Gullstruck Island (31 page)

They had agreed to deliver the soap, and clearly they would make good on their promise. Lord Crackgem in his madness would have it so.

‘But how?’ asked Therrot, coughing as the acrid steam stung his throat. ‘How?’

As they were staring aghast across the plain the answer to their question rose up on a crag as suddenly as a geyser, and flailed white arms. A lone figure, wind-blown hair a scribble against the sky, the padding of her false pregnancy slipped over to one hip . . .

‘I don’t believe it!’ A second figure had joined Arilou on the top of the crag, and was waving frantically at Hathin and Therrot. There was no mistaking Tomki’s high-pitched, unguarded tones. ‘Jaze! Come up here and look! It’s them! She’s done it! Arilou’s found them!’

Five minutes later, after a frenzy of impromptu hugs and back-slapping, the reunited Lace were starting to recover their breath. Almost sick with relief, Hathin was pulling the thorns out of Arilou’s clothing and wiping the dust from the corners of her eyes.

As it turned out, both Jaze and Tomki had spent a sleepless night trying to find the rest of the group. Jaze had made it to the edge of the city with Arilou before finding that none of his other allies had kept pace. Tomki had been cornered by the local bounty hunters, who plied him with drinks in thanks for delivering two Lace into their hands.

‘I only found Tomki because he decided to spill candlewax on the toes of the biggest thug of the lot,’ explained Jaze. ‘I just followed the sound of bellowed swearing, and sure enough – there was Tomki.’

‘You know, you really didn’t have to step between us,’ Tomki remarked mildly.

‘Yes, Tomki, I did. Well, at dawn Arilou woke up and started moaning and roaring, so we had to head away from the crowds. We found that if we went one way she quietened, if we didn’t she started shrieking. In the end, we gave up and put our faith in her. We’ve been following her for hours, hoping there was method in her meanderings – even when she started leading us this way, through Crackgem’s playground.’

‘She found me.’ Hathin curled one of Arilou’s long paws into a loose fist and wrapped it in both of hers. ‘I told you she was a Lost . . .’

‘Yes.’ Jaze squatted beside her. ‘Yes, Doctor Hathin, you did.’

Hathin and Therrot in turn recounted their own adventures, and told of the bargain concerning the Superior’s soap.

‘So, do you think the Lady Arilou can lead us safely through this steam-pit?’ finished Therrot.

The Lady Arilou was certainly intent on leading them somewhere. Her face was set towards the mountain, and any attempt to draw her in any other direction for any reason was met with hoarse squawks of frustration. With some qualms Hathin took her hand and let her lead them across the ominous, multicoloured plain. Behind trooped the others with the elephant bird and the barrow, all following Arilou’s path as closely as possible, wincing with each crackle of stones beneath the barrow wheel in case it was the sound of the crust of rock giving way.

On either side of the valley were great splatters of cream and yellow stone that seemed to drip and bubble, as if Crackgem had been poaching vast eggs on the hot rocks but had abandoned them to bleach, harden and stink.

After a while, to the revengers’ relief, the fragile plain gave way to solid-looking ground and they found themselves wrestling the barrow between stone ancestors squinting with moss, their tall hats laden with creepers. These could only be the Ashlands of Crackgem. No wooden spirit houses here – they would have vanished before Crackgem’s White Tides like cobwebs in a strong wind.

The Ashlands proved to be vast, just as the Superior had warned, far bigger than Jealousy itself. It took some time before they found a tiny stone figure set apart from the other ancestral memorials. Little circles were etched into its teeth, so this was evidently the dead Lace bodyguard that the Superior had described.

The revengers unloaded the barrowful of kindling and soap, piled them high on a slab and nursed them into flame. A greasy smoke smelling of mutton sweat charged the air.

Jaze took Therrot aside, and the two held a muted conference. Then they returned to the little Lace burial stone and began to dig. Only when they had unearthed the Lace’s cremation urn did Hathin guess what they were doing.

‘No Lace should be trapped in a pot,’ was all Therrot said, as he scattered the dank ashes to the winds.

Hathin looked across at Arilou’s pale but serene face and felt a swell of pride. Arilou had
found
her. Arilou had led them safely to the Ashlands. Even as she reached for her sister’s hand, however, Arilou lurched to her feet, turned her face back towards the mountain and resumed tottering up the slope.

