CHAPTER 1
Five years later
The dawn bells of the Golden Tower of the Perpetual Morning were loud enough to make the ears ring, loud enough to wake the dead. They had to be, since it was vitally important that every Sleepless currently inhabiting the monastery was absolutely, thoroughly awake.
And, all at once, Artair was.
He awoke as he always did, sitting upright in a chair in front of the small, barred window of his cell, with no memory of sitting there or even moving the chair. The other one had done that. The clay cup that Artair used to drink water and tea had been smashed, shards lying on the floor. From the damp patch on the plaster wall, he guessed the other one had thrown it in one of his wild moments of rage.
Grimacing at the familiar ache in his back—just once, he’d like for the other one to have spent the night in the narrow bed instead of pacing the room or sitting in the chair—Artair stood up, stretched, and washed his face in the basin of cold water. He’d been waking at dawn since he was a child, and he was used to the punishing schedule of the Golden Tower. Even so, he glanced longingly at the bed with its undisturbed blankets and pillow. Perhaps he could just lay down for a few moments, resting until Brother Benzin came to do the morning checks … But laying down and resting was forbidden to the Sleepless outside of authorized hours. There was always a chance, after all, that he would forget himself and start to doze, and then the other one would come forward. If that happened, there was no predicting what he might do.
Never very far away, a dark memory flickered in the back of his mind: the choking smell of smoke, the taste of burning flesh in the air … Artair splashed more cold water on his face to banish the thoughts.
‘The foundation of the tower is vigilance,’ he murmured.
There was a tiny mirror over the water basin, warped by the years and slightly discoloured in one corner. Artair looked into it, searching his face for signs of the Other, as he did most mornings. It seemed impossible that just moments ago someone else had been looking out of his brown eyes—that some other intelligence had moved his mouth and made it smile, or frown, or shout. His face remained familiar: long straight nose, sharp jawline, the narrow slash of a scar that cut through his right eyebrow—not the result of the other one’s violence, that, but an accident with the wooden staffs the novices trained with each afternoon. Brown eyes looked back at him, full of their usual uneasy combination of curiosity and determination. His dark hair was wild and tangled, as though the Other had spent the night tugging his hands through it, but that could be fixed with a comb and a brush. At least the Other hadn’t been pulling it out, as he had on other occasions.
‘Morning, Artair!’ Brother Benzin’s face appeared at the small aperture in the door. He was a gentle, florid man with a grey beard, the white robes of his order always marked with grass stains. When possible, Benzin preferred to be working in the gardens. ‘Are you with us?’
Artair presented himself in front of the door to recite that day’s line of poetry. Every day they were given a new one, so that the brothers and sisters of the monastery could be sure of who they were dealing with.
‘The silver fish flits where it will. The badger digs deep under the hill.’
‘Yes, yes, fine.’ There was a rattle at the door as Benzin unlocked it with the keys he kept on a ring at his belt. ‘A little simplistic for my tastes, but Sister Rosea has ordered in a new book of poems from a shop in Addersport and I’m afraid she’s quite taken with it.’ The door swung open, and Brother Benzin stood to one side. ‘Brace yourself for many more stirring uses of cat and bat, or, the Twelve save us, river and slither. Goodness, look at the state of your hair. I assume we had a rough night?’
Artair knew it wasn’t a real question. After all, how could he know what the Other got up to? But he felt his cheeks flush anyway.
‘Was there any noise from my cell?’
Brother Benzin shrugged, then patted Artair on the shoulder fondly. ‘There is noise from every cell every night, my young friend. Don’t let it play on your mind. After your morning meditations and exercises, I will want your help out in the orchards. Is that alright?’
When Benzin had left to continue his circuit of all the cells in the tower, Artair ducked back into his chamber, wet his comb, and spent some minutes trying to tame his hair. There was a shadow of stubble on his jaw, but not enough yet to go to Sister Rosea for a shave—sharp blades were expressly forbidden in the cells of the Sleepless. When he’d done all he could to make himself presentable, he paused to sweep up the remains of the broken cup, depositing the shards on the small wooden table in the corner of the room. It was only then that he saw that one of the sharp pieces of clay had been used to carve a message into the tabletop. The words were jagged and rough, as though the author had had only minutes to carve it and not an entire night.
