Mistress of Dreams

By Paul Taffinder

"A unique and potent combination of epic narrative withblood-soaked psychology."

Reader's Digest

"Stunningly entertaining... this epic story of power struggle-and for the highest of stakes: the future of humanity"

The European

Your fate is written

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Taffinder
• Release date: Aug 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781838090272

Book preview

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Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA.

© Paul Taffinder 2022

Published by Xiphax Press

Printed in the United Kingdom

The right of Paul Taffinder to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events, locales, persons living or dead is coincidental or they are used fictitiously.

Paperback 978-1-8380902-6-5

eBook 978-1-8380902-7-2

Cover design and layout by www.spiffingcovers.com

THE CRITICS PRAISE PAUL TAFFINDER’S VISIONARY NOVELS OF THE DREAM MURDERER CYCLE

Stunningly entertaining…this epic story of power struggle, and for the highest of stakes: the future of humanity. A gripping narrative.

– The European

…an epic and enthralling future Earth trilogy packed with peril and pathos that keeps one foot firmly in the real world as it dives deep into the human condition…you’ll be screaming for the conclusion.

– Reader’s Digest

A bold, ambitious story of future history driven by timeless human truths.

– Timothy Arden, The London Economic

Epic in scale, meticulous in detail, and grounded with the author’s profound insight into the human psyche, this trilogy is a dream come true for all sci-fi and fantasy fans.

– Female First

Author Paul Taffinder fuses artistic vision with intellectual keenness to deliver a stand-out epic work.

– MaleXtra

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Coda

Chapter 1

The Ssubanam, or the People of the Tides, claim Isadon as their prime deity. His earthly incarnation is the emerald and vermillion snake of the wetlands, the giver of life and bringer of death. He is oftentimes said to appear as a man or woman, immortal of course. The Ssubanam are a reclusive and primitive people, rarely glimpsed, but their oral traditions convey a most colourful appreciation of the Immortals. In contrast to our own certainties in the Realm, it is said that they adhere fiercely to a belief in the actuality of Immortals in the world: secretive, yes, but physical, present and active.

‘A Cultural History of Ssu-Am Province’, IYE 1810.

As intrepid as I like to think I am, there are places I have avoided. The physical dangers are one thing: you can prepare, take precautions and act sensibly. But the dark places of the world are those, most often, that people have made, and they are invariably impenetrable to the soul and savagely unforgiving.

The Traveller, Kerl Adressi, from his book ‘The Wanderer’, at the end of the first millennium, surviving in a modern translation.

***

Water. Water everywhere. The wetlands sparkled in every direction. Black mangrove trees clutched the shallows with roots like crooked crabs’ legs. Lime-green leaves hung down below knotted branches to the flat, lazy surface of the innumerable channels. Spurning a guide, you would with certainty get lost in this riverine labyrinth of the Ssu-Am Spill. Not an hour’s travel from the margins of the northernmost estuary of the Great Harrenam floodplain, now Skava’s only point of bearing was the sun, still low in the east, warming her left cheek with the promise of the day’s yellow heat.

Maki was hunched in front of her, shoulders stiff and unmoving. She could see the tension in the cant of his neck. No stranger to rivers and the craft that plied them, he did not however like this narrow punt, with its flat-bottomed hull no wider than his knees. They were, he knew, entirely in the hands of their guide, a wrinkled native Shadman with a remarkable black moustache who stood on the stern tread. Silently this peasant mud-dweller raised and dipped the long pole to propel them through the constricted rippling fissures between packed mangrove forest, the scene unchanging, their route bewildering.

He had not been eager, the Shadman, when Skava made the arrangement. A suspicious folk anyway, these western cousins of the Ssubanam, they scratched a living on the mudflats north of the Spill, trading in fish and charcoal with hard-bitten buyers’ agents up from the city of Shad. Reluctant subjects of the Realm, they were ever cautious in their dealings with strangers on horses who came offering coin for a guide to enter the forbidden forests of the People of the Tides.

No, it wasn’t even greed that overcame this Shadman’s foot-dragging. Coin was welcome but his wife and mud-brothers would not thank him for his avarice if it brought peril. He looked at the two men and eyed their fine mounts and saw something in the set of their clothes and their ease with the weapons they carried. They might profess to be traders from the Liphan Plains, but everything else suggested quiet menace – a talent for violence and, assuredly, jeopardy for the village. Much better to accept the coin and do their foolish bidding. Deep in the black mangroves he might easily abandon them. Many were the dangers of the waterways: an accidental bump against underwater roots, a side-to-side tip of the punt and, if they did not drown, sucked beneath the brackish waters by hidden silt, the tygers would get them. If not the tygers, then the Ssubanam themselves. Even the Shadman feared the People of the Tides.

Still, he would make his signs, standing in the stern, where the strangers could not observe him, warding against Isadon’s outrage and making apology to the People for trespass upon their sacred waters. The lesser gods would see the signs and the People, watching from concealment behind branch and bush, would see the signs also and they would know that he did not steal from the waters or the forests: his contrition would be indisputable next to the impenitence of brazen strangers.

One of them, the nearest, turned his shoulder and looked back at him now, hazel eyes catching the fire of the early morning sun. The Shadman blinked, feeling frightened and guilty, as if he had spoken his thoughts out loud. He averted his gaze and muttered incantations to himself and eventually the stranger ceased his scrutiny.

Strange bastards, Skava concluded, as she shifted her scrutiny to the groves ahead. She was not unfamiliar with the Shadmen. They were not a merry community, nor outgoing, nor interested even in food; rather, their singular idiosyncrasy was contempt of all people other than their own. Diminutive folk, timorous and uncommunicative and not above tricks and deceit, she trusted this one no further than she could toss him in the waterways. No wonder Maki was coiled with apprehension.

Alright? she asked to his back.

Maki lifted his shoulders in part-answer, the brown leather jupon flexing over his shoulder blades. Much stitched and mended, it was his favourite item and he wore it even in this humid swamp. For him it was not only a second skin, padded with linen underlayers to blunt the thrust of a dagger, but more like a talisman against ill fortune. And here they were, in the mysterious heart of misadventure and calamity. He would not be taking it off.

