The City (7 page)

Elija and Amita looked at one another, wondering about the fate of the other children. ‘Where do we go now?’ Elija asked.

‘That way,’ Amita said with certainty, pointing to their right. ‘The river flows that way and if we follow it we will eventually come outside.’

Elija quailed at the prospect. ‘I don’t want to go outside,’ he told her. ‘I want to go that way.’ He pointed upriver.

‘We’d just be going backwards, back into the sewers.’ She sounded tired and out of patience.

‘We’d be going home!’

She flared at him. ‘
Your
home is in a sewer! Mine isn’t!’

‘I want to find my sister,’ he wailed, suddenly squatting down and hugging his knees.

‘Your sister was swept away in the storm. She’s probably dead,’ Amita told him brutally. Then she sighed and knelt beside him and put her warm arm round his shoulders. ‘I’m just trying to get us to safety.’

‘I want to go home,’ he cried.

‘It’s not your home,’ she repeated. ‘A sewer isn’t home. Home is a place with warm beds and food in the kitchen, and there’s daylight. And people to care for you. We must find our way back to the light. We can’t stay in the dark.’

‘It’s not dark here,’ Elija argued, hugging himself tighter. Hideous memories prowled the recesses of his mind. Daylight meant pain and despair and humiliation. For Elija and Em there was shelter in dark corners, in cellars and cupboards. Night was a time of safety.

Amita blew out her breath and stood up. She looked to the right, then set off in that direction without looking back. Elija hesitated for a few moments then jumped up and hurried after her.

That night they slept curled together in the lee of a stone pillar sunk deep into the shores. They were asleep long before day’s end, and they were unseeing when from the west a red light slowly emerged from the gloom. As the world turned its fingers flickered towards them, then found them, and for a while until it faded they lay in a pool of light the colour of blood.

THE CITY HAD
once been holy.

Long ago, when suns spun and worlds turned in a different place, a band of seafarers arrived on a sandy beach on the westernmost coast of a new land. According to the demands of their gods, on a hilltop they founded a settlement, which became a trading port and then, in the course of a millennium, a city. When the City fell to the cruel swords of invaders it was built again, new buildings and roads covering the blood-soaked earth of the old.

In the new city the roads were crafted from white stone, the high towers enrobed with gold, and the temples decorated with carvings of heroes, gods and animals. Men and women walked the streets in rich clothes encrusted with gold and silver and pearl. They wore feathers and beads in their hair and, in time, they painted their faces to look like their gods. The gods saw their arrogance and laughed, and the City was destroyed in a heartbeat. An earthquake brought down the towers and high palaces, and the people all died and their blood soaked into the land. Only one survived: a child, of course, an innocent girl.

The City lay abandoned for a thousand years …

Elija interrupted Rubin’s story. ‘What happened to the child?’ he asked.

Rubin thought for a moment. ‘She wandered through the land for a long time. She was barefoot, and her only friends were the birds
and the animals. She slept with her head resting on the warm fur of a fox, and sparrows covered her with their feathers. At last she travelled to a high mountain range. Friendly eagles flew down and plucked her up and she was carried off over the mountains and never seen again.’

Elija screwed up his face in disappointment and Rubin laughed. ‘Now, back to my tale.’

‘The City lay abandoned for a thousand years and grass grew over the mounds of the dead, and rats ran in the corridors. Then new invaders came marching in with shiny swords and shields. They revered the songs of the heroes of the past and they started building again. They built temples to their own gods. They even built temples to the old gods of the City. They were a reverent people, and in their day the City saw peace for the longest time in its history. Libraries were built, and theatres, and hospitals and schools. There were green parks in the City’s heart, with fountains and lawns. Then news of distant wars reached the City and the people started to leave. First its soldiers marched away, with their camp followers, then their families. The news from afar became very grave and the politicians and administrators were the next to go, quickly followed by the traders and merchants. Only the poor people and the elderly were left. They stayed on; they had no choice. They lost all contact with the rest of their world and, without trade, they had barely enough to survive on. For many generations their lives were wretched. The parks and meadows ran to wilderness. The stone buildings fell to ruin, and the people lived on the rats with which they shared their meagre homes. But the human heart is strong and the population grew, and slowly the City came alive again. Men took up tools and started scratching in the wilderness, sowing the thin soil with seed and praying for rain. Small herds of sheep and goats and pigs flourished on the green grass at the edge of the City, and a primitive trading community was reborn.