LET ME OUT
‘Never,’ he said. He rubbed his fingers across the carved words, thinking: my hands did this. ‘I’ll never let you out.’
CHAPTER 2
Elver broke the green ice on the top of the pond with her bare foot, savouring the brittle crack as she sank in up to her ankles. There had been a cold snap overnight and in this deepest, darkest part of the Jih Forest rarely a day passed without something freezing. She waded in deeper, letting the frigid black water envelop her up to her chest. Since the Queen of Serpents had swapped out her blood for poison when she was a child, cold water did not particularly bother her. She was jih now, a monster spirit in the forest of monsters, and the natural world could offer up very little to cause her discomfort. In the middle of the pond, which was one of the smaller, hidden watery places of the forest, there was a ragged island made of reeds, and mud, and stunted weeping willows. She headed towards it slowly, not wanting to startle its residents, but they were even more attuned to the forest than she was. She’d made it less than halfway when a bristly head stuck up out of a thicket of reeds. Large eyes flashed with blue-green light, briefly illuminating the island.
‘Hey, it’s only me,’ Elver called softly. ‘Just come to see how the cubs are getting on. I’ve brought treats!’ She raised the bag she held in one hand, and the watching creature made a low whistling noise of satisfaction.
Seen only in silhouette, the keltraxia looked a little like oversized foxes, with their long snouts and bushy tails, but seen up close, their bodies were covered in tiny blue scales, except where they sprouted red and orange feathers. Their ears, covered in these feathers, looked like little bursts of flame, giving them the name by which humans knew them: fire-listeners. Elver thought the human name was stupid. The Queen of Serpents had told her the true names of all the jih spirits in the forest.
* * *
In the water around her, Elver could sense the movement of other things: frogs and fish and water snakes, but jih spirit creatures too, things with which she shared a kin-bond. Something with silver gossamer fins and eight red eyes brushed against her leg and was gone in an instant. Elver held the bag a little higher and continued.
The edge of the island was ringed with thick black mud, which Elver gamely stomped through until she was on what could charitably be called dry land. Just beyond the wall of reeds, mosses, and heather, she could see a large nest of mud and sticks, and standing over it, the keltraxia vixen. The creature opened her mouth, letting her tongue scent the air, and the long scarlet feathers on her ears flickered open like a bird taking flight.
‘You can smell these from the other side of the forest, I’m sure.’ Elver placed the bag on the ground by the nest and opened it up so the vixen could get her snout inside. Green Lady snails were only found in the far west of the forest, and knowing how much the keltraxia enjoyed them, Elver always made certain to collect a big bagful whenever she was near. While the vixen munched and snorted her way through the bag, Elver carefully peeked over the edge of the nest. Inside was one as yet unhatched egg, and three healthy-looking keltraxia cubs. Only recently hatched, they still had more feathers than scales, but their eyes were open and glowing with a softer version of the light their mother displayed. Elver reached a hand down to them. The nearest stuck his snout into her palm and licked it with a rough tongue.
‘They’re doing well.’ She looked again at the egg and felt a little of her good mood slip away. ‘Shouldn’t that have hatched by now?’
The vixen turned to regard her, the fiery feathers on her ears lowered.
Not that one, the keltraxia said in the voice only Elver could hear. She is still and cold, and did not have the strength to break the shell.
Elver nodded. She understood—not everything that lived in the wood thrived—but it seemed unfair. From the southern slopes of the forest, on the foothills that marked the beginning of the mountains, it was possible to see the roads that led to Addersport, and on them there passed a steady stream of human life: travellers, traders, wanderers. They came with carts and caravans, on single horses or on foot. There seemed to be no end of human life souring the world, yet this one little keltraxia cub had not had the chance to live.
We will eat it, the vixen continued. When the others are old enough to stomach it.
Elver grimaced. She rubbed her hands through her hair—bone white since the Queen of the Serpents had bitten her—and stepped away from the nest. The vixen came closer and briefly laid her head on top of Elver’s; a greeting between kin.
The snails are tasty, she said. Thank you, human-sister.