Sure, boss, he replied, without turning around. Just…well…don’t know this place. But I’ve heard the stories…

Oh, yes. The stories. Cruel rituals and demanding gods. The unseen denizens of the swamps made no welcomes. They tied their fetishes to the branches over the mudbanks, the sticks and bones in woven chains hanging in mute language forbidding enough to give silent caution to evil spirits and anyone mad enough to stray into these shifting wetlands of the Great Harrenam delta. The People of the Tides were an enigma and had been for generations. Though fishermen and traders might sail the placid waters north of The Gap and south across the big waves of the Chebour Ocean, none ventured more than a mile or two into the countless, ceaselessly changing estuaries of the vast mangrove forests. The only navigable course was the easternmost branch of the Harrenam, meandering south from Ssu-Am’s capital Koval, one hundred and fifty miles inland.

Long known as the floating city for its construction on colossal archaic piers over the enormous discharge of the Great Harrenam, there in the airy stone palace at Koval, Lord Racusal of Clan Ke-Wai was master of Ssu-Am and its peoples. His dominion over the Ssubanam, however, was theoretical at best. Their existence, Skava knew, was an undiscussable verity, best ignored and left well alone. Persistent rumours of human sacrifice reinforced the civilized conceit. No sane person dared these swamps nor risked the peculiar predilections of the People of the Tides.

And that gave Skava a gigantic opportunity – if she and Maki weren’t tipped overboard by this shirtless, muttering, wizened Shadman or devoured in chunks in the jaws of a dagger-toothed crocodile or punctured with poison darts by gimlet-eyed savages.

How far, d’you reckon, boss?

Skava looked at the back of Maki’s head. His brown hair was showing threads of grey. Working with her was enough to shorten anyone’s life and Maki had had a rough year, even by the standards of spies and assassins: first, that lance wound he took up in the snows in Allpo; then the imminence of all-out war; and latterly the deadly attentions of the king’s spymaster whose squad had put a poisoned arrow into Yan not more than a month gone. Yan, young, talented and indestructible, Maki’s right hand, Maki’s friend, inasmuch as a man in Maki’s line of work could have a friend. Skava reckoned anyone was replaceable, but Yan would take some beating. She would miss his indefatigable energy, ever alert, and his genius with a blade, his knowing smile and his daft devotion to horses.

But Maki would miss him more. Did miss him more. She could see it in his eyes: that hurt that would not dissipate; the loss of a comrade you were certain would outlive you. Maki was always ready to die, in Honam’s cause, in doing something important, he hoped. It was what made him so reliable. He spotted the threats because he expected the worst and prepared accordingly. He did not fear his own death, but Yan’s…well, Maki hadn’t anticipated that. A poisoned arrowhead. In the dark it might have missed; might have hit the heavy scales of Yan’s hauberk and deflected or hit Maki himself or Skava. Pure chance. The shaft with your name on it. Or the baleful intent of an unknowable god. Maki would search his soul: What should he have done? Which god had he offended or failed to propitiate?

Yes, Honam’s grand cause might keep him sane and Skava’s urgent discipline keep him focussed, but the torment of loss would not go away. He needed distraction, a fresh role in schooling a new apprentice, an eager young man or woman showing flair with blades and ambition to serve the spymaster of Honam and catch the eye of the Lord of Clan Ouine.

What better time? King Jeval assembled a huge Ta-shih army and mustered the forces of the provinces loyal to Clan Ehri. In six weeks they would be on the move, battalions of boots and hooves raising dust in the long march north to crush Honam and Clan Ouine’s allies. A young soldier and journeyman intelligencer might learn much and achieve more in times like these.

When we see the totems, Skava answered Maki at last, we’ll know we’re in the heart of their territory.

A twist of the shoulders. Maki squirmed, staring tensely it seemed at the invariant green foliage on either side as they slid through the thick blue algae strings of the waterways. Looking at it, mile after mile, how could you tell you were anywhere?

You say you know this place, boss? he asked, tamping down the mixture of dread and disbelief with a note of hope.

Mmm. I do.

And you can speak to ’em? Maki jerked his chin at the mangrove trees, surely imagining that bands of ferocious savages were following their slow navigation of the waterways. "The People?" he added, with emphasis.

Yes. I can get by in the local patois.

Right. He sounded sceptical, which, for Maki, was saying a lot. He rarely questioned her. Only when he was convinced she was about to get them both killed.

Be alright, she reassured him, in her usual way. I have a trick or two up my sleeve.

Literally. And it might even work, if the old ways still held sway here, if her arrival didn’t spook some fool Ssubanam warrior into using sharp things to poke holes in them, and if the scrawny Shadman poling them along the watercourses desisted from sly schemes to dump his passengers in the swamp. It was one thing to have no guide, but quite another to have no guide and no boat. They would not easily survive that eventuality.

Skava looked over her shoulder and up at the Shadman again. He glanced down at her, eyes swivelling sidelong whilst he nodded thin-lipped reassurance.

No fetishes yet, Skava observed, hoping to browbeat him with her knowledge.

He showed no reaction, merely chittered in the birdlike dialect of the mud-folk, By and by they come. You see.

Mmm. She kept watching him and, on a sudden thought, warned, "You go around the sacred channels, yes?"

A flicker of surprise, no more than a twitch of wrinkled nut-brown skin in one slitted eye, then he bobbed his shaggy rat-tail hair, expressionless once more, and muttered, Yes. Yes.

Skava pointed at the smooth expanse of water, hand flat in the gesture the Ssubanam would use.

Isadon protects the traveller of good heart, she intoned. The snakes bear witness…in every tree and upon the waters. It is so, yes?

Another twitch. The Shadman eased the pole forward, silent, accomplished and efficient. His rhythm had not faltered. He seemed to be thinking things through.

We respect the sacred channels, Skava pressed him, with the hidden signs, and no harm can come to travellers of good heart, yes?

