Eightfold

Prologue

What Happened in the Forest

What could be done when the lord of your homeland – your leader, and your friend – murdered your closest companion in cold blood? Marley stared through the crowd towards the stage, where the body of his friend lay dead. The body of Avion Lorimer. Revenge was the word that howled through Marley’s head, as he watched the beads of blood pour with the rain. He didn’t close his mouth as the wind swept against him, out here in the city square. He didn’t part his soaked, brown hair from his eyes. He couldn’t blink, he couldn’t let himself. Not while the murderer stood right before him – right before the city folk in their masses. Men shouted and screamed, and mothers shielded their children’s eyes. Locmond, the man who stood upon the stage in blood-soaked finery, just watched them all. He didn’t blink either, nor had he when he pierced Avion through the gut. That sword stood victorious and dreadful from his corpse.

‘Monster!’ the men shouted.

‘What’s happening?’ asked those who couldn’t believe what they’d witnessed. ‘What happened?’

‘Why?’ shouted others. That word echoed most. Why!

Marley wore a thick, brown jacket around his slender form, but that didn’t stave off the chill. ‘Why, Locmond?’ he thought. His thoughts came as coldly as the rain. ‘Avion only wanted to save his son. To save his son from you. You become leader of Verdentia – ruler of the city – and this is what you do to us?’

Verdentia city was built within a forest, the buildings and bridges spanning the titan treetops. The city square was a plaza of dark and weighty wood, held high above the forest floor. It hung tethered from the countless trees in rope and metal bindings, each thick as the trees themselves. Far below, all was shrouded in fog, like this wooden square and its walkways were a raft atop tossing water. Warm, fiery lights brazed from among the foliage, and they were the only specks of warmth on a night like this. The rain thundered and the wind howled, but the sounds of the storm were silenced by the cries of the people. Hundreds of citizens, standing here in the square or watching from the walkways. Murderer! The voices grew frantic. Killer! Killer! Their shouting pierced the storm, and the ebb of fury, hatred, fear, and disgust chased away the smell of damp. A fiery, charring sensation, one Marley was keen to, and far too heated for an evening so cold.

Marley turned quickly, and peered over the square’s banister. He just barely spotted the winding, snaking walkways further down, masked in the fog. The houses and towers of wood and stone were nestled in the trees’ tall trunks. But, again, the fog hid each of their features – hid the beautiful sculptures that crowned their roofs, and hid the swirling carvings on their walls. Marley couldn’t hear their coloured, jewel-like chimes sway in the wind, but how he wished he could. He needed a distraction, from the rabid crowd all about him, and from the sight of the speaker up atop the square’s stage.

That speaker, Locmond, spoke loudly of his new and radical ideas. Right as the bloody body of Marley’s best friend lay dripping at his feet. Marley fought back sickness in his throat. It tasted so foul, like a molten, rancid medicine. At last, he wiped his eyes clear of rain, dripping from his matted brown hair and down his stubble-speckled cheeks. He turned again to face Locmond, and the lord spoke on for the crowd to hear. Loud and confident, as if the madman had the right.

‘Our city hangs amid the trees, linked and tethered tightly!’ spoke Locmond. ‘But such tethers fray, and strain, with each new wanderer to test them!’ His long grey hair did not match his youthful face, nor did his sharp eyes match the tired bags beneath them. But those murderous eyes simmered with some mad, awful purpose. ‘Our city of Verdentia is strained and over-tested in more ways than one! My good people, we must look to new means of housing our young – there remains no space for so many, in a forest that cannot grow so fast.’ He pointed to a ring of stone that stood behind him, leaning against a tree and twice as all as a man. Beside that ring, bundled in a blanket, was a child. A bare month old, he was Avion’s son. The boy Avion was killed for rushing up on stage to save.

One of Locmond’s retainers scooped the child up and cradled him in his arm. The retainer was a young man whose eyes stared without focus, distant and soulless. The way he smiled, the retainer surely hadn’t noticed the shouting crowd that promised death to his employer. That young man, with his free arm, touched the ring of stone. A great emerald light flared inside it, sudden and loud as an explosive flame. The crowd gasped. Some moved closer to their killer of a lord, but more of his retainers – men and woman with weapons sharp, smiles sharper, and gazes glass-like – blocked their path.

Locmond raised his arms, as though expecting applause. ‘There is a land far, far beyond our own, filled with people much like ourselves. Similar, but different still. Human throngs of the Human Earth. An interesting people, you’ve no doubt heard, capable of working wonders even without power such as ours in their lives. Their ways are novel, and they can handle numbers far beyond this forest’s.’

‘What is this?’ thought Marley, aghast. ‘It doesn’t make sense. What of the city’s numbers?’ He didn’t understand. Their world was more than just Verdentia’s forest – if such a thing were true, people could relocate anywhere. What did Locmond really want? What was he doing? He’d taken hold of Avion’s son and killed the man himself, but what did he want Avion’s son for? Where was he going to take him? Marley could barely think; the coldness of it all caught up with him – the blood trickling from Avion Lorimer’s body was real.

