High The Vanes (The Change Book 2) (21 page)

It was dark again down here, as the buildings were tall and the road so narrow that little light could reach ground level. We slowed to a crawl, hunting for the door which led onto the passageway. As I approached one that looked possible, a hand reached out and gripped my wrist, pulling me into the doorway. A grotesque face leered up at me, one eye missing, a mouth containing only a few shattered fragments of blackened teeth. Terrified, I tried desperately to prise the gnarled fingers off my wrist. As I did so, the creature’s other hand lunged up inside the skirts of my shift, groping at my legs.

“Eluned,” I screamed, unable to pull away.

In the darkness, she had not been able to see what was happening, except that I had stopped for some reason, but when I screamed she deposited Tacita and stepped towards me. Just as suddenly as it had started, the creature’s grip loosened and it seemed to collapse in a heap at my feet. As I stepped back away from it I could see the knife that Eluned had taken from the previous assailant protruding from the back of its neck, blood running down its limp arm.

Tacita, sat in a heap leaning against a wall where Eluned had left her, turned her head. “A Reject,” she said. “We were always warned to be on the lookout for them, but I never really believed they existed. Until now.”

“What is it?” I said, still panting. The creature appeared to have no gender that was apparent.

“It is said that there are girls who refuse to accept that they are chosen to be childless women. Most who do this simply disappear, but there are stories about one or two who manage to escape. They spend their miserable existence like this, lurking in dark doorways, waiting for some unsuspecting childless to pass by. Their minds are twisted. It’s horrible.”

I stared at the miserable heap of what was once humanity that now lay dead before me. I could still feel the thin, bony fingers scrabbling at my legs, and I shivered. “We must go,” I said. “Can you walk now, Tacita?”

“I think so. Eluned could you help me up, please?”

Eluned lifted her up and we walked on. Before long, Eluned pointed at a doorway and said, “Here, my lady.” She pulled open the door and I stepped into the dark passageway beyond. We groped our way along this, bruising ourselves on the walls, until I felt the other door in front of me. I pushed it open to feel a rush of cool air as I stumbled back on to the river bank.

“Your clothes,” I said to Tacita. “They should still be here. We left them on the other side of the bridge. Come on.”

We scrambled up and over the bridge. As I hoped, Tacita’s Guard uniform still lay in a heap where she had dropped them before dressing in the rags of the drowned childless. Slowly, she dressed herself. Eluned and I sat down, grateful to be able to pause, at least for a while, after the madcap hours we had spent in the caster. My right leg felt sore and when I pulled up my skirts I could see that it was covered in scratches up over the knee from the attack by that revolting creature. They were not deep, but tender to the touch, the skin broken enough to cause bleeding in one or two spots.

Sitting down beside me, now dressed, Tacita looked at my leg. “That Reject was exactly like the stories we were told about them. Their faces are broken because the street boys hate them. They throw things at them, or smash them with a door.”

“Why?” I said. “I thought people who live in the shadows like they do would work together.”

“Rejects are neither one thing or the other. They should be childless but they did not receive the injections that make them that way. Instead they become distorted child-bearers. That one was trying to ...” She broke off.

“I think I know what you mean,” I said, and shivered once again. “They’re not poisonous or anything,” I said, looking at the scratches on my leg, which were reddening.

“Just unclean,” Tacita said. “You must wash.” She looked at me and a wide smile spread across her thin, pale face. “You are very brave, Non.”

“No, I’m not. You can thank Eluned for saving me. There was nothing I could do. The creature was holding my wrist so tight that I could not prise it free. It was terrifying. Thankfully, Eluned still had the knife.” I looked at Eluned, who also smiled.

“I am sorry that I doubted you,” Tacita said. “Back there in the Archivum. I still find it difficult to accept that the Change has lied to us. About you. And your grandfather. He was truly not a terrorist, as they say?”

