Книга - The Memory

The Memory
Gerrard Cowan


The time of Ruin has come.The meaning of the Prophecy is becoming clear at last: if Ruin cannot be stopped, all of memory will transform into nightmare.In the tunnels of the Underland, a place of phantoms, monsters, and creatures of god-like power, Aranfal and Brandione are drawn into the game to end all games – a desperate search for the very first memory – while Canning and Drayn grapple with both ancient adversaries and their own abilities.Hunting for a way to destroy Ruin, Brightling journeys into the heart of the Machinery. As she descends, though, she discovers that Ruin is already more powerful than anyone could have imagined.The future – and the past – of the Overland will be reshaped as Gerrard Cowan’s mesmerizing epic of power, magic, and memory reaches its finale.









The Memory

GERRARD COWAN








HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Gerrard Cowan 2018

Cover images © Shutterstock.com (http://www.Shutterstock.com)

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Gerrard Cowan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © July 2018 ISBN: 9780008121839

Version: 2018-08-29


For Grace


Table of Contents

Cover (#u6f92f21f-a394-5894-9bc3-72209c4cf466)

Title Page (#ud38e9202-3f03-5063-9342-090b4efcdfb7)

Copyright (#u3f99c9c5-9404-5e18-9ac8-d697f7060cdd)

Dedication (#u6246a604-6feb-5139-a232-79b0e7c4a61e)

Chapter 1 (#u5268412e-afbe-5ec6-b204-479fde890295)

Chapter 2 (#ud5ce2555-6cf5-54eb-af0f-fafc074304d0)

Chapter 3 (#ucb69e3ca-014c-5fd2-a039-f53a97fbc155)

Chapter 4 (#ubd3ce6d3-41d1-5952-9611-451446b93df1)

Chapter 5 (#u431cf523-2a5a-5d9a-9c82-b019bb16de7c)

Chapter 6 (#u900ce5fd-26ca-55fd-bab7-156af20af6e1)



Chapter 7 (#uf74c9555-6b77-5058-9ed0-0ca1fd3fb1d4)



Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER 1 (#uef57288c-4ff0-50f4-8e12-2300f85234f7)


Turn back.

That was all Ruin said to Brightling, as she walked down the stairs.

Turn back.

She was unsure how long she had been in this place. Her memories felt strange, at times: out of her reach. She forgot why she was here, in this darkness. She had to grasp for it, searching through the muddy waters of her mind. The Machinery, she told herself. I am going to the Machinery.

Ruin is in the Machinery. Ruin will die.

An image rose in her mind, and all her confusion disappeared. It was a picture of a young woman, pale-skinned and black-haired. Katrina.I will destroy the thing inside her, and I will bring her home to me. The mask burned against her skin, when these thoughts came. She had worn it since she had come here; it showed her the way through the darkness, down the never-ending stairs. It had such power, this thing. I have power when I wear it. I will use it to destroy my enemies: the enemies of mankind.

But she did not know how.

Turn back.

Ruin was afraid of her. This creature, feared by the world, Overland and Underland, was frightened. She could sense it, in his voice. She could always sense fear: even the fear of a god.

She caught herself. A god? Is that what we call them now?

Turn back.

Yes. A god. What else were they but gods, and what manner of mask was this, to strike fear into one of them? Jandell had fashioned it from a shard of a defeated enemy, in times long past, and he had given it to her.The Absence. A mask like no other: a mask that could carve someone’s memories into little bits. The Absence was dead, now, but somehow, this little thing still thrummed with a dark power. It loved her. She could feel it. It did not wish to cause her pain. But it still hurt her. It licked its fiery tongue around her memories and longed to burn them away.

Turn back.

Each time Ruin said those words, she heard a noise behind, back from where she had come: a door creaking open. When she continued on her way, the door would close, only to reopen when Ruin spoke again.

Ruin did not speak for a long time. When he did, this time his words were different.

You will not turn back, Brightling.

She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. Her voice sounded so small, here, and she despised herself for all her weaknesses.

There came a great sigh.

You have always been special, Amyllia.

The use of her first name made her stop.

I know you very well. I have watched you for so many years.

Brightling took another step. She knew what Ruin was doing. The doomed tried all sorts of tricks to stave off the inevitable. Don’t ever listen to the dead, went an old Watcher saying. The dead are full of lies.

But she could not ignore Ruin. Not in this place.

I see everything that has been and gone. I remember the first time you appeared as … someone of promise.

Brightling turned another corner of the twisting staircase. The steps were wider, here, the walls further apart. There was a door, to her left. It was slightly ajar, its edge glowing with a thin line of golden light. She reached out a hand, before quickly snapping it back.

‘What is in there?’

What else? A memory.

Brightling heard a voice, muttering beyond the door. It was her voice; the voice she had as a girl. Warmth. Contentment.

I have all your memories before me, Amyllia. Tell me where you would like to go, and what you would like to see again.

Brightling turned away and looked once more down the dark staircase, through the eyes of her terrible mask.

‘No,’ she said.

The mask tightened on Brightling’s face. It wants to swallow me up. She hesitated for a heartbeat, before removing it. She turned it over in her hands, running her fingers along its edges. Each mask was a wonderful thing, fitting its owner perfectly. A second skin. They were all different: some of them reached up over the head, some of them covered it entirely, others were just a thin piece of material. This one, though, was so very different to any other, flitting between man and woman, old and young, anger or happiness, all with that same sense of nothingness. She could not see its expression, now. She wondered what it looked like. She hoped it was wreathed with a terrible fury, and that Ruin saw it, and was afraid.

You are a strange mixture.

She put the mask on. The world around her was once again visible, glowing with a strange, green light.

‘What do you mean?’ Perhaps she could steer this thing, this Ruin, in a useful direction.

You are cold. You are focused. You once thought of nothing but the Machinery. Now it is gone, and I have taken its place in your mind. You are devoted to my destruction.

‘I will destroy you.’

There have been others, over the millennia, who were just as focused as you – many of them. No, it is not your focus that makes you curious. Nor is it your coldness.

‘Go on then. Let me have it.’

You have another quality. It is unusual in one like you, so most people do not see it. You are nurturing. There have been people throughout your life who you turned into your children. Aran Fal was one.

Brightling leaned against the wall, as the image of a blond-haired boy rose before her mind’s eye.

You changed him. I saw it happening. You took him, and when you were done, he was something else. Changed so subtly, yet with terrible finality. Aran Fal into Aranfal. A boy become a torturer. The torturer. A dark creature, yet he still has a little sparkle. I can see it in him.

‘So he is alive, then, wherever he is,’ Brightling said.

Perhaps, perhaps. Everyone is alive to me, Brightling, because all memories are here. All of them, from the beginning of everything. I have seen them all. I have touched them all.

‘You must have seen a lot, then.’

Ruin laughed.

A nurturer to Aranfal, but also to others. To one above all. A girl, whose family was destroyed. I set that all in motion.

Brightling winced.

The Paprissis were destroyed. The girl was abandoned, and ended up where she belonged: with you, the cold nurturer.

Brightling steeled herself. It is testing me. It is only a voice: it has no power. ‘She was going to join you, no matter what happened,’ she whispered. ‘I feel no shame in that. That thing was always going to take her over.’

Always? Always is a powerful word.

A door opened to Brightling’s right. There was no escaping it, this time, no walking away. Something in the room beyond called to her, pulled her towards it. She resisted, perhaps longer than Ruin expected; she thought she heard him muttering darkly. She was not one to give in to temptation. Not her.

But there was no refusing the draw of the room. It was the light that did it. As she stared at her feet, it gathered across the stones: the purple of the Strategists, spilling into the darkness, driving it away.

She began to tremble, and she cursed herself for it.She could resist no longer. She turned her head towards the light and saw her: the girl who changed everything. Her foster daughter. Mother. The Strategist.

Katrina stood alone in a small, confined space, more like a cell than a room. No. This is not Katrina. This was the creature, at its zenith: taller than the girl Brightling had known, stretched into unusual proportions. Her white rags had turned purple, as had her eyes. The same colour of light hung around her in a strange haze. She was standing completely still.

‘It is not really her,’ Brightling said. She felt a wave of relief. She did not want to face that thing, the parasite that had seized control of an abandoned, orphaned girl. But she perhaps feared meeting the real Katrina even more. She had failed that child. If she had been wiser, or more observant, she would have seen what was inside her. She could have gone to the Operator, and he would have done something. She was sure of it. But she had failed. The greatest Watcher of them all, a Tactician of the Overland, and I let my girl be devoured from the inside out.

Isn’t she wonderful?

Brightling silently agreed. There was something incandescent about this girl. Something luminous.

You did this, Brightling.

Anger flared within the Watcher. ‘I failed her,’ she said. ‘But your people put the demon inside her. Not me.’

But what are we, Brightling? What are my people? We came from you. All of you. The memories of humanity. They gave birth to us. They feed us. We are your creations. You are the parents, and we are nothing but children.

‘Children don’t live forever. They don’t have powers that could break the world. They aren’t called fucking Ruin, either.’

There was a laugh in the darkness. I am a child, Brightling.

There was a movement behind the image of Katrina. An old woman appeared, her face just visible under a dark hood. She threaded her arm through the Strategist’s, and smiled at Brightling. Something crawled from her mouth, and flew away.

We are powerful beings, it is true. But all power has constraints. We are born of humanity; we cannot live to our true potential until we are at one with humanity. When we join a host, we become something more. An immortal, still, but one with greater scope. A truer being.

‘And the mortal dies.’

The man that you see, when you look at Jandell – that is not Jandell. He is the host for Jandell. He was meant for Jandell.

