The Seventh Tide Read online

  Jay frowned. ‘You mean you can’t remember?’

  He shuddered, and swallowed hard. ‘I can remember. But it seems it’s the nature of this place that I can’t tell somebody else what I remember. I’m not trying to be difficult – you’ll understand when it’s your turn.’

  Jay stopped so fast the others piled into her. She swung round and grabbed Adom by the front of his habit.

  ‘What do you mean, “my turn”?!’ she squawked. ‘There isn’t going to be a “my turn” I I’m here for technical advice only, remember? I’m not here to kill things. Tell him, Eo. One of you can take my turn. Look, I’ve got loads of good stuff left you can use.’ She began rummaging frantically through the pockets of her belt, spilling the contents on to the stone floor. ‘See? There’s still the Water Purifier, and the Portable Generator, or at least most of the pieces for the Generator, and the Hull Pressure Gauge –’ The thing came apart in her hands. ‘I can’t kill anything!’ she wailed. She covered her face and leaned back against a part of the wall that suddenly wasn’t there any more – and, with a shriek, she disappeared from sight.

  ‘JAY!’

  Eo already had his head stuck in the gap. ‘It’s goes down, like a slide.’ He pulled his head out. ‘To the next level, maybe. Let’s go.’

  Adom was trying to gather up Jay’s things.

  ‘Leave it!’ barked Eo. ‘There’s no time!’

  Adom hesitated, a piece of broken kit dangling from one hand.

  ‘Come ON!’ yelled Eo as he grabbed hold of Adom and threw them both head-first into the chute. The bit of wall that was already closing over the hole again almost caught their heels.

  The ride from the outer ring to the next level had taken Jay completely by surprise. She landed in a heap, winded but unhurt, in a new gallery.

  Staggering to her feet, she stumbled into the first corridor she came to, which also closed itself off behind her the moment she was inside.

  If Jay had still been lying at the bottom of the slide-tunnel when Adom and Eo arrived, they could have done her some serious damage. As it was, they slid out unimpeded and bashed into the far wall of the empty gallery in a tangle of arms, legs and colourful language.

  As they scrambled to their feet, it seemed as if a shadow passed over them, as if something had jumped across the open top of the corridor, from one wall to the next. They both crouched instinctively, but whatever it was, it was too fast for them to see.

  And whatever it was, it wasn’t them it was interested in.

  ‘It’s a fair guess it’s after Jay. We need to find a way round that.’ Eo pointed at the blank stone wall in front of them. ‘But which way from here? Your turn to choose, Adom. Right or left?’

  The gallery they were in stretched away in both directions without a discernible break.

  Adom sighed. ‘That way’ he said.

  They headed off at an anxious jog.

  The passageways and corridors all looked the same. After a while, the one Jay was in made another ninety-degree turn. With a sigh, she hurried round the corner – and skidded to an abrupt halt. There was something there that made no sense.

  It was a Guardian, standing no more than half a dozen metres away, blocking the corridor.

  The faceless, eyeless mask was turned directly towards her, but there was still that split second of uncertainty – had it, he, seen her? There was nothing to read, only the blank membrane giving no clues. She tried to locate a way out, moving only her eyes, trying not to breathe, trying not to draw attention to herself.

  Nothing.

  Part of her brain told her sternly that it was impossible for a Guardian to be there, that the thing she was seeing wasn’t real. Unfortunately, everything that had been happening to her over the last few days was also pretty thoroughly impossible, and also couldn’t be real. And she had memories – and bruises – to tell her just how real the impossible could be.

  She also had fifteen years, give or take a few when she was a baby, of being terrified of Guardians. Of Guardian authority. Of Guardians’ guns. A lot of years…

  Are you ready for your test, girl?’

  The voice burrowed straight into the fear centres of her brain, before she could even sort out the individual words or what they meant.

  What? Wait!

  But the Guardian wasn’t waiting. He was already speaking again.

  ‘As you were told –’

  Told? When was I told? I don’t remember – wasn’t I paying attention?

  ‘– you are to be tested and weighed today. Follow me.’

