagining dangers. I am not someone you will ever need to fear.’
Merlin was vastly relieved when he began to snore again.
Her face felt hot, but one thing was clear to her. Going to Ford’s camp was the best course of action for the present. It was definitely safer to travel with him than without, and she could always slip away before they got to the scatterlings’ camp.
She slept again, and woke near dawn to Ford shaking her. ‘Come on, get up. Can’t you hear them calling?’
Merlin could hear nothing.
‘Get up!’ he urged. ‘We’ll be able to travel back to the Hide with them. They must have been out to hunt!’
She scrambled to her feet, heart thumping jerkily. It seemed she was not to have any choice about going to the camp. It was some minutes before Merlin heard shouts in the distance. She reflected that Ford must have unusually fine hearing.
Moments later a girl hurtled into the open with a bloodcurdling yell of greeting. Like Ford, she wore nothing but a loin cloth, and her small breasts bounced as she threw herself into his arms. Her hair was longer than Ford’s, a dark straw colour. Merlin felt herself blush. No wonder Ford had been amused at her fears in the night. The girl was covered in black, dried mud, but, in spite of the dirt, she was very beautiful. Instead of a bow, she carried a thin spear.
Oddly, neither of the pair spoke, but only stared intently at one another. The girl then turned to face her, and Merlin noticed her eyes were the same searing yellow as Ford’s.
‘My sisterblood, Era,’ Ford said. ‘Era, Merlin is to join us.’
The tall girl sneered openly: ‘An Offering runaway.’
Ford scowled and pushed his sister away from him. ‘Without the Offering, no one would choose to leave clan and family.’
Era tossed her head, unmoved by her brother’s rebuke. ‘What happened to her hair?’ she demanded.
‘It was burnt,’ Ford answered repressively. ‘Where are the others?’
‘Coming,’ Era said, still eyeing Merlin. Her expression softened and she swung round to face Ford. ‘Did you get my Sending about the flier?’
He grinned broadly. ‘Did I! Have they found it yet?’
Era nodded. ‘Of course. They are taking this very seriously. It is worse than when we have killed them on foot. I think they will now regard the scatterlings as dangerous enemies. The skies will be full of them hunting us. We have stirred up a stingers’ nest.’
Ford nodded. ‘But they will not find the Hide unless they comb the forest on foot. I doubt they will have the courage for that, especially now. If only the clans would fight them as well.’
‘Where does she come from?’ Era asked sharply, as if Merlin were not there.
Irritation flickered across Ford’s features. ‘She comes from the Seaside Region.’
Before Era could speak again, there were more whooping shouts and three more ran into the clearing. Two were boys younger than Ford, and one was older, almost a man, his stocky body savagely scarred. All wore brief loin cloths and carried either spear or bow and full cloth pouches. After greeting Ford, they turned to stare at Merlin who felt unexpectedly nervous at their combined scrutiny.
‘She is Merlin – from the Seaside Region, she says,’ Era announced.
The bushes behind them rustled and another girl came out. Unlike Era, she wore a full loose shift like Merlin’s. Her black hair was combed into a long plait that brushed the ground when she walked. She moved more sedately than her companions. And though her eyes were the same colour as theirs, they had an unfathomable quality that made them unique.
‘Ford,’ she greeted in a gutteral voice. ‘You have come back. What wisdoms do you bring us this time from the winds?’
To Merlin’s surprise, Ford coloured slightly and grinned. His single good eye flicked as from its own volition to Merlin and back to the other girl.
‘So,’ the dark-haired girl said, after a long pause. She turned to Merlin. ‘So, you are Merlin?’
Merlin frowned, certain no one had spoken her name in the girl’s presence, unless she had been listening before she showed herself.
‘And this?’ She pointed to Merlin’s shoulder-length hair.
‘It was burnt,’ Ford said.
‘Ah. Merlin is . . . an unusual name.’
‘As good a name as Marthe,’ Ford said in a hard voice.
Merlin was surprised at his aggressively defensive tone, since he had said as much to her himself. And why was he defending her anyway?
‘You trust her, then? Before mindbond?’ the dark-haired girl asked insistently. ‘You will rely on the wordbond of a stranger?’
‘No!’ Era said.
