“His name is Brak, and I’m his cousin,” Trevil said.
But the naked man shook his head. “You are no blood of his blood. Your words not ring true. Lies lie in darkness. Only truth brings back to life.”
“We are not blood,” Trevil admitted, and immediately the attitude in the room changed. My guess was that lying to the man calling himself Healer was not a light offence. Perhaps that was his way out of curing the incurable, to save face in front of his fanatical followers, and if that was the case, my own troubles just got worse.
The torch-bearing man stepped forward to intervene. “No lie brings life,” he said in a harsh voice. “Da Healer shall not—”
But the naked Healer silenced him with a hand gesture; his brown and almost freakishly large eyes were on me.
“And who ya be?” he said.
“A traveller, from afar,” I answered as vaguely as I could. This was not technically a lie. The naked man seemed to forget Brak altogether. He stepped closer to me, and I fought the urge to enter a battle stance. I let him get close until he reached out and touched my chin, his hand uncomfortably warm. I stood motionless as he manipulated my head right and left, standing so close to me I could smell the stench of his breath.
“Your clothes be off,” he ordered. I saw several of his men tense in anticipation of a refusal. This is just a vessel, I reminded myself as I undid the rope belt and let the crude material slip off my shoulders, but the next thought that flashed through my mind was, But it’s the only one I’ve got.
This time Trevil did notice I was unmarked. I saw him register it, but he was too worried about Brak to react.
The naked man scrutinized me. Strangely enough, I interpreted the expression on his face as a mixture of curiosity, disbelief, and even fear, not lust.
“You are a woman from a different life?” There was a question in his tone of voice, as if he was trying to confirm something.
I nodded, trying to hide my surprise.
“You are a woman of many skins?”
I looked around the room. Naked and weaponless, my chances were slim even with ESM. I could take their Healer prisoner, but I’d need Trevil to cooperate and leave Brak to die. That was not going to happen.
I nodded again, and watched the naked man take a hasty step back, his expression betraying shock, even fear. One of his men took a protective step forward but the Healer motioned him to stand and turned to Brak.
“I take this Patshin back to light, if he be willin,” he said, “but you shall both pay steep”—he motioned to Brak—“for he be close to darkness.”
Trevil stood stiffly, but he might as well have been on his knees again. “I can’t speak for her, but you can take everything I have, the truck, my weapons …”
The naked Healer shook his head once. “No metal, it is forbidden, you pay with kind and service, and I tell ya what price by the morrow.”
Behind the Healer’s shoulder I saw the man with the bone earrings looking surprised at this. My guess was this was not the way things were normally handled. Two things I knew for sure: I was not going to agree to serve this strange naked man and his cult for any length of time, but I was not about to declare my intentions at this particular moment. If Brak would die, as he surely would, I would most likely be free to go. If he somehow survived the night, I would make sure to be dressed and armed before I’d deal with the situation. The best course of action at that moment was just to stand there and let things play out.
Trevil looked at me briefly and I shrugged my consent. “I agree,” he said, and the Healer turned and walked to Brak’s body.
The choir outside was humming as we gathered around the body and placed our arms on one another’s shoulders. I had no time to retrieve my clothes, but no one paid any attention to my nakedness.
The Healer touched Brak’s body and a moan came out of him, echoed by the Healer’s own moan of mock pain.
“He be far gone into darkness,” he said as the men and women began to hum in unison, “far from where pain be. I must take his burden.” The Healer began rubbing Brak’s body with his hands. “I must take his pain.” His hands touched the open wound and Brak arched himself up off the table suddenly, crying with pain. The Healer joined the cry with his own and arched his back as the hum grew louder. I turned my head and saw Trevil’s eyes widen with fear.
“I must take his wound.” The Healer placed both hands right on the wound, and Brak’s body began to convulse so violently two men had to rush forward and hold him down. Two others grasped the Healer, who imitated Brak’s movement while screaming in pain as he maintained pressure on the wound with both hands.
Suddenly something small fell from Brak’s wound to the floor, and both Brak and the Healer screamed and arched their backs in unison once more. The Healer collapsed back into the arms of his followers while Brak’s body lay still on the table. The chorus began singing loudly as the Healer’s body was carried out by his followers. Trevil rushed to Brak’s side, crying his name, and I was left standing alone, naked and bewildered as the people around me rushed to leave the hut. I took a step forward for a better look, and there was no denial of what I saw. Brak’s wound was gone, not even a scar. I bent down and picked up what had fallen from the wound. It was covered with blood and distorted, but I had seen enough of them in my life as a soldier to recognise I was holding part of a bullet in my hand.
Twinkle Eyes
It was not a long walk, distance-wise, but surrounded by the hostile Dwaine clan, it took us a long time to reach the Sky Bird. Like the other machines, it was gleaming and spotless. My guess was that taking care of Sky Birds together with shooting trespassers were the Dwaine clan’s favourite pastime.
This particular Sky Bird was huge—it dwarfed all the others by far—and I could not contain the awe it inspired as we stood next to its belly.
“Behold the holy Sky Bird,” said Dwaine, son of Dwaine, waving his arms dramatically as Nana Dwaine limped closer to the metal body. “This is the Leviathan. Your LoreMaster came here, and he and my da walked into the belly of the Leviathan, so he must have left whatever you are looking for right inside.”
Nana Dwaine wailed something unrecognisable as she uncovered a keypad at the lower side of the Sky Bird. “All you need to do is to know the password for the door,” Dwaine said as he ushered me forward. “If you type in the right numbers, the door shall be opened. If you type wrong …” Suddenly there was a handgun aiming at my head. Dwaine, son of Dwaine, looked at me from behind the muzzle. “I will give you one try.”
I glanced at Galinak, but there were too many weapons trained on us for him to be able to do anything that would not result in our certain death. I turned my head back, fighting the rising panic, and a bowel-loosening feeling in my stomach. The numbers on the keypad flashed green. There were eight empty slots sketched above them. I remembered reading somewhere, in my past life, that there were a hundred million possibilities for such a code, and now I had to guess the right code the first time, or die.
I closed my eyes and tried to block out the situation we were in. What would be a code that LoreMaster Harim would have chosen? The eight digits hinted it was a specific date, as was counted by humans in the pre-Catastrophe era. Two for month, two for days, four for a year. The counting of the years was forgotten by many after the Catastrophe, but the Guild of Historians kept the old tradition. The big question was which date my LoreMaster would choose as a code. A birthday? A death day? Or maybe it was just a random combination of numbers, in which case my brain would soon be decorating the shining metal side of the Sky Bird.
As if on cue,