  He turned and walked off down the corridor, not needing to check to know that she would follow. She didn’t even hear Eo and Adom calling from somewhere else in the maze. She just whimpered and did as she was told.

  ‘Stand there.’

  They had entered a strange space. Up till then, things in the maze had been, well, organic. Obviously, rock in the wild didn’t move the way the walls did, and salt didn’t tend to flow a great deal, but still, you could certainly find stone and salt in the natural world. But here, Jay was faced with an array of objects made of what looked like synthetic fibres, steel and glass.

  The sound of the wall closing up behind her, however, was entirely stone on stone.

  On the floor in front of her was a set of large, old-fashioned scales, the kind with two hanging dishes and a fulcrum. The Guardian produced a small black weight and showed it to her.

  ‘This is what the world has had to spend on your life, so far.’

  It looked pretty insignificant, but when he placed it on one side of the scale, the dish clunked to the floor.

  Overhead, there was a tangled mess of ropes and pulleys and gantries that blocked out the stars. They were connected to a wall of square doors, all different sizes, all made of some sort of opaque glass.

  ‘Behind each door is a weighed measure, according to the value of the person described on the tags. You must find the tag which gives a fair description of your abilities, pull that rope and that particular door will open. Then we will know your value. Then we will know if you have been worth the outlay.’

  Jay peered wildly about, unable to see how the system was supposed to work.

  ‘What?’ she dithered. ‘I can’t reach…’

  Then the other ends of the ropes dropped down in a line, right in front of her face. Each had a label attached to it, with words printed on it.

  Jay stepped closer to one, squinting at the writing. ‘Athlete and mathematical genius, D-class,’ she murmured.

  ‘You have begun,’ the Guardian rasped. ‘Fifty-five seconds remaining.’

  ‘WHAT?! No, wait! I was just…’

  The Guardian paid no attention. He was focused on the timing device he held in one grey-gauntleted hand.

  Jay dropped the tag and grabbed another, and then another, searching desperately for one that described her.

  Musician and hydroponicist, D-class

  RD-class epistemologist

  Engineer and plankonologist, D-class

  ‘No… no… no…’

  She worked her way along the line, becoming more and more frantic with each unsuccessful match.

  ‘Ten seconds.’ The Guardian’s voice cut across her panicked brain like a whip.

  Computational cartographer, RD-class

  D-class physicist and animator

  She grabbed hold of the final rope. The tag said just one thing: O-class. Nothing more.

  ‘I must have missed it!’ she muttered, looking wildly back along the line, then down at the tag in her hand again. ‘This can’t be it?!’

  The Guardian looked up from his timing device.

  ‘Time’s –’

  With a despairing wail, Jay pulled the last rope.

  ‘– up.’

  The elaborate pulley system lurched and one of the doors, a small one on the left-hand side, flipped open. A dribble of tiny shells spurted out and, making an incongruous tinkling sound, trickled down to the scales. As the shells dr
opped into the container, Jay stared hopelessly at the other half of the scale.

  It didn’t budge, not even when the Guardian walked over, fastidiously retrieved one final minuscule bit of mollusc and dropped it into the dish.

  And that’s the best you can do,’ he said. It wasn’t a question.

  Jay threw herself into a frenzy of rechecking all the labels on all the ropes, but nothing had changed. The tags slipped through her fingers. She just stood there, head drooping, defeated.

  Which is when the little packet of leaves flew over the wall, landed on the rock floor and burst. Immediately the chamber was filled with a pungent, overpowering scent that made the Guardian snort and choke. There was a moment of displacement in Jay’s mind and then the memory clicked into place: Love’s Truth, and Circe’s cool, considering voice. I thought you might be unusual, but after all… just arrogant and ignorant… never push hard enough to find out…

  And suddenly it was all too much. Too much scorn and being dismissed and deemed valueless and a waste of space. If there hadn’t been all that from Circe, the Guardian’s weighing and testing would have got it just right, just the right amount of dis, but coming on top of what the Fifth Tide had given her… inside herself she hit a wall – and rebounded.

