Kitabı oxu: «The Book of Fire series»

Astra inclinant, sed non obligant:

The stars incline us; they do not bind us

Prologue
The hunt for Hominum chimera

A feral Outsider hunting a feral Insider. There was a rhythm to it. Except Hominum chimera was clever, always travelling north of our beat.

We knew from the outset that though there were many ways to track Lake, trapping her would be another matter entirely. Her powerful Nemean lion prints were clear enough; the North Mountain snow made them gleam like ice-dusted runes, while a brave last stand of arid trees, split and broken by her aggressive marking, pointed onwards like wretched ghouls. From time to time, we also came across a scattering of mountain goat tracks, enough to make me wonder whether her volatile chimera nature was morphing again.

But it was always the long black veins of scorching that offered the real evidence. Evidence that, no matter how buried her humanity, Lake still found comfort in being close to Arafel. Close to us.

I couldn’t voice the urgency I felt to find Lake, but August seemed to understand anyway. There was something deep within me, some primeval instinct that needed to face her and acknowledge our bond. That she was the key to finally understanding the Voynich was beyond doubt – she was Cassius’s alpha weapon of mythical proportions, yet Thomas had somehow bound us with an older connection too. Cassius called it an antidote, a complex protein that would provide some level of control over which of her mythical natures dominated, but I had a suspicion it bore another name, that this was the real legacy for which Grandpa had prepared me.

And I cared. More than I could put into words. Ever since Lake had taken a knife to Max’s throat in the tunnels beneath the City of Dust. Back then she looked just another hungry, scraggy child in a dirty headscarf and smoke-grey tunic – no different from the rest of the Prolet children we were trying to rescue. And yet, her veins pumped with a biology more complex than any other creature of Cassius’s bestiary. Which made her nature a complete mystery because Hominum chimera was also an ancient prophecy. Or curse. Depending on which way you looked at it.

The truth was Lake was entirely unique. And even though Cassius didn’t hold the final genetic coding for the hybrid creature, she was clearly a dangerously close match. According to legend, Hominum chimera was the mother of all mythological beasts, the one hybrid creature believed to be stronger, faster and more agile than her only existing counterpart. Nature. But while Aelia had always suspected the Voynich of hiding a last secret, it was only when August journeyed to Europa that we all learned of Lake’s real potential.

‘There’s an ancient myth that Hominum chimera is capable of triggering a sequence of natural disasters, culminating in the eternal fire of damnation.’

August’s words looped in my head. An eternal fire of damnation seemed so easy to dismiss as mythological rhetoric, and yet I knew better now. There was something in Lake’s serpentine eyes that reached back through the dust of years, to a time when myth and reality were separated by only the thinnest of veils.

Legacy or lunacy, Cassius’s ambition had never been clearer. It was all about power to redesign the natural world, and now that he had The Book of Arafel, Thomas’s secret research decoding the Voynich, it was nearly within reach.

Arafel was nearly within reach.

All that remained was the keyword to operate the cipher and, if he was looking to replicate Hominum chimera perfectly, a certain annotated, aged diagram. It was the same fragile page I’d rolled up and inserted into a certain treehouse dart tube for safekeeping, the last present Max made for me. To get it Cassius would have to slit the feral throat around which it was hung.

I lifted my hand to the precious tiny dart tube. Thomas’s clue had been there the whole time, a simple faint abbreviation on the same page as Thomas’s Hominum chimera sketch.

REQ.

It wasn’t until August mentioned its appearance in the tomb frescos beneath the ancient Colosseum that I guessed at its true significance. REQ was an abbreviation for Requiem, or Mass for the Dead, and a warning, through the sands of time, from the original medieval scribe of the Voynich Manuscript.

Five hundred years later and against all the odds, Thomas had worked out it was also the only keyword to operate the Voynich cipher, the same cipher he drew out on the floor of the first treehouse in Arafel. Our treehouse. I thought of my mother’s living area, of the old reed mat that had always covered what we believed to be our ancestor’s first crude map of Arafel. Little had we known we’d been walking over the only existing key to the world’s most dangerous genetic heirloom.