‘Not human any more,’ said Elver. ‘But you’re welcome, my friend.’
* * *
Elver made her own home by another source of water: the great Serpent Lake that nestled in the centre of the Jih Forest. She had found an abandoned hunter’s hut at the edge of the treeline, and over the years had transformed it into a place she could shelter. There was a bed of fur and feathers, donated by the kindly, lumbering forms of the kartesh, monsters with the stocky, furry bodies of bears and the avian faces of owls; there was a mirror, brought to her by a roch, a vast bird with four fiery wings. On a single shelf there was her beloved collection of books, stolen from travellers or found and brought to her by the other jih spirits of the forest—they knew that their sister had a fondness for the human habit of reading. From the lake, she caught fish, and washed herself, and drank, and every now and then she would find messages from the Queen of Serpents. On rare occasions, the god herself would appear, a huge golden shape coiling through the green water. Elver was not a mage—the Queen of Serpents had none—so she could not call the god to her or ask it for a boon, but as a jih spirit she was one of the Queen’s own, and consequently, the god liked to visit. Elver had the vague sense the god had taken a special interest in her since saving her from being sacrificed in Addersport. The idea made her uneasy, as though it were all part of some larger painting, of which she could see only a tiny corner. But she knew the Queen had brought her back from death while the people of Addersport had been all too eager to see a child thrown into the sea to save their own hides, and that was more than enough to earn Elver’s loyalty. She thought then, as she often did, of the red-haired mage who had sacrificed her to a hungry god. Humans were duplicitous, selfish and bloodthirsty. The jih were all the company she needed now.
It was an hour’s walk back to the Serpent Lake from the keltraxia nest. Elver moved through the forest like a creature that had been born there, slipping through the undergrowth silently, noting the signs and marks and songs of the birds and small animals. She paused at the edge of a stream as a platynus passed by, a vast monster whose reptilian head cleared the tallest treetops in the canopy. Elver could see only its enormous flank, muscles as big as tree trunks clenching and releasing under leathery purple and yellow skin.
When she arrived at the lake, she stripped off her clothes—scavenged or crafted by her own hand—and washed quickly in the water, cleaning the black mud off her feet. When she was dry and clothed again, she headed towards her ramshackle home, thinking to fetch her fishing spear and catch something for that night’s supper. If there were plenty of fish about, she could start putting some by for the long winter that was beginning to breathe its cold air on the back of her neck.
But as she was picking up the spear she caught the scent of something acrid and sour against her tongue.
Woodsmoke. A human fire started with a splash of something else—oil, perhaps. Elver turned and saw, on the far side of the lake, a point of buttery yellow light, and a thin line of black smoke that poked above the tops of the trees. There was a figure there, sitting by the campfire, its head down as it looked at something in its lap.
‘Intruder.’
Elver felt the poison in her blood churn. A filthy human, here, in this place that was her home.
She left the spear by the hut and instead retrieved her knife, which she pushed through her belt. Rather than following the edge of the lake around, she went back beyond the treeline, circling until she could see the human framed against the green water of the lake. It was a woman in her middle age, her limbs long and rangy, and she wore a wide-brimmed hat. There was a sword, still in its scabbard, lying on the sandy ground by her feet. The interloper’s hair was short, and from her vantage point Elver could see the bare skin on the back of her neck. All it would take was her cold, pale hand pressed to that section of skin, and the woman would quickly regret ever coming into the Jih Forest …
But that wasn’t enough.
Elver stepped out of the treeline, letting her feet crunch over the autumnal leaf litter, and watched with satisfaction as the human woman startled and turned, her eyes wide. She pictured what the woman was seeing: an alarmingly pale girl of seventeen years with a shock of white hair and yellow eyes, a line of blueish scars marking her neck and shoulder and arm—the places where the Queen of Serpents had bitten her. A monster-girl dressed in leather and bone and feather, with a knife in her hand. Of course, she wouldn’t know that the knife was the last thing she had to worry about.
‘Who are you?’ Curiously, the woman did not reach for her sword.
‘I am the guardian of this forest.’ Elver walked towards the woman boldly. It made her heart thunder in her chest, to be this close to a human. ‘And you aren’t welcome.’