The old woman turned and embraced the girl, before vanishing. Katrina breathed in deeply.

The host and the Operator must be just right, before the combination reaches its full potential. You made Katrina the perfect host for Mother. You gave her a certain strength: the mentality of a Watcher. Yet you weakened her as well. You filled her with self-doubt. Mother waited, and watched, and smiled, while you worked your dark influence.

Katrina disappeared, replaced with a flickering procession of images: Brightling and Katrina, Katrina and Brightling, over and over, as the girl grew up under the wing of the Watchers.

I did this.

The host was ready when the world changed. She was ready when the Machinery broke, and I sent such powers to her.

The mask throbbed against her. ‘Say what you want: I am coming for you, with my mask.’

See what I have wrought, from my prison. See what I did to your world. See what powers I gave the One. You think I am weak?

‘I think my mask is stronger.’

Ruin laughed, and the door to the cell slammed shut.




CHAPTER 2 (#uef57288c-4ff0-50f4-8e12-2300f85234f7)


‘The Machinery destroyed my family,’ said Jaco Paprissi. ‘The Machinery destroyed us all.’

The old man stared hard at Jandell. When he had first appeared before Drayn and the Operator, rising out of the grass like an animal, his features had been obscured by thick, green paint, the same colour as his robes. Now the paint was gone, but the wildness remained. His skin was raw, his grey hair matted with dirt. His face was deeply lined, but there was a certain spark in his dark eyes. A drive. It reminded Drayn of her mother.

He had taken them into this settlement, him and his men, through clusters of low, stone buildings, until they had come to this cold, dark hall, a damp space of wood and animals and smouldering flame. The other people had peeled off as they went, until they were alone, just Drayn and Jandell and this strange old man.

The wind howled outside the building. The wind always seemed to howl in this place.

Jandell took his son away. That’s what he’d said, when they first met this man. Drayn had met a boy, deep in the Old Place, one who had stood at her side on her journey through her worst memories. That was him. Drayn knew it. She saw some of Alexander in Jaco. She wondered if she should tell him. I met your boy, my lord. I met him in the land of memory.

‘No,’ Jandell said.

Drayn was unsure, at first, if he was speaking to Jaco or to her. He was sitting to her side at the rough-edged table, hunched over, his strange cloak gathered around him, the faces staring wanly at the world outside their prison. ‘I destroyed your family. I cannot hide from that.’

Jaco ran a hand through his nest of hair. ‘Yes. But you’re as much a victim as the rest of us. You may have built it and operated it, but the Machinery was its own thing. It spoke to Alexander. It told him such … things. And it made you take him away.’

A new brightness seemed to enter Jaco’s eyes. He was directly opposite Jandell, and he leaned in towards him. ‘Is he alive down there?’ But the light flickered out as quickly as it had come. ‘No. He can’t be. It’s not a place for little boys.’

A little boy. I met him. I knew him well …

Jandell shook his head. ‘There is a boy in the Underland, but he is just a shadow. He is a dream. When I took him away …’ He bowed his head.

‘He’s just a memory, now,’ Jaco whispered.

Jandell frowned. ‘Just a memory? How do you know that?’

Jaco waved a hand. ‘I’ve learned a lot, out here.’ He took his gaze from Jandell, and looked again at the table. ‘Did you hurt him, Operator?’ he asked in a quiet voice.

An image came before Drayn: Alexander, chained to a chair, exhausted. Jandell was inches from his face, his mouth twisted into a sneer. He held something in his hand – a whip, perhaps.

‘The boy was gone at the beginning. But the memories … I fought that creature of memory, for his knowledge,’ Jandell whispered. ‘Yet even when he told me the One had returned, I would not believe him.’

‘But he didn’t tell you everything, did he, Operator? He didn’t tell you who the One was. He wouldn’t have wanted you to hurt her. His sister.’

A new image appeared in Drayn’s mind: a girl with black hair, a girl in white rags, slowly turning to purple …

Jandell rubbed his temples with thin fingers.

‘Alexander did well to keep it from me,’ he whispered.

‘No,’ Jaco said. ‘Not Alexander. The thing that lives down there: a memory of a boy.’

‘Perhaps that is Alexander. Why shouldn’t memories be real?’

It was the first time Drayn had spoken. The others turned to her, and Jandell smiled.

‘I was a dark thing, in recent years,’ Jandell said. ‘I was mad, and paranoid, and weak. Do you know what saved me, Paprissi?’

Jaco shook his head.

Jandell pointed at Drayn. ‘This girl,’ he whispered. ‘This Fallen Girl, and her powerful memories. More than that, though: her memories are powerful indeed, but so is she.’

Drayn turned her head away. Part of her wondered if she should thank the Operator. But why? How can I thank him for his praise, when I did nothing to earn it?

‘Operator,’ Jaco said.

‘My name is Jandell.’ He sighed. ‘A bleak name. The Bleak Jandell.’

Jaco nodded. ‘Jandell. I want you to know …’ He looked at the moss-covered ceiling, as if searching for answers. ‘I do not forgive you, for what you did.’

Jandell bowed his head. ‘You shouldn’t.’ He gestured at his cloak, at the faces inside. ‘Someone made this garment for me to remind me of all the things I did, and all the people I hurt, when I was Jandell the Bleak.’ He smiled. ‘Was. I am a fool; I will always be Jandell the Bleak.’

‘I hadn’t finished,’ Jaco whispered. ‘I do not forgive you for what you did. But I do not hate you, either. Because it was my fault.’ He stroked his beard. ‘I brought this upon my family. I could have stopped it.’ His voice grew weary. ‘Alexander told me about Katrina. He told me what she was. And I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t. I loved that girl as much as my son.’ He placed his head in his hands and began to tremble. ‘If I had told you the truth, you could have destroyed her, and Alexander would still be alive.’

Jandell shrugged his shoulders. ‘Perhaps it is all fate,’ he whispered.

There came a noise from outside: the whinnying of a horse. A man pushed open the door. He seemed to be middle-aged, though it was difficult to tell with any precision. His head was completely bald, without even eyebrows. He was tall, but strangely stooped. He had pale skin, but it was so weather-beaten as to almost be a shade of red, and he wore the same green robes as Jaco.

‘Dark is coming from the beyond,’ he said, pointing in the direction of the ocean. ‘Not now, my leader, but soon, the dark will come.’

Jaco nodded, before turning to Jandell and Drayn. ‘We have to go. This isn’t a good place at night. There are raiders, further up the coast, and animals that come from the forests.’

They made their way on horseback from the small settlement, Drayn tucked in behind Jandell, with the faces of the cloak staring up at her. She felt something when she looked at them: things from the past, tugging at her.

She turned her head, back in the direction they had come from, squinting her eyes against the wind. The settlement was very small, only a handful of squat, broken dwellings. There were people, there, leaning against the walls or wandering around, armed with spears. But the only ones on the road were Jaco, Jandell, Drayn and the bald newcomer.

‘Allos,’ he said. He rode up next to Jandell and Drayn, and pointed to his face. ‘Allos. Me.’

Drayn smiled at him and extended a hand. The man grasped it, perhaps a little too hard, and grinned back at her.

‘I’m Drayn,’ the girl said.

‘Drayn,’ said Allos. His voice was as rugged as the landscape, a thing of stone and hill. ‘Drayn, from another place.’

Allos turned back to the road, and his expression fell serious once more.

‘Where are we going?’ Drayn called up ahead, where Jaco was leading the way. The old man came to a halt and turned to the girl.

‘Up the road,’ he said, jerking his head in the direction of travel. ‘That place back there is just an outpost. We don’t live there.’

‘What’s up the road?’

Jaco grinned at her. He was old, this man, but remained a powerful physical presence. She could feel the merest hint of his memories. They were full of wonderful things: things that no one else had ever seen. But they were tinged with sadness, too.

‘Home is up the road,’ he said in a cheery voice.

The road gave way to a dirt path. As the night came in, trees sprang up on either side, great sentinels that loomed over them, moaning and swaying in the air. The darkness beyond crackled with sound: the movements of animals among the branches and twigs of the forest floor.

Drayn did not know what she had expected when she first set sail with Jandell. In some ways, she was disappointed by what she had found: wind and rain and rocks and trees. But there were other things, here, that she had never experienced. The land was vast: she had seen that when they first landed. Even the smell here was different, coming at her in waves: the scent of a fire, fuelled by strange things.

‘We are almost there,’ Jaco said. It was growing difficult to see him, up ahead in the gloom. ‘I hope you’re not tired, Drayn.’

‘No,’ the girl said.

Allos spoke, then. She could not see him, but he was near her side.

‘What powers? Why, when you will not turn to them?’

For a moment Drayn was confused. ‘Powers? What powers do I have, is that what you mean?’

‘He is talking to me,’ Jandell whispered. ‘He knows what I am. Perhaps he has seen my kind before.’

‘Yes, before,’ Allos said. ‘For such a long time before, the powers were here.’

‘He’s wondering why I ride this horse,’ Jandell said. ‘He wonders why I don’t lift us all up, with the click of a finger, and take us where we need to go.’

‘They are things, indeed, that matter now,’ Allos said.

Drayn searched for Allos, in the dark. He was nowhere to be seen. He was from this place, unlike Jaco Paprissi. The language he spoke was not his own. The land, though, was his, and he could disappear against it as he wished.

‘I am a thing of memory,’ Jandell said. ‘But I am far from the only one. When I draw on the power, sometimes others can sense me: not all of them, and not always, but some of them.’

‘And there are some you are hiding from, Operator,’ said Jaco.

Jandell did not respond.

A light appeared before them. It was a torch, raised high in the centre of the path, far away from the trees. They took their horses around it, on either side.

