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THE POISON TASTER VOLUME ONE

First published by Allen & Unwin in 2024

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Set in 10/16 pt Tiempos Text by Midland Typesetters, Australia Printed in China in June 2024 by 1010 Printing Limited 1 3 5 7 9

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Part One

‘A simple decision to turn left instead of right, to pick up a pen or let it lie, to kill or spare an enemy, can change the course of Mortal history,’ the Elder said.

‘The other choice always remains as a possibility, however, so the Earth has many possible time lines. They curve through time side by side like the colours of the rainbow. They are all part of the whole.’

She smiled faintly. ‘But some are more interesting than others.’

From ‘The Traveller’, Legends of the El

Chapter One

The boy could hear the grunting, animal sounds of fighting and the clash of metal. The cabin ceiling shook as the heavy feet of the invaders thudded on the deck above.

‘That scrawny bosun went over the side, Cram!’ a man called. ‘He’s cut bad, but he’s swimming for it.’

‘The eels can have him!’ a grating voice shouted back. ‘Get below!’

Boots scrabbled on the ladder that led down to the lower deck. The memory of a hurried voice echoed in the boy’s clouded mind.

He’ll be safe in here. Safe in here . . .

Dragging a blanket with him, the boy squirmed to the head of the narrow bunk till his back was pressed against the cabin wall. He drew up his knees, clutching the book he had been reading to his chest with his good arm, making himself as small as possible. He shut his eyes. I am invisible, he thought.

Numb with fear, he waited.

Cram the slave-trader kicked his way through the bodies of the dead. There were just eight of them. Judging by their clothes, five had been passengers. Two were women – not so young, but still finelooking. What a waste!

Cram shoved his bloodstained axe into his belt. This had been an easy capture, but he wondered if it had been worth making.

The ship was a Free Landovel rescue ship – an ugly old flat-bottomed barge with sails, made for silent running through shallow water. It had clearly been drifting for quite a while. Its defenders had looked exhausted and half-starved, however fiercely they had fought.

And the rest of the desperate souls who had once crowded the ship had gone where Cram could not follow. The storm that had snapped the mast, torn

the sails to rags and splintered the lifeboats had plainly been savage and very sudden.

Cram knew how it must have been. The living spaces in these rescue ships were cramped and airless. Passengers spent as much time as they could on deck. Caught unawares by the storm, the ship rolling and pitching beneath their feet, most would have been swept overboard or killed by flying wreckage.

Cram cursed, not thinking of the doomed people’s terror but of the money he would have made by selling them as slaves. Thinking, too, of the gold rings and coins that might have gone to the bottom with their owners, though wretches escaping True Landovel usually had few enough of those.

A heavy silence lay on the deck now that his men were all below. Might as well be a ghost ship, Cram thought uneasily. Maybe we should have left this one alone. He remembered the sight of it gliding slowly from a great shimmering bank of El-mist. He tapped his brow with crossed fingers, to ward off bad luck.

‘What are you lot doing down there?’ he bellowed into the open hatchway, where a ladder stretched down into darkness. ‘Harker – report!’

‘No sign of life!’ a muffled voice called back. ‘Hold’s flooded. This deck’s drained, but it’s been awash. By the Comet, it stinks down here!’

Cram cursed again. ‘Never mind the stink!’ he bawled. ‘Get the bundles searched. I’m coming down.’ He swung himself down the ladder. The smell of damp and rot came up to meet him. Harker was waiting below with a flaming torch. His eyes were sullen, but he said nothing. He was a big man, but he was still dwarfed by Cram, who looked like a hulking bear beside him.

‘Captain’s cabin?’ Cram growled.

‘Left it to you, like always. It’s up a couple of steps – might have stayed dry.’ Harker led the way through the big, foul-smelling space, where hammocks hung like rows of drowned bats. Men were hunched between the rows, searching through sodden bags of possessions.