Yes, came the sibilant response through the extraordinary moustache.

That is good. Skava gestured ahead, palm side-on now as if she cut through the dense, overhanging mangrove forests with her hand alone. You know the hidden signs, yes?

I know them.

"Then you tell me when you see them. And so we shall both know them. And Isadon will be content to let us pass them by."

Yes. A look of fretfulness crossed the Shadman’s unsmiling face.

How will we know the signs? Skava asked.

More head-bobbing – impatience again, and evasion.

The fetishes, he muttered, lying, Skava realized. Bones like hanging ropes, he went on, pointing vaguely at the boundless green canopies to either side. In the trees.

Slowly Skava shook her head. No, she said. "No bones. Twisted. Branches woven like snakes to mark the sacred ways. The ways of Isadon."

Skava had seen them, the signs, a very long time ago. Long roots of the mangrove trees were trained over time to curl around one another like thick ropes, then cut in four-foot lengths and suspended from the trees, invisible in the tangled forests unless you knew what to look for. They would not have changed. The People of the Tides were isolated and untouched by the Realm. The old, hallowed ways would persist. She was betting on it.

The wrinkled face closed in on itself. Only the hooded black eyes moved, side to side, alert, calculating.

Finally, at the conclusion of whatever shrewd deliberations had occupied him, the Shadman breathed out, "Ah! The sacred ways. Yes! Not the forbidden ways, where the bones of the dead are given to Isadon. There they tie the fetishes."

Skava continued to watch him over her shoulder. Crafty bastard.

"You have seen the signs, then?" the Shadman asked abruptly.

"I have seen the signs."

He nodded, his lips forming a flat line that tugged his moustache into what might have been a rueful smile.

Then we shall both know them, he acknowledged, as if they had been in full agreement all along.

Skava grunted and turned her back on him.

On the mudbank, between the dipping branches of mangroves, three tan spotted deer were standing perfectly still in the shallows, heads cocked to watch the punt with its unfamiliar human cargo slide past.

Those we can see, Skava reflected, but soon, deep among the entwined forests, the Ssubanam would be watching, signalling ahead to their fellows – invisible and intrigued.

***

Mid-afternoon and they tied up for a second stop on a sandbank where root spikes were growing up out of the silt. The punt was ideal for the waterways with its wedge-shaped prow: up the muddy shingle it went, nosing between roots, until it was firm and, with the Shadman holding it stable with his pole, Maki crept forward gingerly along the treads, bulky satchel in hand, until he was able to scramble ashore. As he settled his shortsword at his belt, his long, equine face betrayed relief and anxiety like ripples meeting on the water.

Eyes on stalks, Skava instructed as she prepared to stand up.

Maki took the hint and watched the Shadman with a suspicious stare, though it was plain he would rather be facing the dense mangrove forests behind him. Definitely not Maki’s preferred destination, this ubiquitous, creeping green forest where nothing was more than a hundred mets away and every watercourse took you around a bend to another watercourse and more mangrove trees, long roots clutching finger-like at mudbank and silt. The People of the Tides called them walking trees and it was apparent why: the roots reached out slowly as they grew and extended their height and their spread.

When Maki had a hold of the punt’s prow, Skava got her own satchel, adjusted her shortsword comfortably at her side and then stepped forward along the treads to the shore.

Behind her, the Shadman gave an abrupt hiss and Skava felt the punt reverse rapidly, sending her sprawling over the prow to collapse on top of Maki.

Bastard! she spat.

Maki was already disentangling himself as Skava rolled over and both of them plunged after the rapidly moving punt. It was no good. The Shadman was ten feet away and every strenuous jerk of his long pole pushed him back further.

Both Maki and Skava were now thigh-deep in the waterway, but the footing was soft and they sank into the silty ooze.

Back, she snapped, mindful of crocodiles and other nasty predators.

They heaved themselves up the island’s shoreline to stand dripping and muddy in the hot sun. By now the Shadman was in the centre of the waterway and poling the punt back west.

He can move fast when he wants to, Skava muttered bitterly at the retreating figure.

Maki stepped up next to her with his bow strung and an arrow nocked. Take a shot, boss?

Why not? she answered.

He took the draw and released. The arrow plunged into the waters ahead of the Shadman, who gesticulated wildly and cursed, then resumed his frenetic poling. He was nearing a bend in the watercourse.

One more, murmured Maki, the string taut at his cheek.

If he hits the bastard, Skava calculated, it would be a long swim to retrieve the punt.

This time, the shaft struck the timber stern and the Shadman capered in shock and fury before turning the bend with frantic haste.

They were alone.

Sorry, boss, Maki apologized.

Skava twitched her lips in irritation. My fault, she acknowledged. Should’ve forced him off the punt before me. Still, spilt milk and all that.

Maki was checking the tangled forest at their back, the bow held low but another arrow in readiness.

Steady, said Skava. We’re not going to fight our way out of this.

He nodded, looking unhappy. What now? he asked.

Skava stomped her way up the bank of the small island to take a seat on a thick root, but not before looking carefully for snakes. Then she removed one boot at a time and poured water and silt out of them.

Well, she responded, we’re quite literally up shit creek without a paddle – or a punt. She gestured back the way they had come. We passed some of the fetishes and the sacred signs, so they’ll be around…and they know we’re here.

Maki jerked his head up. The People? They know?

Oh yes, she murmured. They know we’re here.

So…?

So, we wait…

***

They stood in a group, four of them, warriors it appeared, in open contemplation of Skava and Maki. Their clothes were as she remembered them: buckskin trews and short kirtles or tunics, all fashioned from polished crocodile leather the colour of algae – tough material, dense enough to deflect a hardened wooden spear but also flexible so they could climb through the knotted forests and paddle their coracles. All wore their hair long, combed through with mud so that it hung dry in stiff silver strands, amulets and small feathers of blue, red and white fastened down the length. Leaning on man-high spears and staring curiously at the strangers, their outfits were like a uniform, smart as any provincial lord’s militia – if you ignored their bare feet, bizarre hair and identical pale grey eyes.