‘We are almost there,’ Jaco said.

Drayn saw that the base of the torch had been shaped into a figure. No: it was many figures, stacked one on top of the other, naked human beings. At the top, one of them held the torch in his hand.

‘Men and women,’ Allos said. He emerged at her side. ‘Together. That is the future: no powers but those of the world itself, and the people who live here.’

He nodded at the fire, before pushing on up the path.

They passed by more of the torches as they went deeper into the woods. After a while, the distances between the flames grew shorter, until they reached one every ten paces or so. The dirt path began to widen and became a road once more, paved with wide grey stones. Drayn felt something change in the world around her: more memories crowded in, cluttering her mind.

‘Look ahead,’ Jandell said.

She leaned around him. The road was coming to an end: before it was a high wall, formed of spiked wooden poles. There were figures walking along the edge, though she could not make them out clearly.

Jaco rode ahead of them, and the gate opened.

The road continued for another while. Signs of civilisation began to emerge: the smell of animals, the sounds of distant conversations. They passed through another gate, and then another, shell after shell of defences. The trees began to thin out, until they disappeared altogether.

Another gate came. This time, though, things were different. The roar of people could be heard all around them, even in the night, and the world was cast in a golden glare from a thousand torches.

Jaco turned to them, and grinned. ‘Here we are, then. The heart of our little civilisation!’

The gate opened, the small party entered, and the world changed.

They had come to a town square, its surface a muddy mess, ramshackle dwellings of stone and wood leaning over its sides. The place was crowded with men and women, talking among themselves, drinking from wooden cups. Torches burned all around, though Drayn wondered if they were necessary: the moon above them seemed somehow larger than normal, a vast sphere of blue light, surrounded by infinite, sparkling stars.

No one seemed to notice the newcomers when they first passed through the gate. After a while, however, that began to change. Fingers pointed at them from small, whispering groups. Drayn glanced at some of the people and saw they were like Allos, pale skinned, but rough and raw.

Jaco led them away from the square. They passed through side streets and byways, all of them teeming with life. The buildings varied madly in their construction, from relatively stable stone structures to leaning piles of wood, though they were similar in one important way: none was taller than one or two storeys.

‘We are here,’ said Jaco.

In many ways, the building before them was much the same as the others they had passed: a stone structure, low and long. But there was something very different about it. Its lines were neater and sharper, the path before it swept clean. A man and a woman stood at either side, holding spears.

Jaco led them to the door, and nodded to the guards. He beckoned to the small group, who followed him inside. They were now in a large, well-kept room, its only furniture a great table surrounded by rough-hewn chairs. There were no paintings on the walls, no statues, no tapestries, only a handful of glowing candles. Still, there was an air of importance to the place: a sense of ordered authority.

Jaco whispered something to Allos, who nodded and vanished through a door on one side of the room. The old man took a seat at the table, and indicated to the others to join him. Drayn sat in a chair at Jaco’s side, but Jandell remained on his feet, studying the hall.

‘Do you like it, Operator?’ Jaco asked, gesturing at the room. ‘This is a minor version of Memory Hall, I suppose you could say. It’s the centre of our world.’

‘No,’ Jandell said. ‘I built Memory Hall. You made this yourselves, with your own hands.’ There was admiration in his voice. Perhaps it was even pride.

‘Indeed,’ Jaco said. ‘No fanciness here. No names, no titles. This is just the Hall.’

‘And what are you?’ Jandell asked.

Jaco shrugged. ‘Just a Councillor. One of ten, elected by the people. Anyone can run for the job, as they like, no matter who they are. No children, though.’ He grimaced. ‘I think that was the Machinery’s worst mistake. Was there ever a good child Strategist?’

Allos entered the room again, carrying a tray of food. It was simple stuff: white meats, wooden cups of water, bread. He placed it on the table, and disappeared once more.

‘Allos there is a Councillor, too,’ Jaco said. ‘He won a seat in the last election.’

‘Why’s he serving you food, then?’ Drayn asked.

Both faces turned to her.

‘Because he likes to help.’ Jaco frowned. ‘You’re not an Overlander. I can tell. Yet we speak the same language. Where are you from?’

Drayn was about to speak, but Jandell held up a hand to silence her. ‘It doesn’t matter. All that matters is where we’re going.’

He took a seat opposite Jaco. ‘But why are you hiding here, Paprissi?’

‘Hiding?’ Jaco laughed. ‘Who’s hiding? I came here for the same reasons as you, Jandell. To find answers.’

The two men – human and Operator – stared hard at one another.

‘What is this place?’ Drayn asked.

Jaco shrugged. ‘We just call it the Newlands.’

‘Is this the only city here?’

Jaco leaned back in his chair, and bit his lip. ‘As far as I know, this is the only city in the Newlands. But we’re not the only people here, not by a long way. There are communities all along the coast, and in the interior, far outside the forest’s boundaries. We don’t see them often. We try to avoid them, to be honest. It’s a savage place.’

Allos returned and took a seat by Jandell’s side. He held a strange object in his hands, a kind of spiked, purple fruit, which he began to methodically peel.

‘Allos and his people lived in the forest, and along the coast, when we came,’ Jaco said, smiling at the bald man. ‘They still do. But now they have a new life: a civilised life, speaking a civilised tongue. Here, in the city, they’re still protected by the trees, still hidden from their enemies. But now they can enjoy … stability.’

Allos fixed Drayn with a stare.

‘Our language is foreign to you,’ she said.

‘Different, once, but not so different now,’ Allos said.

The Operator stood. ‘We have not come here to learn about language.’ He seemed to grow taller; his shadow fell across the hall. ‘I found this place in Squatstout’s heart. He knew about it, though how much, I cannot tell. This place is so important …’

Drayn found she could not turn away from Jaco, this proud, wounded, fascinating man. As she looked at him, the conversation of the others fell away, and the noise of the city outside began to disappear, replaced with an incessant drumming, thudding in her mind. She felt something, as she looked at him. She felt the corner of a memory, and she ran the fingers of her mind along its burning edge.

‘There is an important memory here,’ Drayn whispered. ‘It’s inside him. I can feel it.’

Jandell raised a hand. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Jaco will tell us anything we need …’

But it was too late. They had already gone inside.




CHAPTER 3 (#uef57288c-4ff0-50f4-8e12-2300f85234f7)


‘What is the Old Place? Is it a country, or is it a creature? Does it have thoughts? Does it know itself, any more? Did it ever? Once, when I …’

Aranfal opened his eyes.

He was on his back, sunken into black sand. Above him was a dark sky, in which burned a red sun. The Underland. I am searching for a memory.

‘… was very young, I played a game where I ran from one side of the Old Place to the other. Well, that’s what I tried to do. But how can one travel through a god?’

There was a thin line of smoke in the sky: pale against the blackness. He had not noticed it before.

‘And it did not like me there, oh no. It is capricious. It is harsh. Like its children. Like its parents.’

A face appeared above him, one that he knew well: the face of a young-looking man with long blond hair. He wore a green gown, covered with images of people and animals and shapes.

‘Well, get up,’ he said.

Aranfal climbed to his feet and cast a glance at the creature before him. There was something different about the Gamesman. He seemed stronger, surer of himself. Of course he is. He’s the Gamesman, and this is a game: it’s where he belongs.

‘Why were you lying in the sand?’ the Gamesman asked. ‘Was it comfortable?’

Aranfal glanced at the endless, black expanse. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember.’

The Gamesman laughed. ‘Memories, eh?’ He clapped his hands. ‘What would we be without them?’

Aranfal looked into the distance. There seemed to be a structure of some kind far ahead, though he could not make out what it was.

‘How is the game played?’ he asked.

The Gamesman put an arm around him. There was a whisper in the desert.

‘The Old Place guards the First Memory with the greatest care. It has never shown it to anyone, and it likely never will.’ There was a sad look in his eyes, as if he was gazing at a condemned man. ‘No one has ever found it. But it does love mortals, Aranfal. It does love you: its parents.’

‘I’m here forever,’ Aranfal said with certainty. ‘I will never escape.’

‘No one has,’ the Gamesman said. ‘Well, all except for Arandel. But he was so … powerful.’ He smiled at Aranfal. ‘You have a similar name, but you do not have that power, Aranfal. You will be like the rest of them.’

‘Where are they?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ The Gamesman shrugged. ‘You can do nothing but follow the path ahead.’

With a bow, the Gamesman was gone, leaving Aranfal no more knowledgeable than if he had never appeared in the first place.

The torturer walked and walked, across the black sand, towards whatever was before him, alone among the endless expanse. It took time for the image to crystallise. At first, he was merely aware of a change in the darkness. He could not tell what it was; he only knew it was there.

But as he went, its shape and outline grew clearer. It is formed of stone and wood. There is something at the top. What is it? It is …

It was a well.

Aranfal approached it carefully. It seemed ordinary enough, the same as any other well he had seen before. A large bucket swayed above, though there was no wind in this place. The Watcher carefully leaned over the side and glanced below. Anything could be hiding down there, a cautious voice warned him. But he could only see the blackness.

‘Hello?’ he called into the dark, feeling strangely embarrassed.

His voice echoed in the deep, but no response came. He wasn’t sure what he had expected.

A sound from behind seized his attention. A figure was approaching at great speed, a moving mass of hair and shawls, emitting exasperated shouts. Aranfal wondered at first if it was the Gamesman, but he soon realised this was something new. And likely disastrous.

‘Five times we walked together, five times,’ came a voice from the shawls. ‘In all the trees in the orchard, no apples could we find. The dog sits alone in the courtyard: it is sick, and Father will kill it in the morning.’