As usual on these rescue ships, the captain’s cabin was the only private place. This one was on a raised platform jammed into the stern. Cram tramped up to the door. It was locked. Behind it, there was silence.

Cram drew his axe. He nodded at Harker to be ready and gave the door a mighty kick. The flimsy lock gave and the door flew open, crashing against the cabin wall. Cram took in the scene with a single glance.

Weak light struggled through salt-smeared windows. A few leather-bound books had fallen onto the rug

that covered the deck boards. The desk beneath the windows was in disarray. Drawers gaped. Sleek, newfangled instruments that Cram would never use lay tumbled together where they had fallen.

So, the captain had left in a hurry, without securing anything, but he had taken the time to lock the door. Valuables in here all right, Cram thought, his mood lifting.

He stuck his axe back into his belt, lumbered to the desk and started poking through the drawers. No gold, of course. Free Landovel sailors were paid in credits. But here were two boxes of bullets – that was something! Plenty of firearms in the treasure room back at the Rock, but guns were useless without— ‘Cram!’ snapped Harker.

Cram turned with a scowl. Harker was standing in the cabin doorway. He jerked his head at the bunk fixed to the wall opposite the desk.

Cram looked, and blinked.

A boy was huddled on the narrow bed, halfcovered with a blanket. He looked to be eleven or twelve years old. He had dark hair and was wearing a white shirt much too big for him. He sat so still that he could have been a dummy made of wax, but his eyes were huge and black with fear.

It had been a shock, but Cram recovered quickly. ‘So?’ he snarled.

‘I thought you hadn’t seen him,’ said Harker, with just the suggestion of a sneer.

‘Course I saw him,’ Cram blustered. ‘Get him onto Hawk and chain him up! He’s one for the Rock, anyway.’

Harker strode to the bunk and pulled away the blanket. The boy winced in pain, but made no sound. His left arm was scarred and twisted, the hand stiffened into a claw.

‘You won’t get any work out of this one, Cram,’ Harker said. ‘That arm won’t straighten. He’s good for nothing.’

Cram shrugged. ‘Kill him then.’

Harker drew his knife. Cram began to turn back to the desk. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw what the boy was clutching to his chest. It was an open book.

‘Wait!’ he barked.

Harker looked around in surprise. Cram pushed him aside and took his place beside the bunk. The boy looked up at the huge, shaggy figure looming over him, but still made no sound.

‘Can you read that?’ Cram growled, jabbing a blunt finger at the book.

The boy hesitated, then nodded.

‘No one in True Landovel can read,’ jeered Harker. ‘Books are against the law.’

‘His ma and pa might have taught him in secret,’ said Cram. ‘They were on this ship, weren’t they?

Law-abiding citizens of True don’t try to escape to the wicked south!’ He laughed and stabbed his finger at the book again.

‘Read to me then, scum!’ he ordered. ‘And if you’ve been lying, I’ll have you skinned.’

The boy tilted the book till he could see the open pages, and began to read.

‘The civil war that was to split the island of Landovel into the two enemy states of True Landovel and Free Landovel began when Oswald the Merry died—’

His voice was cracked and husky. He stopped, glanced fearfully up at Cram’s frowning face, cleared his throat and quickly went on.

‘King Oswald’s anointed heir was Princess Alma, the firstborn of his twin children. Alma was as practical and energetic as her father. Like him, she delighted in the scientific discoveries and inventions that had transformed Landovel during Oswald’s long reign. Alma’s—’

‘The little worm’s trying to put one over on you, Cram,’ Harker broke in with contempt. ‘He couldn’t read all them long words! He’s just parroting a lesson he knows by heart.’

‘No.’ Cram had been staring at the boy with the same fascination he would have shown if a dog had begun to read to him. ‘His eyes are moving along the lines.’

He shoved the boy’s injured arm. ‘Go on!’ he ordered. ‘And this time, don’t stop till I tell you.’