They seemed at ease. Of course, with a dozen more of them concealed in the forest, they had no need to worry or show aggression. To them, the two interlopers were like trapped deer: nowhere to run and no threat. At the moment, inquisitiveness made them unruffled, so that only their smoky eyes roved, taking in the gear that fascinated them: the steel sword pommels, metals being rare and expensive in the delta; the knives and buckles and finely crafted boots.

It was dawn. Ochre and violet in the east suffused the jade of the trees. After a long, difficult night trying to sleep above the ground in crudely rigged hammocks, using small tents from their satchels strung between branches, even with his professional discipline, Maki was not much rested. The wild screeching, twittering and glottal cries emanating from every corner of the wetlands did nothing so much as remind them that squadrons of creeping, crawling, gnashing creatures made this place their home and were partial to human flesh.

Still, he was awake now alright, standing a couple of paces away trying to keep his hands off his weapons. Skava had cautioned him on this point numerous times in the last few days.

She watched the warriors. They watched her in turn. They were intrigued by the amulet she wore at her throat, dangling in the gap of her white linen shirt. It was the length of a thumb, four willow withes bound together in a helix, the sign of the snake and of Isadon and the sacred places.

Crafted on their journey to the delta, much to Maki’s puzzlement, she had looped it around her neck during the night. It was enough to get them both killed on the spot; a statement of sacrilege and open challenge to the People of the Tides; the equivalent of going to the Temple at Cise Hook and twirling the icon of the Faith in the face of every exarch you met.

Time to talk.

She raised her arm slowly and they watched, perhaps more intent now that she had moved, but nonetheless still unperturbed. In a gradual motion, she flattened her hand, palm down and gestured in a wide sweep, as if smoothing the waters on every side.

One of them spoke. Chin up, he seemed to be censuring her, perhaps taking her greeting as an unskilled, offensive aping of their ways. Worse, she had not grasped what he said. A long time had passed since she had last heard the Ssubanam speech and he chattered quickly, hard to follow.

She raised her chin in return, signalling that she was not backing down, and tried the ritual patois she had practised from memory, We come to the People of the Tides as the light comes with the dawn.

She was speaking slowly and he understood, his chin dropping a fraction in unconcealed surprise.

The light of the dawn is welcome, he answered in a measured way and after a long moment of frowning deliberation, not the trespassers who come with it.

Skava shook her head, indicating that he had misunderstood. It was a risk. At any juncture, he might take offence and prefer killing to talking.

I do not trespass, she stated. I return again.

He looked puzzled and uneasy and fingered his hardwood spear. His three fellow warriors were all frowning now, copper-tanned faces creased with drooping uncertainty.

The lead man brought up his spear, jabbed the blackened point to indicate the amulet on Skava’s neck. Why do you…? he spat, and she was unable to follow the rest of his rapid question but guessed the import.

She put her right hand flat against her chest, just below the twisted willow withes on their leather thong. I have returned, she announced again. I seek the giver of the token.

The three warriors hissed. The leader looked affronted and angry. The spear swung up to point again, menacing this time.

Skava pressed on. "I have returned. I seek the Queen of the Tides."

Violence was in the air. All four spears were levelled now. Maki was twitching, both hands straying to weapons.

Hold… Skava muttered, and she saw out of the corner of her eye that, even reluctant, he kept his hands still.

A new voice interjected, the warriors went quiet, and from the mangrove forests a figure detached itself as if materializing from the braid of branches and bronze roots. It was a woman, identical in dress, but her hair was tied back behind her shoulders so that it hung like a heavy silver mud-dried tail down her spine. She walked nimbly and stood before Skava, looking up at her with clear cloud-grey eyes. Then she put both hands on her hips, seeming to suggest by this that she was exasperated by the course of the conversation and wished it resolved, one way or another. She was middle-aged, but more delicate and refined of features than her fellows. Standing over her, Skava felt like a giant.

For a stretch of time, no one said anything. The waters splashed sluggishly as some fish surfaced. Whistling ducks made their distinctive, high-pitched calls. The sun climbed a little and built a growing lattice of light and shadow on the open ground where Skava and Maki had made camp.

Skava awaited the inevitable question, challenge or ritual admonishment, but, when it came, it surprised her.

Why did the Mudman leave you?

A fair enquiry. It must have looked damned peculiar, the little bastard punting away furiously while Maki tried to pepper him with arrow shafts. Skava allowed a half smile to touch her lips.

He fled, she replied. He fears the People of the Tides. And he fears me. Between these two fears, his bowels were water.

A quirk of copper lips. The Ssubanam woman seemed to get the humour. Then you wish him dead? she enquired, with a practical look, as if the Shadman’s continued existence were not unlike a stone in Skava’s boot that needed shaking out.

With a moment’s rapid thought, Skava said, The Mudman’s treachery will kill him. It is foretold.

The diminutive Ssubanam woman seemed impressed by this and nodded to herself. Then she pointed at the amulet, her hand flat in the gesture of reverence that meant the waters.

Who is the gift-giver? she demanded.

Time to push; time to move things along.

Skava gave her a long, level look, then answered, The Queen of the Tides is the gift-giver.

At this, the woman shook her head, the mud-dried braids swinging behind her. You speak the words, but you say – an unintelligible utterance which Skava guessed was derogatory, while the Ssubanam went on in rapid sing-song patois. You say you have ‘returned’. Do you understand what it means for a trespasser to say ‘returned’? It is a word of holy power. You use it so lightly, like throwing a pebble into the dark waters, careless of the tyger you might disturb in the depths. It is an affront.

Angry mutterings from the four warriors greeted this speech. Assuredly, invisible weapons in the surrounding maze of roots and branches were being readied.

Skava held the woman’s smouldering gaze but said nothing, merely lifted her chin again, directing attention towards the amulet.

