Chapter 6
Artair paused, his heart hammering in his chest. He had been walking through the Jih Forest all night, surrounded by sounds and movements he couldn’t identify, convinced that at any moment one of the nameless creatures that lurked in the trees would snatch him up and disembowel him.
It wasn’t making for an especially relaxing stroll in the woods.
He was at the edge of a creek—the same creek on his map that led to a wider body of water, he hoped—and he crouched by it, letting his fingertips brush the ground.
He closed his eyes and recalled Brother Benzin’s voice as he led the Sleepless through the morning and evening meditations.
In this moment, in this place, you are safe.
It was hard to believe himself safe when he could hear something that had to be the size of a house grunting and snuffling in the copse of trees behind him, but the words calmed him, his own deliberately measured breathing calming his racing heart and bringing him back to a place of focus.
‘I have a task,’ he murmured to himself. ‘I will do what is asked of me, and I will bring the novices home. And then we can all forget this nightmare ever happened.’
An image of Sister Rosea’s body lying on the monastery floor flashed across his mind—some things could not be undone, after all—and he pushed it away. Focus.
Artair stood. One of the benefits of the training of the Perpetual Morning was an ability to tap into this focus—it allowed him to step away from fear and pain, even if it was only temporary.
He touched his fingers to the bow slung across his back, drawing strength from its solidity, and began to walk along the side of the creek.
Dawn was coming, touching rosy fingers to the edge of every leaf, every twig and wrinkle of bark, every bloom and bud.
And as the light returned, and he walked, he found that his fear was receding of its own accord, to be replaced by something else: wonder.
I am out in the world , he thought to himself. Yesterday morning, I couldn’t have pictured this future for myself. And now here I am. I have never seen this creek before. Or this tree. I have never stepped on this piece of ground before. Everything is new.
A surge of something like joy clouded his chest, and he reached for the focus again to clear it away. There was no time. He’d have to work fast if he wanted to save his friends.
The creek grew rockier, and wider, until it spread out before him in a small lake—small, but much larger than the tiny pool that curled around the back of the monastery gardens.
In the centre of it, on a reed-pocked island, there was a keltraxia nest; according to the map the red-haired mage had given him, at least. There was movement in the reeds, a flash of vibrant orange and red amongst the muddy greens, and after a moment he saw an animal around twice the size of a large wolf come to the edge of the lake to drink.
Not an animal , he reminded himself. A monster. These creatures belong to the Queen of Serpents. They are touched with magic.
But it was a beautiful thing, all the same.
Blue scales glittered like sapphires in the dawn light, its long scarlet and orange feathers like splashes of paint.
This was a fully grown keltraxia, the parent of the cubs that must be hidden beyond the reeds, and it hadn’t spotted him.
Artair held his breath and waited, wondering if he should circle around the island and cross the water in a different place, but the vixen abruptly lifted her head, scenting something on the wind, and slid into the water as swiftly and smoothly as a swan.
She swam, to Artair’s relief, not towards him, but directly to his left.
Once she was across the lake, she leapt up in a brief shower of water droplets and was gone, lost to his sight in the wider wood.
She must, he thought, be going to hunt, or pursue some other monster business.
The sensible thing would be to wait. There might be another parent animal on the island, watching over the cubs, or the vixen herself could return abruptly. Better, probably, to wait until he was sure she was gone.
But he thought of Reah’s face, how it had been contorted with fear. If he wanted to get to Prideful Leap in time to save the novices, he couldn’t wait.
Other jih live in this forest too , he reminded himself. Anything could blunder along and decide I’d make a decent breakfast. I have to be quick.
Without waiting to lose his nerve, Artair slipped the bow from his shoulder and, holding it over his head, waded out into the lake.
Cold green water rushed into his boots, soaking his trousers and chilling him to the bone.
Silty mud, kicked up by his passage, swirled up all around him, turning the water opaque.
When he climbed up the bank on the other side, he held the bow ready, an arrow nocked and his shoulders tense.
Fear lapped at the back of his throat again, so he paused to refocus.