The figure walked to the other side of the well, ignoring him completely. Aranfal darted around the structure, padding quietly across the black sand, trying to make out the features of this new arrival. But every time he came close, a thatch of wiry brown hair or a bunched-up mass of material would block his view. Even the creature’s hands were hidden in a pair of dark gloves. The voice seemed female, though he could not even be sure of that.

‘Are you an Operator?’ he asked.

The newcomer did not acknowledge the question, but kept talking in her cascading spiel of nonsense.

‘The candles are sparkling in the corridor, and there is a creak upon the floorboards. Nights are longer here, near the ice fields, where they never seem to end. When I walked into the street, there was a fire, such a fire, and none of my friends returned.’

The newcomer leaned over the side of the well, so that her words fell into the darkness and echoed within the pit below.

‘I walked eleven miles to the next village, but my love had already passed. I kept a green bird in a silver cage. When I learned to write my name, I carved it upon my skin.’

The figure made a circle of the well.

‘I found a straw man in the field. I kept a spider in a jar.’

Is this a code?

‘I could not go that day, though I wish I had, for only I could have stopped him. My hounds are all three-legged. The clock in the spire is ticking, my love, the clock in the spire is ticking.’

Aranfal closed his eyes, and the words took on a different shape. They were building blocks, he realised; the speaker was constructing something. But what is it? What is she making?

‘On the fourteenth night I wept for him. On the eighteenth night I laughed.’

She speaks of memories. He did not know if this was his own voice.

‘In the stars I saw a name. It was … torturer.’

Aranfal’s eyes snapped open.

‘What did you say?’

But the newcomer was not listening. She had climbed onto the side of the well, into which she poured her ceaseless words.

‘Fire,’ she said. ‘I saw a fire, in the deep, ten thousand years ago. Such things were put there; such things.’

The figure leapt onto the rope, feet resting on the bucket, gazing into the pit.

‘The cat is so unhappy!’

With that, she descended into the well.

Aranfal stood staring into the darkness for a moment, feeling utterly helpless in this desert. Mother should have picked another. He searched within for the Strategist’s knowledge. Mother, come to me. Tell me what to do. But she did not speak to him.

He looked once more at the sand, at the blackness that rolled on and on. It seemed to shift as he stared. Was there a breeze here, now? The red sun flickered in the sky.

He turned back to the well, where the bucket was slowly creaking its way upwards. There was only one way to go.

‘Where are we?’ he asked in the darkness.

No answer came.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Let me see you.’

‘I thought of something I wanted, once, and it came. That is the way to do it. There are five men and three women, standing at the doorway. The hat is on the stand …’

I thought of something I wanted, once, and it came. Aranfal’s mind turned irresistibly to home. He saw in his mind’s eye the great fireplace, and imagined the light it cast, the scurrying shadows that played across his collection …

He opened his eyes.

‘How?’

He had come to his quarters in the See House. Standing at the fireplace was the figure he had met in the desert, the person he had followed down the well. This time, however, she had revealed herself. She was a young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, though he was wise enough to know that appearances could be deceptive, especially in the Underland. She had a bedraggled, hunted look, as if startled from sleep. She was plump, and pale, with small brown eyes. Her thick hair stuck out from her head like a brush.

‘How did we get here?’ Aranfal asked.

The woman opened her mouth, and Aranfal steeled himself for another onslaught of nonsense. But this time was different. Even the way she spoke had changed; her voice was lighter and softer.

‘Memories,’ she said. ‘All that matters in this world, or any other.’ She seemed confused. ‘Ah. We can think in straight lines, now. It isn’t always easy for us.’

She looked at the fire. She flicked a glance at him, and it appeared as though she might say something else. But she seemed to think better of it and turned her gaze back onto the flames.

Aranfal took a step towards the woman. She glared at him, and he stopped walking.

‘What were those things you were saying?’ he asked her. ‘Up above?’

She spun away from the fire and crossed the room, until she was an inch from his nose. She grasped him by the shoulders.

‘Torturer! Is it you?’

Aranfal nodded, and the woman glanced at the ceiling with fear in her eyes.

‘You are here for the game.’ She turned her head and a hundred different faces flickered before him, men and women of many ages and complexions. ‘There has not been a game since the last one. When was that? A moment ago, or a lifetime?’

‘Ten thousand years,’ said Aranfal.

‘Ah – good, only a moment.’ A look of confusion entered her eyes. ‘The game has begun. Why are you here?’

‘I do not know. I thought that perhaps you would show me the way.’

She looked over his shoulder. Aranfal turned and saw another room, far ahead, cast in a gloomy light.

‘What is in there?’ He turned back to her. ‘Where are you sending me?’

The woman cocked her head to the side. ‘Far from the road, it stood: the tree that never was.’

‘What?’

‘I saw a star, in the distance, though it did not see me.’

Oh no.

The woman smiled at him.

‘There was a frog, and a pond, in the golden glade. But I could not go there.’

She turned away, and shadows surrounded her. Her voice grew softer as she faded away.

‘I was with a child: my child. But it all soon came to an end.’

He was alone, then. He turned to face the new room, and went deeper into the Underland.




CHAPTER 4 (#uef57288c-4ff0-50f4-8e12-2300f85234f7)


‘Time is a funny thing,’ said the King of the Remnants.

His prisoners did not reply.

‘Not so long ago, I lived at the top of a pyramid,’ he whispered. ‘What was it called again?’

He gnawed at his lower lip. How could he forget the name of that place, the black monstrosity that had been his home? He toyed with it, plucking his way through possibilities, until it came to him, floating on the stew of his mind.

‘The Fortress of Expansion,’ he said at last, clapping his hands. ‘Yes, that was it. I lived there, you know, for many years. I was pitiful, back then. I was like a little animal – do you understand? I feel so different, now. But it took a while to get me here, didn’t it? I didn’t just wake up one day, feeling better about things. It wasn’t even my … not even my powers, I would say. Not even the things I can do, and the titles I’ve got, down here. No – it was nothing but time.’

Far above, through a ceiling of thick glass, Canning could make out the sky outside. Sky. Could it even be called a sky, that tempest of storms? A swirling darkness hung above the Remnants; even in the daytime, the light of the sun peered out only occasionally from behind the clouds, as if by accident. What did that to the sky?

‘Was it you?’ he asked, turning to his prisoners and pointing a finger at the great ceiling above. ‘Did you do that?’

He smiled at the Duet. Once he had feared these creatures with such a burning intensity. He had feared their cruelty and their power, the sense that he was an insect, waiting to be crushed. But I’m not an insect any more.

They were lying on the ground, utterly still, curled together at the side of his throne. My dogs. He chuckled at the thought. They stared blankly ahead at the cavernous hall, this great space of steel and stone. They belonged to him now; they could do nothing unless he willed it. How did this happen? His recollection of those events was hazy. They had taken him to a memory, and he had trapped them inside it. Him. At first, they had been suspended in a kind of flickering light. Now, the light was gone, but they were still trapped; they were still in his power. Perhaps the light was never there. Perhaps it was only in my mind.

What had he done to them? They had gone to a great forest, high up in a tree. He had grown angry with them; he had felt himself capable of tugging at the memory, feeling his way through its power and using it for himself. And then he was back in the real world – if the Remnants could be called that – and they were his prisoners. When he looked at Boy and Girl, prostrated at his feet, utterly helpless, only one word came to mind. It was a word from the old books, a word from an age before science, before civilisation, before the Machinery.

Magic.

There was magic in memories, and he was very, very good at using it. He was so good, in fact, that he had trapped two ancient powers and made them into his pets.

I am a magician.

‘Your majesty.’

Canning snapped back to reality, to find Arch Manipulator Darrlan standing before him. The boy grinned, though it was uneasy. He always seems so uneasy, these days.

‘How long have you been there?’

‘Oh, five, six minutes, your majesty.’

‘And I have been …?’

‘In a reverie, my lord, positively in a reverie.’ He giggled and cast a nervous glance at the Duet.

Canning nodded. He found that his own memories could take a strange hold of him, if he allowed them. Getting drunk on the past.

He glanced at his surroundings. I am here. I know I am here. But somehow, it does not feel true. How could it be true?

This was a throne room like no other he had seen or read about. It was a vast space, formed largely of metal, like so much of the Remnants: functional, durable, with no regard for beauty. The throne was a small, ugly affair, built into the wall itself and reached by a series of narrow steps. Canning was now sitting in this blackened metallic lump. There were no paintings on the walls, no tapestries, no artefacts to commemorate the history of this world. Good. Why would we want to remember anything in a world like ours?

The glass ceiling did nothing to relieve the gloom; on the contrary, it added to it, forcing the occupants to look at the world outside, that dark and bleak panorama of misery, torn and ruined by the wars of the Manipulators and Old Ones.

He looked down at himself, at the white robes he now wore: the uniform of a Manipulator. Pure, light, and free of blemish. Perhaps that was how the Manipulators saw themselves. But none of us are spotless, are we? None of us can ever be truly clean. Not with our memories …

‘Great Manipulator.’

Canning started again, flicking his attention back to Darrlan. It felt strange being called that. So many titles to remember: Darrlan was the Arch Manipulator, a grandiose mouthful for a child, and the head of the Remnants until Canning’s arrival. But now he, Canning, the one-time Tactician of the Overland, was the Great Manipulator and the King of the Remnants, successor to Arandel, who led a war against the Old Ones ten thousand years before. Titles, titles, titles, rolling through the endless years …

There came a sound from the far side of the room, in the corridor beyond.

‘Ah!’ Darrlan cried, clapping his hands. ‘The Protector of the Secondmost City has arrived!’

