Daywards (13 page)

The light was wrong. Instead of the murky, orange glow that the solar lamps usually threw across the clearing, the light emanating from the Eye was now glaringly white. Long before the clearing itself was visible, the bright corona shone between the tree trunks, strong enough to penetrate several hundred metres into the forest, revealing every tiny detail of the facing tree trunks and undergrowth, and destroying Dara's night vision.

As she stood lurking in the shadows, shielding her eyes against the worst of the glare, Dara wondered what in the sky could have caused such a change. Cautiously, she leaned out, risking a quick glance in the direction of the Eye and feeling horribly exposed in the process. All she could see, though, were the dark columns of trees, reaching up into the hazy light that reflected down from their canopies. From this distance the light appeared as solid and impenetrable as a wall. When she pulled back into the protective shadow, spots and streaks danced across her tear-blurred vision and it was some minutes before she could see well enough to continue.

Around her the forest was silent, an unnatural stillness that told her she was now well inside that ‘dead zone' – the only life within any distance of the Eye, and certainly the only thing moving towards that implacable light.

Breathe!
she reminded herself for perhaps the hundredth time.

Sliding carefully through a thicket, several thorny branches scored the exposed flesh of her arms, but Dara barely noticed. Once clear, she dropped to her hands and knees and continued the rest of the way on all fours, sliding carefully from shadow to shadow, not moving ahead until she was certain that the way was clear.

From the clearing, so faint as to be at the very edge of her hearing, an unnatural hum vibrated into the night. Turning her head left and right, Dara tried to pin down its source, but to no avail; it simply resonated from everywhere, like part of the night itself.

She was about to creep forward again, feeling something like a moth, drawn against its will and better judgement into the flames of a cookfire, when something caught her attention and she froze.

Immediately ahead, the trees at the edge of the clearing stood like black bars, holding in the bubble of intense light beyond them. And, between the two nearest trunks a figure appeared, and then another. Both people were silhouetted clearly as they made their casual way along the perimeter of the clearing, their route taking them parallel to the treeline. Neither moved like members of the clan; there was none of the flowing grace she was used to seeing in the movements of Eyna and Jaran, and in all of them who'd grown up hunting in the forest. Instead, these two walked in a kind of awkward, stilted plod, as though encumbered. Neither made any attempt at stealth or concealment and – thank the sky – neither so much as glanced sideways into the forest.

There was something else unusual about them, too, some niggling aspect that placed them outside Dara's sphere of experience and worried at the edge of her mind. It took Dara several seconds to work out what was bothering her and when she did her first response was disbelief. But then she focused her mind, pulled up a little earthwarmth and reached, just gently, pushing herself out towards the two figures as lightly as she could.

And there was nothing there. No spark, no thread of contact with the Earthmother. Nothing.

Whoever or whatever they were, the two people patrolling the clearing perimeter moved through the night like cold holes, empty spaces. There was nothing linking them to the earth, even though they were walking on it just the same as any other person.

Carefully she eased back into herself and crept forward again, trying to keep the two in sight as they continued their slow circumnavigation. This, however, brought her closer to the hard white edge where the light shone directly onto the brown earth without having to penetrate the mesh of branches and trees. Dara slid into the shimmering twilight corona and, as her eyes grew used to the harsh brightness, more and more of the clearing around the Eye became visible.

It was now almost unrecognisable as the place from which she and Jaran had set out two weeks earlier. The Eye still crouched in the centre, its blocky, angular shape instantly familiar and its flat roof still festooned with tech. But to this had been added a bizarre assortment of other equipment: domes, aerials, and strange, shapeless objects of various sizes, many sporting blinking lights and antenna of their own. In the middle, one enormous tower vanished up into the night sky, with flashing red lights blinking in unison along its entire length. Attached to the top of this, well overhead, was the cluster of ten or fifteen white lights which now blanketed the entire area with hard luminosity, so that the four solar lights, which had stood vigil over the clearing for a hundred years or more, were now rendered completely ineffectual.

More strange than all of this, however, were the changes that had been wrought upon the clearing itself. No longer did the Eye crouch alone in the middle; now it was surrounded by a small village of structures unlike anything Dara had ever seen before, even in the ruins of the skycity.

The largest three were identical, and all much bigger than the Eye itself – giant, angular objects made of black metal, which towered over the rest of the clearing. Each was mounted on six stout, round legs that looked to have been extended down out from their undersides, and, from wide hatchways in their sides, heavy ramps extended into the clearing, allowing access to the interior. The ground at the base of these was deeply scored and pitted. Under the bright lights, these giant buildings gleamed hard and featureless, their appearance reminding Dara of the carapaces of the black beetles that often made their way into the caves at night.

