thick purple and pink tentacles several feet in length. They curled to and fro, each with pulsing suction cups.
The Cephs hauled nets bulbous with fish, and lugged them up the beach, through sedges and reeds and onto land. Aside from their shaggy breeches, they were utterly bare-skinned, and she still could not quite discern where the human body ended and these marine appendages began, so gradual was their change in morphology. Contrary to what she had first thought — that these were creations of the cultists — Cayce had informed her that they were part of the natural tribes of the Boreal Archipelago. Over the tens of thousands of years of human and rumel military dominance, they had taken sanctuary off and on the coast of Ysla, where they remained living peaceful, simple lives.
Lan breathed in deeply this clean air, content with watching the Cephs go about their business, their tentacles unfurling majestically around bundles of fish, or massive planks of wood in order to repair their huts.
The sky was vacant except for the flight antics of pterodettes, and their reptilian squawks echoed across the bay. Out to sea, a few tiny boats were navigating the treacherous channels, gullies and tiny whirlpools around the reefs. The surf folded over itself, endlessly — and the repetitions were intoxicating. The landscape served to calm her mind and, if ever there was a place in which to recover from such painful surgical procedures, then this was it. If she could bring herself to believe in the Jorsalir tales, then this would be what she hoped the heavenly realms would be like.
Am I dead?
She stood upright, stretched tentatively, then more snaps of pain savaged her nerves. She grinned. No, most definitely alive. Lan bent her arms this way and that, trying to work out the pain.
She turned back to face the city in the deep distance, a construct of wood and stone and metal. It blended in with the texture of the vegetation, yet towered above, dominating the panorama.
Villarbor, the forest city.
Cayce called it a treetop metropolis in which cultist magic flickered in and out of existence, but to her eyes Villarbor was a city of violent sorcery. She had been barely conscious when she entered the place, but there was plenty of the weird to alarm her. Nothing there seemed to make sense; it was a phenomenally different way of life. Magic charged through the skein of streets. Buildings were constructed from, and within, the trunks of titanic trees that seemed settlements in themselves.
Each lightning-pulse of magic that now boomed in the distance sent a quiver through her body.
With that in mind, she sauntered along the sand, a slow arc around the beachhead. Such beautiful heat, she thought. I don’t ever want to go back to Jokull, that freezing island.
Further up the shore she spotted a lone figure. Cayce was sitting on a rock smoking a roll-up. He was wearing a cream-coloured outfit. She could smell his heady weed from a distance. As she approached, sand squelched between her toes.
He looked her up and down, brushing his stubbled chin. He analyzed her anatomy, and she knew by now that there was nothing sexual in his examination. This was merely one of his inspections.
‘So you are enjoying the beaches, I see,’ Cayce said.
‘Something like that. The Cephs — they’re bizarre people, aren’t they? We don’t have anything like that where I’m from.’
Cayce frowned, scanning the Cephs in the distance, but he didn’t acknowledge her words. Rubbing his arms, he said, ‘You look really good, Lan, and I mean that. You were already in impressive physical shape — there are a good many unhealthy people, with all that ice.’ Despite his slightly unusual accent, he spoke with utter confidence, as if he was always declaring something profound, and whether or not he knew it, his words were helping to rebuild her in places his science couldn’t quite reach.
‘When will I have to leave?’ she asked. ‘I’d love to hang around a little longer.’
‘We are all done, as far as I’m concerned,’ he replied. ‘Ysla, for its own sake, does not permit visitors. So, I’m afraid you will have to leave soon. You simply cannot stay — and it is not just for our good, but yours, too.’
Lan thought as much. ‘In the morning?’
‘Indeed.’ Cayce jumped down from the rock, his cream cloak flailing around him in the breeze. Marram grass rippled along the edge of the dunes whilst a flock of gulls suddenly filled the sky before drifting in circles along the shore.
‘There are some festivities tonight — cultural celebrations for one of the orders. You may as well enjoy the night before you head back — just, if you please, try not to talk to too many of the others.’
‘For my own good?’ Lan asked.
‘You have, it seems, caught on well.’ Cayce turned and Lan moved to follow him across the sand.
*
The approach to Villarbor was contoured with surges of trees and plants that seemed alien to the Archipelago. Spiked structures and fat-leafed things and explosions of gaudy colours. Heavy, almost monstrous insects droned in and out of the foliage, snapping back branches with their clumsy flight. Other creatures drilled holes through bark, filling their venous sacs with sap.
The stone track was well-kept, tidied regularly by small teams of men and women. They cleared paths of vegetation with strange relics shaped like a crossbow, with minimal effort, and it was not at all obvious how the devices worked.
Lan never understood why, on an island without money, anyone would want to do such jobs, yet they did. Surely you should be paid for having to do chores like this? They stopped their tasks to gather around and talk to her, and she had to strain to follow their accents. She forced a smile in her effort to cease being self-conscious. Their clothing was garish, and woven with little patches in the style of harlequins. Not one of them dressed identically, and both genders sported equally unique variants of style, and wore bright flowers in their hair — which made her frown since back on Jokull flowers were generally worn only by women.
Cayce humoured them all for a moment, but then steered her onwards towards Villarbor. She waved her goodbyes over her shoulder.
Further up the road she asked, ‘Are we in a hurry for a reason?’
‘They will spend all day talking to an outsider,’ Cayce replied. ‘We do not get many of your kind here — a layperson from the Empire, I mean.’
‘Why is that anyway?’ Lan asked.
‘It is just easier that way,’ Cayce said.
‘You said that last time, too.’
‘I probably did,’ was his non-committal response. ‘We are simply taught that outsiders have a tendency to corrupt — I wish our society to remain harmonious, is all.’
‘One more question,’ Lan said.
‘Just one?’
She paused and chuckled. ‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s just exciting for people like me, that’s all.’
‘Your question?’
‘How come you were allowed off the island? Seems as if everyone else is curious about me — but does no one ever leave?’
‘Few people want to leave. They are free to do so, of course, but they hear of the many tragedies of the Archipelago, and want nothing whatsoever to do with it.’
‘And you… How come you travel?’
‘My experiences and feelings are not entirely like the others,’ he replied, and marched on before she could press him any further.
*
Fields rolled back in all directions. Various colours denoted what must have been dozens of different crops covering small plots of land, unlike the vast, intensive efforts on Jokull. Clusters of huts and thickly wooded copses were dotted everywhere, surrounded by strange climbing fruits.
The sun was sliding from the sky, the heat still unbelievably prominent. Cayce said that the cultists managed the weather in Ysla. Whilst around the Archipelago winds and clouds heaped ice and snow, here there was little but clear skies and intoxicating warmth. It was no wonder the cultists kept this island to themselves.
She had seen the process of manipulation and been mystified. Figures perched on a hill, tilting some device towards the sky and, on the next hill along, another working in tandem. Purple shafts of light had buried deep into any clouds that persisted, disintegrating them slowly or ploughing through into the heavens. Whatever they were