Now it was a knowledge that burned, in the same way my blood burned every time I imagined Lake’s heavy double-lidded eyes peering out of the crevices and caves of the North Mountain landscape we scoured. Ancient, powerful eyes that watched us track and hunt, from the icy dawn until the fireflies danced.

Biding time.

Chapter 1
Arafel

Raven was the first to spot us.

I watched her slight figure straighten in shock, as I fell into a stumbling run towards the afternoon shift working among the corn. Twice my exhausted feet slipped on the mountainous shale, making me skid and graze my blistered skin, but nothing could slow me. We’d been walking for longer than I could remember, and our conversation had long since worn as thin and broken as our soles. But in the past few minutes, Arafel had finally reached through the mountain mist like a ray of dawn after a nightmare, and Raven’s expression was everything I needed to pull me over the last stretch.

She lifted her hand, and a sharp piercing whistle filled the air. It was the village alert, the same one we’d all learned as part of our shift training, more usually associated with flagging wild animals among the crops than alerting the village to intruders. But not today.

A dozen more figures straightened throughout the large cornfield, and I could read their incredulity even at a distance.

‘Mum?’ I tried to force the word out between my blistered lips, but there was no sound but the rustling of the breeze through the corn.

I was spent. My body knew it, I knew it, even the ground beneath my exhausted feet knew it. Just a few more steps. The whisper echoed around my head as the field group convened and stood together to await us. And I understood their hesitation. I knew what a sight we had to present: the disloyal, rebellious girl with two strangers – a gladiator and a Cyclops – for company. But still they waited. And although Mum wasn’t among them, dry sobs reached up my throat, racking my body with convulsive pain as I opened the field gate and stumbled in among Arafel’s irrigated crops.

‘Talia?’

Raven’s voice was as sweet as the first rain, and as I barrelled into her open arms I was overcome by her homely scent of apples and cinnamon, warming me a thousand times faster than any knitted blanket.

‘Hush, Talia, you’re in Arafel now … you’re home,’ she soothed, her voice distant and strained as my knees buckled.

My vision shrank, but I was just conscious of Bereg’s thunderous face as he strode past to confront August and Unus, flanked by three machete-wielding hunters.

I wanted to protest, but there was nothing left – just a few hoarse words that spilled over my cracked lips as the fields receded in a blur.

‘Don’t hurt them … they’re friends.’

***

The days that followed were a haze of delirium. I was racked with pain one moment and incoherent with fever the next, but as the world slowly returned, I became aware of two stone-cold facts:

I’d made it home; Max and Eli hadn’t.

And each time I remembered, it was as though I was teetering at the edge of a North Mountain abyss all over again.

August and Unus made swifter progress and became frequent visitors. And if the villagers were wary of my new Insider companions, they guessed my survival was at least due to them in part, and afforded them a cautious respect.

‘They want to know if you’re feeling well enough for the Ring meeting?’ August murmured a few mornings after our return. ‘I could handle it myself but your leader, Art, he’s quite insistent you’re there … needs to hear it from you … it’s understandable.’

He was trying to act normal, to be his old confident self but his iris-blues betrayed him in a way they never had before. His pain was visible. There were glimpses that spoke louder than the iron will forcing his Roman lips upwards, or his tone to be even. It was a vulnerability no amount of Pantheonite training or armour could hide, and then there was our own stalemate, frozen in place by the icy North Mountain winds.

I turned to gaze out of the window. It was the end of winter, so the rains were still heavy and frequent, but there was a hint of the new honeysuckle that grew all around the old wooden frame in spring. A ghost of its scent.

‘Tal?’ August laid his hand gently over mine.

I drew my hand away distractedly, focusing on the forest, willing spring to come and chase away the winter that had settled in my bones.

Because I couldn’t pretend. Not to August.

And the furrow between his eyes told me he knew. He could sense I was watching the world as though I’d never really emerged from the glass river at all. I could see and hear it all in sonorous detail, I just couldn’t touch it. I was isolated – from everyone. And while he did his best to deflect the darting glances and barely contained curiosity, I knew he felt it too. Every second of every day, we were slipping a little further away from each other, and we were both utterly powerless to stop it.