The stranger who returns is not you, the woman protested dismissively. The stranger who returns is one of the ancients. You are not one of the ancients. You are a man who knows the People’s legends and so you bear the amulet and speak falsehoods. Your heart is foul as the dead water places and you bring mischief like the stealer of souls.

Breathing hard, her refined oval face was pinched with virtuous indignation. She had made the accusation, but still she was uncertain, compelled by the things this interloper had spoken and the secrets he knew and his grasp of the People’s language. Skava could see it. It was the only reason they were still alive.

I have returned, she said once more. I seek the Queen of the Tides.

The woman made an abrupt cutting gesture, a warding perhaps against enchantment. Her face was like stone.

I ask you, Skava said in a gentle voice. Did we pass through the sacred channels? No. Did we catch Isadon’s fish or kill his deer? No. Did we make fire and burn the groves like the Mudmen? No.

The woman held her tongue, but the anger in her eyes had collapsed in on itself.

You call this stranger’s heart foul, Skava challenged her. Where is the People’s welcome for the stranger returned?

Still the Ssubanam could not bring herself to speak. At her back, the warriors stood like so many grim statues, motionless, perplexed by the turn of events and the astonishing words that the stranger uttered.

Must I show you the mark, demanded Skava in a louder voice, upon my flesh?

Swaying her head in indecision, the Ssubanam rocked from one foot to the other. The words of legend, passed down by the generations, had made her fearful and she was caught between disbelief and committing some awful iniquity.

Finally, she made another gesture, this one less dramatic, suggestive of regret or penitence before the snake god and a grudging concession to Skava.

I cannot ask, she said, recovering some of her deftness. By Isadon’s will.

Clever. Now no one was forcing a confrontation. The god of the waters would decide.

Skava smiled and nodded. By Isadon’s will, she echoed, I will show you his mark.

Slowly she extended her left arm, reached down with her right hand and began to roll up the linen sleeve.

The Ssubanam woman turned her head, unconsciously flinching away.

Skava pulled the sleeve to her elbow, turned her forearm and showed the scars: a criss-crossed skein of white twisting lines, multiple sword and knife wounds that made a spiral shape of curling cords from wrist to upper forearm.

The Ssubanam woman took a step back. Her eyes were locked on Skava’s arm. The blood had drained from her face, but she recovered quickly, looked straight at Skava and nodded once, chin down nearly to her chest, then spoke loudly, By Isadon’s will.

***

The tension gripped him all the time. He hated this place. The mangrove forests slid by and the sun dipped whilst the stagnant wet air made him feel like he was enclosed in a smothering canvas, inescapable, even at night. And that was when the insects swarmed, biting and crawling and keeping him restless.

He glanced at the Ssubanam, in their neat crocodile tunics, as they paddled the coracle. It was worse than the damned punt. At least that was shaped like a boat. This looked like a round basket dropped on the water, utterly unsuited to its intended function, but Maki had been surprised by how smoothly it moved through the shallow channels, expertly steered by the warriors. Two of them, kneeling upright, paddled, accompanied by three further coracles in a miniature fleet. It was evident, as he observed the crews’ dexterous handling, that such vessels could be hauled ashore and hidden in no time, their resin-covered deer-hide hulls blending seamlessly with the undergrowth. These were a people of forest shadows and silhouettes, fleetingly glimpsed, if at all, like apparitions of mist, and only if they chose to be seen.

Fingers tight on the woven frame, Maki turned his glance to the Ssubanam woman, silver mud-dried hair heavy against her back. She knelt in the same fashion as the warriors and looked only ahead, as if to gaze upon the strangers was ill-omened. Next to her, in the centre of the little rivercraft and the focal point of the entire party now, Skava knelt too, shoulder to shoulder with Maki. Both of them held their sword sheaths and belts in hand. There was very little room for bulky weapons.

Whatever had transpired in the stand-off on the island was a mystery to Maki. He could not follow the Ssubanam dialect. To his ear, the tones were wrong, the accent dense and the speech too rapid. Skava seemed to have no difficulties or, perhaps, as she claimed, she knew enough to get by and the rest was carried on her usual show of supreme confidence. It was hard to tell. Maki had long ago suspended his disbelief. The spymaster of Clan Ouine was exceptional, a woman of breathtaking conviction and brilliant judgement. By rights, he had concluded, they should both be dead, so much rotting meat for the tygers, and their bones hung by the People of the Tides from the trees, one more portent to dissuade the next foolhardy adventurer from intrusion upon the sacred waterways.

Yet, here they were, striking deeper into the baffling, shadowy heart of the vast swamp where the flooding of the great river and the unknowable sweep of the ocean tides altered the world every day. Here, unlike the cities of the Realm, there seemed to be no certainties at all.

Except one. Skava had spoken, staying the murderous intent of the People and coercing obedience. Maki knew what power her words could wield. He had heard the force of them a hundred times. But here, in this terrible place, with its savage ways, what was astounding was that they seemed to recognize her. The amulet and the trick with the forearm, revealing the tangled scars – more scars from blades than Maki bore, when he was older by fifteen years – and the Ssubanam had stood down.

Maki had muttered to her, there on the muddy shoreline as a score of warriors emerged from the mangrove forest like so many water-wraiths, Boss, what’s happening?

His heart had been in his mouth and, moments before, he had been rehearsing his moves, how to defend the two of them against the imminent attack of a horde of brutal killers. A hopeless prospect.

Then she showed the woman her scars.

Boss, are we good? he had asked again, urgent, as the Ssubanam woman bowed her head.

Calmly, Skava rolled down her sleeve and lifted her chin at him, that familiar gesture that said he should stop worrying.

All good, she had murmured and damned if she didn’t have a small smile crooking the corner of her lips.

When they gathered their weapons and satchels and set off to follow the nimble lead of their new friends, or captors – he still wasn’t sure which – he asked the question that seemed to be at the source of the bitter tension in his gut: Boss, they tell you where we’re headed?

Skava didn’t even look at him. Yes, Maki. They’re taking us to the Queen of the Tides.

An answer which did nothing to quell his anxiety.