The woman stood up slowly. On the ground behind her there was a well-used bedroll, and a battered tin cup filled with soup.
‘I’ve heard of you,’ the woman said. ‘The ghost of a girl is supposed to haunt this place. But you’re no spirit. Are you living out here by yourself? How are you alive?’
Elver laughed. ‘This is my home. Nothing here will harm me. But you? You’ve made a very serious mistake, human.’
‘Listen.’ The woman raised her hands slowly, palms facing out. ‘I’m just a traveller. Passing on through this place on my way somewhere else. There’s no need—’
‘You thought you could just pass through the forest of the jih?’ Elver grinned, and for the first time the woman looked truly unsettled. ‘Humans, you think that everything is a road for you to walk on. That everything deserves to be beneath your feet. A dung beetle has more sense than you.’
‘Now then.’ The woman scowled. ‘I’ll not have such attitude off a scrap of a thing like you. You’ve gone mad, living out here by yourself.’ Incredibly, she took a step forward, reaching out as though to bring Elver towards the fire. ‘You need some hot meals inside you, a bloody good bath, and then maybe you’ll know to speak to your elders with some respect.’
‘It’s you who needs to show some respect.’ Elver took the woman’s arm and pressed the flat of her hand against her skin. The woman jumped as though she’d been bitten, the hat falling off of her head with the force of it, and she gave a little shriek. Elver saw the shape of her own handprint on the woman’s arm, the skin already blistering, and then the woman folded to her knees, falling down next to her own campfire. Her eyes had rolled up to expose the whites.
‘I told you. Idiot human. Talking to me like I’m some lost child. The monster forest is my home.’
Elver knelt to feel for the interloper’s pulse. It was there, light and fast. When she took her hand away, there were two more livid marks on the woman’s skin in the shape of her fingertips. She wiped her hand on the back of her trousers. Touching humans made her feel dirty, but even worse was the painful curiosity it roused in her. What would it be like to touch a human safely? What did skin feel like when the person you touched didn’t recoil in pain and horror? The memory of that sensation had long been lost to her. You’re not human any more, she told herself fiercely. And you never will be.
‘You’re not dead,’ she told the unconscious woman. ‘Which is more than you deserve.’
It would be easy to end it, though. A longer touch from her poison skin should do it, or if she didn’t mind making a mess, her knife would do the job. Elver looked up to see another of the forest’s monster inhabitants peering at her from the treeline. Slowjorns were some of the more talkative of the jih spirits, and she knew this one well.
Greetings, forest guardian. One of your kind?
Elver felt heat prickle across the back of her neck, but she swallowed down the annoyance like a sharp stone.
‘No, not my kind at all. Since you’re here though, will you do me a favour?’
The slowjorn crept forward. Out of the shadows, it looked like a human-sized bipedal snail, its limbs tentatively picking their way across the ground. The bulbous shell on its back was formed of a great spiral.
Perhaps. The antennae on its head expanded curiously, questing towards the body on the ground.
‘Drag this idiot back towards the road. You don’t have to go near it, just get close enough that she’ll see where she has to go when she wakes up.’ Elver smiled, imagining the look on the woman’s face if she woke up during the journey and saw what had a sticky tendril around her ankle. And of course there were lots of dangers in the Jih Forest. She might not make it to the road at all. ‘Don’t worry too much about bumping her over brambles and puddles. She needs to learn not to ever come back here.’
When the slowjorn had gone, dragging the human behind it like a sack of bones, Elver picked over the traveller’s possessions. She drank the cold soup, savouring the taste of herbs and spices from outside the forest, and took a notebook with a few empty pages left from the fallen pack—there had been books in the orphanage, and they were one of the few things she truly missed. This one looked as though it had been used to keep track of the woman’s travels; there were notes on Addersport, a town called Tarflin she had never heard of, and a detailed section on a mage dedicated to the god Tisk. There wasn’t much else, but the sword was decent enough and had a sharp edge. Elver took it back with her to the other side of the lake.