The footsteps grew closer: great, thudding steps that echoed through the metal room.

‘Who is this, Darrlan?’ Canning asked. ‘I didn’t know there would be visitors.’

‘Just one, my lord, just one!’ Darrlan shot him a worried look. ‘I am sorry to surprise you. But you must meet your people!’

The door to the throne room was a great gash, sliced into the side of the wall as if by some gigantic blade. Even it struggled to accommodate the figure that entered, a creature of greater proportions than anyone Canning had seen before.

‘May I present to you, my lord,’ Darrlan cried in the loudest voice the boy could muster, ‘Arna, Protector of the Secondmost City, Mistress of the Night Shore, Scourge of the Old Ones, Wielder—’

‘Enough, enough,’ the woman said. Her voice was surprisingly soft: not the great boom that Canning expected. ‘Arna will suffice.’

The woman strode towards the throne, her dark eyes never leaving Canning. She was the tallest person the new king had ever seen. Her skin was a light brown, and her hair was entirely black, tied up into a functional bun. She wore a billowing cape that was as dark as her hair, folds of the material falling away from her powerful frame. She was not fat, though it was difficult to tell under her layers of clothing; rather, she had a solid look that made Canning think of the trunk of a tree. She held a walking stick, which she thumped rhythmically on the ground as she traversed the throne room. Canning very much doubted that she needed it for support. Perhaps it is a weapon.

He was briefly reminded of Tactician Brightling. You are inferior. This is her world, her game, her rules. She will toy with you, and she will break you. But he shook these thoughts away. This was not Amyllia Brightling, and he was not the same man that had cowered in the Fortress of Expansion. You are the Great Manipulator. You are the—

‘King of the Remnants,’ Arna said. She fell to her knees before the throne, and bowed her head, staring at the metal floor.

They remained like that for a while, Canning staring at the kneeling woman and wondering what he was supposed to do. He eventually glanced at Darrlan, who made a gesture with his head. Canning knew what it meant. At least, he thought he did.

‘You may rise, my lady,’ he said, in what he hoped was a suitably king-like tone of voice.

Arna remained where she was for a moment, before slowly unfolding herself into a standing position.

‘It is a delight – a delight – to have the honour of meeting you, your majesty,’ Arna said. ‘Many of our people thought this day would never come. There were even times when I began to despair myself. But you are here, now – finally, we have a weapon that even the Old Ones fear!’

She glanced to Canning’s side, her gaze falling on the Duet. Strange: this was the first time she had looked at them since entering the throne room. Even now, she fears them. My little pets.

‘What have you done with them, your majesty?’ she whispered. ‘Your abilities are incredible. Once, you know, I held them for half a heartbeat – I was so proud of myself!’ She laughed. ‘I shudder with mortification, as I look upon what you have achieved. They are your prisoners completely.’ Her eyes flickered towards Canning. ‘What glories have you seen within their minds? They hold such memories, that pair: memories from long, long ago, from ages of savagery and glory. I saw such things in the moment I defeated them. What have you taken from them, my king?’

Canning glanced at the Duet. He had taken nothing. He had thought about trying, of course, but something held him back. He was unsure how to do it, in truth.

There was another reason too, though: something deeper. He was afraid of breaking the spell he had somehow cast, and which seemed now to operate entirely independently from any effort on his part. What if he tried something and accidentally freed the Duet? What would they do to him? Despite his newfound confidence, he knew the way of the world, and what would happen if he unleashed these beings. If I freed these enraged gods …

‘I—’ he stammered, before Darrlan interrupted.

‘The king will discuss his activities when he sees fit,’ the boy said. ‘Until then, we should not ask.’

‘No,’ said Arna with a bow. ‘Forgive me, your majesty.’

Canning studied the people before him, the wise little boy and the statuesque woman. His time in the Remnants played before his eyes, rolling forward in a river of memory: the weak man, proclaimed a king. What is the point in your power? What have you done with it, except sit on a throne, gathering dust?

Were these thoughts the workings of his mind, or was one of his guests doing this to him? He could not tell.

‘Why have you come to me?’ Canning asked. His voice was heavy, almost slurred. He felt out of balance. He turned his head sluggishly to the Duet, fearing for a moment that they would use his fragility to free themselves. But they remained just as they had before. He could still feel his hold over them, an invisible cord that ran from his mind to theirs, binding their vast and unknowable greatness.

Arna came closer to the throne. ‘Your majesty – we need your help.’

It was the first time Canning had been outdoors since he had arrived in the Remnants. He had felt no desire for fresh air, no impulse to feel the wind on his face. Little wonder: there was no fresh air here, and the wind stank of death.

They were in a large courtyard, its surface paved with cracked and weed-infested stones. The main building loomed behind them, a great mongrel of a structure, stone and steel and wood. Scattered around was a mismatch of other structures, twisted and hulking shapes. Occasionally a pale sun would shine through the sky above, and the courtyard glowed with a dull light.

The space was filled with people, all wearing the white robes of Manipulators. Canning associated that uniform with power, with vitality, but there was none of that to be found here.

The Manipulators were lying on the ground, very still indeed. The Great Manipulator did a quick headcount of his prostrate subjects: eleven of them, crumpled up on the floor. He would have taken them for dead, though their eyes were open and burning white.

‘They are Manipulating,’ Canning said.

‘Yes, sir. That’s what caused the trouble,’ came a voice from the edge of the courtyard.

A man appeared before them. Canning recognised him, he thought. A face from another time: before I became a king. The man seemed to be about as old as Canning, and just as bald, with dark skin and wide, lively eyes. He was no Manipulator, this man. He wore a brown cloak, and his gaze held no hint of the power of the Remnants.

‘I know you,’ Canning said, screwing his eyes up.

‘Arlan,’ the man said. ‘I met you, your majesty, before you … back before you came down here with us. When you were being held by the Duet – before you held them.’

Canning nodded.

‘Controller,’ he said. He placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘I remember you, now.’ He smiled. Memories are such precious things.

Arlan nodded. ‘There’s no time to reminisce, your majesty.’ He seemed to catch himself. ‘Apologies … I did not mean …’

Arna was at Canning’s side, then. ‘These are Manipulators from the Secondmost City, your majesty. Our part of the Remnants has been under great … strain, in recent times. We’ve become the focus of a particularly nasty Autocrat, and it’s almost broken us.’ She gestured at the unconscious Manipulators. ‘All of these warriors fought him at once – and all of them have been defeated. I took them here, to seek your assistance.’

‘I’ve been keeping watch on them,’ Arlan said.‘They’ve not moved a muscle. Sometimes you can see a Manipulator fighting back, even in this state, just by the flicker of a finger or the blinking of their eyes. But not with these ones. I think they might be gone for good.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Arna snapped.

‘Apologies, my lady.’ Arlan bowed, before returning to the side of the courtyard.

Canning studied the Manipulators, glancing from one to the other. He felt something, as he gazed at them: a kind of presence, as of a great pressure bearing down on them all, or a fog blocking them from view.

‘Where are they?’ he asked.

‘We don’t know.’ Darrlan was speaking, now. ‘They’ve been taken somewhere, by this thing. We can’t do anything for them. We’ve tried.’

‘Perhaps you could help, Great Manipulator.’ Arna’s voice. ‘This Autocrat would be no match for you. You could find them, and bring them back.’

There were more noises; more words being spoken. But Canning could no longer hear them.

‘What did you say?’ he asked.

He realised, too late, what had happened. He had gone to the other side of the fog.




CHAPTER 5 (#uef57288c-4ff0-50f4-8e12-2300f85234f7)


‘Who are you?’

The question seemed to come from far away, repeated in a pained voice. Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Brandione paid it no mind. He focused on the sand, the black, black sand, as it fell away beneath his boots.

‘Who are you?’

The desert was empty. The desert had always been empty.

‘Who are you?’

There was no one there but him. The desert was empty.

‘Who are you?’

He looked up from his feet. He looked away from the sand. And he saw that the desert was not empty at all.

There was a young man at his side: a man of many contradictions. He appeared youthful, at first, with unlined, pale skin and long blond hair. But there was an air of age about his watchful eyes, which could not be concealed. Stranger still was his gown, a green thing that writhed with symbols and shapes, numbers and figures and moons and stars.

How did this young man come to be here, in this desert of black sand, under a red sun in a dark sky? Where had he come from?

This is the Underland, and things are not the same here.

Brandione stopped walking, and the man came to a halt, too.

He grinned at the one-time General, and clapped his hands together. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘Charls Brandione. At least, that’s who I was.’

‘So you aren’t him any more?’

‘I used to be a soldier. Now I’m nothing.’

‘Nothing? Hmm. You wouldn’t be here if you were nothing.’ He snapped his fingers together. ‘I have it! The Queen. You are the Queen’s pawn.’

Brandione nodded, and braced himself. He knew what was coming next.

‘The Last Doubter,’ the man whispered.‘I have heard your name. She has seen such things for her Last Doubter. Oh, I know what she thinks. I’m the Gamesman – I know what everyone thinks will happen, in all the games. She thinks you’ll find the First Memory. Amazing!’

He laughed, and Brandione was struck with a sudden image of this man, long ago, standing before so many tables, a dominant figure, a power of the world.

The Gamesman, as he called himself, came up close to him. ‘She is deluded. Do you know why, Last Doubter?’

Brandione shook his head.

‘Because this is the game. The Old Place runs this game, Brandione. Hmm? We do not know what it is thinking. We do not know the rules. When it decides to …’ He snapped his fingers again. ‘When it decides to end the pawns, or take them away, we do not know what forces its hand. All we can do is watch. Now tell me this, Last Doubter – why, exactly, would the Old Place want to show you the First Memory? Why would it reveal its most powerful secret, and risk losing it forever? It wouldn’t, is the answer. It never has, and it never will.’