  ‘I’ll show you? she sobbed, breathing in the scent and watching as Circe’s face floated before her eyes. ‘You said I’d never push hard enough. Maybe, maybe not, but you just watch me pull!’

  She lunged along the line, grabbing hold of every rope at once and, throwing her whole weight into it, heaved. The Guardian, caught completely off-guard, took a moment to realize what she was doing. When he did, he screamed and turned to run, but it was too late. Every door in the place flew open and an avalanche of shells thundered out. The weighing scales were smashed. The Guardian was swept up and slammed against the far wall. His shrieking stopped abruptly. The shells pounded relentlessly, without letting up for an instant, battering him and burying him at the same time.

  Some instinct tightened Jay’s grip on the ropes as the tidal wave of shells knocked her feet from under her and laid her out horizontally, like a windsock in a force-ten gale. The noise was deafening and the power of the river without water threatened at every second to sweep her away but she held on. Grimly. Triumphantly.

  Out in the corridors, Adom was having a difficult time. They’d taken every turn that seemed to head in the right direction, until Eo said suddenly, ‘Stop.’ Just like that. No more. He’d not said why, or for how long. He’d just stood there, staring at the wall in front of them and fiddling with his hair in a weird way. Then he’d rummaged in his bag for a moment, pulled something out – and chucked it over the wall!

  Jay was gone. Eo was acting like a madman, and… and…

  ‘What’s that noise?’ It was Eo asking. He looked back to normal, as far as Adom could tell. ‘Is it another river of salt?’

  Adom’s heart lurched, even as he shook his head. ‘No. No, it sounds like something different. Something dinkier?’

  The wall beside him split and an avalanche of tiny shells exploded through, slamming into the opposite wall and then surging away down the corridor. They caught a brief glimpse of something mangled and battered in the midst of it all before the river swept it round a corner and out of sight. For one horrible moment, they thought it might have been Jay – until she appeared, safe and sound, surfing the shell tide feet-first.

  ‘Grab hold!’ she gargled, flailing her arms about wildly, and they snatched at her hands and hauled her in like a great fish.

  They ended up in a huddle on the floor, too relieved at being together again to do anything else. Then Adom frowned.

  ‘Was that a…’ he began, then swallowed hard. ‘There was a thing got swept off that way and we were scared it was you. Was that a Kelpie too?’

  Jay nodded. ‘But how are they finding us?’ she panted. ‘This place is huge, so how do they know just exactly where we are all the time?’

  ‘Smell,’ said Eo. ‘They can smell souls.’

  ‘Don’t be revolting,’ she snorted. ‘My soul doesn’t smell, thank you very much!’

  The river of shells showed no sign of slowing down. It seemed quite settled in its new bed, but this was a place of change, so as soon as they’d caught their breath, the three moved off in the opposite direction.

  They’d seen what a river with no water could do.

  Eo was in the lead when they found the stairs.

  ‘This beats the last time!’ said Jay as they trotted sedately down.

  ‘Yeah, maybe this is where things start getting easier!’ said Eo.

  No one bothered to comment. Nevertheless, the next part of their journey passed without incident. That didn’t mean they weren’t all as edgy as cats, startling at imagined dangers at every turn. But as they worked their way further and further through the final level, it was hard not to let the tiniest flicker of hope begin…

  … which was, of course, the moment the maze changed again.

  Adom and Jay were a few paces ahead when it happened, but this time, when it was over, the three could still see each other. Instead of a wall dividing them, this time it was another river. And a wall of sound.

  The river looked like sand, and if they had known any of the noises moving sand can make in a desert, they would have said it sounded like sand as well. A broad river of glittering sand running from under one wall, cutting across the corridor they were in and disappearing again under the opposite wall.

  ‘Can he jump it?’ shouted Jay, looking over at Eo.

  ‘No. And we have no idea how deep it could be. Or what would happen if he touched any of it,’ Adom yelled back at her.

  Eo seemed to have come to the same conclusions. He shrugged resignedly across at them and then acted out a mime of ‘I’ll go this way, you go that way, and if you keep turning right, and I keep turning left, we should be able to meet up again.’