‘Alma’s twin brother, Greville, however,’ the boy read through the tears of pain that blurred his eyes, ‘believed that machines, science and modern medicine were against nature, and therefore evil. He claimed that the first guardians of Landovel, the immortal El of myth and legend, had warned him in dreams that the unnatural use of the land must cease.

‘The legends of the El were favourite fireside tales, but few people believed them to be true. Gradually, however, Greville gained a small following among the ignorant and superstitious. Their ranks were swelled by Greville’s circle of flatterers, and those who insisted he was his father’s rightful heir because he was male.

‘Greville’s challenge for the throne was not taken seriously, because he would not allow his army to fight with any but the most primitive weapons. Alma could have destroyed his few strongholds easily with the far deadlier weapons at her disposal. Then came the great natural disaster later called the Day of the Comet or, by Greville, Star Fall.

‘A fiery meteorite of enormous size crashed into the sea to Landovel’s north-east, causing a tidal wave and a series of massive earthquakes that killed thousands and changed Landovel’s face forever. Where land cracked and fell away, the ocean rushed in. The great northern city of Octavia was lost beneath the waves. More importantly, the sea claimed Landovel’s broken centre,

dividing the island into two parts separated by the broad strait now known as the Channel of the Comet.

‘Greville declared that the El had made a star fall as punishment for Landovel’s wickedness. In their misery and terror, many of the surviving people believed him. Queen Alma and her remaining supporters were driven south, escaping across the new channel in boats and rafts. They made the south island their base, calling it Free Landovel to distinguish it from the land across the water, now firmly in enemy hands.

‘In the north, Greville announced that the El had granted him eternal life, and would guide him as he ruled what he called True Landovel. True would be purified of machinery, and the people would live simply, according to the laws of nature. He then unveiled a great stone, a fragment of the Comet, to which was fastened a silver plate engraved with the so-called “El Prophecy”—’

‘Bah, enough!’ barked Cram. ‘This history pretends to tell the whole truth, but it’s on the Free Landovel side – any fool can see that. And what use are history books anyway? The past is the past – bones and dust!’

He grabbed the book from the boy’s hands. ‘Still, you can read, all right. That’s good. I’ve got books aplenty back at the Rock, and no one who can read them to me in the whole cursed place!’

He swung round to Harker, catching him sneering. ‘And you can get that look off your scurvy face,

Harker!’ he snarled. ‘What’s one slave more or less to you?’

‘Another mouth to feed,’ Harker muttered. ‘Don’t seem worth it for a few storybooks. The men won’t like it, Cram. They’ll see it as a weakness.’

‘They can see it any way they like,’ Cram grunted, but he seemed to be thinking.

Harker pressed his advantage. His knife was still in his hand. He eyed the boy on the bunk with the disgust he felt for all weak, helpless creatures.

‘There won’t be many more easy pickings for us in these seas, Cram,’ he said. ‘Everything’s changed since that bungled rebellion up in True. This must have been one of the last rescue ships to escape, and we’re going to get little or nothing out of it.’

‘We’ll have to spread our net a bit wider, that’s all,’ growled Cram. ‘And this boy won’t just be my reader. Maybe you’ve forgotten, but Dree pegged out just before we left. One spoonful of that stew meant for me was all it took. So I need a new poison taster, don’t I? This boy can be it.’

He grinned unpleasantly. ‘Unless you’d like to volunteer for the job, Harker?’

Harker remained expressionless, but his face turned a sickly grey. He shook his head.

‘And here’s another thing for you to chew on, Harker,’ said Cram. ‘If you blab to the crew about my

taster being a reader as well, you’ll have worse than poison to worry about. Hear me?’

He turned back to the boy on the bunk. ‘You got a name, scum?’

‘Derry,’ the boy said. Pain was shooting through his damaged arm, and behind his eyes there was whirling darkness. In the darkness, he could see wild water. He could hear the name screamed again and again over a roaring wind. A woman’s voice – high, anguished, panic-stricken.

