His voice slurred as he spoke. ‘The Nothings. They had me. They were here. Where did they go?’
Someone grabbed him from behind and hauled him to his feet. He was wrenched around to face another armoured figure. She seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. The woman glared at him over a grille that covered her mouth and neck, her copper-eyed stare unbearable. On the right-hand side of her stubbled skull was a patch of bloody gauze where her ear had once been.
He squirmed in her grip, overwhelmed by an inexplicable repulsion, and she slapped him curtly across each cheek. Startled, he watched as she jabbed an accusatory finger at his face, then lifted her nose in a silent gesture of sniffing the air. She then pointed at the grass and traced an imaginary trail somewhere off into the distance. Her stare was like a blazing summer sun. He struggled to look away. The pain of it seared through whatever narcotic addled his senses. Before he could cry out in protest, she slapped him twice again then dropped him to the ground, kicking him up the backside with an armoured boot to hurry him along.
Cade scrambled out of reach, his body prickling with gooseflesh, shivering with disgust, as if he had just escaped the embrace of a flyblown corpse. Several more women stood behind her, spires of bronze, muzzled and cloaked, their shaven heads crested with a proud ponytail. They carried strange blocks of iron which Cade realised must be some form of rifle. These muskets were absurdly bulky, though the women hefted them as easily as if they were toys. Though their ponytails stirred in the mortal wind, the women did not seem part of this world. Their presence seemed to elude Cade’s senses, evading his comprehension. He thought himself deaf when their heavy armour betrayed no creak or clamour as they moved. He could not hear them breathing. They were like silent spectres projected from some netherworld, statues of living bronze, whose icy sheen repelled his eyes every time he tried to study it. All he could feel was their absence, holes in reality. Nothings.
‘What I’ve given you for the pain should also help you see a little clearer now,’ said the girl. ‘Should make our presence a little more tolerable.’
Realisation dawned, and with it came anger. He snarled at them all.
‘It was you all along. I thought ghosts had murdered my people, but it was you.’
He recalled the suffocating maze beneath the Tor, the deadly avalanche, the terror of the cornfield. Through it all, he had borne a delusion. The thought of such stupidity – of his peasant ignorance – pained him, stoked in him a fearless fury.
He closed his eyes and reached deep, deep into the earth. He sought lightning, a horned angel, anything to drive these women away. The girl tried to stop him, but it was too late. The resulting pain hit him like a chunk of rock and he almost blacked out. He shrugged her aside as she went to steady him.
‘I am Novice Maia,’ said the girl. ‘And these are Null Maidens of the Sisters of Silence. We are anathema to your kind. Just as the standing stones of your valley nullified your powers, so do we.’
Cade snorted. ‘You don’t sound very silent to me.’
‘Unlike my sisters, I have yet to take the sacred Vow of Tranquillity. For now, I act as their interpreter.’
Cade struggled to his feet. ‘You want me to find Abi for you? Well, interpret this.’
He hawked and spat on the ground at her feet.
The woman with one ear glowered at Cade. He recoiled as she advanced on him, soundless as a phantom, but the younger woman intervened. She did not speak, but instead made a series of gestures, her hands dancing, fingers fluttering as she spelled out her entreaty. One-Ear gestured back, harsh and abrupt. The younger woman signalled her reply, insistent and beseeching. The older woman turned away, exasperated.
‘We are not murderers,’ said Maia, turning to him, her voice tender. ‘We gathered your people for their own safety. Our comrades are tending them in the valley as we speak. They are all in our care. Safe from harm.’
Cade looked about him. Nothing but grassland. Nowhere to run.
‘Are you witchfinders? Sent from the city?’
Maia smiled. ‘Not from any city you could comprehend,’ she said. ‘And we have been sent to do nothing more than protect you.’
‘The Horned Throne protects us,’ he said. ‘He is soil and sky, root and branch.’ He half-hoped his words might conjure another Faun Light to spirit him away.
‘Then we serve the same master,’ said Maia. ‘What you know only as the Horned Throne is in fact part of a greater truth, a truth that spans the galaxy.’
‘What’s the galaxy?’
Maia’s look of sympathy rankled him.
‘A kingdom of worlds that you know only as glimmering stars,’ she said. ‘Each ruled by the Emperor of Mankind, on the Throne of Terra.’
The greater truth. Emperors of Mankind. How Abi would have been fascinated by all this.
‘His light shines upon pastures just like these,’ said Maia. ‘And you would have been hidden forever from that light if we hadn’t found you.’
Once again, he pictured the laurel-crowned figure on that ancient frieze beneath the Tor. Was that the god of which she spoke?
‘Enough,’ said Cade, dazed by thoughts of worlds, people, even gods beyond his own. He felt nauseous, sick with perplexity. The eerie presence of these women was pouring agony into his brain.
‘You are already connected to a world wider than we will ever know,’ said Maia. ‘You are a witch, blessed with a connection to energies beyond anyone’s understanding. But with that gift comes great danger, which is why we must find your companion.’
One-Ear gestured impatiently. The novice stalled her.
‘I don’t know how she got away,’ said Cade. ‘We got separated. She just disappeared.’
One-Ear clenched her fists.
‘Things dwell in the immaterial realm from which your kind draw power,’ said Maia. ‘Things that would mean you harm.’
Cade swallowed at the thought of him helping Abi onto the Faun Light’s back, sending her off into the gloom atop that spectral beast.
Maia read his face and her expression hardened. ‘Have you seen such a thing?’
‘I have not.’
‘Hear me, boy.’ Her voice suddenly rang like steel. ‘They know your thoughts. They will assume the shape of that which you trust. If you have seen any such thing, you will tell us this instant. You cannot conceive the dangers involved.’
She was right. He could not. To him, all she said was just a morass of fear and bafflement. He thought of Abi, how she had stood by him, dragged him from danger time and again. It was the only thing that still seemed real.
‘If I help you find her,’ he said, ‘what will you do with her?’
One-Ear exchanged amused looks with her Sisters. She made a curt gesture.
