Page 70 of Of Empires and Dust

When Ella broke the water, her body urged her to gasp and drag in a lungful of air. She resisted, drawing her breath in slowly through her nostrils, only allowing her head to emerge so as to check her surroundings.

The bear was gone. Or at least, she couldn’t see it.

Tamzin tapped her on the shoulder, and Ella turned to find the woman’s head and neck free of the water’s surface, one finger pressed to her lips, her other hand wrapped around the shaft of an axe. She mouthed the words ‘stay here’, then left the cover of the rock and moved out of Ella’s sight, white mist drifting up from the river’s surface.

Ella pressed her back up against the rock, savouring the sweet taste of air, the sense of panic slowly ebbing. She drew a long, burning breath, then turned about the rock, moving against the current. She wasn’t going to sit around like some lamb waiting to be slaughtered. If that bear was still there, Tamzin would be an idiot to face it alone.

She almost leapt from her skin when she found herself staring directly into Tamzin’s eyes.

“This time I definitely told you to stay where you were.”

“You did.”

The woman stared at her, the edges of her mouth giving the slightest of turns. “It’s gone. For now. We should follow the river east for a while. It will mask our scent.”

Tamzin turned and started off towards the far bank. She climbed from the river, then pulled Ella back to dry land.

“What was that thing?” Ella asked, kneeling on the bank, water dripping from her hair and nose.

“We need to keep moving. It won’t be far.” Tamzin helped Ella to her feet and started off east along the riverbank. She continued, “It was an Angan of Clan Bjorna.”

“The Angan can travel here?”

“The Angan can do many things. They are the first children of our gods, carved from pieces of their flesh. Níthianelle is how they communicate so quickly. They travel the Warrens, sending messages from one to another, spanning great distances in short times. More than that, we may have power here, power we can learn to wield and mould and shape, but the Angan are as much part of Níthianelle as they are of the waking world. They move between both like shadows. In this world, there is no greater predator.”

“It was hunting us.”

“It was.”

“But why?”

“The Angan are bound to our gods. They are as branches to a trunk or fingers to a hand. They do not question the will of the gods nor, I believe, do they have the capacity to. The children of Bjorna, those that are left, are zealots left over from a war that died out long before our time because there weren’t enough bodies to fight it. A war in which gods killed gods, a war in whichthe blood of our people fed the land in rivers. There were once many more gods than there are now and with them many more of our kind. They didn’t all get along. The Bjorna still live that war, still hunt the remnants of what is left. It is their purpose to kill all gods but their own.”

“But there are so few of us now…” Ella trailed off, her mind lingering on the word ‘us’. She had said it without thinking.Us. “How can they keep fighting a war with their own kind with so few of us still breathing? Or are the stories all wrong? Is there a nation of us hiding somewhere, just like the elves?”

“Oh, if only the world were that simple,” Tamzin said. “No, the stories are not wrong. Exaggerated, but not wrong. I would wager there are a few hundred of us across the continent in one form or another. Maybe fewer, but not more. Many stick to the old clans, following their gods. Others have formed morecolourfulgroups, like ours. But the majority simply do not even know what they are and wander alone. But you see, Ella, if there was only one piece of shit in the world, people would kill each other to possess it. To live is to want, to want is to need, to need is to take. That is the unbreakable cycle this world finds itself in. By the time we all realise we’re just killing each other, most of us will likely be dead.”

“Well, that’s cheery.”

“It’s the truth. Take it or leave it.” Tamzin looked over her shoulder at Ella. Her eyes were a deep chestnut brown now, her pupils more human-like. “The only thing we can control is what we choose to do about it.”

“And what have you chosen to do? Besides finding helpless women who have somehow managed to what? Separate their soul from their body?”

Tamzin laughed at that. “You are far from helpless. Of that I am sure.”

Ella’s throat tightened. All she could see in her mind’s eyes were images of Rhett lying in the dirt, blood pooling, her own screams echoing. She knew what it was to be helpless. If Faenir hadn’t found her that day, her body would have lain next to Rhett’s – likely in a ditch somewhere.

“What I’ve chosen to do,” Tamzin said, noticing Ella’s silence, “is not lie down and die. I’ve chosen to fight. To live. To carry on with the hope that some day, all of this killing will mean something. When Amatkai found me, he promised me one thing – that I wouldn’t have to be scared of who I am for a moment longer. And since that day, I haven’t been.”

“Amatkai. You’ve said that name before. Who is he?”

“You will meet him. While we travel here, he makes his way to your body in the mortal plane. It is he who can help guide you through the veil.”

Ella started to answer but stopped herself when a cold breath brushed the hairs on the back of her neck. She snapped her head around and leaned back towards Tamzin. Her skin goosefleshed from head to toe, and a terror like nothing she had ever known wrapped around her heart as she stared at the face of a woman long dead.

The woman stood barely half a foot from her, dark, saturated hair clinging to her milk-pale skin. She stared at Ella with eyes of deathly grey ringed with black, the whites laced with veins of blood-red. Her dead, black lips were twisted into an unnatural grin, the corners of her mouth seemingly pinned in place.

A heartbeat passed, and Ella stood frozen like a deer, her limbs unresponsive as she stared into the woman’s eyes. She could hear Tamzin shouting something, but the woman tilted her head slowly to the right, those terrifying eyes holding Ella’s gaze, and then she let out a shrieking wail and lurched forwards.

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