CHAPTER 3
The monastery clung to the side of the mountain like a cluster of oyster mushrooms on a tree. From its walls it was possible to see the Jih Forest spreading away across the foothills below, a dense carpet of trees that at this time of the year burned yellow and orange and red—and beyond that there was the ever-shifting sparkle of the sea. Between the two lay Addersport, hidden by the rise and fall of the land, the only clues to its existence the trails of smoke that rose from its industrious buildings, and the steady arrival and departure of ships of all types. The monastery itself grew out from the central tower, where the Sleepless were housed during the night; buildings with green and blue tiled roofs crowded around it like children around a nursemaid. Behind its sea-facing walls, there was an interior garden so sheltered from the mountain weather that the monks and their charges grew most of the things they consumed there, from apples and cabbages to herbs and medicines.
Artair liked to look at the view as he made his way from the meditation hall to the garden, peering out of the many tiny windows that marked the corridor. If he ignored the bustle of activity that gave away the existence of Addersport, it was easy to pretend that the Golden Tower was all alone in the world; there was just the mountains, the forest, and sea, with no people to make things complicated. If the world was empty beyond the monastery, then it would be safe for him—for all the Sleepless—to leave the tower behind.
But it would never be safe. As long as the Other dwelt within him, he was dangerous. And thinking about the world beyond was dangerous too. Brother Elthem believed that such thoughts of freedom originated with the dark spirit, because what the dark spirits wanted, more than anything, was to get out into the wider world so they could cause chaos. The monks taught them to keep their minds and their bodies occupied—with meditation, physical training, and simple chores.
Vigilance, thought Artair.
Down in the orchard the apples were ready to drop, and Artair spent much of the day with some of the younger novices, picking the fruits and carting them away in crates to the monastery kitchens or the cold cellars dug into the raw rock of the mountain. In the afternoon, the monks gave them a couple of hours of leisure time, so they went to the natural spring at the edge of the gardens. Over thousands of years it had carved a small pool into the rock, fed by a bubbling waterfall. It was a good place to sit and talk with their bare feet dangling in the freezing water. To be Sleepless was to be constantly seeking ways to stay awake.
‘My parents say they will visit after the next harvest,’ said Reah. She had arrived at the monastery only six months ago. She looked down as she spoke, apparently examining the freckles on the backs of her hands. ‘Which isn’t so long now. But…’ Reah shifted on the grass, her posture awkward and stiff. ‘I can’t believe I’m not there with them, helping them with it. That I’m going to be stuck in this place…’
She didn’t say it, but Artair could hear the word in her silence anyway. Forever. Stuck in this place forever.
‘It’s harder for you,’ said Chessun, in a matter-of-fact tone. He was one of the older novices, a broad lad with sunny blond curls. ‘Most of us found out we were Sleepless when we were little. How old are you? Fourteen? Fifteen?’
Reah frowned at him. ‘Fourteen.’
Chessun shrugged. ‘There you are then. You were too used to having a normal life. Didn’t know you had a monster creeping around inside you. Now you’re wondering why you can’t just wander into town and buy a loaf of bread, or sleep in a room that doesn’t lock from the outside. It’s a rude wotsit. Awakening.’
‘It will get better,’ said Artair. He remembered being brought to the monastery five years ago, and the sense of dislocation that came with it. ‘You’ll get used to the place. The monks keep us busy. And we can go where we want in the gardens.’
‘At home, our farm was twenty acres,’ said Reah sulkily. ‘I could catch a cart to Addersport if I wanted to. I used to go and look at the markets. I’d save up my money to go.’
‘At least you don’t need money here,’ said Artair.
‘I didn’t even do anything bad, not really,’ Reah continued obliviously. ‘Nothing permanent, anyway. I can’t believe my parents would do this.’ Her voice wobbled and she looked away from the rest of them, keen to hide the expression on her face. ‘That they’d just leave me in this place. In a prison.’
‘You didn’t do it,’ said Artair.
‘What?’ Reah looked at him. Her eyes were too bright, only moments away from spilling tears.