Hathin was, as usual, a little winded by the impact with Arilou’s will. A sudden collision with a stranger, in a pitch-dark room which had seemed empty.

Tomki turned away from the flame to see Hathin setting off in pursuit of Arilou. ‘Not
again
! Take your eyes off our Lady Lost for a moment and she’s away like a slingshot!’

But Hathin could only think of one place that a young Lost might be heading with such furious determination. The Beacon School. What else was to be found on this desolate and dangerous mountainside? Arilou’s urgency infected Hathin. This landscape
did
mean something to her. Perhaps this adventure really would allow Hathin to glimpse something through a chink in the hard shell of Arilou’s strangeness.

At last, just as the sun was dropping out of sight, Arilou’s chosen path became a recognizable trail, the rain-moistened earth marked here and there by recent-looking footprints. Hathin’s heart rose. Dance’s hopes had been justified after all then – there
were
still people at the Beacon School, people who might help them.

Another zig, a zag, a short boulder scramble . . . and suddenly Hathin could make out the faint amber glow of a fire further down the path. She could hear the trill of a pipe and the rumble of voices. Clay pots flanked the path ahead, each spewing stunted yellow flames and vast flowers of sooty smoke. Above an unruly cairn an enormous deep-blue flag roused itself slightly in the wind, then fell back against its pole with a sullen slap.

Hathin turned in delight to her companions, only to find that Jaze’s smile was thin and joyless.

‘Here.’ Jaze gently took Hathin by the shoulder and drew her to stand beside him. ‘Do you see that? Silhouetted against the moon?’

Obediently Hathin stared out in the direction of his pointing finger, back the way they had come and upwards. Thrown into relief against the moon was a tapering shape too tall and regular to be a tree.

‘The school’s beacon tower,’ said Jaze.

‘But . . . it’s so far away!’

‘Yes,’ Jaze replied under his breath, ‘too far away. Whatever it is we’ve found, I don’t think it’s the school.’

Has it occurred to you that somebody might be a Lost and be an imbecile as well?
Hathin bit her lip hard as she remembered Therrot’s words.

She turned back to Arilou just in time to see her break into a stumbling run down the path. Hathin followed with the others in her wake. On either side of the path, crevices in the rocks seemed to deepen and become doorways. A tiny dog ran out and bit red pieces from the night air with its warning barks. People poured from the rock-mounds. The green of their clothes was dulled in the firelight, but Hathin heard the bubble of their anxious, angry speech, and knew that they were Sours.

Oblivious to the dangerous murmurs all around her, Arilou made straight for a little family group near the village’s central bonfire. There was a father with a worn, surly face, a wife, an adult son and daughter and two younger children.

Arilou made a trilling, happy sound in her throat, and staggered towards them, her face radiant with recognition, her arms stretched forward. Her tottering steps carried her right up to the mother of the mountain family.

An inexpert pat at the woman’s face resounded as the heel of her hand struck the jaw. The woman recoiled from the apparent attack. Arilou crumpled to her knees, took hold of the smallest girl’s arm and tugged her into a clumsy embrace. The mother pounced and snatched the screaming child free, then backed behind her husband, face dark with hostility and fear. The family were now in uproar, and as they raised their voices Hathin knew at last why the Sour language sounded so familiar. She had heard words flow in this liquid way a thousand times – from the lips of Arilou.

As the little family backed away from her, Arilou reached trembling arms towards them and her wail rose into a screech of utter desolation. Hathin watched her, feeling a sadness that seemed to belong to someone older.

You didn’t come to the orchid lakes to find me at all, did you, Arilou? And you weren’t trying to lead us to the Ashlands, or to the Beacon School. No, you were coming here.

The light of the Beacon School drew your mind in, like all the other Lost children, didn’t it? And the teachers tried to teach you and the others to go home and practise using your bodies. But when your mind wandered away from your classes, you didn’t come back to the coast, did you? No, you didn’t go far at all. You found a little village on Crackgem and you watched a family there until it felt like
your
family. That’s why you hardly ever came home to us. That’s why you spoke a language none of us could understand. You were trying to speak
their
language.

You were never an imbecile. You’ve just been busy elsewhere all these years
. . .
with
this
family.