‘And at last these people too started to build. And on the ancient layers of buildings, flattened by earthquake, toppled by invaders, crumbled by time and neglect, soaked in the blood of millennia, the present City slowly began to rise.

‘It spread as never before, devouring the shabby settlements on its borders, eating up the rivers and hills and layering them first in timber, then in stone. There were no towers of gold, no carvings of rich woods, just stone upon stone and an implacable march to
north, south and east. Factories and forges spat smoke into the air, and all the birds and animals fled. Except of course for the rats. Great walls were built around the City. Then, barely as the labourers were finished and the shiny bronze gates were closed, new, higher walls were erected further out. The circles of gates would open from time to time to let out armies of soldiers, sent to pacify and pillage outlying lands.

‘Seven great Families arose to rule the City, seven houses named Guillaume and Gaeta, Sarkoy …

‘I know this story!’ Elija interrupted Rubin again. ‘It’s the tale of the Immortal and his brothers.’

‘Then,’ Rubin replied, folding his arms and sitting back, ‘I can tell you no more. You know everything I can tell you about the history of the City.’

There was silence for a moment, and Emly nudged Elija in the ribs, then her brother said sheepishly, ‘Tell me anyway. It might be a different story.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Please.’

‘Their names were Guillaume and Gaeta, Sarkoy, Vincerus …’

‘Broglanh, Khan and Kerr,’ Elija finished triumphantly.

‘And,’ said Rubin, drawing breath, ‘they came to the City thousands of years ago. No one knows where they came from …’

‘But they are very important.’

‘They
were
very important, Elija, yet some of the Families dwindled or died out, or perhaps they hid themselves away from their more powerful brothers.’

‘
Were
they brothers?’

‘Perhaps. But they lived a very long time and had many offspring and it’s said that even the gods can’t remember if they were once brothers or not.’

‘
Are
they gods, Rubin?’

Rubin shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I was told this by my father, who knew them all. And I asked him the same thing. So he asked me what I thought a god was. I said a god was a being apart, one unlimited by the laws of nature. He said in that case, yes, they were gods. And together they were called the Serafim.’

Elija stared at his friend. His words were incomprehensible, but he nodded.

‘My father said they came to the City to bring peace and justice and knowledge. And in the end they gave us none of those things. They became steeped in greed and vice; they sucked in wealth and breathed out only corruption. And the emperor, whom we call the Immortal but whose real name is Araeon, is the worst of them all.’

Elija put his hands to his ears, frightened at these perilous words.

Rubin patted him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Elija. We are safe here in the Halls. We could die any day, drowned by a flash flood or killed and eaten by reivers, lost in the Whithergo, executed by patrols. But at least the emperor can’t hear our words. We are safe from him down here.’

‘
We’re lost!
’

Elija’s comfortable reverie about his days with Rubin had given way to present-day reality. ‘We’re lost,’ he repeated to Amita.

They had been trudging for ever. But the river meandered in great loops and they were making slow progress. They could not stick to the main path, along the river bank, for it was too steep and slippery, but struck out towards an outcrop of white rock they could see in the distance. Once there, Amita said, they could use the rock as a reference point, heading towards the source of daylight. But the light was fading and Elija could barely see Amita’s shape ahead of him. Within moments it would be pitch dark again and they would be lost.

‘We should have gone back to the tunnels,’ he complained, not for the first time. He was on the verge of tears.

Amita came to a halt, knee-deep in sticky mud.

‘We’re not lost,’ she told him with her usual confidence, ‘but I think we’re going the wrong way.’

‘I can see the rock right there,’ Elija replied, pointing to its gleam to their left.

The girl shook her head. ‘I mean, by the time we get there we won’t be able to see.’

‘And we have no food or water.’

So they sat there, defeated and out of choices, until the mysterious rosy light that had found them before appeared far to their right.

