Free Dark Heart by Russell Kirkpatrick Page A

whatever it was, so she ignored it.
    Lenares was surprised to find herself thinking at all. Why wasn’t she dead? Why hadn’t it killed her? She knew the secret, after all. The hole in the world— one of the holes, perhaps, snag, jerk went the thought—had been forming for months, perhaps years. It had already been well advanced when she discovered it. She was the very first person to notice it. That made her proud. She wasn’t very good at making friends with people, she knew that, but she also knew she was special because she could understand the numbers that made up the world. She could see them in her mind. She—Lenares, and nobody else—could see the hole, the emptiness, small at first but growing bigger, eating at the places where the patterns of numbers (threads, she named them) joined together. Nodes, which were the lives of people, were being attacked by the emptiness she called the hole in the world.
    And no one else saw it! Not any of the acolytes, training to be cosmographers. Not Mahudia, the Chief Cosmographer, head of their order. Not even their great and good Emperor of Elamaq, a man who, when Lenares met him, turned out to be stupid and nasty.
    Mahudia, the Chief Cosmographer, had come to believe her eventually. And then the hole in the world had reached out and taken her, the woman who had been like a mother to Lenares. A lion had killed Mahudia, but Lenares knew the hole had directed it.
    The Emperor had believed her when she told him about the hole in the Garden of Angels, but said he didn’t. Lies to try to get people to do what he wanted. Why did he have to lie? Why did the all-powerful Emperor have to lie? Because he isn’t all-powerful, that’s why.
    Best of all, Torve believed her. More than believed. Torve, the Emperor’s pet, of the despised human-like animal race, an Omeran. A freak, an animal, but one who could not only talk but also reason. Who was as good with numbers as anyone she had ever met, even Mahudia. Not as good as Lenares though, nowhere near. An animal bred for complete, unquestioning obedience to his Emperor, but who had fallen in love with Lenares, even though he knew his Emperor would disapprove.
    She put her arms around herself, hugging her body at the pink feeling that blossomed in her chest when she thought of Torve. Dirty Omeran animal, part of her mind said, but she ignored it. Where was the harm in loving a lovely, smart person like him? Even if he kept secrets.
    Was Torve alive? Had he survived the fall from the hole in the world? Almost she opened her eyes to find out. No. Not until I have thought this through. She clamped her eyes tightly shut, so tight that colours danced behind her eyelids.
    She and Torve could love each other as long as the Emperor didn’t find out. And he wouldn’t. He was back in his palace in Talamaq ( no, no, no, said a faint voice in her head, a fearful voice, not a logical voice, so she ignored it) and they were…she didn’t know where they were. Another log in her river, jerk, snag. How could she centre herself if she didn’t know where she was?
    They had left her home months ago, part of the Emperor’s great Northern Expedition, led out of Talamaq by the celebrated Captain Duon, to take possession of the fabulously rich lands of the north, or at least as much as they could bite off with thirty thousand superior southerners and a hundred invincible chariots. But the expedition met with disaster when enemies of Elamaq ambushed and destroyed them in the Valley of the Damned. If it hadn’t been for Captain Duon and Dryman the mysterious soldier, no one would have survived. Because, for reasons Lenares had not yet worked out, the hole in the world had aided the enemies of Elamaq. The threads of the mighty Elamaq army had been burned out.
    There had been a presence looking out at the world from behind the hole, a dark, ravenous god searching for prey, and Lenares was sure it was the Son. But, ah, here was the confusion. Her numbers