He would have liked Yan at his side. Yan, with his sardonic half smile, confidence undimmed by anything the world threw at him. They had spent five years together in service to the master-intelligencer of Clan Ouine. You got close to a man in five years. The dangers and the loss of other comrades made the bonds stronger, even if you told yourself not to care, not to become accustomed to the humour and companionship out on the roads. You reminded yourself that five years could be gone in an instant of blood and the malice of a wilful god. Yan was gone, ashes buried in the sealed earth on the banks of the mighty Cise river. There were just the memories now, memories that tormented.

Maki felt guilty. His self-reproach had not been eased by Skava’s reassurance, there on the riverbank as they interred Yan’s ashes, that they had been fortunate to get away at all, any of them. She had looked at him, face to face, her hand gripping his shoulder so tightly that he could feel the strength of her touch long afterward. Her eyes were alight with a certitude he could not disbelieve.

They dug the small burial place under a stand of siris trees and Maki lined it with flat river stones in a nod to both the stipulations of the Faith and the practices of Kristum. For Yan’s funerary urn, the galliot rivermen had prepared an empty terracotta pot. When the pyre had collapsed and the embers were almost cold, Maki collected the remaining bone fragments and a handful of ash and placed them in the urn. Skava gave him a brass bridle ring from Yan’s mount and it seemed entirely right to include it. It was personal to who Yan was – the young man passionate about horses, not the lethal killer at war with Clan Ehri’s spymaster and the Realm’s king.

Yes, it would have been good to have Yan at his side. Instead, they coasted swiftly through the narrow tributaries and, though he was in company with a dozen People of the Tides, he felt alone. Skava, at his shoulder, was as distant from him as Yan and when, occasionally, her arm brushed his, he was troubled by how little he understood of her. The People, these savage little creatures with their unsettling grey eyes and silver hair, appeared to know her, like a legend come to life, more familiar to them than to him.

***

The palace of the Queen of the Tides floated on the placid waters of a lagoon, surrounded on all sides by the shallow expanse of creeks and inlets and the inevitable verdant green shoulders of the mangrove forests. Anchored in a way that only the Ssubanam knew, so that neither the tidal flow nor the sluggish, inexorable press of the Great Harrenam moved the solid mass one way or the other, its dimensions suggested an island; yet the disturbing ripple of passing waters and the barely perceived undulation of the structure confirmed that you were afloat. It created a disquieting effect of losing balance – intended, Skava realized, as symbolic of the queen’s role, at the boundary of both mighty river and irresistible tides, and subject to neither.

They sat outside the woven dome of the palace, no larger really than a field pavilion of one of the Realm’s lords, but in the wetlands where nothing was taller than the twenty-foot mangrove trees, the palace was substantial. It was a statement of regal authority, as impressive as the queen who sat before Skava and Maki on a throne of braided mangrove roots and regarded them with a wise, unblinking gaze. Her ankle-length shawl, a patchwork in iridescent snakeskin of blue, green, red and black, seemed just as watchful, the stripes, bands and whorls stitched ingeniously to make multiple pairs of eyes.

The journey into the heart of the delta had taken a full day. Night was falling. Now, above the hide-covered palace dome, the first stars winked their silver and gold in a cobalt firmament and, around the circumference of the float’s crisscrossed timber planks, flambeaux on tall uprights cast yellow illumination, burning a citrus resin that scattered flitting insects.

They both sat on polished stools, comfortable if not for the almost unconscious sense of precarious movement underfoot. A ring of silent, motionless guards encircled the queen and her peculiar guests, but were mere silhouettes now in the gathering gloom.

Skava did not speak and Maki had not uttered a word since their arrival amidst the hushed, quizzical scrutiny of the lagoon’s teeming inhabitants. Word had gone ahead and it seemed that thousands of the People had rushed to the lagoon to witness an event whose like was told only in legend.

In the night, those swarming onlookers who had perched on coracle, raft, tree and shoreline were invisible and unheard, gone perhaps, like a mirage of heat and troubled fears. There was no sound save the voice of the wetlands, a background murmur of forest life that was subdued by the open glittering lagoon and the soft creak of the palace afloat upon it.

The queen leaned forward and began to ask a question and, as she did so, the white sinuous snake scars on her cheeks writhed as if they too demanded answers. While the serpents squirmed, her bald head turned and appeared to fix on Maki, assessing and then dismissing before sliding back to Skava.

How shall I know thee? the queen said.

It was the old speech, accented but recognizably archaic, a language from a forgotten epoch that no one else here would comprehend. It was the first test for the interloper and a precursor, Skava guessed, to several more. The word ‘shall’ posed an added challenge. It invited simple introduction, the offer of a name, yet it also insisted on proof: How do I know you are who you claim?

I am Eslin.

It felt unnerving to say it, like she had summoned the little bitch back from oblivion to begin shrieking at her and begging to be gone, to seek safety…somewhere. But the voice in her head was absent and so the moment stretched the unpleasantness into mute self-recrimination – that she, Skava, was an impostor.

The queen, likewise, seemed unimpressed. Thou speaketh a name that is ancient, and thou weareth at thy throat the token of Isadon, and thou hast shown my captains the mark of Isadon upon thine flesh. But a clever man might know our legends and an evil man might be the Deceiver’s instrument, one who fashions yellow-eyed enchantments upon my people. She paused and the bald head moved side to side in an act of measured inspection or the weighing of possibilities. After a time, she asked again: How shall I know thee?

I have returned, Skava asserted, as I did promise. In that distant age, the Queen of the Tides did gaze upon me with a different face but the same eyes. She gaveth to me the token. We know each other.

Time and tide hath not made the Queen’s memory dim, came the curt rejoinder. Generation upon generation, we remember. Nonetheless, we have heard tell that in the other lands, where the king stands on stone and builds stone walls against the water and against his people, the Immortals are long gone. It is told that they despaired and made war, one upon the other, unto their mutual ruin.

Skava nodded slow agreement, then said, The War of Asunder, my queen, hast not ended.

