35
One of the more intriguing footnotes I’ve come across in my research concerns that of the Golden Fox exodus. When the crimson flux truly took hold in Ebora, there were a group of people there who believed that perhaps they could outrun it. Led by an artist known as Micanal and his twin sister, Arnia, around fifty Eborans left their dying lands and travelled north to the Barren Sea, apparently sailing from there to – no one knows where.
The truth is, I suspect, more complicated. Little known to the world outside Ebora, there were two schools of thought regarding the origins of Ygseril. Many Eborans believed that the land in which the tree-god spread his roots was sacred, a place preordained to be the mighty Ebora. Others believed that a great seed was blown down from the north, brought to the central continent of Sarn by a lucky wind. Somewhere across the Barren Sea, they claimed, was a holy island, sacred to Ygseril and his war-beast children. No one has ever been able to say exactly where it is, however – as far as we know, there is nothing worth speaking of in the Barren Sea; hence its name.
There are so many juicy elements to this. First, Micanal himself was a very interesting figure. He was known to be exceptionally beautiful even for an Eboran, a man with unheard of grace. There were multiple offers of marriage for him, but he turned them all down to concentrate on his own work. His paintings and sculptures still exist, most of them held in private collections, and I have had the privilege of viewing at least three pieces. They are exquisite, and all signed with his personal sigil, the golden fox.
He and his sister had a ship made on the Barren Coast, and sailed with a group of followers and believers, fans and lovers, hoping perhaps to rebuild Ebora far from the troubling corpse of Ygseril. They believed that the holy island existed somewhere to the north – although it should be noted that even war-beasts flying over the area have never found it – and perhaps they thought that the salvation of Ebora could be found there; perhaps they hoped to find a new seed, and birth a new tree-god on that distant coast. What became of them, we do not know. There is a notorious stretch of water known as the Assassin’s Heart, twisting its way across the Barren Sea, and weather systems there do not usually let ships pass unscathed. So where did they go? Did they all die on the treacherous seas, or did they reach their mysterious destination? Did Micanal know something that we now do not? Everything I have read about him suggests a wise, careful man who did not make snap decisions. Why would he wilfully lead a group of his people to their doom? I don’t believe he did, or at least, that he meant to. Clearly, he had other plans.
Personally, I believe the mystery of the golden fox exodus still has a few surprises waiting for us.
Extract from the journals of Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon
Noon lay on her back looking up at a perfect blue sky. Indigo grass rose all around her, shifting and whispering in a mild breeze.
‘This grass,’ said Tor, who was lying next to her, ‘is the same colour as the eastern sea. Was it truly this colour?’
‘It was,’ said Noon. ‘There is an entire valley of it. Mother Fast called it “the god’s eye”. We never stayed here for long, though. Some people have a strange reaction to the grass. It makes them sleepy. Confused.’
Tor grunted. ‘The plains, it seems, are much more interesting than I gave them credit for.’
‘There are lots of strange places like this,’ she said, remembering. ‘Quiet, lonely places where people didn’t go, and if they went, they didn’t stay. All those memories I have, I can bring them back here, can’t I?’
‘I suppose you can.’ Tor didn’t sound particularly interested. He was brushing his fingertips across the blades of grass.
‘I don’t think you know what that means,’ said Noon. She thought of her endless nightmare, the one that skirted around the hole in her memory, and then pushed it away. ‘How dangerous that could be. To relive anything from your past.’ She turned her head to look at him. ‘You’re too used to being able to do this. Do all Eborans dream-walk?’
Tor picked a blade of grass, twining the slim shaft around his fingers. ‘We were all capable of it, to greater and lesser degrees, but not everyone was interested. My sister was the finest dream-walker Ebora ever had, I think.’
‘And now I can do it too.’
‘Well, no, actually. All you are doing is shaping your own dream. You have mastered dream awareness. All you can do is summon memories to experience. You can’t, for example, enter my dreaming mind. You can’t enter it, and you can’t change things there. Whereas I . . .’
He gestured lazily and the blue grass turned a lurid shade of pink. Noon elbowed him, and he laughed, turning to face her. Meeting her eyes, he seemed to grow suddenly serious.
‘You are so clear to me,’ he said. ‘So close. In dreams, often other people, even the dreamer themselves, are mutable and shifting. But you are you. I can never not see exactly who you are. Why is that?’
Noon sat up, pulling away from the unsettling look in his eyes. Summoning the correct memories, she reached into the dense pink grass and pulled forth a shining greenish-golden vessel. It sloshed in her hands.
‘What is that?’ asked Tor, sitting up next to her. ‘Is that . . .?’
Ignoring him, Noon peeled back the top from the throat of the vessel – part of her questioned how she knew how to do this – and tipped it towards the roots of the grass in front of her feet. The slow-moving golden liquid that trickled onto the ground smelled strange and alien; like the mineral silt of a river, and a sharper scent underneath that. There were a few moments of stillness, and then the ground erupted; shoots of blue and pink grass shot up from the dirt, while the grass already grown stretched towards the sky with an odd, whistling whoosh. Other plants were growing too, foliage with flat green leaves and dark red fruit, and bright orange toadstools; seeds and bulbs that had lain dormant under the ground forever. In moments they were surrounded by a strange chaotic forest, everything larger and wilder than it should be. Noon laughed aloud.
