The mirror chronicles th.., p.49
The Mirror Chronicles: The Last Night, page 49
Something pale and sinewy was snaking between the stones, winding its way so gently and deftly that it did not disturb a single pebble. It slid between where she had been lying and Sylas, who had also leapt to his feet and was staring in horror. It had reached the Quintessence now, and was moving up the side of Simia’s leg, slipping beneath her waist. A moment later it appeared on her other side, and looped back over her stomach, then once again wound beneath her, beginning to spiral up her body.
Sylas and Naeo lunged to pull whatever it was from Simia, but they found themselves fixed to the spot. Terrified, they looked down and saw more sinewy tendrils winding up their own legs. But these were not smooth and pale like the ones now entwined about Simia’s body: these were dark and rough and gnarled. They tried to kick out at them, twisting wildly to wrestle themselves free, but the tentacles held them in a powerful grip.
Sylas and Naeo looked along the lengths of their restraints, their eyes following the tendrils through the pebbles of the shoreline and then up towards the ceiling high above. There they saw three thick fibres straining and flexing like muscle.
“The roots!” yelled Sylas.
He turned back to Simia to see with horror that she was now completely ensnared by the pale root, and it was lifting her from the golden sea, leaving behind a shower of Quintessence.
“No!” he cried, straining against his bonds. But the roots had coiled so far about his arms that he could barely move and, as he fought against them, they only grew tighter. He and Naeo squirmed and struggled, but all the while the roots crept up and up their legs and their torsos, the fine tips searching and reaching until, at last, they touched the bare skin of their necks.
In that very instant, they both ceased their struggle. A voice sounded loud and clear in their minds.
“You have nothing to fear.”
It was no ordinary thought because it came to them with a certainty greater than conviction.
It was knowledge.
Then they too were hoisted into the air.
They rose swiftly, sailing up from the rocky shore and out over the shimmering sea. And, as they were carried aloft, more of their thoughts became certainties, and certainties became knowledge:
These are the roots of the Knowing Tree.
The sea is not the end, but it is part of the end.
And now you know how the rest will be made.
It begins with Simia. Simia, who will live again.
“It makes one wonder whether we and our Glimmer, as well as sharing our beginning and end, take twin paths through life, with the same moments of choice, opportunity and challenge, even if the causes may be very different.”
SYLAS WATCHED NAEO’S LITHE figure walking away, silhouetted against the stars, her movements looser and more graceful now that she was free of pain. He wondered why he did not feel something. He expected a wrench at their parting – a complaint, perhaps, from the Merisi Band – but there was nothing.
Simia, he thought. It’s because of Simia.
His eyes followed Naeo until she disappeared behind an outcrop of rock and then he turned back.
Simia lay where the roots had left her, where the sand and rock had buckled and opened wide to let them through, and then closed up, all evidence of the breach quickly lost in the undulating sands. Now, the only sign of what had happened was a trail where that last pale root had parted from her and disappeared back into the cavern below the desert.
She looked so white by the light of the stars and the failing moon – so peaceful and still – that Sylas could barely believe it to be true. He would not have believed it if he had not known it.
He took her hand in his. “Simsi?”
There was a magic in the starlit air, and Sylas felt his hairs prickle. He laid his free hand on her forehead and brought his face close to hers.
“Simsi,” he said. “Wake up.”
A gentle wind played through her hair, and there was a sound like an intake of breath.
She opened her eyes.
Sylas gasped and reared. “Oh my god,” he murmured despite himself. And then he brought his hand back to her face. “Simsi!”
For a moment she looked through him, as though focused on something in the far distance. Then she blinked and seemed to see him.
Her face crumpled and tears rolled from her eyes.
Sylas gave her a wide, faltering smile through his own tears, then he pulled her close. “I thought I’d lost you,” he said, his voice cracking.
He heard her breath at his ear. Halting. Precious. Miraculous.
She whispered: “You did.”
The desert was dark and featureless, but Naeo knew the way. She knew the stars to follow and the stony ridge that she must keep to her left. She knew when she needed to walk in its shadow to keep from being seen and she knew that, when she climbed the approaching crest of sand, she would see the circle of stone ahead.
She knew all this because of the Knowing Tree.
But it was not the knowing that made her walk tall and a little smile play over her lips. It was what she had felt when she had parted from Sylas. It was that peculiar sense that, for all the strength they had found in being together, they were ready to be apart. That after their long journey to see the world as the other saw it, feel as the other felt, they no longer needed to be close.
And there was something else. The more she reflected on the certainties that had flowed from the roots of the Knowing Tree, the more Naeo realised how much she had known already. The very journey she was making now, to the stone circle, was something she had thought about. The journey Sylas was to make too was one that, deep down, she had known had to be made. As soon as she had seen the sea of Quintessence, she had known that it was what they had been looking for. She had even had an idea of how they might use it. The Knowing Tree had simply made it a certainty.
So, as she climbed the dune, there was nowhere else she would have rather been. And, when she thought of her father in the valley, she felt certain that he too would want nothing else for her than to be there, on that sandy crest, walking alone to the stone circle. It was what had to be done.