It might be, came the counter, before Skava had finished speaking, that Eslin is gone. Did she, too, succumb to despair? Who sits before the Queen of the Tides, then?

An imposter, Skava said to herself. I tried to bury her but she just won’t go away.

She lifted her head and answered in a subdued voice, I have known despair. The loss of hope is a slow death, alike to the smothering embrace of the deep mud. First is rage and cursing the world for its traps. Then comes the struggle, the frenzy to win clear. But desperation exhausts you and drags you deeper. The feebleness of your limbs for a time makes you calm and, in the stillness, at last, you see your end. Then the mud creeps into your mouth and the frenzy returns. Too late.

The queen had listened with quiet attentiveness. Now she asked softly: And what wisdom hast thou learned from despair?

Skava leaned forward. She stared hard at the woman opposite, then said, straight-faced: Do not go near the mud.

There it was, the white flash of an involuntary smile and a twisting of the snake scars. Thou hast the wisdom of the People, the queen replied.

A graceful compliment. The People of the Tides were the first. First to ride the deluge. First to tame the waters. First to stand against the Deceiver…

A silence followed. The queen was considering.

Skava waited. The flambeaux jerked to an evening breeze and flung sinuous coppery light over the silent guards and the rising shadowy vault of the palace.

At last, tracing the course of Skava’s comments, the queen asked, What dost thou know of the Deceiver?

Without hesitation, Skava said, The Deceiver hath returned.

How dost thou know this? A sharp note of caution made the queen sound breathless.

The Faith, Skava said quietly, has been corrupted. And the Faith stands behind the king in the stone palace at Chisua. And the king sends his armies against the enemies of the Faith. The Immortals who might bring succour are scattered or gone…or repudiate their obligations.

How hast the Faith been corrupted?

The exarchs keep secrets, my queen, buried deep in their temple. Secrets from the ancient times. Locked and barred in the dark places of the sealed earth, none but exarchs may enter there. What use wisdom, I ask thee, if it is never shared? What use wisdom, if the exarchs employ it to crush the peoples of the world and build their malevolent empire? We have seen its like before.

Do their dreams no longer guide them? asked the queen in a tone of arch scepticism. The People of the Tides scorned dream divination.

The exarchs maketh their own dreams, my queen.

The bald head nodded. The Faith is emboldened, she confirmed, speaking abruptly in the Ssubanam patois. The exarchs come upon the ocean’s tides, single-minded in their goal to bring the Faith to the People. One, two, then three in a year. They are blind to the fetishes and the warnings upon tree and root. If they do not drown, the tygers take them. At the last flooding, two of them came south in a coracle on the spring waters, equipped with only their faith, yet crazed with thirst. My captains reviled them. Still they babbled their dreams, each holding out a caged bird like an offering to their gods. They promised protection against the Deceiver and would not turn back. Now their bones make fetishes in the forests.

Skava shook her head. They will not heed the fetishes, my queen.

This I know. The queen leaned forward and the shawl whispered with the dry voices of the snakeskins. Tell me, she demanded, snapping back into the archaic language and angry it seemed to be asking yet again, how shall I know thee?

Now came the moment of truth, the instant when Skava’s bet would pay out or get them killed.

Thou shalt know me by the three prophecies, she answered. First, it was foretold that I should return from the west and I should ask a boon of the Queen of the Tides. Second, that I should make a new prophecy. Heed these words for I make it now: that the king at Chisua shall leave his stone citadel Mera and, when he does, it shall fall. Third, thou shalt know me by the mark of Isadon – the mark upon my arm and his secret mark upon thy breast – there, beneath thy robe.

A deep silence followed the instant Skava pointed at the queen’s heart, then the old woman sighed – a sound from the back of her throat, full of relief and certitude. As the snakeskin shawl rustled and hissed, she raised her arms and announced to the sky in the common tongue of the Ssubanam, By Isadon’s will, the Immortal has returned!

A low keening began, echoing along the black borders of the lagoon, thousands of voices in chilling harmony like an unhurried animal cry. Skava felt the hairs on the nape of her neck stand. At her side, Maki was turning his head in alarm, staring blindly into the darkness on every quarter, astounded by the sheer numbers of voices surrounding them.

I had forgotten the primal power of these people, thought Skava, as the wail became an ululation back and forth across the meandering waters. She listened in amazement, thrilling to the transcendent shout of human hope and celebration. It was intoxicating. Joining body and soul with the mass of humanity under the forests, she felt exhilarated by the huge emotional charge.

Eventually, the sound stilled. During that time the queen had stood up and Skava did the same, heard Maki following her lead, and they waited for the old woman to speak.

The Queen of the Tides welcomes you, the Immortal who has returned, she declared. We remember. We remember what it means when the Immortal passes once more into the domains of the People. It signifies a time of grave peril and blood. Though we fear the grim changes wrought upon the land and the waters, we remember our pledge. It has been foretold: we shall fulfil our oath so that, in the letting of blood, hope is reborn and all things are possible. We remember.

The queen bowed her head three times and Skava matched her. Then, from behind the tangled shape of the throne, two figures walked forward, between them a man, unsteady on his feet and supported in a firm grip. White eyes rolled. He was muttering and incoherent, evidently drugged. Light from the flambeaux illuminated his features. It was the Shadman, their untrustworthy guide.

Blood is foretold, the queen chanted, and blood there must be.

One of the accompanying figures, a bald woman, nude apart from fetishes of feathers and small bones adorning throat, arms and ankles, took two steps aside, lifted a blade and bowed to the queen, to Skava and then the four points of the compass. Finally, she looked at the Shadman. He seemed at last to apprehend what fate awaited but his limbs were leaden, near paralysed from a narcotic, and only his head reeled back. Behind him, a nude man gripped the Shadman’s shoulders.

The woman stepped forward, the knife at arm’s length, parallel to the waters of the lagoon, until the blade’s edge gently kissed the Shadman’s throat.

The queen chanted again, Blood is foretold. Blood there must be. In blood, hope is reborn and all things are possible.