‘All right, so you are quite adept at changing your own dreamscape,’ said Tor, a touch sourly. He was finding the space where he had been lying suddenly very cramped. They crouched together under the extraordinary canopy. ‘That was the substance Vintage found in the Shroom Flats, wasn’t it? You have certainly replicated its effect—’
He stopped talking, and his face grew very still. He will ask me about Vintage now, thought Noon. He will ask where she is, and then we will have to talk about this endless dreaming, and it will all come out. He will have to face it now.
Instead, to her enormous shock, he snatched up her hand and kissed the palm of it. His eyes were wild. Seeing her expression, he grinned at her. ‘Do you not see it, witch? You have given us the answer. The wild growth of these plants. When we spilled the substance, it reawakened dead plants, did it not? And it just so happens that I have a dead plant that is very much in need of healing.’
She blinked at him. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘Ygseril!’ He scrambled to his feet, taking her hands and pulling her with him. ‘So, the old god is slightly more than a plant, but don’t you see? If we get enough of this substance and take it back to Ebora, there’s a chance Ygseril can be saved. A chance for all of Ebora.’ He grinned. ‘I can see how it will all work now. We just have to wake up.’
‘No,’ said Noon immediately. ‘We can’t. Wait, you have to wait a little longer.’
He shook his head at her, still smiling. ‘Why? It’s all clear to me now. The answer has been sitting in front of us. Now we have access to so much of it . . . I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. We’ve done enough sleeping.’
Noon grabbed his shoulders, trying to keep him with her, in this dream, this safe space that reality had yet to ruin, but he mistook her gesture and swept her into a hug.
‘We can do it together, Noon,’ he said into her ear. ‘I know it.’
They woke up, Noon holding a scream of frustration deep in her chest.
There was something stuck to his face. Tor could feel it, thick and stiff and unyielding, partially gumming his left eye shut. Whatever it was, it also covered his left arm and part of his chest. He sat up, trying to get his bearings. He appeared to be in a squalid little room, dirty light coming from a single window, partly obscured by a brown curtain. The place smelled of blood and wine, an oddly intoxicating mix, and he was lying shirtless on a narrow bed. Next to him, her body turned away, was Noon, curled up with her knees nearly up to her chest.
He smiled. ‘Did I miss something?’ He reached over to touch her shoulder, and that was when he saw what had become of his left arm. In the brief second before it all came back to him – the compound, the explosion, the agonising walk back to the house – he had a moment to regret the passing of that blissful, unknowing time. And then he was out of the bed, sprinting up the set of grand stairs to find a room with a mirror. On the upper landing he crashed into the wall, his legs weak and uncoordinated, and pain fell across his body like a clinging sheet. He cried out then, some wordless yell, and he heard Noon calling his name from below. Ignoring her he ran to the nearest bedchamber. There were boxes all over the floor, crates of jars and bundles of parchment, but there was also a tall standing mirror in the corner, covered in a film of milky dust.
‘It won’t be that bad,’ he murmured as he wiped the mirror’s surface. His fingers felt grimy and silky, like the powder from a moth’s wing. ‘It can’t be.’
It was worse. The left side of his beautiful face was a purple mass of scar tissue, the cheekbone on that side too prominent, his eyebrow entirely missing. The fire had burned his hair away on that side so that his scalp showed through, livid and shining. The destruction continued, down his neck and shoulder and his left arm, and it was all the worse for the smooth perfection of the rest of his skin. He did not recognise himself, but those were his red eyes, wounded and frightened. Had he ever made that expression at a mirror before? He thought not.
‘You nearly died.’
Noon was at the door. Her face looked too pale, her eyes too dark, and for an alarming moment Tor believed that she had died in the explosion, and this was her ghost, hounding him. But then she stepped forward and the illusion was lost. Her arms were covered in cuts, and he suddenly knew why he had seen her so clearly in her dreams.
‘I should have,’ he said, his voice a rusty croak.
‘Don’t say that,’ she said, anger in her voice. ‘I gave you so much. You can’t just give up.’
Tor looked back at the creature that was his reflection. Cautiously, he touched his fingers to his cheekbone. Painful, but not agonising.
‘So much blood,’ he said faintly. ‘Enough to pull me back from death, and perhaps enough to summon the crimson flux. By the roots, what have you done?’
‘What I had to do.’ Noon crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Do you even care what happened to Vintage?’
Tor looked at his feet for a moment. The room was swaying. ‘Of course I do. Of course I bloody do.’
‘She’s alive,’ Noon’s voice wobbled and Tor looked up, but she had lifted her chin and was staring at him steadily. ‘She made it out of the compound, but she’s gone already. She said she had to go somewhere and that we couldn’t come with her.’
‘Vintage left?’ Tor took a slow breath. His skin felt strange, too tight. ‘She left me here, like this?’
‘I told her not to, but she –’ Noon stopped, shaking her head as though her ears were full of water, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. ‘It won’t leave me alone. I keep hearing it . . . why won’t—’ She pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead, and staggered against the doorframe. Part of him – the part that knew the memory of the taste of her blood, the warmth of her slim shape on the bed next to him – wanted to go to her. But too much had happened.
‘So here I am, grievously wounded, abandoned by my one friend to the company of the lunatic who nearly killed me.’
Noon seemed to collapse in on herself slightly at those words, but the look she threw him was defiant.
‘You were just about to be turned inside out by a parasite spirit, or have you forgotten that bit? I dragged your lanky arse all the way back here, gave you my own blood to heal you when I could have left you to fester, when I could have gone back to find Vintage instead—’ She stopped. ‘I’m going to go and have a drink.’ She went back out the door, pausing before slamming it. ‘And you’re welcome, by the way!’