by Jen Williams
Vintage nodded seriously. It did well to remember that Helcate might look like the most harmless war-beast, but his gift could deal a devastating amount of damage.
‘You know why I’m here, I expect,’ she said.
Okaar shifted in his chair, and picked up the cane that rested on the screen. ‘I suppose that I do, Lady Vintage. Come. I will find a better place for us to talk business.’
Chapter Twenty-seven
The place sang with wrongness.
Tor could almost hear it, a high-pitched whine that shifted uncomfortably on the edge of awareness. They had been flying when they’d spotted it, a vast swathe of jungle that was more than Wild-touched: it was the Wild given true form. Bern had insisted they land, and Tor had agreed with a nod, his eyes rooted to the poisoned trees. It wasn’t the sort of place you flew into without having a good think about it first.
‘This is where they are,’ said Bern. His voice was flat, full of a weight of knowledge Tor didn’t want to ask about, but had to.
‘You can feel them?’
‘Stones help me, I can practically feel them crawling against my skin.’ Next to them, Sharrik opened and closed his beak to produce a snapping sound; an odd, nervous gesture. ‘They are close.’
‘Then perhaps we should continue on foot.’ Beneath Tor, Kirune gave a low growl. ‘I know, I don’t want to any more than you do, but I can’t help feeling like flying overhead is giving them the best possible warning that we’re coming.’
‘They can feel Bern,’ Kirune added in a low voice. ‘Is his presence not also a warning?’
Bern shook his head. ‘Since we broke their memory crystal, they pay almost no attention to me. I don’t know how to describe it . . . It’s like they’re too busy trying to put out the fire we set. And in the end, I am a tiny part of their web. Unless they decide to look for me, I don’t think they will notice.’ He glanced at Tor. ‘And we’re just here to get a look at them, right? That’s what we told Aldasair.’
‘Yes,’ said Tor, not looking at him. ‘I know. Come on, let’s get it over with. Keep your eyes open. We might not have to deal with parasite spirits anymore, but I dread to think what might have spawned in that mess.’
He and Bern dismounted, giving Kirune and Sharrik more freedom to move, and they stepped into the Wild forest. Tor loosened his sword, ignoring the mild tremor of annoyance at the fact that it wasn’t the Ninth Rain he carried. Beyond the treeline was a world of shadows and shafts of yellow, buttery light. Motes of dust, pollen and spores spiralled through the patches of light, while long, fleshy vines hung from the trees, crawling with flies. The place smelled rotten and strange, and Tor was reminded of summer days with his sister, chasing leaping bugs in the gardens. Mostly the bugs were much too fast for them, but every now and then one of them would get lucky, and once caught in a hand the bugs would release a watery yellow liquid that smelled terrible. That scent seemed to be everywhere here.
As they moved forward, the vines grew more numerous, until Tor found that he was having to part them with his sword. Moving them, he noted that they were sticky and covered all over with tiny insects, trapped in a glistening orange slime.
‘I don’t like the look of that.’
Tor looked up to see what Bern was pointing at, only to witness several of the vines moving slowly upwards, retreating back into the branches of the trees.
‘What are these things?’
‘A carnivorous plant, maybe.’ At Tor’s curious look, Bern shrugged. ‘I’ve seen pictures of them in books. They trap insects, then eat them. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is going to be the worst thing we see today.’
They moved on. The deeper they went, the thicker the atmosphere became. Soon Tor could feel a steady trickle of sweat moving down between his shoulder blades. Bern, with his fair complexion, had gone bright pink across his cheeks, and his face grew shiny with sweat. The sound of insects was incredibly loud.
‘This is not an honourable place,’ said Sharrik. ‘It is foul.’ He snorted and tossed his head like an agitated horse. ‘We should leave and find battle elsewhere.’
To Tor’s surprise, it was Kirune who replied to him. ‘Steady, brother,’ he said. ‘We’ll need your strength soon.’
Sharrik fluffed out the feathers on his chest, looking pleased with himself, and Tor leaned over to place his hand briefly on Kirune’s shoulder.
Thank you.
He feels his human’s fears, and it is making him skittish.
‘Are we heading in the right direction, Bern?’
The tall human grimaced. ‘I can’t help feeling that the right direction is always going to be heading very far from this place but, aye . . . the worm people lie ahead.’
In amongst the general cacophony of insect calls there came a new one, loud and guttural. Tor felt the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and he touched the hilt of his sword again.