‘Then how is it played?’ Always the same question, over and over again. ‘I think I should know, if I’m a player.’

The Gamesman shrugged. ‘That’s the delicious thing, Brandione. It changes all the time.’ He looked up at the sun. ‘It knows when we are coming to play. It knows what we want. And it does what it likes. The Operators watch you all, on my lovely table: helpless.’

‘So I’m not playing a game at all. I’m only walking through a nightmare, until it decides it’s had enough of me.’ Brandione felt perversely piqued at the injustice of it all. ‘There is no fairness, here. There is only death. It kills us in the order it wants, or throws us in some corner of this place, never to return.’

The Gamesman turned suddenly serious. ‘Perhaps, perhaps. But to survive in the game, even for a while, is such an honour. The Old Place is everything, Brandione. I never question it, and neither should you. Its mind is unknowable, its highways endless, its thoughts too subtle to comprehend, even for the Queen herself – its first child!’

Brandione held up a hand. ‘Enough. I can’t listen to this nonsense any more.’

The Gamesman cocked his head to the side. ‘Interesting. Nonsense.’ He giggled. ‘Well, here’s something you’ll understand. If one person lasts longer than the rest, it would be better to be that person, than any of the other pawns, wouldn’t it? You would have time, then. Time to defeat the game.’ He laughed derisively.

Brandione nodded, and looked out to the desert. ‘That I can understand.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Where does it take them – the ones it doesn’t kill?’

He turned back to the Gamesman, and found he was alone again.

Brandione walked on, through the black sands. At one point – he did not know when, or if ‘when’ even mattered here – he looked up and saw the outline of an object far ahead. He kept his eyes on it as he went. Once, he turned in another direction. But as he walked, the lines of the object reappeared. It is meant for me.

It became clearer over time. At first, he thought it was some kind of building: another tower, perhaps, like the one where he had met the Dust Queen. But soon he realised it was not a manmade structure at all: it was a mountain.

It was the smallest mountain the General had ever seen; so small, in fact, that it took him time to realise it even was a mountain. But soon it was clear. Rising from the desert before him was a sharp mound of rock, small but perfectly formed, its peak frosted with snow, its body wreathed in shadow.

Its size was deceptive. As he walked, the mountain seemed to leap towards him, growing with every jump. The experience was familiar; he had seen it many times before, in the Overland. In those days, he thought it was some trick of perspective or light. He wondered, now, if he had seen the Underland itself, back then, seeping into the real world. Perhaps there was no difference between them.

The sand at his feet began to slowly dissipate, giving way to rough, sparse grass. The mountain leapt forward again, until all the world before him was taken over by the rock.

Brandione began to climb.

A path had been laid out into the side of the mountain, cutting its way sharply upwards through jagged rocks. He was glad of his old boots, his military garb, as he made his way up the path, into the heights of the mountain. He stopped, once, and looked out at the world below. Blasted grasslands stretched away from the great rock, merging into the black sand somewhere far away. He thought he saw something else, out there: one of the great statues of the Strategist that now stood in the Circus. He thought she was raising her arms, but he could not be certain. There was a kind of fissure in the air behind her, like someone had torn out part of the black sky; a haze of blue light crackled in the beyond.

In the sky above, the red sun had gone. In its place was a moon, a vast, perfect sphere, casting a blue light down upon the desert.

Brandione turned back to the path and carried on up the mountain. The path began to twist and turn in tighter and tighter corners. Eventually he came to a wooden sign propped up on the rock before him, on which a question had been scrawled in black ink.

Who are you?

The one-time General stopped for a moment before the sign. Was he meant to answer this question? If so, how?

On he went, around another corner.

Who are you?

He stopped again. This appeared to be the same sign. He walked up to it, studied it, felt its edges; it was identical to the one before. He did not allow himself to feel any surprise. This is the Underland.

Brandione turned another corner, and there was the sign again, with those same three words leaping from its surface. Now, however, things had changed. He was no longer alone.

A young girl was sitting beside the sign, nestled among the boulders and smiling up at Brandione. Unlike the Gamesman or the Dust Queen, this girl had no hint of humanity. She put Brandione in mind of a figure from a painting, sliced out of the canvas and brought to life: a beautiful drawing of a blonde-haired child in a white dress, but nothing more than that.

‘Who are you?’ she asked him. The voice did not belong to a girl of her age, or to any girl: it was more of a rasp than a voice, the pages of a book blowing open in the wind.

‘Charls Brandione,’ he said. ‘I seem to always be introducing myself.’

The girl climbed to her feet. ‘That is not you.’ The voice rattled around his ears.

She reached out a finger and tapped Charls on the nose. ‘Soldier, and scholar. Last Doubter.’

Brandione felt a sudden burst of anger. ‘How do I play the game?’

The girl looked to the sky, whispering something incomprehensible, before she snapped her head back to Brandione. ‘There will be no game,’ she said. ‘Not like the old ones. The game has changed.’

Anger burned in Brandione. The one-time General was a furious insect: a wasp, trapped in a jar.

‘How?’

The girl became a man, then an older woman, then a thousand other people, changing madly in the course of a minute, before returning to the person he had first encountered.

She walked up to him and whispered in his ear.

‘You are not here to have fun, this time. You are here to help.’

She nodded behind Brandione. He turned, to see a doorway in the mountainside.




CHAPTER 6 (#uef57288c-4ff0-50f4-8e12-2300f85234f7)


‘Death is coming.’

Drayn opened her eyes. Jandell and Jaco were at her side. She knew, somehow, in her bones, that these were the realJandell and Jaco. There was something in the way they held themselves, something in the way she felt when she looked at them, that told her they were flesh and blood. But it was instantly clear that everything else in this place was a memory. Does that make it any less real?

A man sat at a desk before them. He was fairly young, perhaps in his late thirties, with neat black hair and smooth pale skin. He had an air of precision, of order. But there was something harried in his expression, something wan and fearful. The table was covered in papers, which the man sifted through with his fingers.

This was a younger version of Jaco. Drayn glanced from the old man at her side to his counterpart in the memory. There was a strange look in the old man’s eye: a kind of affectionate disdain.

There came a great lurch, and Drayn almost tumbled to the floor. This was a ship like Jandell’s, the one that had carried her into the East. But it was very different. On Jandell’s vessel she had sensed his power, carrying them across the waves. There was none of that here. There was only the peril of the real.

At the doorway stood another man, who must have been the speaker. He was a short, stocky type, who seemed to have sprung from the ship itself, a thing of seasalt and cold winds, his unblinking eyes making Drayn think of some animal of the depths. His head had been shaved with such severity that only the barest hint of stubble could be discerned on the gleaming pate.

‘Who, Teel?’ asked the memory Jaco.

The man called Teel entered the captain’s cabin. He glanced at the floor and lifted a torn black cloak.

‘Harra,’ Teel said. He tossed the cloak to Jaco. ‘She’s above deck, my lord. It is cold.’

The younger Jaco stood and tossed the cloak aside. ‘Let’s go.’

They found themselves on the deck at night, staring at a dead woman.

Her corpse was positioned against a mast. A handful of other crewmembers were spread around the deck. Some watched Jaco, as he knelt down by the body of the woman called Harra. Others stared out to sea, to impenetrable blackness.

Drayn looked to the real Jaco. If he was surprised to find himself in a memory, he did not look it. Instead, he stared ahead with a dark gravity. Jandell seemed lost in thought as he watched the unfolding scene.

‘How did you bring us here?’ he asked Drayn, emerging from his reverie. ‘Do you remember how you did it?’

‘No.’

‘And can you … what do you feel?’

‘Nothing,’ Drayn said. But perhaps that was not true. Perhaps she was once more deploying her tricks, as if to ward off the Voice, that thing that had watched her in the Choosing. It’s gone, now. Isn’t it?

She could feel something: the edge of the memory. There was something there: a whisper of power …

‘What killed her?’ asked the Jaco of the memory.

Teel crouched down beside the captain. ‘It’s the same thing that gets them all,’ he said. ‘Whatever it is. The Blight. She was fine this morning, or as fine as you can be, out here. And then …’ He shrugged.

The young Jaco nodded. ‘The Blight,’ he said. ‘What is it?’ He lifted Harra’s arm, turning it over to study the underside. ‘When I was a boy, I used to hear of terrible scourges. They came from the swamps in the South, folks used to say, from the festering waters. People would come out in blotches, and that would be the end of them. You never got rid of it, when it arrived in a town. You had to keep the people inside, until they were all … gone.’

‘Then perhaps you shouldn’t be touching her, my lord.’

‘That’s just it, Teel – there are no marks on her.’

Jaco brushed a strand of thin black hair away from Harra’s forehead.

‘If it is the same thing, we’re all dead already,’ said Jaco. ‘But I don’t think so. I think it’s something else. It’s as if the spirit falls out of them, somehow.’

‘It’s a curse,’ Teel spat. ‘We are being punished.’

Jaco squinted. ‘What do you mean?’

Teel clenched his fists together. ‘We’ve gone too far from home, my lord, and we’re being punished for it.’

Jaco smiled.

‘The Machinery,’ he said.

Teel nodded. ‘Yes, my lord. We’re from the Overland. We’re a part of the Machinery. It felt us leave it behind, and it’s punishing us. That’s why we’re lost, out here. We lost ourselves, when we left, and now we’re lost at sea.’

There was a sound, in the dark – the screech of a bird. The crewmembers on the deck muttered to one another in hushed voices.