‘That’s where we should go,’ Amita told Elija, pointing.

Elija looked at it and felt only fear. He shook his head.

‘It’s a fire,’ he said. ‘It must mean danger.’

‘If it’s a fire then there will be food,’ Amita told him persuasively.

Reminded of food, Elija felt his stomach cramp painfully. They had found water the previous day, running in a torrent from high above them. It tasted earthy, but they had kept it down and it had given them energy for a while. But it was two days or more since they’d eaten. He shook his head again. ‘I’m frightened.’

‘The river goes that way, I’m sure. We just have to cut across there.’ She pointed straight across the mudbanks.

Elija had walked shores like these many times before and he could tell by the sheen on the mud that it was perilous. ‘It’s too dangerous,’ he told her. ‘There might be shallow vaults. We could fall in and die.’

‘I don’t know what shallow vaults are. It will be hard going. But there might be paths.’

But there were no paths. The two children found themselves struggling through mud again, and after a while their legs ached and their chests hurt. There was a new enemy too: swarms of flying insects which buzzed around them, biting their skin and getting into their eyes and mouths. Neither of them had suffered these in the tunnels, and the constant persecution was almost more than they could bear.

The red light had vanished again when Elija realized he could no longer see the girl ahead of him.

‘Amita!’ he cried in panic. ‘Where are you?’

‘Here!’ He felt her hand grab his arm and she pulled him towards her. ‘Here. Hold on to this.’ He felt a wooden post sunk deep into the mud, and clung to it. ‘It’s a piece of fence,’ the girl said in his ear.

As the last light dwindled and died all he could hear was a distant squealing, like the sounds of a hundred crying babies, and his heart froze with fear.

Elija felt strangely comfortable when he awoke. He was knee-deep in mud, but it was solid enough to support his thighs and back, and he felt almost rested. He could hear the mewing sound again, but louder. He opened his eyes and was surprised to see daylight. It was a thick, soupy sort of daylight, but he could see better than he had in a long time. For all his fears, it was good to see again, and his spirits lifted a little. He raised his head. Amita was beside him, fast asleep. She had tied herself to the wooden post so she would not slip into the river in the night. Elija could see now that she was fair, and her thick blonde
lashes rested on her cheek as she slept. He relaxed back against the mudbank, wondering how to extricate his legs from the sludge.

Then he heard muffled voices. He tensed and, raising his head, he looked about him, alarmed. At first he could see nothing but mudbanks rolling back in the half-light. Then the twin sparks of two torches, coming towards him down the river. Stretching over he shoved Amita sharply, then put his mouth to her ear. ‘Stay still. There’s someone coming.’

He felt her start awake, then her head lifted and she looked at him, eyes wide. He nodded his head upriver and she looked past him.

‘A boat,’ she said. ‘Be quiet. They won’t see us.’

Elija had never seen a boat. There were no boats on the rivers of sewage in the Halls. He laid his head back down as Amita scooped mud over him, and over herself. They were filthy enough already and Elija had no fear they would be noticed, two muddy lumps in a sea of mud.

He heard a gentle lapping, and the creak of leather, getting louder.

‘We’re wasting our time,’ complained a rough voice, echoing weirdly in the great open space.

Another croaked, ‘Your time so valuable, Leel? What’ll you do else this fine morning? Join the emperor in his palace for breakfast?’

A woman cackled and Leel, whining, replied, ‘I’m just saying. Every morning we come this way, rowing all morning, just to see the same sight. Blockade’s been there a year or more. I’m just saying.’

‘And
I’m
saying,’ the other man told him, ‘you do what I tell you, boy, and one day you’ll be thanking me. There’ll be pickings aplenty when our boys take them on. Dead sailors are easy pickings. Live ones too. Gold rings aplenty when we slice their ears off. Wouldn’t want to miss it, would you?’

Elija lifted his head slowly and saw a wide flat shape floating on the river. So
that
was a boat. Paddles on either side moved gently up and down. The boat was getting smaller as it headed towards the light. The light was so bright now it hurt Elija’s eyes. A new ripple of fear coursed through him.