‘Whatever it was that happened, it wasn’t you.’ Artair gave her a smile. Reah was only three years younger than him, but in that moment she looked painfully young. ‘The evil spirit inside you, the thing that comes out when you give into sleep. That’s what did those things, not you. We can’t control the spirit that waits inside us, but we do what we can to limit the damage it causes. By living here, in the Golden Tower, away from the world.’ He thought of the view from the monastery windows, that open sea that could lead to anywhere, and he felt a dull ache in his chest. But close on the heels of that thought was the memory of what had happened when the Other had first shown itself. Smoke and blood and ruin. ‘It’s safer for everyone this way.’
‘I know it wasn’t me,’ said Reah, although she didn’t sound certain. It was, Artair knew, one of the hardest lessons of the Golden Tower—that the Other was something separate, something evil, even though it lurked under your own skin. Even now, after five years in the monastery, Artair still carried the queasy guilt of what the Other had done.
Chessun chuckled. ‘You sound just like Brother Benzin, Artair. Come on, the sun is still out and I’m sticky with apple juice.’ He stood up in the freezing stream and waded out deeper into the water, soaking the bottoms of his rolled-up trousers. All the novices wore soft white trousers and yellow shirts, with a mustard-coloured half robe over the top. This last he pulled up over his head to make a rough hood. Artair laughed.
‘Thank you,’ Reah said quietly. ‘This place is just so … far away from everything.’
‘It’ll feel like home eventually,’ he said, wondering if he even knew what home meant any more. ‘Come on, before they find other work for us to do.’
* * *
The afternoon was passing pleasantly enough until Chessun decided that he wanted to climb to where the waterfall started, which meant shimmying up a number of slippery, moss-covered rocks. Artair had begun wading out towards him, trying to talk him out of it, when the big novice slipped, falling back into the spring with a sizeable splash. Some of the other novices gave out cries of alarm, and a few of the more skittish ones ran back across the gardens to fetch the monks. Artair, strong and lean after years of martial training and exercise, dragged his friend out of the water and onto the grassy bank. Chessun had grazed his temple on a rock and blood was running freely from the wound, turning his yellow robe scarlet at the shoulder.
‘Twelve save us Chessun, you idiot.’ Artair gave his friend a little shake, but the boy’s eyes rolled back into his head. Dread seized Artair. ‘No, don’t—don’t do that…’
Reah appeared next to him, her face so pale that the freckles stood out like spots of ink.
‘Is he alright?’
‘I don’t know. I think he’s passed out, and if he has … Reah, get back into the monastery, I’m not sure that—’
Chessun’s eyes snapped back into focus. For a split second, they looked to be a shade paler than they had been moments before, and the broad, kindly shape of his face was transformed into an expression of fury. In that instant, the Chessun that Artair had known for years vanished. He was leaning over a complete stranger.
‘Chessun, wait—’
Artair scrambled backwards, his bare feet sliding on the wet grass, but Chessun moved faster. He reached out with his big brawny hands and grasped Artair by the throat.
‘That’s not my name.’
Artair gasped for air. He was a few inches taller, and even with Chessun’s greater bulk he normally would have had no difficulty in throwing his friend off, but Chessun’s strength was coming from a different, darker place. The Other had taken over the moment the novice had lost consciousness.
‘I am outside!’ The being inhabiting Chessun looked around at the spring and the gardens in apparent wonder. ‘Finally. I can get out of this stinking, pish-ridden hole.’
With a grunt he stood up and threw Artair back into the freezing water. When Artair had scrambled back onto his feet, soaking wet, he saw that Chessun was heading for the Red Gate. The other novices had fled, and a number of Brothers and Sisters had appeared from the buildings, moving swiftly towards the rogue Sleepless. Artair heard them calling his friend, telling him to wake up, to come back to them, but he knew it wasn’t going to work. The spirits were at their strongest when they had just taken control—it normally took an entire night’s worth of sleep for the novice to be close enough to the surface to return.
Even so, he called his friend’s name, a rising flutter of panic in his chest.
‘Chessun! Come back!’
The Red Gate was one of the oldest structures in the monastery, dating from before the order of the Perpetual Morning had moved in. It was made of iron, the scarlet coating of paint that gave it its name now mostly flaked off, and it had a row of wicked points running along the top. It would be locked—the gates of the Golden Tower almost always were—and it stood a good ten feet in height. That wouldn’t discourage an evil spirit intent on escape, though.
Artair began to run.
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