‘Yes,’ Ford said defiantly. Brother and sister exchanged a long look, and again Merlin sensed a silent interchange. Era looked away first, angrily.
‘If she is not what she seems . . .’ began Era, then she shrugged dismissively.
‘We will see,’ Marthe said, her eyes slanting through the grey early morning light with an ambiguous expression.
4
Merlin walked between Ford and the older youth called Sear, the leader of the scatterlings. He had been first to rebel against the Offering, Ford told her.
She dared not ask what an Offering was, since it was assumed she had come to join them having rejected it too. They took her arrival casually, as if runaways were commonplace, and the scatterlings’ Hide a well-known refuge.
‘The population of street dwellers increases daily . . .’ the mechanical voice began. Merlin repressed it feeling she needed all her wits to deal with the scatterlings.
Marthe walked slightly apart from the others, and Merlin often felt the girl’s eyes boring into her as they walked.
In retrospect, it seemed to Merlin that the confrontation in the clearing had been stamped with a ritualistic air, all except for Ford’s defence of her. That still puzzled her, particularly since Ford had not said a word to her since, and even seemed to be avoiding her.
She wondered what they had meant by mindbond. Some sort of pledge of faith, she guessed. Ford’s sister, Era, had seemed dismayed. Merlin felt uncomfortable and guilty that Ford had staked his word on her truthfulness. She had not intended that to happen, any more than she had set out to deceive them about herself. It had just seemed less complicated to make up an acceptable lie than to try and explain an incomprehensible truth.
‘Ours is a race of liars . . .’ the William voice said sadly.
Merlin refused to feel guilty. She had decided to slip away without a fuss the first chance she got. When she reached the camp she would be questioned thoroughly, Marthe’s eyes told her that. It would not take much to reveal she was neither from the Seaside Region nor a runaway from the Offering.
Unfortunately, no chance of escape had so far presented itself. Flanked on all sides by the scatterlings, she could do no more than hope fervently for a diversion.
She had considered telling them the truth, but she was too frightened they would regard her as one of the Citizen gods they had murdered. She sensed Ford would be sympathetic, but Era and Marthe were too hostile, and there was the problem of Ford vouching for her. They were a primitive people and might even kill her for lying. She had no plan beyond getting away from the rebels and did not waste her time planning future courses until she had managed that.
To pass the time, she tried to look at everything that had happened since waking in the wreck from another angle. Instead of trying to fit it all into a theory that would explain her own situation, she simply looked at the facts, regardless of how strange they were.
There were two distinct groups of people: the technologically advanced and physically frail Citizens, who dwelt in a domed city and wore clothing to protect them from the environment which was violently poisonous to them, and the pri
mitive yellow-eyed clanpeople, of which Ford and the scatterlings were a rebel faction.
There was conflict between the Citizens and the rebel exiles, and between the clanpeople and the rebels, all apparently over the Offering, which seemed to have been begun by the Citizen gods. The Offering sounded like some sort of slavery.
Merlin did not belong to either group, yet she seemed to contain elements of both. Physically, except for her cut hair, she was a clanperson – sharing their physical characteristics of golden skin, yellow eyes and immunity to the poisons in the atmosphere which affected the Citizen gods. But she had no memory of herself as a clan member, or of any sort of people in the world who possessed their odd physical characteristics. The world as she remembered it had more in common with the advanced culture of the Citizen gods. But the world she had seen since wakening in the wrecked flier was completely alien to her.
Except for the strangely familiar ruined city.
And none of that told her why the Citizens had held her captive and chained her, or why she had been travelling in a Citizen flier when it crashed.
This last thought disturbed her most of all. What if the scatterlings found out the truth and decided she was a spy? Merlin thought sickly of the driver screaming as he burned, and of Ford’s callous pleasure in the death of a hated Citizen god.
Catching the enigmatic Marthe watching her speculatively, Merlin tried to outstare her, but was defeated by the flat expression in the other girl’s eyes.
It was further than she had expected to the scatterlings’ Hide, and they were still walking in the late afternoon. Merlin flopped down with weary gratitude when Sear announced they would rest and eat. She forced herself to remain alert, recognising this might be her sole opportunity to get away without being noticed. But Era watched her constantly.