‘Derry!’ the voice shrieked. ‘Derry! Derry! Derry . . .’

He crawled into the cave of his mind, away from the screaming, the terror and the pain, away from Cram’s red-veined eyes and Harker’s knife. He stayed there through two days of darkness and hunger in the hold of Cram’s ship. But when rough hands hauled him up into a world of angry red light and stinging spray, he could stay there no longer.

Behind the ship, the sun was setting. Ahead, dark against the sky, a grim fortress jutted like a giant fang from a waste of water. Sheer walls of stone rose high from black rocks where foam surged, but facing the ship was a yawning gap screened by a gate of iron bars. As Derry watched, the gate began to rise as if great jaws were opening to swallow the ship and everyone in it.

This was Cram’s Rock.

Chapter Two

Three years later . . .

Howling wind. Wild water. A silver flash. A screaming voice. ‘Derry! Derry! Derry!’

Derry’s eyes flew open. He lay sweating and panting, his crooked arm throbbing, the voice still echoing in his mind.

The Dream no longer came every night. After three years on Cram’s Rock, it tormented him only now and then. But it had lost none of its power.

Derry stayed still, waiting for his thudding heart to slow. It was still dark, but he sensed dawn was not far away. Soon he would have to get up and face the day, but thankfully not yet. His bed was just a couple

of worn blankets on the stone floor of Cram’s treasure room, but he had come to think of it as a refuge.

Across the short corridor, Cram was snoring like a pig. Derry’s hatred rose in his chest like water boiling. He shut his eyes and let the hatred settle back to a low simmer. What good did it do? He blotted the snoring from his mind by concentrating on other sounds.

He could hear the slow wash of the sea that surrounded the Rock. He could hear the dull rattle of the gate that screened the Rock’s entrance from the open sea. He could hear the rumbling of the Kettle, the giant boiler that worked day and night turning salt water into fresh. He could hear the ticking of the clock in the room Cram called his Great Chamber. He could hear the rats in the walls.

The Rock had double stone walls, with a cavity in between. Cram often boasted of this, but he knew of it only because of the rats. He had not seen his fortress built. He had simply attacked it, slaughtered its occupants and taken it for himself, Kettle and all.

No wonder he was always so wary of being invaded in his turn. No wonder he kept great cauldrons of oil boiling on the ramparts above the gate, where guards stood on lookout day and night.

The rats scrabbled and scratched, pattered and scurried. No one ever saw them. They were only active

at night. In the daytime they were quiet. Poison was laid for them, but food stores were still plundered and the night sounds went on. Cats ran wild on the Rock, lean and hungry, but the rats never became fewer, it seemed. The cats did, though. Harker claimed the slaves caught and ate them. Perhaps they did.

Now Derry could hear muffled clatters from below. Down in the kitchens, the cooks were making breakfast. He thought he could smell it already, mingling with the odours of damp stone, mould and salt.

Fish stew for Cram, flavoured with spices from past captures. Eel stew for Harker, the slave masters and the crew. Flat bread with greasy eel broth for the slaves who tended the gate and the Kettle, who cooked, cleaned and heaved garbage into the sea.

From what Derry had heard, the slaves were fed a little better now than they had been when he first came to the Rock. It was worth keeping them alive because these days they could not be replaced.

Ships were rare in these waters now, and captives had to be sold quickly to pay for the Rock’s supplies. Harker had been right. Since the failed rebellion, True Landovel’s borders had been shut tight. No longer did families try to escape to Free Landovel in the south. No longer did ships leave Free on rescue missions. All that was over.

The waking bell clanged. The rats in the walls fell silent. Slave masters bellowed. In his bed, Cram grunted and cursed.

Derry got up. His left arm was stiff, as it usually was in the morning. Clumsily he rolled his sleeping blankets and shoved them behind the door. Then he left the treasure room and padded along the short passage that led to Cram’s Great Chamber.