Her pace was so lively now – without the Black – that she came to the peak more quickly than she had expected. At the right time she lowered herself on to her stomach and crawled forward until she could peer over the edge. At once she saw the ring of flickering torches just ahead and, at their centre, the stone circle.
She looked out for the guards they had seen earlier. She quickly saw two Ghorhund prowling about in the outer shadows, and soon enough she saw three Ghor guards moving at a steady lope between the stones, their eyes and ears alert, searching the night.
For some time she watched the pattern of the patrols, hoping that there might be a way to reach the circle without being seen. But the guards were too many and too disciplined. Naeo would just have to summon all of her courage and believe.
She collected her thoughts and did her best to steel herself for what she must do. Sylas found his way into her mind. She thought of what she now knew. She thought of her father. But it was when she thought of Sylas that Naeo found the strength she needed.
She raised herself on to one knee and lowered her head, readying herself just as she had in races on the plains of Salsimaine. She pictured herself leaping over the crest and scrambling down the far side, eyes low, looking for the easiest way. She began to breathe quickly and her heart began to race.
Then a sound pierced the silence of the desert.
It was a tortured, screeching animal cry.
In an instant, Naeo was back on her stomach, pressing herself into the sand. For a moment she just listened to the ghastly squeals echoing between the hills. It was a sound she had only heard once: earlier that night, when they had entered the Crucible. And then came another newly familiar sound: a huff, huff, huff, like the beating of wings. And it was growing louder.
Skin tingling, she turned and gazed back the way she had come.
Her stomach tightened to a knot. There was a dark silhouette above the hills, huge and shapeless, snuffing out the stars as it grew larger and larger.
She looked back at the stone circle and saw that the guards too were transfixed. They had gathered on one side of the circle, leaving a large section unguarded.
“Come on, Nay-no!” she muttered to herself. “You can do this!”
And once again she rose on to her haunches. Then she took three short breaths and launched herself over the crest.
Sylas held Simia tight round her shoulders – more tightly, in truth, than was necessary – but in that moment she seemed to him a newly rekindled flame, so precious and fragile that just one false step might blow it out. They talked little at first as they picked their way carefully along the rocky riverside. Simia was unsteady and weak, her breath coming in faint gasps, but slowly, as her blood started to flow, she improved and was able to ask Sylas to explain all that had happened.
So he told her about their escape from the pit, and the great cavern, and how he and Naeo had tried to save her by bathing her in the sea of Quintessence. He told her about the roots, and how she had been taken by the Living Tree.
Simia’s eyes widened. “How do you know that’s what it was?”
“Because the roots that took me and Naeo were the roots of the Knowing Tree,” he said.
He explained how the touch of the Knowing Tree had been like eating the fruit in Isia’s temple, but also different; that they did not show him the truth, it had just come to him, stark and clear. As the root had touched his skin, he had known what it was, and other things too. He had known that the roots were there for the Quintessence, that the trees were infected with the Black and Quintessence was all that kept them alive. He had known that, in their endless retreat from the Black and search for Quintessence, the roots had spread far and wide beneath Old Kemet, particularly here where the Black and the Quintessence had congregated.
He told her that, as he had felt the touch of the Knowing Tree, he had known what they must do. “No, that’s not it,” he said after a pause. “We knew what we should do as soon as we saw the sea of Quintessence. We knew we needed to use it, somehow, to heal the worlds. But the Knowing Tree gave us the how.”
“And that’s why we’re going to the Windrush?”
“Yes. That’s part of the ‘how’.”
Simia stared at him expectantly. “So, come on, what’s the whole how?”
“I’ll show you when we get to the ship.”
Simia was less than impressed, but seemed to have no energy to argue.
Sylas helped her to wade across a stream. “So I still don’t understand,” she said as she reached the far side. “Why are you and Naeo splitting up? Surely you need each other now more than ever?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
She tutted. “Try.”
He was quiet for a moment, thinking of the right words. “I suppose we don’t need to be together any more. It’s like … I’ve found the Naeo in me, and she’s found the me in her.” He laughed. “Does that make any sense?”
Simia looked at him long and hard. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose it does.”
They continued in silence until finally they walked round a jutting rock and came to a clump of dense scrub shrouding the river ahead. A dry, long-dead cedar tree rose from its heart, leaning precariously over the waters.
“I recognise that tree, Simsi!” Sylas exclaimed. “We’re close.”
As they took the last few steps, he was filled with a mixture of excitement and dread. He remembered all too vividly the sounds they had heard from the Crucible: the shattering of timber and that freakish animal cry.
They paused before the thicket, glanced nervously at one another and then began pushing their way through. As they emerged from the other side, they stopped and gaped. Simia staggered, so that Sylas had to hold her up.
Before them was the wreck of the Windrush.
The top half of the mainmast had toppled on to the shore. The sails were shredded. Frayed ropes hung loosely from shattered yards. Broken timbers lay scattered upon buckled decks. Their beloved Windrush – the brave vessel that had saved their lives, and carried them between continents, was in ruins.
