High The Vanes (The Change Book 2) (18 page)

“Won’t the capture of a group of – what would you call them?”

“Who?”

“The men and women who were in the house where we lived. Taid. My grandfather. The professors. They were taken away by the Guards you told us about. What would you call a group of people like that?”

“Renegades. Outlaws. I don’t know. Vagabonds.”

I took a deep breath and looked at Eluned. “Vagabondi,” she murmured. “Surely not.”

“What did she say?” Tacita asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “We heard a word similar to that before. Vagabonds.”

“They are the men, and I suppose the women, who refused to enter the casters after the Change. They will all die eventually. There is nothing to support them in the wilderness.”

“You’d be surprised,” I said. “Well, let’s call them ‘outlaws’. That does not sound quite as bad. As I was saying, wouldn’t the capture of a group of outlaws be big news in the casters?”

“Not really. Happens all the time. These people are always being rounded up. We see them in Deva Caster at least once a month.”

“What do you mean, ‘you see them’?”

“In the square. At the monthly Concilium. You must know about the Concilium.”

The word meant nothing to me. Once again I was astonished at how much had changed in the time I had been out of the Change. “Remind me,” I said.

“At Concilium the Leaders tell us what they have discussed and decided upon. We listen and make choices.” She made it sound deadly dull.

“So what has this to do with outlaws?”

“After we have made our choices, the Leaders present rewards and punishments. Those who have worked well in some way are given rewards. I had one when I finished Schola. So did Charity.” She paused, gazing into the distance. “Those who have committed some offence,” she continued, “are punished.”

“And what offence are outlaws considered to have committed?”

“Refusal to accept the Change. The most serious offence that may be committed.”

“What is the punishment?”

“Sometimes Desolatio. Sometimes death.”

“Death? You mean they are ...”

“Put to death? Yes. For a second refusal to accept. I have only seen that happen once.”

“How? I mean, how are they put to death?”

“Why are you so interested? Electrification is the normal method.”

I shivered at the thought. “Where does this happen?”

“At the Concilium, of course.”

“With everyone from the caster watching?”

“Yes. An electrification is often the highlight of a Concilium. If rumours start that an electrification is going to happen, everyone is very excited. We talked about the one I saw for days before it happened.”

“What about the other punishment you mentioned? Desolatio, was it?”

“Yes. The first time vagabonds are captured they are desolated. Only if they try to escape again are they put to death.”

“And what is ‘Desolatio’?”

“I really don’t understand why you do not know these things, Non. You say that you lived in the Change until you were fourteen. Yet you know nothing of the Concilium. Or of Desolatio. How can this be?”

“Do you know when the Concilium started?” A very odd idea had sprung to my mind.

“In the time of my grand-parents’ grand-parents. I think. Maybe longer. Three generations after the Change.”

“Three generations after the Change? What year are we in?” I asked, as innocently as I could.

“What year? What do you mean? It is 2265, of course.”

“Twenty-
two
sixty-five?” My mouth fell open. I turned to Eluned who had been listening to our conversation. “How can this be?” I said to her.

“I do not understand, my lady. There have been many of these ‘Changes’?”

“No, of course not. The Change is the Change. But as far as I know the Change happened not long before I was born. In Taid’s life-time. He lived before the Change. As did the Professors. You know that.” My heart was racing.

“What are you saying?” Tacita asked. “The Change is ancient. It cannot have happened just before you were born. You are only one year older than I am.”

“Eluned,” I pleaded. “Tell me this is not true. Tell me she is lying. My head is spinning.”

“What you have said is the truth?” Eluned said to Tacita.

“The truth? What do you mean?”

“That the Change is ancient. From your grandfather’s grandfather’s time?”

“Before his time. I told you that the Concilium started in his time. That was three generations after the Change. How can she not know this?”

I sat down heavily on the nearest arch base and buried my head in my hands.

“Surely, this is not possible,” Eluned said, coming to stand next to me.