‘But they don’t know you,’ Hathin said aloud. ‘You loved them and they never noticed you – any more than you really noticed me.’

Arilou’s face was a picture of hurt, incomprehension and betrayal, and Hathin could only feel pity for her.

Arilou’s wail and the dogs’ yaps had summoned the rest of the village out of their stone houses and filled the darkness with hostile, uncertain faces. Hathin and the other intruders crouched next to Arilou, sensing that their fate was being discussed all around them.

‘Should we try to talk to them?’ whispered Hathin. ‘I mean, if just
one
of them can speak Nundestruth, maybe we can persuade someone to show us the way to the Beacon School, and then we can leave here . . . before . . .’

‘. . . Before they decide to stone us out of the village,’ finished Therrot under his breath. Tomki’s face brightened immeasurably, but Jaze slowly shook his head.

‘It’s worse than that. Right now I think they’re deciding whether they can
let
us leave. Look around. Look at those pots, the ones with the burning fat in them.’

The pots were made of clay, and as Hathin stared their bumps resolved themselves into blobbed faces . . .

‘Oh no! They haven’t!’

Jaze nodded grimly. ‘Cremation urns. They’re using them as candle-holders.’

‘But then . . .’ Hathin was still struggling with her own horror at the blasphemy, ‘what happened to the ash from the . . . oh.’

Their eyes all strayed unwillingly to the great blue flag as it shrugged apathetically in the breeze.

‘They
can’t
have done!’ gasped Therrot.

Jaze shrugged. ‘I’ve seen green cloths hung at the threshold to ward off demons, and yellow cloths to ward off Lace sorcery – and Ashwalkers say they can make themselves invisible to volcanoes if they dye with the right human ash. So maybe if you wanted to make a
whole village
invisible to the volcano . . .’

‘. . . Then you’d need a really
big
cloth, which probably means . . . an awful lot of ash. In this case, I guess, a lot of Counts of Sun and Dukes of Sedrollo,’ Hathin finished in a small voice.

‘We could pretend we haven’t noticed the flag or the urns,’ whispered Tomki. With difficulty, the Lace contingent tore their eyes from the incriminating evidence. ‘I can try talking to the Sours,’ Tomki continued in a scared, hopeful voice. ‘I can mime.’

‘Arilou might be able to talk to them,’ Hathin said softly.

‘What?’

‘I – I think so, anyway. But . . . But she’s a bit too upset right now.’

‘Then cheer her up quickly!’ hissed Therrot. ‘They’re holding rocks!’

‘Arilou.’ Hathin stroked Arilou’s face to get her attention. Arilou gave a soft, disconsolate squawk.

Tomki was on his feet, both hands raised in a gesture of surrender.

‘Friendly!’ he was exclaiming in Nundestruth. He illustrated this with a smile, but panic stretched it to alarming dimensions. Two small children wailed and ran off to hide behind a vat of indigo dye.

‘Friendly, Arilou . . .’
Come on, Arilou, you spent a little time with us, you checked on your body, you must know a few words of Lace. Please tell me you listened to us sometimes, please tell me we meant
something
to you.
‘Say “friendly” to them.’

An old man squatted beside them and spilled a gargling question. Arilou gaped silently, eyes bulging with effort, then managed a few soft sounds. He looked over his shoulder at his fellows, and shrugged.

Despite herself, Hathin felt a pang.
He asked Arilou a question, and she tried to answer it. And to him that means nothing.

But now Arilou’s mouth had started to soften into a loose pansy-shape. Behind her grey eyes a crystalline dream had softly shattered into fragments.

What was I expecting? She’s never had a conversation in her life. Maybe she’s learned to understand the Sours’ speech, and maybe she’s practised making the same mouth shapes, the same sounds. But words are like toy bricks you learn to pick up and put together over years. Did I think she’d just know how to do it?

Poor Arilou. It never crossed
your
mind that you wouldn’t be able to, did it?

‘There’s something ugly about this whole village,’ muttered Therrot, ‘something dangerous in the mood here.’

‘Of course there is,’ said Hathin sadly. ‘
They’re like us.
They’re so used to protecting themselves and their secret by shutting everybody else out, they can’t see how dangerous it is to be so alone.’