‘It is with this,’ said the confident and unfeeling lord, ‘that Verdentia’s numbers – her rife population – are an issue no longer! Our young shall be sent to the Human Earth, raised by they who can tend them, and be shown their roots at a fitting age. At an age when the differences between Human and Vulshiera begin to manifest!’

The vulshiera. They were much like humans, in so very many ways. Marley was vulshiera, as was Locmond, and everyone in the city. And they had been proud. So proud, until tonight.

The retainer near the stone ring walked through its fiery light, Avion’s son held tight in his arms.

And with that, it was done. The boy was gone. Lost.

The retainers were pushed to the limit, trying so hard to fend Verdentia’s people back. ‘Death!’ those people shouted, eyes simmering and teeth bared. ‘Death to Locmond Gattelfaust!’

Marley, at last, moved his hand from the banister. Resting against that banister was a quarterstaff – a simple, trustworthy old thing of his. He brought it along this evening, for some strange, uncomfortable feeling he couldn’t quite put his finger on. His fingers brushed against it now, before slowly curling around it. The rain and sleet drizzled down the shaft, stinging his hands.

Marley ignored the screaming crowd – he blocked their curses from his mind. Gripping the quarterstaff, staring ahead at Locmond, he knew this was the right thing to do. He, Locmond, and Avion had always been together. Long before Locmond was risen to city leader; long before Avion became a father. So what an injustice it would be, surely, to just let matters run their course, and await Locmond’s arrest. What an injustice, and a betrayal to their fallen friend in common, if Marley didn’t finish what Avion started. He’d fight the city’s lord, no matter who was watching. He’d kill him.

Only right. Only fair. ‘Just a good old bit of sport, eh?’ His thoughts had never come so coldly before. He turned his head, and saw Avion’s beloved, so tearful and furious. Townsfolk held her back, and yet she clawed towards Locmond, screaming up a storm worse than any gale. She held no weapon, but could have cut the uncaring lord to shreds.

But she wouldn’t. Marley wanted to. ‘You always loved some sport, didn’t you, Locmond?’ Marley strode through the crowd now, raising the quarterstaff high. He ran, pushing the frantic people aside. ‘See now? You’re smiling. Smiling! I’ll enjoy this too, Loc, mark my words. You betrayed us. You betrayed us all!’

The retainers’ wall broke as the crowd finally pushed them apart. Leaping up onto the stage, Marley drew on all his years’ practice as he swung the staff in a perfect arc. He earned his keep in this city, defending the people from crime – from threats. Marley knew this was no different than a day on the job, as he aimed his weapon towards the young lord. Locmond hardly had time to pull his sword from Avion’s body.

And for seventeen years, no one heard of Avion Lorimer’s vanished son. No one heard of the boy Verdentia’s people lost. Of the boy connected to the tale of their mad, senseless lord, whose motives were taken with him to the grave. No one in Verdentia heard, at least. As for the people of the Human Earth, however, they had the chance to know the boy very well indeed.

That boy’s name was Erril Lorimer.

But of course, it was never likely that Verdentia’s people would forget about young Erril. Even all these years later, they kept searching . . .

Chapter 1

Catkin and Oswin

You could notice the two from a mile away, no matter the throngs of people around them. They walked together, bunched up among those townsfolk – a river of people, cascading along the busy street.

‘Oh, forgive me,’ said sixteen-year-old Catkin, voice light as the summer sun. She turned from the woman she’d bumped into, and continued on her way. ‘I’m terribly sorry, I do apologise,’ she then said to another. It was this clumsy, bulky jacket she was wearing, bright white and fluffy as a whole flock of sheep. She continued down the street, squeezing past the people coming the other way, something like a giant snowball.

‘Catkin,’ said her only company today, Oswin Faire, ‘Not to keep bringing it up, and not to complain, but I really think we misjudged our disguises. Look what they’re all wearing,’ he said to her quietly, hinting at everyone in their summer shirts and shorts. ‘They’re looking your way, Catkin – this isn’t blending in.’ And indeed they were looking her way.

‘You’re the one they’re staring at,’ replied Catkin, tugging her jacket tighter, and throwing another loop of her red scarf around her neck. The clopping of her thick-lined boots nearly drowned out Oswin’s whisper. ‘It’s that hat of yours catching their eyes – I said it was too much, didn’t I?’ The scarf undid itself again as she swept a lock of her long blonde hair from her freckled face.

‘Nonsense,’ replied Oswin, ensuring his top hat was sitting tall and sensible atop his head. As a blue-shirted boy ran passed with an ice-cream in hand, Oswin took a look down at his long, black overcoat and trousers. Lucky – none of the ice-cream had gotten on him. ‘The hat was part of the package, and it’s no disguise if I don’t coordinate.’

‘Coordinate? Oswin, there’s no coordination in human style. You have a look at what they’re wearing: tops with colours like they’d fallen in paint; shorts with pockets at the back, ripe for pilfering; shoes that are more or less just straps – they don’t even warm your feet! If we’d worried about style, Oswin Faire, you’d have chosen the priciest things in the shop. The currency here isn’t easy to come by, and we’re on a budget.’