“What do you mean?” I yelled, tears streaming down my cheeks. “How long have you been alive? Hundreds of years? How is that possible? If you can live for that long, maybe I have lived just as long.”

“I am of the old people, my lady. That is how we live. But you are not.”

“What if I am? What if that is why everyone tells me I am the Expected One. Just as years for you and your people are the same as hundreds of years for my people, what if I have become one of the old people? When I left the Change with Taid time changed for me too? Is that possible?”

“It would explain why you appear to know nothing of life within the Change as it is now, my lady.”

Tacita stood with her hands on her hips, staring at the two of us. “Non,” she said. “You’re beginning to frighten me. What are you saying?”

“Your descriptions of life in the Change, in the casters, mean nothing to me, Tacita. Nothing. You talk of the Concilium, of men put to death. You said this is a ‘work caster’. That means nothing to me. When I left my caster there was no Concilium. A caster was a caster. Taid – my grandfather – was born before the Change. He remembered how things were before. That is how he knew where to take me when we left.”

“But that cannot be.” Tacita sounded exasperated, fearful. “The Change happened over two hundred and forty years ago. How can your grandfather know of life before the Change?”

I lifted my head. Looked at her. Turned to look at Eluned. And promptly burst into tears.

“Soon it will be dark, my lady,” Eluned said. Her voice sounded a little distant.

I opened my eyes. For over half an hour I had sat and wept. My eyes now felt sore. My nose was running. I wiped it with the sleeve of my shift, and looked up. Eluned was lying on the top of the bridge, her head hanging over. I could not see Tacita. I climbed up onto the bridge.

“Where is Tacita?” I said as I crawled alongside Eluned.

She had turned her body so that she was facing the other side. She pointed. Tacita was stood next to the small door, her back to the wall.

“What is she doing?” I gasped.

“Waiting for someone to come out. That is what she said.”

“Why? If they catch her we’re finished.”

“I could not stop her, my lady. You see the ditch? Where we saw the woman go before?”

The ditch at the end of the path that led up to the door was much more visible from this position. “Is it?”

Eluned nodded. “I looked. There are many of the small white bundles. Some have been there a long time. The smell is terrible. With some the wrappings have rotted. They are, as we thought, babies. And some small children.”

‘What has happened to these people?’ I thought. How could this be? And why so many? “Is there anything we can do for them?” I said aloud.

“They are in the hands of the Lady,” Eluned said. “She will protect and guide them now. They are no longer of this world.”

Once again I wished I had a tenth of her faith. Life must be so much easier to bear. “We must find a way inside this terrible place,” I said.

“I believe that is what Tacita is trying to do.”

“You called her ‘Tacita’,” I said.

“Yes, my lady. That is her name.”

“But I have never heard you use it before. You always refer to her as ‘the other one’. What has changed your mind?”

“Something she said while you were mourning.”

“Mourning? What do you mean when I was mourning?”

“You were mourning the loss of your life in this world. I left you to do it because it is necessary before you can rejoice.”

“I don’t understand, Eluned. What are you saying?”

“You must be joyful, my lady. Joyful that you are one of us. One of the old people. It will give you so much more time to complete your task. Your world, this world you see before you, is moving on at a much faster pace than the world you now belong to. You see how things have changed. Changed for the worse. Tacita lives in a world that is much more terrible than the one you left.”

I could not disagree with that. It was going to take me much longer than Eluned seemed to think to adjust to my ‘new’ life. While I had been ‘mourning’ as she put it, the thought had crossed my mind several times that I might have lost Taid for ever. What if he had not become one of ‘the old people’ as I had? Then how long ago was it that he was taken? A few years, as I had thought? Or many, many years as might be the case in Tacita’s world? Perhaps he had died long ago, and no one in the Change now remembered him. Who would remember an ‘outlaw’ from long ago? If they hadn’t put him to death, he might have suffered that other fate – Desolatio. And I had no idea what that meant.

“Look, my lady.” Eluned’s voice broke into my reverie. She was pointing again.

“What is it?” I said, crawling to the edge of the bridge.