“No, of course he wasn’t. Because he was born and lived before the Change, he could see what was happening, and what was going to happen. The new way of living that we were told by the Apostles would lead us to a better world was nothing but a sham. Two hundred years on and look at where it has brought us. Brought you, especially.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are a childless, Tacita. Medically altered so that you remain for ever a ten year old girl. Other women have no function other than to bear children. Those who refuse to accept what the Change tells them are classed as ‘Rejects’ or ‘street boys’, who spend their awful lives being pursued by each other until they meet a miserable end. The caster has become a place I do not recognise, with strange glass buildings in the centre and nothing but blank walls elsewhere.”

“You did not see the other side of the caster,” Tacita said.

“What other side?”

“The Leaders, the workers, the childless who are chosen to work in the Aula. These are the happy ones. The Change has been good for them.”

“But we did not see them. According to you they were all in that Palladium place celebrating – if that is what you can call it – some Festa or other. The creatures of the night scuttle about in the dark streets surrounding their glass palaces. Do you think that is right?”

“It is their choice. The Change decides the best future for all citizens. If you accept that – as most people do – then you will have a good life.”

“A good life? Destined to work in a lifeless administrative building, if you’re lucky. Otherwise destined to work as a slave to who knows who. I don’t call that a good life.”

“The child-bearers and the Leaders have a good quality of living.”

“I’m sure they do. Leaders always manage to live better than those they lead. They do nothing to deserve that life because all the work is done for them by you, the childless. The slaves of this world. Tell me, Tacita. If you believe that the world inside these walls is so good, why are you outside them? Here? With us?”

“Something inside me. Something here.” She placed her hand on my heart, then on her own. “It tells me that you believe that there may be a better world. I would like to know why you believe. I need to believe in something. That is all I know.”

I looked at her. Her sad, pale face, the dark eyes sunk above her prominent cheek bones. “I need to believe in something,” I said and repeated it. I looked down at my leg, now covered with red welts. “I need to bathe my leg. That is something I can believe.”

“We need to cross back over the river, my lady,” Eluned said quietly. She had been sitting listening to our conversation without saying a word.

“Yes,” I said. “I wish I had your belief, Eluned. Perhaps one day. Right, we shall cross in the same way that we did before, yes? Evening is fast drawing on. We’ll carry our clothes again.”

The three of us undressed and plunged into the river. It seemed strangely colder than before. And so we left behind Salopian Caster, my first experience of the world of the Change as it had become. In many ways it was as the Professors and Taid had suggested. Only worse.

PART FOUR

Deva Caster

After much heated discussion, the following morning we set off in the direction of Deva Caster. I suppose I was the only one who wanted to go there, because the Archivum screen had said that was where Taid was sent. Tacita argued against it, since it was her home and she was more afraid of being caught there, when she should be still out on Guard duty, than she was of Salopian Caster. Eluned would follow wherever I decided to go. In the end it was sort of one and a half against one, so that was decided.

It took three days and nights until we came in sight of it. It lay on the banks of another broad, fast-flowing river, again completely surrounded by a high wall built of a red-coloured stone. It was much bigger than Salopian Caster and did not appear to have the steep hills of that place. From the hill side on which we sat the evening we arrived, we could make out the two main streets of the city, one of which ran from left to right, the other from our side to the other. There was one building visible outside the walls, on a shelf in a loop of the river. This was another glass structure, but much, much bigger than those in Salopian Caster.

This, Tacita informed us, was the palladium of this caster, called by its citizens ‘The Amphitheatrum’ as it was built in the same way that the Romans had built their places of entertainment.

“Do you mean ‘the old Romans’?” I asked her.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “What do you mean, ‘the old Romans’?”

“They built Uricon,” I said. “And look what happened to that place.”

Tacita shook her head, missing my meaning.

As the evening drew on, lights came on in this huge building, and soon it shone out in the increasing darkness. Oval in shape, there was an empty area in the centre, surrounded by what looked like banks of glass benches which soared up, row upon row.