The Other is far from me. Here and now, I am safe.
Just ahead he could see a place where the reeds parted, and what had to be the nest, built from sticks and dried mud, caught in a ring of pawprints.
There were sounds too, little yipping barks and the odd snuffling noise.
He wondered for the first time how big the keltraxia cubs were—he’d brought a sack from the kitchens, but he’d never seen such creatures before, and had no idea whether they’d struggle and bite.
Belatedly he wished he’d brought a pair of Brother Benzin’s leather gardening gloves.
There was no time to worry about such things.
Eager to get it over with, he strode across to the nest and peered over the muddy wall.
Inside there were three cubs, each no bigger than a large house cat, much to his relief.
They were mainly feathers, ears and gangly legs at this stage, and each of them looked up at him with large green eyes; not at all afraid, but curious.
One of them opened its mouth and yawned, exposing a bright pink tongue and two rows of sharp white teeth.
‘Hey. You’re not so bad.’ Artair lowered his bow. ‘Just don’t bite me, okay? I don’t mean you any harm, I promise.’
The blood-curdling howl that rose from behind him turned his neck to ice.
Artair swung, the bow raised, to see the keltraxian vixen at the edge of the reeds. Her eyes were glowing brighter than the moon and she was crouched, shoulder muscles bunched up ready to spring, teeth bared. Fury and fear radiated off her, and instinctively Artair took aim and loosed the arrow.
It struck her in the shoulder and knocked her neatly back into the water with a yelp.
For a second, Artair was frozen in place, a sick sensation flooding through his chest and stomach. He’d never willingly injured anything in his life. The keltraxia vixen was lying motionless in the water.
‘Twelve damn me.’ Familiar memories threatened to surface again; waking up in a ditch, the scent of roasted flesh all around, smoke coating the back of his throat. No, he’d never willingly hurt anything living…
Artair ran over to the creature. She looked stunned.
Her eyes had rolled back into her head, which was partially under the water, and blood, red as the gown of Mother Maura, was swirling away into the lake.
He grabbed her front legs and heaved her back onto the mud so that her head was out of the water, before examining the arrow.
It had partly passed through a meaty section of her shoulder, leaving the arrowhead and stem streaked with gore, and the fletch feathers—which were yellow—untouched.
He took the knife from his belt and cut the end free, letting it drop into the mud.
‘Be still for me now,’ he murmured. ‘I promise I’m trying to help.’
Bracing one hand on her shoulder, he slowly pulled the rest of the arrow out, wincing as it came free and fresh blood spurted over his arm and onto the mud.
He shrugged his shirt off, all the while watching the vixen closely to see if she were about to regain consciousness and savage him, then tore off one of the arms. Fingers covered in blood, he tore the fabric into strips and made quick work of a bandage.
He was used to tending the wounds of other Sleepless, and he assumed the principles were the same: slow the bleeding, keep it clean.
When it was done, he stepped away and realized he was sweating despite the chill of the morning.
‘That will have to do.’ That feeling of sorrow threatened to swallow him again, so he repeated his words— the Other is not with me, in this moment I am safe —and turned back to the nest. The cubs were making more noise than they had been, perhaps sensing that their mother had been harmed in some way.
When he leaned over the nest wall, they were clustered there, looking up at him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, and, leaning down, plucked the one in the middle from its siblings and put it in the sack he’d brought with him.
He tied it up carefully, experimenting with ways of carrying it that wouldn’t discomfort the creature too much.
Already, he realized, the morning was marching on, with the sun inching towards the centre of the sky, and very soon he would have to face the next problem—how he was going to keep the Other from harming anyone now that they were both free in the world.
He needed a room with a lockable door, a place with no windows. He needed a prison.
The monastery and his small, bare cell were far behind him, halfway up a mountain and in the wrong direction. Addersport was the closest city, but he had no real idea how long it would take to get there on foot, and exhaustion was already weighing on him heavily.
‘Time is against me, either way.’ He glanced back at the keltraxia vixen again, who had raised her head an inch or so off the ground. ‘Forgive me.’