‘Do you hear that?’
As if he had summoned it, a large shape buzzed through the air over their heads. It was around two feet long and looked like a beetle, with a thick carapace held out of the way of its wings. However, when it landed on the trunk of a nearby tree, Tor saw that it had an oddly fleshy head – where the mandibles of a beetle might be, there was instead a head covered in what looked like greyish skin, and it opened a pair of jaws to reveal two rows of suspiciously human-looking teeth.
‘By the stones,’ Bern slipped his axe from its belt, ‘what is that?’
The thing shifted where it clung to the bark, hiding its delicate wings away. Spiny grey legs with a claw at each end dug themselves in deeper, and it clicked its teeth together, so rapidly it became a clattering buzz.
‘Honestly.’ Tor motioned them all away from the thing, heading on a wide path around the tree. ‘If I never see another Wild-touched fucking monstrosity in my life I will consider myself blessed by the roots themselves.’
They walked rapidly on, eager to put a reasonable distance between themselves and the mutant insect, but instead they came across more of the things; flying from tree branch to tree branch above their heads, or clattering to themselves on tree trunks. Most of them were smaller, perhaps only a foot long, but several were much larger. One monstrous example had to drag itself through the undergrowth, too heavy to fly. Tor drew his sword and carried it loosely in one hand.
Eventually, they came to a place where the trees were more spread out, although it was difficult to call them trees by this time – many of them had smooth, shining surfaces, strangely oil-like, and they leaned and curled around each other, their networks of branches joining overhead. Rather than leaves in the canopy there were thick swathes of a white, fibrous material, and Tor frowned at it as they walked under, thinking of piles of nets in fishing boats. The further on they travelled, the thicker the white material became, until Tor began to see darker shapes nestling within it. A crawling sensation marched up his spine.
‘Can you see what those are?’ he said to Bern, although it was a stupid question; Eboran eyesight had always been vastly superior to that of humans. Yet he didn’t want to say it out loud himself.
‘Spiders,’ said Bern, squinting up at the fibrous canopy. ‘Really, really big spiders. Why did we come here again?’
‘Because we are idiots,’ mumbled Kirune.
They were big and fat, grey-blue in colour, with smooth, slightly flabby skins. Most of them were curled up on themselves, as if sleeping, while a few sprawled with their legs out, as if ready to scamper somewhere. They did not have the comforting symmetrical shapes of normal spiders. These Wild-touched things had legs that were longer on one side than the other, and clutches of odd-numbered eyes on various places on their bloated bodies.
‘Quickly,’ said Tor, his neck prickling. ‘Let’s just move out of their way as soon as we can.’
They did, all thought of moving quietly thrown to the wind as they tramped rapidly through the undergrowth. They were almost to the far side of that particular clearing when
Bern gave a low cry, pointing upwards. Several of the giant spiders were silently spooling down towards them, long clasping legs outstretched.
Tor slashed upwards with his sword and slit one spider in two as it reached him. It fell apart like a piece of rotten fruit, while the one that had been next to it landed heavily on his left arm. Its legs locked around him like he was an absent mother and it was a needy child. Swearing repeatedly, Tor brought his sword around, but the angle was all wrong and he couldn’t strike it with any strength. In the meantime, the thing had increased its grip to the point where he could feel the painful thud of his own pulse in his biceps.
‘The bastard thing is going to squeeze my arm off!’
Bern was having his own problems. Three of the fleshy spiders had landed on Sharrik, and the big griffin was frantically beating his wings while Bern tried to drag the things off. Tor dropped his replacement sword and pulled a short dagger from his belt. With this he stabbed the fleshy pouch that was the spider’s gut, and the thing let go, bleeding a dark purple blood. It fell to the ground with a heavy, wet sound. Snatching up his sword, Tor went to Sharrik and began peeling the spiders off. Kirune had one of the things in his mouth, shaking it back and forth like a dog with a rabbit.
‘That’s the last of them,’ said Bern. ‘Move!’
They left the twisted trees at a pace. Glancing once more behind him, Tor saw more of the Wild-touched spiders floating down from their webs, and he put his back to them with relief. Once they were a decent distance away, he took off his coat and rolled up his sleeve. There was a dark band of bruising around the top of his arm, just above where the bandages for the crimson flux ended.
‘That looks nasty,’ said Bern. ‘It’ll hurt for a few days yet, I expect. What have you done to your forearm?’