  As the others waved ruefully and turned away, Eo sighed and headed back the way they had come. They’d passed a corridor leading off to the left not too long before and he wondered if it was still there.

  It was. He followed it for a time before another left turn presented itself. Now, with any luck, he and the others might be moving towards each other again. The thought quickened his steps and he jogged along the passageway at a brisk pace, until he had to stop. The corridor had come to an end and there, in the wall, was a door…

  … or not. One minute it was there and the next it was blank stone again. As Eo moved closer, however, the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t act slowed down and stopped. He hesitated, and then put out a hand to the handle, wary of being bitten or burned or electrocuted… but nothing happened. It was just a handle. He turned it and the door swung inwards. Eo let out his breath in a whoosh, and stepped forward into what could only be described as a room. (At which point, the door behind him flicked out of sight again.)

  Unlike the other spaces they’d been in in the mazes, this one had a ceiling. Instead of the starlight he’d become used to, the place was lit by the same flat white phosphorescence they’d come across in the entrance tunnel. It was a good size and all along three sides of it there were more doors that appeared and then disappeared in an irregular pattern. Only the fourth wall, directly facing Eo, behaved in anything like a normal fashion. It just stood there, with two doors in it, side by side. They weren’t moving at all. Weirdly, that made them seem much more significant.

  Suddenly, Jay arrived through one of the other on–off doors.

  ‘Adom?’ she quavered, looking over her shoulder, but the door had already vanished. Then she saw Eo. ‘There you are!’ She rushed over to him. ‘Come on, let’s go. If we hurry we can catch up with him! My turn to choose –’ She swung round wildly and caught sight of the non-moving doors. ‘That’ll do,’ she grunted and started forward, grabbing Eo by the sleeve.

  ‘NO!’

  She stopped and stared at him. ‘Why not?’ she said.

  She se
emed so honestly amazed that Eo had a lurch of doubt. Then he looked at the two doors and was sure again.

  ‘The two doors are important,’ he said firmly.

  ‘How important?’ Jay almost wailed. ‘We’re wasting time!’

  ‘Can’t you see it? They’re not just a couple more doors. They’re, what’s the word – mythic!’

  ‘Mythic. Right,’ said Jay. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Can’t you see it?’ asked Eo again.

  ‘No! No, I can’t, and can’t you see?! There hasn’t been a mythic moment in the whole thing! Can’t you see it’s all been random?! Stuff just happens! And the thing I want to have happen now is we find Adom.’

  Eo didn’t answer. He just stood there, looking sullen.

  She tried again. ‘It’s not your fault, you know,’ she said. ‘None of it, not any of it, start to finish. All the stuff with the moon and the tide and the thin places between the worlds – something weird was going to happen. You didn’t make any difference.’

  Eo stared at her. Hadn’t she understood at all?!

  ‘Jay, haven’t you been paying attention?’ He tried to explain. ‘If I can’t find the way to mend the Dry Heart, then everything will stay the way it is now – at the turn, at Samhainn, at eclipse, with the walls between the worlds permanently at their thinnest and the rip I made unhealed. The Kelpies will come, and they will suck the G world dry. And that could be only the beginning. That could be all they need to make them strong enough to break into another world and then another. I don’t know – but it’ll be my fault too if they do. It’s my responsibility. Not yours. Not Adom’s. Mine.’

  ‘I can’t believe that’s right,’ she exclaimed impatiently. ‘It’s not fair! Some stupid little thing, you hardly notice it, and then you turn around, and bingo! Armageddon. It’s hardly cause and effect, is it? Anyway, if it’s anybody’s fault, I think it’s the Kelpies’.’

  ‘How do you make that out?’ Eo wondered why he was sounding so defensive. Why he was feeling so defensive, as if he wanted it all to be his fault!

  ‘Well, if there weren’t any Kelpies, then it wouldn’t matter what you did.’ She smiled brightly at him. ‘Oh, let’s stop talking about it. Let’s just go. That door looks good.’ She pointed at random at one of the non-moving doors.