Again and again my dreams took me back to the North Mountains, to the unique magic we’d created in a remote cave, and to what almost happened there. The edges of my thoughts darkened with guilt, the same guilt that forced me into consciousness each time. Because of my best friend Max, because of my twin Eli, because of August’s sister Aelia, and because of Lake and her guardian, Pan. And finally because the spell binding us in the harsh solitude of the North Mountains had been broken. We could no longer pretend we were at the end of the world, that no one else existed, or that we were the only ones hurt by Isca Pantheon. And while our connection had saved us while we were isolated, it did nothing but scorch in Arafel, where ghosts darkened every corner.

‘I’ll tell him you need more time,’ he breathed.

I stared out at the white oak branches shadowing my window, willing the impossible every time it rustled.

‘No.’

I turned back to face him. My head was still hazy with weakness and denial, but in the last few hours one thought had materialized clearly: so long as Max was missing, there was a chance. And while there was a chance, I was wasting time. There was little doubt Cassius was already devising his revenge. After all, we’d escaped Ludi Pantheonares, and set his prized mythological weapon free.

And I’d made too many mistakes to expect any reprieve, but Max deserved so much more. Art needed to know what danger I’d carried through Arafel’s door. And Taskforce, special delegation, army … whatever he decided, I was going to be right at the front. Come what may.

‘I’m ready.’

And somewhere deep in the jungle a lone oropendola bird hissed, stilling the forest briefly.

Chapter 2

‘Friends, we gather here today for two important reasons.’ Art’s grave voice echoed through the Ring’s flickering torchlight.

‘Firstly, to give thanks that the stars and earth have conspired between them, to bring home a much-loved daughter of Arafel. On behalf of everyone gathered here, I would like to offer our sincerest gratitude to Talia’s companions who, we can all be assured, have played a critical role in her return.

‘Commander General Augustus Aquila and Unus of Isca Prolet, you are most welcome.’

I watched as August and Unus, seated to the right of the Ring platform, nodded in acknowledgement. August’s inclination was brief and tight; while Unus’s great pudgy head fell forward in confused embarrassment, his one misted eye focused on the rock floor.

My nerves settled briefly. I owed Unus so much. From the moment we met in the strix-ridden passages beneath Pantheon, he’d proven himself a loyal and true friend. He’d saved my life countless times, but more than that, he’d proven real friendship could come from the unlikeliest of places. In truth, Unus gave me hope. He’d also eased into village life easily, proving invaluable in treehouse construction work. And despite a mistrustful start, fuelled by generations of fireside tales, villagers were now starting to treat him with real respect and kindness.

Much more so than Commander General August Aquila, who remained aloof and harder to know. I dragged my gaze back to his proud Roman face, still over-bright from the raw biting wind of the North Mountains, and so at odds here among my people. He’d insisted on sleeping on a mattress outside my bedroom door for the past week, and barely left my bedside during the long silent days. Yet conversation between us had long since guttered and died, overladen with shadows neither of us could ignore. We were lost. Not only because his presence forced me to face the absences, but also because it meant accepting who we’d become, that the constellation that had aligned over our snowstorm cave had faded.

Our snowstorm cave.

I couldn’t think about what we’d done, of how we’d nearly given in, despite everything. Despite everyone. Every time I closed my eyes I was haunted by a memory of us lying together, the flickering flames shadowing our skin as if inking our shame there. How could we have forgotten the others, even for a moment?

August’s eyes narrowed, reading me, as I dropped my eyes to my feet. The memories were corrosive. He could feel it too – I could tell whenever we made the mistake of catching each other’s gaze.

And the irony nearly consumed me – I’d spent a year feeling like a ghost girl with Max, and now I’d give anything to go back there. Not because I was happier, but because those feelings were so much easier than this caustic pit of guilt. The knowledge that Max, Eli and Aelia were lying pale and lifeless within the glassy Dead City river. Because of me. While I was still here, beside two Insiders instead of my childhood companions, and expected to explain their absence in a way that made it bearable. What could be more impossible than that?

‘Secondly, in accordance with Arafel tradition, when one of our community has been reported missing or compromised, we gather to hear the facts and decide on our collective response.

‘Action or inaction, Thomas’s principles stand as firmly today as they did two hundred years ago. An Arafel hunter believes in natural order, respect for his place in the forest, and taking only what he needs to survive. But if the circle is broken, particularly by forces outside of these four walls, it is up to the rest of us to decide whether to meet that betrayal with earth – or fire.’

