‘It wanted its reward,’ tittered the voice. ‘It wanted to go into the pit, to fall, to come to the end. But that is the reward for those who do not fail. This messenger failed. This messenger must try again.’
The sobbing figure was dragged away. Jaer stood up, swaying. None of what had happened was at all real, and she brushed it away as she would a foolish dream. The falseness persisted, the red figures on the carved thrones were still there, each weighted by its iron crown. The play was evidently over. From the thrones they bent toward her, eyes intent upon her, the viscid voices winding into another interrogation. They desired to know about Jaer, her birth, life, her companions, destinations, purposes. In her dreaming confusion she said one thing and its opposite. She had been born, she said, in Lak Island, or perhaps in Rhees. She had grown up in Anisfale, except for travel in Xulanuzh to the south. There were lions in the south. Her mouth grew dry and then she said nothing. The guards gave her water with something acrid mixed into it, and the room hardened into clarity.
‘Once again,’ said one of the multiple voices. ‘Tell us where you are going. Who travels with you? Where are they now?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jaer, honestly. They asked her again, and she told them of learning to play the jangle. They had her stripped and looked at her while the guards turned her around before them.
‘This is not the one,’ they said. ‘This is not power, not danger, not the weapon, not the adversary. This is only a female, young, useless. The messenger has indeed failed.’
‘Lithos does not fail.’ An objection, a hiss.
‘The messenger has failed.’ Firmly. ‘This is not the one. But it may know the one. We will send this one for modification, after which it will tell us everything.’
Jaer looked up, suddenly defiant. ‘I will not tell you anything. Not anything.’
‘Oh, yes.’ The voice returned to its tittering, oily tone. You will tell us what we wish to know. You will look deep inside for little things you have forgotten. You will bring them to us as gifts. You will beg for the reward, but we will not give it to you until you have told us all. No, we will insist that you live for a time, only a time, until you have told us everything.’
The figure beckoned with one hand. Jaer was dragged forward until she faced the crouched creatures in their red gowns. Their left hands lay flat on the stone thrones, and through the hands nails of steel had been driven which held the hands to the stone. On each head the high iron crown was held in place by pins of steel thrust through the living flesh into the skull. Filth ran down the sides of the thrones, and Jaer knew they had been nailed there for an untold time.
‘You will tell us,’ the voices promised.
She was taken away, given into the care of a jailer who put her in a cage. Around her were other cages, full of old women who slept, their chests moving slightly with laboured breaths. Soon the jailer returned to her cell and took all her clothing, feeling her body with hands that were like paws, leering from a face that looked like lumps of brown-purple fungus, speaking from a mouth like an unhealed wound. Oh, so much to cut away. This, and this, and they must go up inside to get it all. This is good. It pays best, your kind. I must stay here until it is all paid for me. Someone else must pay for me. Then I can go. Soon, I think. Soon. I have been here so long. No, maybe not long. I forget.’ The creature gave her a wrapping in exchange for her clothing, gave her food and water, and then took her from the cell to show her the laboratories and surgeries where the modifications were done. Jaer saw them all. There was an endless screaming in those places, for it was all done with the victims quite conscious. Then, when what was done had partly healed, it was often done again. The jailer explained carefully what it was they would do with Jaer.
She was returned to the cage to fall weeping upon the floor, choking with terror and crying endlessly to herself, ‘Oh, Ephraim, Nathan – someone, don’t let them do that to me….’
But, of course, they did it anyway.
CHAPTER TWENTY
OUTSIDE OF MURGIN
Year 116’ – Midwinter Day
The gryphon buried the Keeper as a cat buries its own excrement, scratching dirt over the body with heavy lion paws. Then it spent long moments staring at Terascouros while the old woman muttered and maundered and shook like a sapling.
‘She talks to me in my head, like a beetle crawling on my brain,’ she gasped. ‘Oh, I’m hungry and tired, and there is still so much she demands us to do—
Jasmine hugged the old woman. ‘You’re cold, grandmother. What are we going to do now? Do you want some tea? To eat something?’
Terascouros nodded, babbling, ‘Yes. Tea. Oh, that would be good. Something to eat. What are we going to do? Oh, child, Leona says that there are others, others like her. I don’t know if she means really like her. Unseen, she says. Around us, or near us, within hearing. Forgotten and unseen, able to move at our summoning, full of terrible power. She says she can feel them, knows they are there. Perhaps I misunderstand her. It’s hard to know. But we will try. Oh, yes, we will try.’
They fed
