Jaco waved a hand. ‘I’ve learned a lot, out here.’ He took his gaze from Jandell, and looked again at the table. ‘Did you hurt him, Operator?’ he asked in a quiet voice.
An image came before Drayn: Alexander, chained to a chair, exhausted. Jandell was inches from his face, his mouth twisted into a sneer. He held something in his hand – a whip, perhaps.
‘The boy was gone at the beginning. But the memories … I fought that creature of memory, for his knowledge,’ Jandell whispered. ‘Yet even when he told me the One had returned, I would not believe him.’
‘But he didn’t tell you everything, did he, Operator? He didn’t tell you who the One was. He wouldn’t have wanted you to hurt her. His sister.’
A new image appeared in Drayn’s mind: a girl with black hair, a girl in white rags, slowly turning to purple …
Jandell rubbed his temples with thin fingers.
‘Alexander did well to keep it from me,’ he whispered.
‘No,’ Jaco said. ‘Not Alexander. The thing that lives down there: a memory of a boy.’
‘Perhaps that is Alexander. Why shouldn’t memories be real?’
It was the first time Drayn had spoken. The others turned to her, and Jandell smiled.
‘I was a dark thing, in recent years,’ Jandell said. ‘I was mad, and paranoid, and weak. Do you know what saved me, Paprissi?’
Jaco shook his head.
Jandell pointed at Drayn. ‘This girl,’ he whispered. ‘This Fallen Girl, and her powerful memories. More than that, though: her memories are powerful indeed, but so is she.’
Drayn turned her head away. Part of her wondered if she should thank the Operator. But why? How can I thank him for his praise, when I did nothing to earn it?
‘Operator,’ Jaco said.
‘My name is Jandell.’ He sighed. ‘A bleak name. The Bleak Jandell.’
Jaco nodded. ‘Jandell. I want you to know …’ He looked at the moss-covered ceiling, as if searching for answers. ‘I do not forgive you, for what you did.’
Jandell bowed his head. ‘You shouldn’t.’ He gestured at his cloak, at the faces inside. ‘Someone made this garment for me to remind me of all the things I did, and all the people I hurt, when I was Jandell the Bleak.’ He smiled. ‘Was. I am a fool; I will always be Jandell the Bleak.’
‘I hadn’t finished,’ Jaco whispered. ‘I do not forgive you for what you did. But I do not hate you, either. Because it was my fault.’ He stroked his beard. ‘I brought this upon my family. I could have stopped it.’ His voice grew weary. ‘Alexander told me about Katrina. He told me what she was. And I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t. I loved that girl as much as my son.’ He placed his head in his hands and began to tremble. ‘If I had told you the truth, you could have destroyed her, and Alexander would still be alive.’
Jandell shrugged his shoulders. ‘Perhaps it is all fate,’ he whispered.
There came a noise from outside: the whinnying of a horse. A man pushed open the door. He seemed to be middle-aged, though it was difficult to tell with any precision. His head was completely bald, without even eyebrows. He was tall, but strangely stooped. He had pale skin, but it was so weather-beaten as to almost be a shade of red, and he wore the same green robes as Jaco.
‘Dark is coming from the beyond,’ he said, pointing in the direction of the ocean. ‘Not now, my leader, but soon, the dark will come.’
Jaco nodded, before turning to Jandell and Drayn. ‘We have to go. This isn’t a good place at night. There are raiders, further up the coast, and animals that come from the forests.’
They made their way on horseback from the small settlement, Drayn tucked in behind Jandell, with the faces of the cloak staring up at her. She felt something when she looked at them: things from the past, tugging at her.
She turned her head, back in the direction they had come from, squinting her eyes against the wind. The settlement was very small, only a handful of squat, broken dwellings. There were people, there, leaning against the walls or wandering around, armed with spears. But the only ones on the road were Jaco, Jandell, Drayn and the bald newcomer.
‘Allos,’ he said. He rode up next to Jandell and Drayn, and pointed to his face. ‘Allos. Me.’
Drayn smiled at him and extended a hand. The man grasped it, perhaps a little too hard, and grinned back at her.
‘I’m Drayn,’ the girl said.
‘Drayn,’ said Allos. His voice was as rugged as the landscape, a thing of stone and hill. ‘Drayn, from another place.’
Allos turned back to the road, and his expression fell serious once more.
‘Where are we going?’ Drayn called up ahead, where Jaco was leading the way. The old man came to a halt and turned to the girl.
‘Up the road,’ he said, jerking his head in the direction of travel. ‘That place back there is just an outpost. We don’t live there.’
‘What’s up the road?’
Jaco grinned at her. He was old, this man, but remained a powerful physical presence. She could feel the merest hint of his memories. They were full of wonderful things: things that no one else had ever seen. But they were tinged with sadness, too.
‘Home is up the road,’ he said in a cheery voice.
The road gave way to a dirt path. As the night came in, trees sprang up on either side, great sentinels that loomed over them, moaning and swaying in the air. The darkness beyond crackled with sound: the movements of animals among the branches and twigs of the forest floor.
Drayn did not know what she had expected when she first set sail with Jandell. In some ways, she was disappointed by what she had found: wind and rain and rocks and trees. But there were other things, here, that she had never experienced. The land was vast: she had seen that when they first landed. Even the smell here was different, coming at her in waves: the scent of a fire, fuelled by strange things.
‘We are almost there,’ Jaco said. It was growing difficult to see him, up ahead in the gloom. ‘I hope you’re not tired, Drayn.’
‘No,’ the girl said.
Allos spoke, then. She could not see him, but he was near her side.
‘What powers? Why, when you will not turn to them?’
For a moment Drayn was confused. ‘Powers? What powers do I have, is that what you mean?’
‘He is talking to me,’ Jandell whispered. ‘He knows what I am. Perhaps he has seen my kind before.’
‘Yes, before,’ Allos said. ‘For such a long time before, the powers were here.’
‘He’s wondering why I ride this horse,’ Jandell said. ‘He wonders why I don’t lift us all up, with the click of a finger, and take us where we need to go.’
‘They are things, indeed, that matter now,’ Allos said.
Drayn searched for Allos, in the dark. He was nowhere to be seen. He was from this place, unlike Jaco Paprissi. The language he spoke was not his own. The land, though, was his, and he could disappear against it as he wished.
‘I am a thing of memory,’ Jandell said. ‘But I am far from the only one. When I draw on the power, sometimes others can sense me: not all of them, and not always, but some of them.’
‘And there are some you are hiding from, Operator,’ said Jaco.
Jandell did not respond.
A light appeared before them. It was