I looked up at Art, Thomas’s wisdom echoing around the rock walls. He looked older and more wizened than ever before, and though our return had been celebrated with a whole roasted lamb and two kegs of elderberry wine, I could also see how it changed everything. I’d changed everything.

Cassius had broken the circle, but I had too. I’d brought Insiders here, to our most precious secret valley home. I’d violated the most sacred of rules, and I didn’t need to look around the room. I already knew fear and suspicion would be etched into every single face, all at my hand. I wished Mum was beside me, that I could bury my face in her familiar scent and comfort. But she was seated at the back, shelling peas as though it were just an ordinary harvest meeting, safe inside her own quiet oblivion.

So I locked my agitation inside my knotted fingers, because there was still Max, and that meant there was nothing I could do except tell them the stone-cold facts, and hope the people I’d always called my family didn’t end up hating me.

‘Talia … Commander General Augustus Aquila … Unus of Isca Prolet, I ask you to relate your journey and experiences with us now, omitting no … difficult details, so that we might arrive at the best course of action for Arafel.

‘The Ring platform is yours.’

My chest tightened, and I climbed the wide stone steps, feeling as though my legs had grown as dense and heavy as the rock surrounding us. I’d never felt more alone in the world, and yet there was nowhere to hide either. I’d been dreading this moment, finally facing Art, Max’s family … and Mum. Although she’d stopped asking after Eli, I was all too aware that didn’t mean the truth had reached through the mist separating her from the rest of Arafel. If anything, I was probably about to push her further away.

I turned slowly and surveyed the waiting crowd, recalling the last time I’d stood here – appealing for help to rescue the Prolet insurgents. I’d chosen my own path anyway, and could already see the doubt in their eyes.

Why were they even listening to me? I’d acted rashly, spent innocent lives, and exposed Arafel to danger.

The air was sombre and suspicious, I closed my eyes and Pan’s pale face loomed out of nowhere. It was the moment before he stepped into the writhing mass of basilisk, a moment filled with both fear and courage. Human attributes blazing in a creature of Pantheon.

He’d sacrificed his life so Max and I stood a chance of finding and protecting Lake. From Cassius, from the world and from herself. And now Max was gone, which meant the responsibility was mine alone.

It was time.

It was nearly an hour later when we finally finished relating our story. Mum had shelled peas consistently throughout, and the cavern was eerily quiet.

‘We tried everything.’ My voice sounded brittle in the echoing space. ‘We took them to the Oceanids, hoping they would do what they did for myself and the Commander General … hoping they would bring them back … somehow?’

My voice was growing thinner, an invisible fist closing around my throat.

Could they tell I was just about the worst human being alive? That I was the type of girl likely to give in to her darkest desire, even when her best friend was missing and her brother not quite cold in his watery grave?

‘They didn’t,’ August finished for me, ‘or more likely, they couldn’t – not in the time we needed them to.’

His words met with ominous silence, before the uproar began. I was conscious of time slowing, of the mood turning as faces I loved twisted beyond recognition. Until now there had been whispers and conjecture, still laced with hope, but now their worst suspicions had been confirmed there was only pain. And honest-to-God fury.

‘These … Oceanids of which you speak … dare we hope they may yet return Eli and Aelia?’ Art’s face was grave, his eyes straining with grief.

A poignant silence hung on the air before August shook his head. ‘From experience, and what I understand of how the Oceanids work – their therapies either work swiftly, or not at all. So … tempting though the thought is, it is better not to nurse unrealistic hope.’

‘Then I think we have our answer!’ Bereg roared from the back of the crowd, his affable face over-red and raw.

Loud voices bayed their support, their faces leering as unbridled fury pierced my skin like barbs. And for a fleeting moment, I could almost believe I was back beneath the flashing screens and bloodthirsty crowds of Ludi. But how could I blame them? I’d breached village protocol by taking off with Eli and Max in the first place, and I’d breached it again by bringing back two Insiders, instead of two much-loved sons. And August’s defection and Unus’s efficiency with whatever he turned his hand to were no recompense for the biggest danger I’d carried right into the heart of our home. I was a Trojan horse of the worst kind.

