A Solitary Journey by Tony Shillitoe Read Free Book Online Page A

‘How did you come by this knowledge?’
    ‘A colleague sent word.’
    ‘That’s all you have?’
    ‘It is enough. My colleague is Seer Weaver and he sails with your son. Their ship will be in Port of Joy within four days.’
    ‘But my Royal fleet is already intercepting the Kerwyn ships. They will be captured and brought here in chains.’
    ‘Perhaps that is how it is meant to be,’ Vision conceded. ‘If I may be excused, Your Majesty?’
    Sunset studied the young man. He had an intelligent face, but there was steeliness to his eyes and a surly edge to his thin mouth that she knew she couldn’t trust. ‘You are excused. I have an important meeting.’
    Vision bowed and retreated, but after he had covered ten paces and was within reach of the door he slipped his right hand inside his robe and turned, calling, ‘Your Majesty?’ Sunset, who’d issued an instruction to Goodman and was about to leave the chamber, stopped to look at the Seer. ‘The real news is that your Royal fleet is nothing but wrecked hulks on the sea floor and my colleagues have this gift for you,’ Vision announced.He flicked a spherical object that bounced along the tiled floor to rest at the Queen’s feet and, before Goodman or the Elite Guards could react, the object exploded and engulfed the Queen in a vicious fireball. Vision lunged for the door.

C HAPTER F IVE
    ‘ B lossom Beekeeper,’ the woman with the greying hair tied back said. ‘And you?’
    She gazed at Blossom blankly. ‘I—I don’t know.’
    ‘You don’t know your name?’ Blossom asked.
    She shrugged. ‘No.’ Water lapped against the side of the boat. She was conscious that the women and children closest to her were staring. The grey-green eucalypts on the river bank were crowding in like the people.
    ‘Well, where are you from?’
    She pointed north. ‘I think that way.’
    ‘What village?’
    ‘I don’t know. I woke up and everyone was dead.’
    The boat people nodded and sighed. ‘We know what that’s like,’ said an older woman with her hair under a ragged blue shawl. ‘The barbarians attacked my village at night.’
    ‘You don’t look like you were hurt,’ Blossom said. ‘You must have been lucky.’
    ‘I guess,’ she said. ‘Where are we headed?’
    ‘As far as we can go upriver,’ Blossom told her. ‘You really can’t remember your name?’
    She shook her head despondently. ‘No.’
    ‘Call her Found,’ a wizened older woman suggested.
    Blossom smiled. ‘Is that all right by you?’
    ‘I guess,’ she said.
    ‘Found it is,’ Blossom said, pleased with the idea.
    Found was glad when the questions stopped. Squeezed between two other women and with three children pressing against her legs she sat in the boat’s leaking hull and watched the panoply of gum trees drift past. Black cormorants and black-and-white pelicans glided across air and water, dipping and diving for fish. She closed her eyes and let the dappled light play across her eyelids as they passed under overhanging boughs. It was good to be among people.
    The man in the blue robes was laughing at her. In his arms he held a bundle and she felt fear for what he held. He pointed at a group of people to her right. There were two women, one much older, and several men and children, and there was also a dingo and a rat at their feet. They were all looking at her as if they knew her. And then they vanished. The man in the blue robes threw the bundle into the air, holding one end of the cloth wrapping, and the bundle also vanished as it unravelled.
    She was woken by cries and shifting bodies. ‘Oh Jarudha!’ a woman screamed beside her. Found twisted to see what was happening ahead. The leading vessel in their river party, the sailboat, was burning and people were struggling in the water. The people on the raft following it were also falling and leaping into the river. Thin, dark arrows flitted across the space from the northern bank and buried into victims. A boy flipped