‘Second,’ Jaco said, ‘the Operator has sanctioned our voyages. He would not have done so—’

‘No, sir, no.’

Jaco’s eyes widened. He seemed unaccustomed to being interrupted. He was so like Drayn’s mother. He’s higher than the rest of these folk, and it’s nothing to do with a title.

‘I’m sorry, my lord, truly.’ Teel bowed his head. ‘But the Operator is not the Machinery. They are not the same thing.’

Jaco looked back to Harra.

‘Do you think it sees us here, Teel?’

Teel nodded. ‘Yes, my lord. The Machinery knows all.’

They were back in the cabin.

‘My lord.’

Jaco turned towards Teel, who stood at the door again. ‘Death is coming,’ said the captain. ‘Who is it this time?’

But Teel shook his gleaming head. ‘No. That’s not it. Come.’

They all followed Teel through the memory ship, back up to the deck.

‘It’s land,’ said Teel.

Jaco grunted, and stared out into the ocean, which glowed in the light of the dawn. Drayn saw it, then – a grey mass.

‘Have we come home?’ Jaco asked. ‘Or back to the South?’

Teel silenced Jaco with a shake of his head.

‘This is not the Overland, or the southern lands, my lord. We have not found our way by accident.’ Teel squinted out into the greyness. ‘I don’t know where we are.’

Jaco nodded. ‘Have we seen any other ships?’

‘No. There’s no sign of life here at all. But the coast … I cannot be certain, my lord, but to my eye, this is the edge of a wide land. It is no outcrop. If it’s large, then it could be inhabited. And we don’t know who they are, the people that live there.’

Jaco sighed. ‘We have no choice. We must go there.’

The memory took them somewhere else: an expanse of pale-green grass and black, broken stone, at the side of a forest. The wind howled at them.

There were about a dozen crewmembers left untouched by the Blight. They had carved out a small camp at the side of the woods, in the shadow of three great boulders. They had food, and a supply of firewood: a hog was burning on a spit.

‘Why’s it stopped?’ said a voice.

Drayn turned her head, and saw Teel and Jaco, sitting on one of the boulders. Teel seemed healthier than before: his skin was pinker, his flesh thicker, and there was even a thin layer of stubble on his scalp.

‘The Blight?’

Teel nodded.

Jaco shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the climate.’

Teel grunted. ‘It’s like we were being poisoned by someone, and now they’ve decided to … stop poisoning us.’

Jaco did not argue.

‘If someone was doing that to us,’ he said, ‘I wonder why they’ve stopped?’

Teel glanced at the captain. ‘Maybe they’ve got us where they want us.’ He gestured to the other crewmembers, below the rocks. They were spread around in little groups, talking to one another and eating. ‘Everyone’s taken their mind off their work,’ Teel said. ‘Do you know what I mean, my lord?’

Jaco nodded. ‘I do.’

‘It’s just that … I feel something here, my lord. That’s all.’

Jaco stared at their surroundings.

‘Then what should we do, Teel?’

Teel jammed a thumb over his shoulder. ‘We should get back to the ship, my lord.’

Jaco glanced behind him, down to the shore beyond. Drayn could not see it, but she imagined the ship was there, tied to some rocks.

‘We should get back to it, and take our chances on the waves,’ Teel said. ‘Death is coming here, as well. I can feel it.’

The memory shunted forward, into the night. The crew were asleep around their little camp, all except Jaco, who sat at the edge of a rock, staring out into the woods. Drayn glanced quickly around. She saw Jandell and the older Jaco, watching this memory with the same fascination as her.

A noise came from the woods, one that could not be ignored. It was the cry of a newborn baby.

Teel was awake and on his feet, staring out into the trees, tightly grasping a blade. Jaco scrambled down from the rock to Teel’s side. The cry came again, closer than before. This time there were other sounds: the shifting of undergrowth, the crackle of sticks and twigs breaking underfoot.

‘We should get away from here,’ Teel said, in a quiet voice. ‘Nothing good is coming from those woods.’

The memory Jaco shook his head. ‘We don’t have time. And we don’t run away from crying babies.’

Teel grunted. ‘It’s not the baby I’m worried about. It’s whoever’s carrying it.’

The sounds came closer, almost as if the wanderers were at the very edge of the treeline, before they stopped altogether. Even the baby ceased crying. Perhaps a hand has been placed across its mouth.

‘They’ve seen us,’ Teel whispered. There was a tremor in his voice that was oddly unsettling. ‘They’re watching us.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’ Jaco whispered back. ‘If you were carrying a baby through the woods, and you stumbled across a group of strangers, would you run out into the middle of them?’ He glanced at Teel’s blade. ‘When they’re armed?’

The rest of the crew were awake now, too, on their feet and staring out into the woods. The only light came from the moon and the dying glow of the fire. ‘Light a torch,’ Jaco ordered a woman to his right.

He walked forward as the torchlight flickered around the camp. Teel grabbed him by the shoulder, but the captain shook him off. He approached the trees as quietly as he could, raising his hands in the air.

‘I don’t know if you understand me,’ he said, in what Drayn took as an attempt at a friendly voice. ‘We are from another land. We came here by accident, and we only wish to go home.’

There came a noise from the woods. It was not the cry of a baby, but a hushed whisper.

Another moment passed.

‘Please, come out to us,’ Jaco said.

There was silence. Nothing happened.

‘Please,’ Jaco said again. ‘I swear, we mean you no harm.’

And then she came.

The woman was young to look at, somewhere in her twenties or early thirties. But there was an air of something old in the way she carried herself, and in the glances of her eyes. And what eyes they were: green as grass, green as emeralds, green as a snake. Almost as green as the dress she wore, a long gown that wrapped itself around her narrow frame, like it too was alive: a spirit of the forest. She wore her red hair long, the curls cascading past her shoulders, and her skin was a white so unblemished that it could almost have been porcelain.

Drayn heard a gasp: she turned and saw that Jandell had fallen to his knees, his head in his hands. The real Jaco simply watched, his face a slab of stone.

The baby was in the woman’s arms, wrapped in grey rags.

‘Can you understand me, my lady?’ the memory Jaco asked.

The woman stopped walking. She was perhaps ten paces from their camp.

‘Yes, oh yes,’ she said, nodding vigorously. ‘I am from your land, my lord, I know your words well, oh yes.’

The memory Jaco sucked in a breath.

‘How did you get here?’ he asked. ‘We thought we were the first from the Plateau to come to this place – wherever we are.’

‘Oh, it is a terrible place, a terrible place!’ the woman cried. Her voice had a strange, sing-song quality. ‘It is full of terrible people, my lord! They took me, you see, they sailed to our lands in their terrible ships, and they took me away!’

Jaco glanced at the trees.

‘Is that your baby?’

‘Yes, yes, my little girl!’

The woman began to move. The crewmembers tensed up, and Teel raised his blade, but Jaco quietened them with a flick of a finger.

The woman brought the baby to him, and Jaco looked down at the squalling child within the rags. Drayn hurried forward, to catch a glimpse of this infant. She had a thick thatch of black hair, and her wide eyes were the same colour. Strange, but she was not dissimilar to Jaco himself.

‘They want to make her a slave too, my lord!’ the woman cried. ‘But I will not let them! I will throw her into the sea before I allow that!’ She looked at the ground. ‘They used me most cruelly, my lord,’ she said in a quiet voice, gesturing at her child. ‘But I am not sorry to have her, oh no. I will not allow them to take her!’

‘Captain.’

Jaco turned to Teel, who was pointing into the forest.

‘There are lights in the forest, captain.’

The captain squinted into the darkness. Drayn saw it too: a flickering line of torches, coming closer. Drayn could just about make out the sound of voices, shouting and calling, the words muffled by distance.

‘It is them!’ the woman cried. ‘They are coming!’ She grasped Jaco’s arm. ‘They will kill us all if you stay! Take my baby, and leave this place, oh yes, you must leave.’

Jaco seemed to thrum with a restless energy.

‘Very well,’ he said. He turned to Teel. ‘We can launch the ship quickly.’

Teel nodded. ‘Yes. But the instruments—’

‘Oh your little tools and your maps, your little toys, they will work now!’ the woman cried. ‘This place sucks people in with its terrible tricks, but it cannot stop you leaving, oh no!’

Jaco nodded. He did not truly appear to understand, though he knew they had to leave: of that, Drayn was certain.

‘Come with us,’ he said to the woman.

‘No, my lord, no. They will chase you if they see your ship. I will stay here, and I will distract them, oh yes, I am so good at distracting!’ She thrust the child into Jaco’s arms. ‘Take her! Run!’

Jaco seemed to think this over for a moment. ‘Very well,’ he said.

The woman nodded, and turned towards the lights.

‘What is your name?’ Jaco asked.

The woman glanced back at him. ‘I have many names, my lord, but none of them matter here.’

‘What of the girl?’

The woman began to walk away. ‘Call her what you will.’

They were back on board the ship, now, in Jaco’s room. The captain sat at his desk with the child, wrapped in a woollen blanket. She was older than Drayn had first thought: perhaps seven or eight months old.

Teel came to the door.

‘We will tell no one of this,’ Jaco said, ‘apart from my wife. I will keep the child in Paprissi House, until it is time to reveal her. My wife never leaves the house anyway. They will believe she is ours. As for our journey, we went to the South as usual.’

Teel shrugged. ‘That is your concern, my lord.’

Jaco nodded. ‘Yes. It is.’

‘What will you call her?’ Teel asked.

Jaco looked down at the baby.

‘Strange,’ he whispered. ‘When I look at these eyes, sometimes I think I see the slightest hint of purple.’