Glinting, the blade pressed, then extended. With wide eyes, the Shadman pulled his head away but in moments, at the severing of the main artery, blood began to gush. The bald woman stepped forward, very close, drenching herself in the hot cascade. Still held upright by the strong arms of the man behind, the Shadman sagged.

Lurching back, her body agleam with firelight reflected in the crimson gore, the bald priestess wailed to the night sky and, once more, thousands of voices took up the unnerving, rolling howl. It seemed that all of the great delta was in unison with the vast outcry.

As the sound died away, the queen looked at Skava over the corpse of the Shadman, now laid carefully across the long planks. My captain, she proclaimed, recounted that you foretold the death of the Mudman.

It is so, Skava confirmed.

He has died a death worth a hundred of his lives.

So it must be.

The queen indicated slow agreement. Then she returned to her throne and seated herself, regally erect. Without hesitation, Skava did the same.

How, asked the queen in the archaic speech, dost the battle with thine immortal enemies fare?

Skava was given pause. Somewhere, her enemies from long ago asked the very same question. Somewhere, they made their plans. And one day she would meet them again.

They are like the tygers, my queen, she responded. They watch, hidden and dangerous, and their schemes are long in the making, their approach stealthy and patient, difficult to perceive. Then they strike.

And so thou returneth to the heart of the world. Smoothly, the queen changed back into the Ssubanam patois, undoubtedly for the benefit of a concealed audience in the shadows of the palace dome: Tell us why you are here.

Skava straightened her back and spoke boldly, I seek the queen’s aid against the armies of the king.

The queen chuckled. An imprudent petition. Are the People of the Tides to stand with you inside the stone cities and die in futile conflict with the king’s soldiers in their steel skins?

A question posed for the sake of the audience, the queen’s advisors, her captains and the leaders of the clans – there, behind the throne, in the pitch night inside the palace. They would hear the answer and they would convey it to the People.

No, my queen.

No. I did not believe it. The Immortal is clever. Eslin answers with the wisdom of man and woman, in both their voices. Is this not so?

It is so. They remembered, then. They knew who she was, preserved in the tales and legends of the living and remembrance of the dead.

Yes… The queen made a sound like a serpent, then announced in a loud voice, Before the Immortal spoke the three prophecies, that is how I understood. We know each other!

Words spoken to strengthen her authority, this was a glimpse into the politics of the Ssubanam and the seething ambitions of the clan leaders. The whole conversation, from first meeting until the draw of the blade across the Shadman’s throat, had been a time of tension and hazard for the monarch of the Tides. Those at her back were sceptical. The myths were distant, the affairs of the clans immediate and pressing. Now, to their consternation, she was the queen who had welcomed the return of an Immortal.

Skava echoed her: We know each other!

The queen smiled, broad and gleaming, and the snake scars writhed in triumph. She let the moment stretch, so that the guards might see her jubilation and the clan leaders at her back might know it too. Then she asked, How must the People of the Tides aid the Immortal against the armies of the king in his stone cities?

Skava offered her own smile, as genuine as the pounding exhilaration that still flooded her veins and as real as the bloody corpse that divided the space between them.

My queen, she answered, swapping back to the archaic speech, the language of the living gods that the clan leaders could not understand. What she had to say was not for their ears – yet. My need is to bring an army through the waters of the tides, in secret, and at speed…if the Queen of the Tides will help.

The bald head moved side to side again, like a serpent about to strike. And how, she pressed Skava in the Ssubanam tongue, will our aid advantage the People upon the waters and among the walking trees?

The Archivists of the high stone temple, Skava proclaimed, recognizing that she spoke to the clan leaders and ultimately all of the Ssubanam, seek dominion in every place – in the wide lands of the Realm, on the islands of the limitless ocean, and at the headwaters of Isadon’s great river. Here, the People are safe within the bounds of the sacred waters, defended by flood, tide and tyger. Skava raised her arm, boldly gestured north. Yet the exarchs in their black robes ride the currents south, heedless of forewarning and the fate of their brothers. First one, then two, then more. They do not fear death. And why? Because the Deceiver has corrupted their hearts.

A low murmur of anguish rolled across the lagoon as her words were repeated among the invisible host.

Once, Skava continued in a loud voice, "the exarchs of the Faith devoted themselves to the preservation of wisdom. It was their sacred duty. They offered the ancients’ secrets freely and so men and women prospered and reclaimed the lands, built their dwellings, towns and places of worship on the very bones of what had been buried. The Deceiver was exiled. But the People know that power corrupts. So it was that the Archivists became blind with their power and lusted for more. The Deceiver saw this. Slyly he broke free of the chains of the in-between. Little by little, one by one, he has stolen the hearts of the exarchs. He is as you know him: silent as the tyger, patient, watchful and deadly. I have stood against the exarchs’ power and for a time their ambitions were held in check. But I cannot be everywhere. The generations pass and now they are many and I am the last Immortal who will not yield to despair.

I warn you, Queen of the Tides, that the Deceiver has suborned the king in the stone city of Chisua and all his clan leaders, including the Lord Racusal at Koval. His soldiers guard the great river, but permit the exarchs to come south to the heart of the sacred waters. More will come. The exarchs number in their thousands! Will your captains seize all of them? And if they do, will not the lord of the floating city be exhorted to send his soldiers in their metal skins? Then the sacred channels will run red with the blood of the People, the exarchs will preach their vile dreams and Lord Racusal will invite the Mudmen to your forests to burn them and make charcoal in your holy places. Remember, for I recall it well, the Mudmen were once like the Ssubanam, noble and free. Now they hack branch and root with their mudbrothers, squatting in the ashes and making dead waters of their waste and doing the bidding of the traders at Shad. And who commands the traders in charcoal? The king, of course! And who commands the king? The exarchs. And who commands the exarchs? The Archivists in their stone temple. And who commands the Archivists? The Deceiver, deep inside the black tide walls of the temple!

A tremulous moan swept back and forth through the forests. Upon her throne, the queen rested her chin in her hand, contemplative and still.