He set off across the island.
Elver arrived around an hour later, her pale face flushed with a rare splash of pink across the tops of her cheeks.
She had heard the vixen’s cries some distance away and started running, a growing fury boiling in her throat.
She pictured arriving to find the thief in the middle of his crime, grabbing hold of him so that her hands were pressed against his hated human skin, watching him scream and writhe until enough of her poison was in his system that his heart gave out.
But when she staggered onto the island, soaking wet and breathing hard, it was to find only a scene of devastation: blood in the dirt and splashed against the reeds, the vixen crouched in her nest, her nose buried in her remaining cubs, who were crying and keening pitifully.
‘What did he do?’ Elver scrambled into the nest herself, to be immediately beset by the distressed cubs. One of them climbed into her lap, and she gently lifted him back out again. ‘Is that a bandage?’
The vixen’s shoulder had been bound with yellow cloth, although much of it had been soaked with her blood. She licked at it once, then nosed mournfully at her cubs again.
The wound is slight , she said in the voice only other monsters could hear. The human pulled out his arrow and bound it. But he took my littlest, child of the serpent. And I cannot run to save him. Her eyes glowed once, then faded, as though she were in too much pain to maintain her anger.
‘I will go,’ said Elver. ‘I will bring him back to you, my friend. I promise on my life.’
She stepped back out of the nest and looked around. There, on the ground near the water, was a broken arrow with yellow fletching feathers, and a trail of human footprints heading northeast.
‘How long ago was he here?’
The shadows say an hour, Elver. Why are humans so cruel?
‘I wish I could tell you.’ Elver went back to the nest briefly, placing her hand along the vixen’s snout. The scales there felt very smooth and cool against her skin. ‘I’ll bring you back your child, and the thief’s head.’
The thief was easy to track, as most humans were in the Jih Forest. They didn’t know its secret paths so they created their own, tearing across the wood like a knife pulled across skin.
His footprints were as clear as day, sunk into the rich black mud, and even when they weren’t she saw his presence in the broken twigs, the trampled bush, the silence of the smaller animals who had been run off by his blundering weight.
Once or twice she passed a jih creature and asked if they had seen a human pass that way; if they hadn’t seen him, they had certainly smelled him.
She was swift, moving through the woods like a ghost, not pausing to eat or drink or catch her breath, but it still wasn’t enough. He had had too much of a head start.
Elver came to the edge of the road as the sun passed over the highest point in the sky, a flat heat radiating down on the white stones.
It was a wide, well-maintained road, that dipped down the hill and bore east towards Addersport.
From her vantage point, she could see the highest spires and roofs of the city, and beyond it, the glittering, ever shifting light of the Queen of Serpents’ larger domain, the sea.
She could also see, at the very bottom of the hill, so small he was practically ant-sized, her thief.
The yellow of his torn shirt was the same yellow as the bandages the vixen had worn. He was heading towards the city.
‘Of course he is from that stinking pig hole,’ she muttered.
What she had to do was run after him. She had to leave the forest—her forest—and venture back into the human world.
There was no choice. He had stolen a cub from its mother, and even if the Queen of Serpents hadn’t commanded her, Elver would have been furious enough to chase him to the ends of the world.
And yet…
She turned back to look the way she had come, the cool greens of the forest giving way to oranges and reds and yellows.
She rested one hand on the bark of a hornbeam, let ting her fingers trace the rough patterns, the whorls and ridges as unique as any fingerprint.
A few feet away, animals moved through the undergrowth, oblivious to the problems of the wider world, their days filled with simple concerns: eating, hunting, sleeping, warmth. She longed to join them.
This was the place that she loved, the place where she was safe from humans and their betrayals. Out in the world, she was not safe. And the world was not safe from her. The idea of being in Addersport, of all places, made her feel sick to her stomach.
Yet every moment she waited, the thief was getting further and further away.
Elver squeezed her eyes shut, spoke aloud every curse word she could think of, then stepped out onto the road.