Tor made a point of looking around. ‘This boring river is private? Very well, let me show you something, then. I’m not even sure if I can still do this . . .’
He took hold of her arm, and the balmy night and cold river swirled away, carried by something deeper than water, and they were standing in a grove of trees on a hot summer’s day. Noon could feel the sun on the top of her head like a blessing, and she could even smell the blossom on the trees. Something about that was familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Next to her, Tor was laughing.
‘By the roots, I did it! You see this, witch? These are the sacred groves of Ebora as they were over two hundred years ago. No living human has ever seen such a sight, and here you are. Are you suitably honoured?’
‘This is a memory of yours?’
‘It is. A memory from before the worst times, before the crimson flux had truly decimated us. This orchard was grown in honour of Ygseril, and the trees were tended as honoured associates of the tree-god.’ He paused, and Noon noticed that his clothes had changed again. He now wore a simple tunic of deep russet and ochre leggings. There was a bronze brooch at his throat. Somehow, the outfit made him look younger. ‘When I left Ebora, of course, all of these trees had long since died. Of heartbreak, Hest was fond of saying, but they were just left unattended for too long. Delicate things like this require care.’ He reached up and touched his fingers to the pale pink blossom clustered in the branches, causing a brief flurry of petals like snow. ‘You should have seen Ebora in its glory, Noon. It was quite extraordinary.’
‘Hest is your sister?’
Tor nodded. ‘Lady Hestillion, born in the year of the green bird, mistress of dream-walking and ever my biggest critic.’
She didn’t know what to say to that. She crossed her arms over her chest.
‘This place is beautiful,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s full of life here. I can feel it, even though it’s not real.’
He looked back at her intently then, as if seeing her properly for the first time. It was unnerving, and she had to look away.
‘Can you do this with any of your memories?’ she said, hoping to distract him from his sudden examination of her.
‘I have not tried, for a very long time.’ His voice was soft. ‘Tell me, witch, why is it I can feel you so clearly in this dream? You are closer to me than you were before. I can almost—’ He stopped.
You drank my blood, Noon thought but did not say. A hot wind suddenly blew through the grove of trees, scattering blossom in a fairy blizzard. It smelled, Noon realised with horror, of burned flesh.
‘What is that?’ said Tor, looking across the neat avenue of trees. There was, Noon saw, a strange cloud hanging over the horizon, a silvery grey shape that she couldn’t quite make out. ‘Can you smell that? Perhaps something burned in the kitchens.’
‘It’s a dream, remember?’ Noon stepped away, reaching up to pull her hat down over the tattoo on her forehead before remembering that she had lost it in the compound. ‘I can’t stay here with you, looking at your old Eboran crap. I have other things to do.’
She turned away, meaning to run back to the river somehow, when she lost her footing and fell, her stomach lurching uncomfortably. Noon woke, gasping, in the bed next to Tormalin. Thankfully, the tall Eboran was still asleep. Moving as carefully as possible, so as not to wake him, Noon turned over on her side and lay staring at the door, thinking of the river and the blossom, and the terrible smell of death that had come for them.
31
Aldasair stood on the far side of the gardens, looking down into the plaza. Already, there were more humans here, their tents and carriages clustered like colourful anthills. They had lit fires against the chill of the day. The smell of wood smoke and cooking was everywhere, and their voices were clear in the stillness, the babble of their feelings battering Aldasair like waves of pebbles: eager, angry, confused, calm, excited, uncertain. It was too much.
There were things he should be doing, but today it was so hard to remember how Ebora had been just a few short weeks ago, and that made him feel like he was a ghost of himself, so he turned away from the teeming plaza and walked, instead, further into the overgrown gardens. Bern the Younger had been hard at work on the other side, clearing away the debris of decades of neglect, burning it in huge piles outside the gates. Aldasair had nodded to him briefly the day before, not quite looking at the man’s bare chest – the ink patterns on his arms swept across his skin there, too – but hadn’t been able to speak. Instead, the human had nodded back, an expression of sympathy on his face that Aldasair had found deeply uncomfortable. He had avoided him since.
Here, the trees and bushes were thick, covering the narrow gravel paths and the rockeries. The small streams that had been carefully cut into the earth had either vanished entirely or been filled with a sludge of ancient dead leaves, and he passed two of the elegant enamelled bridges, hanging broken and skeletal over mud. The ground here grew steeper, and he quickened his pace, belatedly realising why he had come this way.
The Hill of Souls.
Eventually, he stumbled across the old path, the one that had been cut into the rising ground and paved with heavy black stones. These had mostly survived intact, although he took care to step over the piles of wet leaves that threatened to tip him back down to the plaza. He followed the path, up and up, looking over his shoulder once to see the palace spread below him; from here, the plaza and all its strange human activity was hidden, but Ygseril still spread its dead branches like a silver cloud. Like old times. The silent times.
Eventually, at the top of the hill, he came to the old orchard and the building that nestled at its heart. The ground was thick with grass and the puckered corpses of old apples. In the summer, he imagined this place would shake with the sound of wasps, but on this cold day it was silent, with just the half-hearted wind for company. Aldasair walked through the trees, stepping over fallen branches, until he stood at the door. This was a strange building, he had always thought; it did not match the organic, spiralling architecture of the palace, or even the sprawling houses that circled it. This place looked more like a beehive, rounded and simple, with large circular windows now thick with dirt. It was older than everything else. Aldasair looked down at his feet, his hand resting on the door. He couldn’t remember how he knew that – some distant lesson or conversation, back when his people had lived.