‘There are others!’ August’s authoritative tone rose above the din, quieting it momentarily.

‘There are other Outsiders – communities like you – in isolated locations across Europa. The fate that befell Eli, Max and my own beloved blood sister, Aelia, was beyond our control. You must believe what Talia is saying – we did everything we could to save them.’

I stared at the floor, acutely aware he was still doing it. Protecting me by trying to turn the tide, saving me when I least deserved saving. Didn’t he get it yet? There was no reprieve from this. I deserved it all. How could there be any light when the blood flowing through my veins was dark, like Cassius’s?

Black to black, dust to dust.

‘Believe me, I understand …’ his voice faltered momentarily ‘… how you are feeling right now. But there is a darker day than this yet to come.

‘Max, Eli, Aelia … they are just the beginning. Cassius is coming for Arafel; he is coming for each and every one of you. And the reason I know this is because I was a Commander General of Isca Pantheon’s Equite forces, and a senior member of the scientific team for too long. Cassius will not rest until every last Outsider has been eliminated.’

A muted gasp swept across the belligerent crowd.

‘You want revenge on your sons’ deaths, but you would do better to save your energy for those who are still alive. If you march on Pantheon as you are, you will join Max and Eli before the sun goes down. To stand even the remotest chance of bringing Cassius’s Civitas down once and for all, you need strength, speed and numbers. In truth, you need every last Outsider on this earth standing beside you.

‘And I know where they are.’

For a second it was quiet enough to hear the faint call of a lemur outside. And then fresh pandemonium broke.

‘He must be lying … It can’t be true! Where are these other Outsiders? We would know of them. Do they look like him? It’s obviously a lie! How could an Insider know this? We would have known before now!’

‘Silence!’ This time it was Art’s command filling the space, and every pair of eyes levelled with the elderly man charged with making sense of it all.

‘If all of this is indeed true …’ he exhaled raggedly ‘… it is both a dark and wondrous day. We have lived with dreams of finding other communities like our own, but … how do we know they will be friendly or even receptive to helping Arafel?’

‘You don’t,’ August returned baldly. ‘We don’t … at least not yet. But I can tell you they are more like this community than they are different.’

His tone grew gentler as the Ring hushed with new respect. ‘I’ve no idea how many individual communities there may be scattered across Europa. But my own Pantheon mission encountered one that had adapted to a similar climate, and where there is one there must be others. It’s vital to remember that while their Outsider DNA may be as original as any of yours, their culture will likely be very different … We would all need to tread cautiously.

‘Any community that stands beside Arafel will be unpredictable and a risk, until we know otherwise.’

I scanned the faces in the crowd, which had morphed from hostility into something quieter, a grim unified determination. It was a real turnaround, and I knew if it wasn’t for his intervention we would be facing a very different scene now.

My eyes flickered back to meet his. The lanterns were casting shadows across his tapered cheekbones, his dark eyes were hollowed, and the tiny muscle beside his mouth was twitching as though he wanted to say so much more. And yet, even though he’d saved me from clear ostracization, and provided my people with the most fragile of new hopes, I still couldn’t feel anything.

I swallowed, trying to recall my father’s face. I could just see a hint of his smile, and his hunched back as he pored over the old-world maps in his treehouse study, ringing all the valleys in dark red. He would have been euphoric to know his belief and years of work weren’t in vain.

August pulled his gaze away abruptly.

‘You need to gather a legatio, a deposition to locate new communities quickly and appeal for their help. There is no time to waste. I am willing and able to lead this legatio – in Arafel’s name.’

There was a murmur across the crowd as Art nodded, visibly relieved. August already knew where to locate at least one other community, and that whoever travelled as embassy had the huge challenge of rallying them to our cause. He had a natural authority and had just demonstrated his powers of persuasion. There was no doubt he made the perfect choice.

An Insider rallying feral communities to an Outsider army.

It was a bittersweet outcome, and though it was clearly fraught with danger, there was no way back. I’d hurt them all, my own family included, and while August had provided some hope, it was merely a glimmer of light amid the gathering storm clouds.

A war was coming, and my peace-loving people had eyes the colour of revenge.

What, in the name of Arafel, had I started?