‘Still,’ replied Oswin, ‘I do wonder why this stuff was on sale.’

‘Now listen – Oh! Sorry!’ Catkin near-missed stepping on someone’s dog. Both the dog and its owner spared a glance at her before colliding with someone else. ‘Now listen, Oswin, we’re here for just one thing, and that isn’t a shopping spree. I’m sure these people can ward off the heat too – the light clothes are probably just traditional. Trust me, we look human through and through.’

Amid the throbbing voices, the music from the balconies, and the shouting of street vendors, she had to raise her voice a little. There was something about the summer warmth that amplified the smell, too – the scent of meat and fish, frying and sizzling; of things so sweet, being bagged, or scooped, or whipped all around them; of the perfumes and colognes of countless passersby, mingling thickly. A barrage to senses like theirs.

‘What we’re here for,’ Oswin muttered, correcting the hat atop his scraggly red hair again. ‘So where is he?’ he asked. ‘Where is Erril, anyway?’

‘He was at those terraced houses for the third morning running, so that must be where he lives. Then he went to that school, and stayed for about an hour longer than yesterday – I knew he’d forgotten something when he left without his satchel. Then he met up with those other four, as per usual. So now . . .’ Catkin raised her hand, and pointed ahead (nearly clipping an overly-close passerby as she did). ‘In there,’ she replied, sounding proud enough to suit the jacket. By the end of the street stood a wall, with just one looming ornate gate of colourful metal. ‘closed for maintenance’ read a large sign upon that gate. Beyond the wall, rides and roller-coasters gleamed bright beneath the summer sun.

Catkin dug into her pocket, and withdrew a tiny compass without letters, which pointed sharply at the wall and what lay beyond it. ‘Definitely in there,’ she affirmed, before putting the compass back, right beside a little stone flask filled with powder. ‘You’re coming back with us,’ she whispered voicelessly, peering dead ahead. ‘We’re taking you home, free from this musky, buzzing place. And they’re all going to love me for it.’

Chapter 2

A Distraction

Death faced Erril from either side. Lean to the left, and down he’d fall onto the ground all littered with bricks and glass. Lean to the right, meanwhile, and he’d be greeted by much of the same – just with a little more broken glass. Of course, if he fell from way up here, atop the tracks of a roller-coaster, it wouldn’t matter whether he hit a pile of bricks or a field of daisies. He’d be dead, and he’d save those bricks the trouble of being painted red.

Little thoughts like that, however, were good for staying focussed. He peered down at the ground beneath him, way down there, and bore witness to the gathering workmen, peering back at him as they waved their arms around. He also looked at the rides and attractions, scattered around the park either broken or rusted or both. They were all so colourful – like tiny sprinkles over tarmac.

He saw his friend, Mark, among the assembled crowd. Mark just waved, and Erril knew exactly what that meant – Mark was off to grab the workmen’s keys, now they weren’t looking. The keys to every site in the city of Guildblume that needed maintenance, be they abandoned theme parks, rotting tenements, or the caved-in caverns. Mark’s dad worked for the builders, and sure, and that meant Mark could get his friends in to all sorts of places, but not quite everywhere. Mark couldn’t just snag whatever keys he fancied, and call the city his own. Those gleaming key-chains were guarded, and that’s what Erril was here to fix. It was the simplest plan: while Mark looked for the keys, he just had to make a great distraction!

Erril lifted his gaze from the ground – all those flustering people were bringing spots to his eyes – and instead stared forward. From here, he could see Guildblume stretch out before him, the hundreds of people pouring through the streets like colourful dots. The sun lit up those sandy buildings, towering, domed, or bridged by archways. Beside them stretched the sea, and way up here, the scent of the ocean breeze was untainted by the city musk. A breeze that ruffled his dirty-blonde hair and frayed brown jacket. It was a shame they planned to reopen this place; it would be just the perfect spot for him, up high, where no one else would dare approach. He loved that sort of peace.

Anyway, the task at hand. He could do this. No different than clambering up a tree, or across the rooftops back home. He looked down again to see a truck pull up by the roller-coaster. Workmen hurried from it like ants from their hill, while one of them deployed a ladder. Coming to get him, were they?

‘That thing isn’t safe, boy!’ came a workman’s voice over a loudspeaker. ‘You wait right where you are, you hear?’

Taking a deep, cold breath, Erril considered the winding track before him. He took a step forward, and the straining metal creaked. ’Come on,’ he thought, as he took another. ‘No time for numb feet.’ And another. ‘You might just survive this, if you’re lucky!’ His thoughts were coming clearly, so that was a good sign. He started walking along the narrow track. He picked up the pace, and started to run. As the ladder stretched up higher, Erril scampered along the battered, rusted roller-coaster, the wind rattling him while his footsteps rattled the framework. The track trembled beneath his feet, and voices began to holler up from the park, as cutting as the wind through his hair.