“The door is opening.”

As we watched, the door opened, just as before. A thin woman – not the same one we had seen earlier – came through it, carrying one bundle that was bigger than the previous two. It was clear even from where we were that the woman was sobbing. She did not look around but quickly made her way down the path to the ditch. She went to throw the bundle in but hesitated, clutching it back to her chest. As she did so, Tacita hurtled down the slope and pushed her forcefully into the ditch. She screamed briefly as she fell, but then lay silent, still clutching her bundle.

“What has she done?” I whispered. Before Eluned could answer, Tacita jumped into the ditch and was now signalling to us as she stood over the woman’s body.

“We must join her, my lady,” Eluned said, rising to her feet and scrambling down the side of the bridge. I picked myself up and followed her. As we came nearer to the ditch, the smell became overpowering. I held my arm over my face in a futile attempt to stop it. Eluned jumped straight into the ditch alongside Tacita, but I stood on the side. I could not face being in there.

Tacita said something and with one swift movement Eluned lifted the woman’s body and threw it over her shoulder before clambering up out of the ditch. Tacita retrieved the woman’s bundle and climbed up after her. I followed as the two of them ran down to the river bank, through the last arch and out to the other side of the bridge.

When we reached the bank where we had first arrived on this side, Eluned gently lowered the woman’s body to the ground. As she did so, the woman stirred. She was not dead, as I had thought. She opened her eyes and a look of terror passed across them as she saw Eluned kneeling over her. She opened her mouth to scream but seemed to think better of it and clamped it shut again.

Tacita had sat down and was unravelling the cloths around the woman’s bundle. As she did so, the body of a young girl began to appear. Unlike the woman, the child was clearly dead.

Eluned looked across. “Oh, my Lady. ‘She went and sat down opposite her a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot, for she said,
Let me not look on the death of a child’.
This cannot be. This cannot be.”

The woman, hearing these words, sat up and seeing the child, now free of the cloths, put out her hands to Tacita. I took the dead child and gave it to her. She clutched the poor limp body to her.

“Is this her child?” I asked Tacita.

“No. She is a childless. Maybe she has been hiding it. She was probably told to dispose of it when it was born, but she found it was still living.”

“Where would she hide a child? This one must have been at least two years old.”

“I have no idea. To hide a girl-child in a work caster is a serious offence. I am surprised no one discovered her.”

“Perhaps they did,” Eluned said, still kneeling over the woman.

“Yes,” Tacita said. “That would explain why she was taking her to the burial place. If a child is discovered, death must follow. First, the death of the child. Then, the death of the one who has concealed her. This woman is doomed.”

I looked at the woman and her child. Just like Tacita she had the body of a ten year old, covered only from the neck down by a shapeless piece of brown cloth. She was stick-thin and her face was aged, her hands red and raw, her feet the same. The child seemed somehow better fed. I presumed she must have been giving her food to it.

Eluned stood up. “If she must die, then she may be our way into this place,” she said.

With a struggle, Eluned took the child away from the woman. She returned it to Tacita. “Wrap it up and dispose of it,” she said. Then she pulled the woman to her feet. She stood with her head down, her arms wrapped around herself, saying nothing. Eluned stood behind her, pushed her arms down and lifted the flimsy garment she was wearing over her head.

Tacita was just scrambling back down the side of the bridge. “What are you doing?” she said, alarmed.

“Take off your clothes,” Eluned said, holding the woman’s arm.

“What for?”

“You will wear her clothes so that you look like her. You can go to the interior of the caster and no one will notice. These poor creatures are probably invisible in there.”

The woman was now beginning to shiver, violently. It was not particularly cold, although night was falling around us. In the end, Eluned had to release her arm. As soon as she did so, the woman rushed down the slope and threw herself in the river. My first reaction was to run after her, but Eluned stopped me.

“Let her go, my lady. It is probably for the best.”

We watched as the woman waded deeper into the river before simply falling forward. The current took her body and it soon drifted away.