CHAPTER 18
Hreodwater, England
Avelyn woke up little by little, feeling much better than he had expected to.
His leg was stiff and there was an ache deep in the ripped muscle, but madly, it was no worse than it would have been after lifting weights that were too heavy.
Even though Annunciata’s news had spread around the abbey like wildfire and he had ended up drinking prosecco with a mob of Irish nuns who taught everyone sea shanties, he didn’t have a hangover either.
And he didn’t seem to be passed out in a ditch.
He was on Jericho’s couch again, unless the ditch had yellow velvet cushions.
He couldn’t tell what time it was, but he had an obscure certainty that it was still the same day. As he shifted, the old sense of north rolled: north was behind him.
The ras was there too. It was a quietness in his mind, one he never normally had.
The difference was more incredible than how much his leg didn’t hurt.
Usually if he had fallen asleep in the day, he jolted awake disorientated and irritable and racing around inside with snippets of half-finished thoughts and dreams and Christ, I didn’t mark that paper, I’ll have to do it in the ad break between the Noticiae and the Angelus . . .
Now: nothing. Calm.
He lay still with it, his eyes still closed, quiet-bathing. It was bliss.
Someone was sitting with him, one cool hand on his waist just where the muscle ached from scraping over the edge of the jetty, stroking the space between two of his ribs.
It felt idle, like they were doing something else at the same time.
Reading The Exorcist probably. He should have stopped it, but he wanted more than anything to move and lie the other way, with his temple resting on the green and purple jumper that he knew would smell of beeswax.
And then maybe that cool hand would comb through his hair, and that would be . . . that would be good too.
He frowned into one of those strange, uncomfortable realizations that arrive when you have time to catch up with things that have happened too quickly.
There was a Jesuit exercise called the discernment of spirits. It was a way of making sure you chose the right thing to do if you had a difficult problem.
It was about taking care to listen to your own soul, which was actually a very good compass for God.
Usually, down one direction lay a certain feeling: desolation.
It meant dissatisfaction, a hollowness, a truly unpleasant restlessness.
It wasn’t just something you didn’t want to do.
Generally, doing something you thought you wanted to do brought desolation.
Drinking too much, eating too many sweets, having affairs, punching someone annoying, all the rest: they were hollow pleasures because they were followed by that sense of cheapness and soullessness.
Down the other path was consolation, which was the opposite feeling: stillness, wholeness. You were supposed do what brought consolation, however difficult, because that was the path to God.
It always worked. He had used it for everything from deciding to join the priesthood, right through to what he should do with his savings; every time, there was a way that suggested consolation, another that suggested desolation.
He ran everything through that filter now automatically, including this, this .
. . whatever it was, this pointless longing.
What had just come to the surface of his mind was that what he felt, lying here right now, was consolation.
Like always, his hearing was the last thing to switch on, and so he had been awake for a long time before he realized that actually, people had been talking nearby all along.
Jericho was saying soothing things to someone Hreod who couldn’t speak English, and was talking through a friend who was just about functional.
“It’s not deep. It’s going to be fine. Just make sure it’s kept clean. If you develop a fever, I want you to see your clan witch straightaway, because that means there might be an infection.”
He was across the room at the desk.
So who was . . .?
Avelyn opened his eyes.
No one was sitting with him. No one was touching him. He was alone on the couch, curled under a fur blanket, in a beam of salt light from the high windows.
Just for an instant, there was the barest outline of a man in it. He would have sworn it. Then it was gone.
Disconcerted, he sat up and pressed his hand against his side. It hadn’t been a dream. He didn’t dream like that. It had felt as real as the velvet couch and the warmth of the salt light.
With a bloom of tired dismay, he pushed both hands through his hair. How were you supposed to tell right from wrong if the Salt King was there, with his fingertip on the compass needle?
Over at the desk, Jericho was talking to a boy of about seventeen, who was sitting anxiously on the spare chair with a new bandage on his arm. He was a Balen, with tattoos of Caer Halen on his unbandaged arm. With him was an older girl who had been translating.
