The Witch Woman's Prophecy

57 | The Square |

While Soni went into Polemmy on foot with the rest of the travellers, I went back into the dunes alongside the Greater Harn and tried to shelter from the driving rain by huddling up beside the ponies. I gnawed on the last hard piece of cheese from Tasmi; more for something to distract me from the memory of the floating corpses than because I was hungry, but it didn't work. I saw their limbs washing back and forth in the water and the snapping of the crocodiles' jaws.

Guilt filled me and threatened to overflow and drown me. I considered jumping into the Greater Harn and letting the crocodiles take me. I was responsible for so many deaths; more than I could count. My friends among them: Quain, Reesa, Irridus and Eldi. My stubborn insistence on completing the Remedy had killed them.

What had I done?

My life's achievements came to mind: I had helped the guards of Polemmy discover new weapons and their first use of them had been directed against me and the people I cared for; I had built a relic that had taken the lives of more people than I could count; so many people had died because of me, even though I had never met them. How many more would I kill? I knew that my life had not been a total failure, I had brought back the rains after all, but it seemed a small thing set against all the damage I had caused.

'Come to me.'

All at once the voice of Basata came into my mind and prevented me from running into the Greater Harn. Her urging me to find her filled my thoughts. My nails dug into my palms and for once I felt anger at her. I was not allowed to have my mind and emotions to myself when I wanted to grieve for my friends.

I longed to talk to Basata and explain that sometimes her intrusions were not wanted, but she had never been able to hear me. Our relationship was one-sided too, I realised. She asked and I gave. But what she had demanded of me had cost too much.

It was almost night when Soni returned. I was colder, wetter, hungrier and more miserable than I had ever been before. I did not hear her approaching over the noise of the rain and wind. When I felt the touch of her hand on my shoulder I flinched with the shock of it.

'I got some,' she said in a low voice, holding out a tiny pouch to me. 'The scholar could only make three and these are scraped together from the leavings of the last batch.'

I chewed two of the bitter pellets as I rose, so cold that I could not feel my feet. These pellets tasted even worse than usual, or maybe I had just forgotten how awful they were. We followed the crowd of people straggling in before the guards closed the gates for the night. I hoped that the guards were as cold and miserable as I was and would not be searching the faces of the crowd too closely.

I twisted a rag around my head to hide my dark curls. My face was stippled with the first wisps of a beard and I hoped that I did not look like the boy who had left Polemmy. After the cave mouth had fallen in, the guards had thought I was dead. That I could have survived and now return to Polemmy was not something they would expect. All I needed to do was to ensure that I did not draw attention to myself, but I hoped that Basata would not require me to be in Polemmy for too long.

I shuffled in through the gates with the rest of the crowd and I took care to keep my eyes down and to bear myself like those around me. I did not risk looking any of the guards in the eye in case they recognised me. As the gates closed behind us, I smothered my sigh of relief. At last we were back in Polemmy.

As we walked the puddled streets I still kept my head bowed, but risked glances at my surroundings. There were wet shapes huddled in corners and against walls where there was the tiniest amount of shelter from the rain. There had never been people living out on the streets at night before and I wondered at this. Perhaps the guards had shown some kindness to the inhabitants of the shanty town. Or were these people who had come from further afield? There was no way of knowing without asking them, and I did not want to arouse their interest.