It was too dark to see much, but Derry didn’t need a light. He knew this level of Cram’s Rock only too well. He never left it. Cram strutted around the fortress whenever he was in the mood, but on his return he expected to find Derry where he had last seen him, as if he were a table or a chair. It was the same when Cram sailed away in Hawk , hunting slaves and plunder. At sea, Cram ate and drank with his crew, helping himself from the same cooking pot and jug, so he didn’t need a poison taster. And he wanted no distractions, so he had no use for a reader, either. What Cram didn’t need, he dropped till he needed it again. And so it was with Derry.

It had never occurred to Cram that his absences at sea were the only glimmers of light in his poison taster’s dark life. If it had, he would have taken Derry with him, just for spite. But Derry never showed his feelings by word or sign. He never showed emotion of any kind, except when he was reading.

His bare feet made no sound on the stone floor as he entered the Great Chamber and began walking along a broad, straight aisle. To his left and right, rows of bookshelves jutted from the side walls of the Chamber like the teeth of two giant combs. When he first came to the Rock, Derry had stood on a chair to reach the books on the high shelves. Now he only needed the chair for the ones at the very top.

Derry’s feet slowed, as they always did. The familiar smell of the books drifted around him, tempting him to linger. Paper, leather, dust and just a trace of mould. The books Cram hoarded greedily, but could not read. The books that had saved Derry’s life and been his only companions for three long years.

He had read all of them, some many times. They seemed to whisper to him from the darkness. Once upon a time . . . It was a dark and stormy night . . . I often wonder . . .

Derry made himself move on to the shelf that held the book he would later read to Cram. They needed a new story for today, and he had decided on Lipton’s Travels, which was a fast-moving tale full of shipwrecks, fighting and wild beasts. As he reached for it in the darkness, his fingers brushed the volume beside it. This was a collection of myths called Legends of the El . It was Derry’s favourite – which was why, perhaps, he had never yet read it to Cram.

The legends of the El are many . . .

Though he knew most of the tales by heart, Derry was seized by the urge to read the book again. He pulled it from the shelf and hurried on.

The bookshelves filled a third of the Great Chamber. Cram’s living space lay beyond. Here Cram lolled in luxury, imagining himself a king. Here he counted his gold. Here he ate. Here he listened as Derry read to him.

Derry crossed to the room’s one tall window and opened the shutters to let in the dawn light. He leaned for a moment on the deep, low sill, trying to flex the bent fingers of his left hand. In books, windows usually had glass. There was no glass here. There was nothing beyond the sill but cool, salt-laden air and a sickening drop.

The day was still and overcast. Far below, murky green water, stretching away forever, sullenly lapped the base of Cram’s Rock.

At this time of the morning, it was hard to see where the natural rock ended and the stone of Cram’s fortress began. The walls rose straight up, up to where Derry stood looking out, and higher still, till they almost touched the low clouds. Jutting alone from the sea, Cram’s Rock was a prison from which there was no escape but death.

Derry lifted his eyes to the clouded horizon. Beyond those clouds lay Free Landovel and True Landovel – the two large islands that had been one, before the Comet fell almost seventy-five years ago. They were real, Derry knew, though for him they might as well be fantasy kingdoms, existing only between the covers of a book.

As he began to turn away from the window, he caught a glimpse of something far out to sea. It was a dark speck tipped with white, moving slowly but steadily through the green water.

A bird on a mat of seaweed? A lonely dolphin, separated from its pod? More than anything, the speck looked like a tiny boat with a white sail. But that it surely could not be. No small boat would venture near Cram’s Rock . . . unless it was hopelessly lost.

Derry looked away, pushing fears for the imaginary dolphin, the hapless sailor, from his mind. Even if they existed, he could not help them. He could not help himself.

Weak light now touched Cram’s grand chairs, elegant tables, rich rugs, golden lamps with painted shades . . .

All captures. All bought with oceans of blood. Like Derry. Like the other slaves. Like the books.

