I
Darkness
On Astowell, it was dark.
A boy sat atop cliff a small spit jutting off the eastern coast of the island, leaning against one of the boulders that dotted the rugged, sloped cliff top. His knees were drawn up to his chest, his arms clasped around his legs as though for dear life. His head was bent, but even so the full moon made his tear-wet cheeks glisten. His true name was Ekoet, and he was called Tath by the score or so other people who lived in his village, Astolet. The wraith-like outlines of Astolet's huts, goat-pens and store-pits rose behind him, at the foot of the rocky outcropping that was Kach knoll.
"It's not real," he murmured to himself, and he repeated it again and again.
Mazes; fire, blood on Kach knoll, his mother's blood, his brother's, his father's... The world tore open under his feet, and he was falling into an abyss.
"It's not real!" The words were his touchstone, a shred of sanity in a sea of fragments of nightmares.
Get out of my head! The screams crescendoed into a chilling cacophony, and he jumped up, sobbing, wishing there were something he could, fight, beat his fists on... something real, not these horrifying shreds which slipped away from his mind like water but left marks like bee stings.
Suddenly, everything changed. The quality of the air became heavier; the sound of his breath and of the sea more muted; the light seemed harsher, but the shadows thicker. Ekoet hardly moved as he stared, wide-eyed, at shadows that seemed, suddenly, impenetrable.
Something was happening.
There was silence. The sea muttered brokenly against the cliff's foot as Ekoet's breathing slowed.
Nightmares.
In Astowell, it has always been a boring place. In the summer, the villagers of Anlot and Astolet would get great baskets woven of the reeds that grow along the southern shore, and pick the bitter dark purple-black berries that grew on the thorny geaskeln bushes. Some of the berries would be boiled and turned into jam, some would be dried, some used for dies. Summer and autumn were the heights of activity – in summer, everybody was picking berries. Those who weren't were herding the goats. In the autumn, everybody was at work processing the berries. During the winter, the people waited for the spring and, perhaps, made new clothes out of goat's pelts and wool.
It was always the same. Always boring.
Then the nightmares had come.
It was a disease which the wise men, the healers, of the villages could not cure, not with their sleeping-potions of ground sheep's leaf and powdered wellflower, not with their feverish chanting.
Not these nightmares.
Nightmares, eating into the very heart and soul of all of them.
Nightmares which made them fear sleep and made their bodies weak.
Nightmares which made them cry and scream and relive ancient fears.
He had, perhaps, been the first to suffer them. He dreamed, always, of smoke and war and tall, pale-faced men cutting down other people who looked more like him; he dreamed of foreign lands which were torn down the middle, and of war, and he dreamed of unbalance.
Fear chilled his heart and he looked up at the shifting, hissing sea.
He dreaded the night and he dreaded the day. He grew weaker every time the sun rose, for a sort of dead apathy born of that dread had settled in his bones, making him slow and sluggish. Everybody was like that in his village, and they were not gathering enough berries to last them through the winter. The cold would come, inexorable, like the nightmares, and they would die.
A sudden, great wave crashed upon the pock-marked rocks below.
Come to me, boy.
Ekoet started at that voice. He looked around, frightened. His eyes rested on the open sea, which was calm and passive in the oppressively warm air; and on the moon which hung in the sky; then on the rock-faced ridge that rose up on his right; and finally on the moonlit huts of his home, Astolet.
The voice did not come from any of those places.
It came from inside him.
Come, boy, come to me.
Ekoet took one uncertain step towards his village. Was the voice coming from there? Where, where? Lost, confused by this echoing whisper, "where, where?" rang in his mind like the forlorn cry of the seagulls.
The wind rose, suddenly and sharply, and Ekoet strode into the huts on impulse. They were simple affairs of wattle, with thatched roofs, and no doors, just goat pelts tied across the northward-facing doors to keep out the bitter winter wind.
In some of the huts he passed, the embers of fires made of geaskeln (or Lastland broom, as it was known) branches and goat dung still glowed before the doors. From some of the shadowed doorways, he could hear the low moans of restless sleepers.
He walked on through the fragmented, uneasy stillness of the empty darkness.
At the foot of Kach knoll, Ekoet paused, his body swaying as the pull grew stronger. He gulped and looked up at the top of the knoll. Above him, the sky was threateningly dark, save for where the white stars twinkled. Against this darkness, the rough outline of the knoll could hardly be seen. Then he shrugged, nervous and trying to take control of his situation, and started on slowly, deliberately and mindlessly, careful where he put his feet. The knoll was dotted with sharp rocks and bumps and potholes. At one point, he ran into one of the many geaskeln bushes that carpeted the knoll like wiry fur. The thorns pricked him, but he was past caring now.
Something was happening.
Finally, the black-haired boy stopped at the very top of the knoll, his feet planted on the loose, sandy ground. Ekoet raised his head a little and half-closed his eyes, like a hunting-dog sniffing for the scent. Then he reached out and pushed aside the flowering geaskeln bush before him and retreated down the other side of the knoll. The downward slope continued before him for some thirty feet before ending in a marshy ditch filled with nettles and geaskeln. He chose his footing even more carefully – he had no desire to fall down there. He had done so before, and had ended up covered in scratches and mud, for it was the place where the Wellcreek ended, choked by weeds and nettles.
With a sigh, Ekoet stopped and turned, placing his hand on the rough gray rock half-embedded in the hill before him.
Come, boy. The voice roared in his head now, terrible as the nightmares, demanding, insistent, and even though Ekoet bucked and shook his head, it would not go. It would always be there, he knew in the cold certainty of one in terror.
The world flipped, suddenly, and Ekoet gasped – it seemed as though the stars dimmed and died and the moon's light became darkness and the geaskeln bushed melted into the ground, and where there had been rock there was shadow.
Wary, tense, trying not to fall over, Ekoet stepped forward, then recoiled from the shadows. A warm wind blew over the knoll, making the geaskeln rustle mockingly.
For a long time in the untouched stillness of the night, Ekoet stared at that gaping opening. That sudden lurch had broken the bond – that voice in his head, which had pulled him like iron to a magnet, was silent now. Still there, but silent.
Gone, alone, askew...
Everything was askew.
Run, then, boy.
Ekoet broke into a run, dodging around rocks and the gaping shadows in the hill. Askew. That was the word – askew, it was all askew. Rocks did not turn into shadow – light did not turn into darkness – stars did not dim and die...
As he raced into the village, his hair slicked with sweat, he felt as though he had gone into a circle. He was still sobbing, and the nightmares were pulling at his mind again like the moon pulls at the tides. He rushed into the low wattle hut he shared with his mother and sister, crying, just as he had left it. They, trapped deep in cells made of the hurts of their own minds, did not hear him.
Dodging the cooking-tripod in the center of the low room, Ekoet collapsed onto the rumpled pile of goat-pelts that was his bed. His tongue moved of its own volition, and he gasped, even as the nightmares drew them into their deadly embrace:
"Oh, Astowell, Astowell..."