And yet what dismayed Sylas more than anything else was the silence. The decks were deserted. There was no sign of the crew or Triste or Sylas’s mother.
“Hello?” he ventured, his voice echoing through the broken decks. Then more loudly: “Anyone there?”
There was no reply.
“Thoth,” murmured Simia. “It has to have been him.”
Sylas was doing his best to contain his panic. “But where is everyone?”
“Must have run away,” said Simia hurriedly. “I think it’s – it’s good that there’s no one here. It means they escaped, right?”
Sylas peered up at the hills, searching them for movement, but they too were still and empty. He glanced across at the far bank, wondering if they might be hiding there, but the river was far too treacherous to be crossed.
“Maybe,” he murmured doubtfully, wishing for one last touch of the Knowing Tree so that he might be sure that his mother was safe.
Simia stared dejectedly at the gleaming wreckage. “Well, we won’t be going anywhere on the Windrush, that’s for sure. What should we do?”
“We should try and find my mum and the crew.”
“We can’t, Sylas!” she said imploringly. “They could have gone anywhere! It could take us hours. Besides, I can hardly walk the way I am!”
Sylas grunted and bit his lip, thinking.
“I know you’re worried,” Simia said, “but we have to believe they’re all right.”
He nodded absently.
“Why don’t we go the way Naeo went?” suggested Simia.
“No,” said Sylas, his eyes still searching the riverbank. “We have to go our own way, up the Nile.”
Simia frowned. “How are we supposed to do that?”
Sylas looked at the shattered hulk. “I’ll just have to fix her.”
“Fix … that?” gasped Simia, pointing at what was left of the Windrush.
He stepped past her and walked along the bank a little closer to the wreck.
“I have to,” he said over his shoulder. “And I don’t know why, but … I sort of … know I can.”
In truth, he was fighting his own doubts but, without waiting for a reply, he raised his hands towards the heap of planks and rigging, and did what he knew he must. He closed his eyes and reached out with his mind, searching for the Quintessence in every part of the ship: coating timbers, layered upon sails, coiled about ropes, covering every door, railing and rivet. When he found it, it felt strangely familiar, as though something about his encounter with it beneath the desert had forged a new connection between them. It was almost as though it was waiting for him.
Simia had been watching him from the riverbank, bemused, wondering what on earth Sylas could have in mind. But, all at once, she had her answer. She gazed in wonderment as the Quintessence began to move and, with it, every part of the wreck. Rope spliced with gleaming rope, timber meshed with shining timber, metal melded with silvered metal. Masts righted as though hoisted by a ghostly crew, buckled decks straightened as if pulled taut by mighty hands, and sails restitched themselves to their resplendent whole. Like a princess dressing in her finery, the Windrush slowly roused herself and reclaimed her majesty. Soon enough, the elegant lines of her hull were restored and, within moments, she had righted herself in the waters of the Nile, her sails ready to gather the winds. And, as Simia looked up to the highest reaches of the rigging, she saw the bright feather of the Suhl on the ship’s standard dancing against the stars.
For Sylas it was as though the Quintessence was him and he was it. Everything that happened to the Windrush that night felt peculiarly natural, almost ordinary, as though he was doing little more than working on one of his kites, setting its wings, pulling its canvas tight, picking out the details with his coloured paints. And so, when he saw Simia beaming at him with that grin that he had come to know so well, her eyes bright, her chest heaving, he was surprised. And when he blinked and looked back at the Windrush he was surprised again.
She looked like the ship that had raced down the hills of the Valley of Outs, newly anointed in Quintessence, every timber shining so that the river and the trees about her danced with a golden light.
Sylas grinned at Simia. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get going.”
She let out a bark of laughter. “OK then!” She staggered over to him. “How did you do that?” she asked as they linked arms and started walking to the gangplank.
“I really don’t know.”
She drew up short and looked him in the face. “Really?”
Sylas smiled and nodded. “Really.” He was about to say more, but then his eyes shifted away from her, back towards the riverbank. He frowned.
“What?” said Simia. “Did you see something?”
“A movement – just there, where the—”
He was interrupted by the snap of a twig somewhere in the undergrowth.
They both tensed and instinctively drew close. Sylas was just beginning to push Simia behind him when a tall figure suddenly stepped from the shadows.
The moonlight revealed long robes, tumbling blond locks and a familiar pale face.
They recognised him in the same instant.
“Ash!” they exclaimed.
“To give an example, who really knows more about flight? We, who have taken to the air ourselves in helicopters and planes? Or the Suhl, who sense the winds and feel the flock of starlings carving through the skies?”
NAEO RAN AS SHE had on the plains of Salsimaine. She ran free from the bite of Black, free from Sylas, free from doubt. She tore through the darkness, arms pumping, long legs bounding with ranging, confident strides. Already she could see where she would enter the circle: between two abandoned torches, their flames burning low. And beyond she could see the massive stones themselves slanting into the dark, calling her on.
Yes, that was the place. The ground was level and free from loose sands that might slow her down, and the guards had loped away to gaze up into the inky sky.