Fixing his mind on the books, Derry went on with his early morning tasks. He wound the massive

black-and-gold clock that ticked the minutes away on a cabinet with a mirrored door. He lit the small oil stove. He filled the squat little saucepan with water from the tall silver jug, and set it on the stove. Then he opened the tin of Cram’s special tea, and took the teapot from its shelf.

The teapot was painted with a scene of blue sky, a hedged field of golden wheat, and scarlet poppies with black centres. Derry liked to look at it.

‘Got it the same day I got you,’ Cram had once told him. ‘Maybe it belonged to your ma and pa! It could have, easy. The stinking bundle it came out of was poor enough.’

When Derry refused to react, Cram laughed. Derry sometimes wondered if the teapot had once belonged to his family. Was that why he liked it? Had it been carried aboard the rescue ship with other small household treasures when he and his parents fled True Landovel? If so, surely he would remember it?

But why should he remember a teapot when he had forgotten everything else but a name cried in terror on the wind? It was as if thick black ink had been spilled over the pages of his memory, blotting them out. It was as if the story of his life began when the door of a ship’s cabin crashed open and Cram burst in.

The water in the saucepan was boiling. Derry scooped tea into the teapot. The tea looked like shredded bark. The pale brown brew it made smelled and tasted vile, but was supposed to ensure good health and long life. Good health and long life for Cram.

As he did every morning, Derry thought of adding a lump of rat poison to the teapot. Cram would not notice the taste. He always waited till the brew was lukewarm, then poured it down his throat all at once, like medicine.

Derry imagined Cram drinking, then clutching his belly in agony half an hour later, his eyes bulging with shock. That would be the end of him.

Of course, it would be the end of Derry, too. Cram trusted no one, even his poison taster. Derry would have to drink a cup of the tea himself before Cram would touch it.

Sometimes, Derry thought it would be worth it. Sometimes, he told himself that he wouldn’t mind seeing the last of this life, even in pain, if it meant taking Cram with him.

Then, as he did every morning, he looked over his shoulder at the books standing on their shelves, row upon shadowy row, and changed his mind. He didn’t want to see the last of them.

He put the filled teapot, a silver tea strainer and a cup on a painted tray. The cup was as pale and

delicate as the shell of a seabird’s egg, with a fine gold rim. It was quite large, but looked like a child’s toy in Cram’s huge, hairy paw.

Derry picked up the tray, pressing it hard against his chest to make up for his left hand’s weakness, and padded towards Cram’s room. As he passed between the bookshelves, something hissed in the shadows to his right. Derry jumped, steadied the tray by a miracle, and peered between the rows.

Yellow eyes glared in the dimness. Derry made out the shape of a cat. The creature’s back was arched. Its tail thrashed. Its scruffy, mottled fur stood on end.

Derry let out his breath. His hands were slippery with sweat. It was not unknown for a cat to sneak into Cram’s quarters and stay trapped overnight, but the beast had given him a shock. He could not imagine what Cram would have done to him if he had dropped the tray, if the cup and the teapot had been broken.

Then he saw what the cat had been looking at, and froze. Where the bookshelves met the wall, a slight, white figure stood, motionless and staring. It was a boy, eight or nine years old. His skin was so pale that it seemed to glimmer in the dimness. His eyes, ringed with black, looked huge in his thin face. A long, knobbly necklace hung around his neck. In one hand he held a short, padded stick topped with a grinning doll’s head made of rag.

Derry began to shiver. The cup and teapot rattled together on the tray. He had always felt that cruelty and suffering had soaked into the stones of Cram’s Rock, infecting the place with an atmosphere of dread. But this was the first time he had seen a ghost.

‘Tea, curse you!’ Cram bellowed from his bed.

Instinctively, Derry looked round. ‘Coming,’ he called shakily, amazed that he could speak at all.

When he turned back to the shelves, he saw only darkness. The ghost boy had vanished.