Between these behemoths, a dozen smaller structures, obviously temporary, had been erected. For the most part these were domeshaped, with each dome made up of numerous hexagonal panels. Unlike the larger structures, however, with their impenetrable, solid appearance, these seemed to be made of some kind of flexible, semiopaque material, which glowed slightly. Dara could make out odd shapes inside a couple of them – darker blurs suggesting shadows thrown against the outer wall by the objects within. Most of the domes were different sizes, the larger ones roughly the same size as the Eye, and the smaller ones only a couple of times her height. Several were linked by long, flexible tubes of silvery material which, Dara guessed, must have been walkways. Every single structure was also connected to the Eye by thick bundles of heavy cables, most of which had been suspended overhead on telescoping mesh frames, so that the air above the clearing was now a tangle something akin to a spider-web.

Apart from the two figures who'd walked past earlier, there wasn't another soul to be seen. Not a hint of movement and no sound other than that constant, unearthly hum.

‘Shi!' Dara whispered. ‘Xani, what have you done?'

She closed her eyes and probed gently for some earthwarmth, intending to reach again and see if she could penetrate that bright bubble of light, but when she did so all she found was that same cold deadness, underscored now by an electric buzz that set her teeth on edge.

I'll have to get closer,
she thought. Despite being at the very edge of the treeline now, there were still a number of low bushes dotted sporadically along the edge of the clearing.
I'll get myself under one of them, and try again.

Checking that the two patrolling figures weren't nearby, she slid silently out of the cover of the final tree and into the light.

Her skin prickled as she felt the merciless glow wash over her. The nearest bush of any size was three or four metres away and she'd have to crawl completely exposed over open ground in order to reach it. She crushed down the impulse to scurry there as fast as possible.
It's just like hunting,
she reminded herself.
Movement makes you visible.

Slowly, carefully, Dara inched forward, pressing her belly and thighs hard against the bare earth so as to be little more than a groundshadow, her every tiny movement weighed and tested ahead of time, and gradually the straggly patch of scrub that would provide some cover came closer.

She was halfway to it, totally in the open and completely visible to anyone who cared to look in her direction, when her right hand, probing carefully across the ground ahead, broke through an invisible beam of light.

And immediately the world went crazy.

In the middle of the clearing, amidst the confused cluster of buildings and structures, a siren began howling, its cry shattering the stillness. In the forest, more lights, mounted high in the trees and each as bright as the ones over the clearing, burst into life.

Dara's heart leapt and for a moment she lay frozen in complete indecision. On top of the Eye, three glittering, spherical objects rose into the air, hovering in place for several seconds and emitting a loud, low, whirring as they turned in place, orienting themselves.

Then Dara ran.

Leaping to her feet, all pretence at stealth forgotten, she whirled and fled back into the secure embrace of the forest.

Except that the forest was no longer safe. The lights in the trees stripped away every nook and cranny in which she might otherwise have been able to conceal herself, extending the halo of light around the clearing out into a wide belt inside which nothing, and nobody, could possibly hide.

Dara was only vaguely aware of the branches that whipped at her bare calves as she ran, awkwardly weaving between trees and crashing through the underbrush. She needed one arm up to shield her eyes, and already she could sense the onset of real panic tightening her breathing and shortening her stride.

Leaping a fallen tree trunk, she sneaked a quick glance back and was startled, then terrified, to see one of the flying spheres chasing her. It appeared to be about the size of her head, its black shape threading effortlessly through the trees and a single red lamp glowing on its face. Somewhere behind it, back at the clearing, voices were shouting. Human voices. The sound spurred her on. She pumped her legs as hard as she could, ignoring the pressure of her increasingly ragged breathing and jerking sideways erratically between the tree trunks, hoping to throw that
thing
off her trail.

Ahead, perhaps two hundred metres away, she could see the point where the overhead lights ended. The dark curtain of the forest, with its promise of cover and safety, seemed to be coming towards her agonisingly slowly.

She swerved, dodging to avoid a granite boulder, and as she jinked sideways something whizzed past her head, missing her by millimetres and passing her left ear with a high, mosquito-like whine.

‘Shi!' she shouted, dodging back again in the other direction.

The darkness was getting closer, and Dara flung herself towards it with renewed vigour. For a moment she thought she was going to make it, but then her left foot caught an exposed root, or a loose patch of gravel or something, and she was flung forwards, face down, onto the forest floor.

Her breath exploded from her and she rolled several times, until her momentum carried her into a scrubby thicket that tangled in her clothes and hair, and there she lay, gasping desperately as she tried to suck some air back into herself.

Get up!
screamed a voice in her head.
Move!

But she couldn't. Her legs refused to budge and her arms flopped uselessly against the ground. All she could do was roll onto her back, staring up into the painful light and trying to pull just one breath down into her tortured lungs.

It was only several seconds but it felt like an age that she lay there, and then, just as she was beginning to get her wind back, a shadow fell over her and Dara looked up to see the sphere, joined now by another, drifting lazily down towards her. It was made of dark metal and the lights gleamed off it as it came to a halt above her. The loud buzzing subsided to a soft, impersonal hum. Slowly, it revolved a little, slightly left and then slightly right, as though measuring the distance between them.

Then it spoke. Its voice was, like the rest of it, inhuman – a synthetic whirr.

‘Relax,' it said.

There was a puff of air. A sting on her arm.

Then …

… nothing.