“It must be Concilium night,” Tacita said, just as a series of lights illuminated a road that ran from a gateway in the caster wall down to the Amphitheatrum. “Look.”

As she spoke the gates opened and a stream of people poured out. The first ones to emerge were all brightly dressed in colourful clothes, presumably the Leaders. They were followed by a group of women, many carrying small babies or children, others who looked pregnant, even from where we sat: the child-bearers. Then came a huge group of men, young and old, all dressed in the same grey one-piece outfit: the workers. These were followed by children that even I recognised as scholars, their faces bright and happy. Last came the childless, the first smaller group of which wore clean white or cream shifts, the rest were dressed in brown, many of their shifts in a serious state of disrepair.

The whole procession took nearly an hour to parade from the caster into the amphitheatrum. Once inside, they were again separated, the Leaders in their brightly coloured costumes clearly visible in a square section of the seating closest to the arena, all others in ranks up to the top where the poor brown-clad childless sat, buffeted by the wind, barely able to see what happened down below.

“Let’s move a little closer,” I said, heading down the hill side.

“What if someone sees us?” Tacita said, hesitating.

“Who? Everyone is inside the building. They are not likely to be looking up here, are they? All they would see is darkness. Come on. I want to see what happens.”

Reluctantly she followed, as Eluned and I moved down until we had a better view of the interior of the amphitheatrum. We found a dry patch of heather and flattened it to sit on. As we did so there was a blast of very loud music from somewhere deep inside. The murmurings of the crowd were at first drowned out but then ceased altogether.

“Is it starting?” I asked Tacita.

“Yes. The Quaestor will speak first.”

“The what?”

“The Quaestor. The Leader of the Leaders. The most important person in the caster. He has direct contact with the Apostles.”

“I see,” I said. Again, something new for me.

Although we were too far away to make him out, a voice began to boom across the arena. It was amplified to all the seats, but we could not distinguish what he was saying. He carried on for some time, a speech that sounded as if he was full of himself, with plenty of pauses that were followed by ripples of applause, and, occasionally, bursts of laughter. Finally, he stopped. Silence fell again.

“What happens now?” I said.

“The parade of those who will receive a Praemium.”

I looked at her, quizzically.

“A reward. I told you of this before. There are those who receive a reward, a Praemium, as we call them, and those who are punished. They receive what is called a Supplicium.”

“A punishment?”

She nodded. By this time the arena had begun to fill with people from the various levels of this society. There were no Leaders. I presumed they either received their rewards somewhere else, or they did not need such a form of encouragement. Soon the arena was filled to capacity. Obviously, this was a society that liked to reward its people. Once they were all there, it was possible to make out the gaps in the seating where they had come from. There were, I noticed sadly, no brown-clothed childless, possibly one or two white-clothed ones; very few child-bearers, though the ones I could make out were all carrying babies; a large group of scholars; but the vast majority wore the grey outfits of the male workers.

Silence fell once they were all in place. Another burst of loud music was followed by a different voice speaking. At this point the people in the arena seemed to start moving, and eventually I could make out that they were passing in front of the Leaders’ area, presumably receiving their Praemium before making their way out and back to their seats. As a result of this, the crowd slowly thinned out. After an absolute age, two white-clothed childless were all that was left, and both swiftly passed the Leaders and left.

Once they had gone the audience began to murmur again, this time louder than before. There was clearly an air of expectancy.

“Now the punishments?” I said to Tacita.

“Yes,” she answered. “I think from the noise they are expecting a Desolatio, or even an execution.”

“An execution?” I lowered my voice. “What? Here in this arena?”

“If there is to be an execution, it will take place in the centre of the arena. Yes.”

She did not appear to be in the least perturbed at this prospect. I remembered what she had said earlier about the anticipation there was when an execution was expected.

I was not keen to see this, but just as I was thinking of turning away, Eluned suddenly stood up.