“Ask him if you can get the water madness from a dream,” the boy said. He sounded scared.
A dream? What did that mean—he’d dreamed he’d been hurt?
“You can’t get rabies from anything here but bats,” Jericho told him, without waiting for the translation. The girl relayed it in Hreod. She wasn’t looking at him. She seemed like someone listening to a conversation on speakerphone.
“It’s still bleeding a lot,” the boy said bleakly to his arm.
He was right. There was blood just dotting through the bandages, making a circle shape. No—not a circle. It was a bite mark. Big, bigger than a dog could have made.
“It will stop in a minute,” Jericho told him. Jericho, Avelyn realized, could understand a lot of Hreod, although being a sane person he preferred not to speak it. “Would you like some hot chocolate?”
Both of them looked much more worried by that idea than anyone had probably been in the rest of history. Without a word of goodbye or thanks, they left.
Not seeming even a little surprised by that amazing rudeness, Jericho let his head rest back against his chair, offering his throat to the chandelier.
Avelyn watched him, thinking he looked tired, but not in the sense that he wouldn’t want to get up and walk.
It was soul-tiredness. If someone had set a razor against his larynx then, Avelyn had an uncomfortable feeling that Jericho’s only reaction would have been to dare them to do it, and feel very little interest in the outcome.
“What was all that?” he asked.
“Oh, hello,” Jericho said, tipping forwards again to rest his elbows on his knees. “Sleep all right?”
“I—yes, well,” he said.
“That’s surprising, because you look like you just had an appalling nightmare.”
“The ras is quite strong,” Avelyn said anaemically. He was too hot, but he kept the blanket pulled up and leaned forward against his knees so that there was no chance Jericho could see the state he was in. “Do you . . . can you not feel it?”
“Me? No,” said Jericho.
“I guess it’s to do with salt light then,” Avelyn said, only half coherent. “It doesn’t touch you.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No, that’s why you’re always cold. It .
. .” He traced the shape of the dark aura in the air.
“It stops about three inches from you. Like you’re antimagnetic.
Anti . . . pho . . . tonic.” He pulled his hand across his eyes, which ached.
He’d fallen asleep in his contact lenses, and now they felt stiff.
He should have asked Jericho if he had a spare case and some solution going—he probably would, there were medical supplies in the cupboards behind him—but he couldn’t stand the idea of letting Jericho see his real eyes.
That would have been worse than being naked. “What time is it?”
“Half past three. You’ve still got some afternoon left.” He came across. “You look a bit warm to me, do you mind if I—”
“No! No,” Avelyn said, jerking away from Jericho’s hand. Then he sighed and let his neck bend. “I’m sorry. I’m okay. It’s not a fever.”
“Well, if it turns out that it is,” Jericho said, managing to seem both unoffended and not quite sure what else could be going on, “you owe me a salt cake and unprotesting silence while I lecture you about drinking alcohol right after a major injury.”
“All right,” Avelyn said, grateful. His contact lenses were settling down, fortunately. He’d be all right till tonight.
Jericho perched on the edge of the closest armchair and skewered him with one of those unembarrassed stares, candles and salt light making galaxies in his eyes. He was the palest person Avelyn had ever seen. In Hreod, you didn’t say that someone had light skin, but bright skin: that was right.
“Stop it. I’m fine,” Avelyn told him.
Jericho folded his arms, thoughtful. “Are there wild animals in the mine?”
“There are eels in the lakes, and eel owls. They’re tiny and adorable and they make friends with you if you give them shiny things. I can’t think of anything else, but . . . did you have something in mind?”
“That boy just now, he was bitten by something in the deep. Third one this week. Something’s going on down there.”
Down in the deep, the King sleeps, and dreams.
Even though the Lodge smelled reassuringly of woodsmoke and candle wax, he tasted salt dust, the grit of it, the seawater acridity grating at the back of his throat, and on the edge of the fire crackling and the plink-plink of the kettle on the stove, he could hear a roar that wasn’t really there: masonry collapsing, support beams breaking, his uncles’ hands on his arms, all but hurling him out, away, and not following.