Teel chuckled. ‘That’s love, playing tricks on you, sir. Makes you see funny things.’

Jaco’s head snapped up. ‘Love?’ He looked down at the baby once more. ‘She looks like one of us, doesn’t she? A Paprissi.’

‘Yes, sir. Pale skinned, my lord. A little Paprissi lady already, just by another name.’

Jaco smiled. ‘She looks like my own grandmother. So there we are – that’s what I’ll name her.’

‘Grandmother?’

Jaco laughed. ‘No.’ He touched the baby’s nose. ‘Katrina.’




CHAPTER 7 (#ulink_49172451-f40c-5f35-b7b2-05938755bbd5)


Welcome.

The word was scrawled into the wall in white chalk, high above Aranfal’s head. He was alone. A narrow passageway stretched before him, formed of black stone and filled with a pale light.

He had been walking this same corridor now for hours, alone with his thoughts. He felt no tiredness, no hunger, no thirst. He was just a walking, thinking machine, mired in the past, and the present, and the game.

He began to walk again. But the wall was not finished with him, and another word waited up ahead.

To.

He studied it for a moment. Welcome To. So I am collecting words.

The next words came sooner than the others.

The Hallway of Regret.

He gave a sharp nod. Welcome to the Hallway of Regret. I have a sentence now. That’s progress, isn’t it?

There was a noise behind, a kind of creak. He turned, to find a door had opened in the wall. A golden light came from within, so bright it forced him to shield his eyes with an arm.He considered walking in another direction, back the way he had come or further down the corridor. But he knew there was only one way to go, now. The Underland would always take him there, whether he wanted to go or not.

The light was blinding, forcing his eyes closed. He had a curious sensation of floating. There was a sense of nothingness here, carrying him along with it. After a while the intensity of the light began to weaken, though he could still make out very little. He became gradually aware of a presence: he could feel it, rather than see it.

‘I can’t see anything.’

The light dimmed again, and the Watcher could finally fully open his eyes. He was in a vast hall, cut into the shape of a rough circle. All around were doors, carved into the walls in line after line, formed of all kinds of colours and materials. The room itself was empty, save for one, solitary figure.

The creature before him had the rough outline of a human, though human it was not. It was tall and thin, dressed in a blue gown that hung open to expose its birdlike chest. Thin fingers sprouted from webbed hands that sat at the end of elongated arms. Its red mouth was split open by a coruscating smile, sitting under a nose that was unusually normal on that strange face. It was completely bald, though this was not the baldness of a shaved head, or of one whose hair had fallen out: the skin had a strange quality, milk soft and satin supple, like that of a newborn baby. The creature had no eyes: just a smooth patch of skin where they should have been.

‘Time drifts, and time is still,’ it said. Its voice was familiar to Aranfal, yet he could not place it. It had a strange tone, as if it was not the voice of one being at all, but of many, somehow squeezed together into a single stream.

‘Memory is strong, and memory is weak,’ it said.

It did not appear to notice him, but to exist in a kind of suspended reality of its own.

‘Who are you?’ Aranfal asked.

‘There was once a mother, who was herself a daughter, and a mother of mothers for evermore.’

‘I don’t understand.’

He walked around the creature, unsure of what to do. It remained perfectly still as he made a circuit of its ugly form.

‘In the outside, there is a door. In the inside, there is a tree.’

His mind turned to the woman he had encountered when he first came to the Old Place. She talked in much the same way as this thing. He wondered if this was that same creature, or some twisted relation. She had spoken sense, in the end, pointing him on the path to take. But how could he draw some sense from the mouth of this monster, which seemed more distant than even the woman in the well?

‘There is nothing but stars in the sea, there is nothing but droplets in the sky. The words of my fathers were unspoken, but my children sang in rhymes. When I found …’

‘Help me,’ Aranfal said. ‘Please.’

The creature ceased talking. It seemed to incline its head towards him, though he wondered if this was only a trick of his mind.

‘The floor is on the ceiling. The roof is in the ground.’

He had seen people like this, in cells of the See House, men and women who drifted away on the contours of their own ravings. Perhaps they were trying to escape reality; he could not blame them. But floating minds were no use to a Watcher. A Watcher needed answers.

Aranfal had a lot of tricks, to bring someone back to reality. One always worked best though, a tried and trusted manoeuvre for which he had become famous: hurt someone they loved, or threaten to do so. Well, that was not going to work here. There was nothing here that the creature loved.

It occurred to him, then, that perhaps there was something here that the creature cared about. He was here: a human, one who had been permitted to play in the great game and not yet been killed or thrown into some nightmarish pit of memory. Perhaps he was his own bargaining chip.

‘The night turns into more night, until day comes,’ the creature said. ‘But then, the night lasts longer than before.’

‘Being of the Old Place,’ Aranfal said. He did not know what else to call it, yet his words felt foolish. ‘You are far away from me. Come closer, so that we may talk. I know you have summoned me here: allow me to understand you.’

‘There is a world formed of green grass and blue ice. It is our own world, but it is upside down.’

‘If you do not drag yourself away from madness,’ Aranfal whispered, now standing directly before the beast, ‘I will kill myself. I will pick my eyes out and bleed to death. I will make a noose of my cloak, and hang myself. I will die, creature, I will die, and I will not be able to help you.’

The creature was silent.

‘I will die, and it will be your doing.’

And then all at once, the creature came to life: real life, engaged life.

‘Torturer,’ it whispered. A smile stretched across its unlined skin. ‘We were gone, weren’t we? We always go off on our journeys, floating away on the winds of memory. We cannot stop it.’

‘I have met someone like you before.’

The creature only smiled.

‘Who are you?’

‘We are a face of the Old Place. We are the children of humanity, and the parents of Operators and all the other beasts that have spawned from this place.’ It sighed. ‘We are glad we can talk to you, now, as people. But it is hard for us. That is why we need our children: they are focused. They are more like you. We are … we cannot think straight. Sometimes it lasts for millennia.’

It cocked its head to the side, as if noticing Aranfal’s expression for the first time: as if it could actually see.

‘It’s the eyes, isn’t it?’ The creature reached one of its spider hands up to its plum of a mouth and chuckled. ‘It’s always the eyes. We do not feel their absence. In fact, we pity those that have them.’

Aranfal glanced at his surroundings, to the doors that were all around. Some were slightly ajar, and light spilled out from the beyond.

‘Where am I?’

The creature frowned. ‘Didn’t you see the signs? Did we forget the signs?’ It seemed angry for a moment.

‘I saw,’ said Aranfal. ‘The Hallway of Regret.’

The creature grinned, and clapped its strange hands.

‘Indeed.’

‘What do you want?’

It giggled. ‘We will tell you about our eyes, torturer. We do not have eyes, because they are distracting. Do you understand? We do not want to see memories. Not ever. We simply want to feel them. The power in them is so much morethan something one can see. And when we feel them – oh, well, we can see them all anyway.’

It reached its hands up and placed them on either side of the Watcher’s head.

‘It is so nice to have you here, in your true flesh and bone. It gives your memories more flavour. A great circle – we feel new memories being born within you, memories of memories, and on and on it goes …’

The creature withdrew from Aranfal, and went suddenly still. ‘We are many. We are eyeless. The Eyeless One, you can call us.’

Aranfal nodded. He felt as though the Old Place was beginning to show itself to him: starting to reveal its weaknesses. It was a god: he could feel that in his bones. But this god was born of mortals. This god lived for human memory. This god was a parasite. It worshipped him, and all the rest of humanity.

There came a great rumble, emanating from somewhere far beneath them. The room shook, and a piece of the ceiling fell, landing with a crack on the floor.

‘Everything is changing,’ the Eyeless One said. ‘We all sit here, pretending to play a game, just like the others we have played for so many long years. But this one is not the same, Aranfal. How can it be, when we are subjected … yes, subjected … to that thing.’

Aranfal opened his mouth to speak again, but the creature held up one of its spider hands, palm facing forward. There was a new edge in its voice. ‘The world is in motion, Aranfal. Can’t you feel it?’

Aranfal nodded. ‘I felt that, yes. What was it?’

The creature seemed suddenly fearful. ‘Ruin is coming. We sit here, having a nice chat, and all the while, Ruin is coming. Ruin has grown so strong, now – stronger than us!’

‘Us? You mean the Old Place?’

The creature made a flurry of tuts. ‘Our children are such wonderful things.’ It clicked two bony fingers, and suddenly they were joined by a group of spectral beings, hallucinations from a fevered dream: Shirkra, Jandell, the Strategist, the Dust Queen, Squatstout, a boy and girl Aranfal did not know, but who he knew in his bones were Operators like the others. ‘We made them to help us, long ago, when we could not help ourselves. They are weapons: the power of memory, warped into creatures that can use it in such amazing ways.’ The creature let out a long, rattling sigh. ‘Among them all, one was the worst, and the best, all at the same time.’ A gesture from a spindly hand, and a new figure appeared. This one, however, was no more than a shadow: a black silhouette, standing at the creature’s side.

‘Who is that?’ Aranfal whispered. He looked around the room, and it seemed to him that the other Operators were cringing away from the shadow man.

‘Ruin,’ the Eyeless One said. ‘He has no host, as yet, though he has been searching …’

‘Ruin is an Operator,’ Aranfal said. He felt himself backing away from the shadow man.

The creature nodded. ‘Yes. And something has happened to him. Two of these children of ours – the lady of Dust and the Bleak Jandell – built something, in our heart, a little while ago. It is a terrible thing. They placed Ruin within, but they did not know what they were doing. They have made him stronger than he ever was before. He is now greater even than us: than the Old Place. That





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