Tor rolled his sleeve back down, looking away. ‘Oh, nothing. Just a scratch from training. Don’t want to catch an infection from being out in this armpit of a forest.’
Bern frowned, but said nothing further. They walked on.
The trees continued, closing in around them again. Tor saw more strange insects, although these ones at least were smaller. There were fat, pinkish things the size of his hand, with thousands of hard, translucent legs, and centipedes, their segmented bodies covered in short, brownish hair. Eventually, they began to come across pieces of heavy stone littered across the dark earth. These seemed out of place, but Tor thought nothing further of it until Bern stopped to kneel by two that happened to be together. He looked unsettled.
‘Here, look at this.’
Tor joined him. Up close, the two stones looked too regular, and there were vague shapes on the pitted surface.
‘These stones,’ said Bern, ‘have been cut and shaped to fit together. Do you see? There are even some tool marks on here, and a decorative pattern. There’s something like mortar, just at the bottom here.’ He picked at a pale crusted substance on the edge of one stone.
‘What are you saying?’
‘It’s part of a building. All around here, are ruins. See?’ He stood up and pointed at some more rocks nearby, sunk mostly into the earth.
‘You mean there was a settlement? Out here?’
Bern shrugged. ‘A very, very old one, aye. I couldn’t say for sure, but my people know a lot about shaping stone, and once you start looking . . .’ His voice trailed off. ‘There was a building here, and a path. Once.’
Tor touched his hand to the hilt of his sword. Many humans made their homes within Wild territory – they hardly had much choice – but this place was something else.
‘Imagine,’ he said. ‘Imagine walking through that grove of spiders and thinking, “what a lovely place to settle down and raise some kids”.’
‘Even the air smells wrong,’ said Bern, his face creased with displeasure. ‘I don’t think you could breathe it every day and remain well.’
‘Perhaps the humans were here before,’ said Kirune.
‘Before what?’ asked Tor, but the big cat refused to be drawn further. They followed the submerged stones as if they were a path, and soon it was clear that Bern was right. The scattering of stones became more regular, until they were seeing the remains of broken-down walls, half lost under creeping vines and vast, muscular fungi. Several of the walls came together at the corners, suggesting a few closely built dwellings.
‘Vintage would love this,’ he said, trying to inject some jollity into his tone, but the truth was the ruins made him deeply uneasy. He could not picture anyone living in these poisoned woods, yet someone had spent enough time here to bring stone and shape it to make a place to live.
‘Look at this.’
Bern had stepped over one broken-down wall into a clearer section, and there on the ground was, unmistakably, a small stone bowl, and next to it, a pile of flint arrowheads. There were things carved into the wall here, slightly hidden from the elements, symbols of some sort, although if it was writing, Tor didn’t recognise it.
‘How old is this place?’
‘There is something here,’ Kirune’s tone was sharp, and Tor went to him immediately. He was also exploring the ruins and had found a place where the walls were almost standing to shoulder height. Crouched next to the wall was a skinny figure about the size of a child. It had greyish skin and a distended belly, and its head . . . Again Tor thought of the giant beetles with their oddly human teeth. His stomach lurched sourly.
‘Stones curse me dead, what is that?’
The thing’s head was riddled with slippery mandibles and black, shining eyes. On the back of its smooth pate, several thick black hairs poked through the grey skin, and these quivered as it sheltered by the wall. Tor wasn’t even sure it knew they were there. It raised stick-thin arms and patted at its face with fingers that were smooth and free of fingernails. After a moment, another one rounded the corner of the wall, and made a series of clicking noises with its mandibles. The original creature shuffled towards it, repeatedly bowing its head. Tor and Kirune moved back instinctively, watching as the two creatures came together. Their mandibles met, quivering, as if they were smelling each other, and then they moved slowly away.
‘I have a horrible, horrible feeling I know what they are,’ said Tor. It was Vintage’s fault, he thought absently. She had taught him to think like this. ‘This place,’ he gestured around at the low stone walls, ‘it has been here for a very long time. I think it must have been here before the Jure’lia even arrived. This was a normal forest once, like the rest of Sarn, and then they came. Their ships landed here, all that time ago, and now this is where they hide when the battles are over. Somewhere very close. So the land has just been poisoned more than anywhere else. The people, the plants, the insects and the animals – poisoned over and over, for generations. They’ve changed and they’ve . . . become each other. Do you see?’
Bern looked a shade paler than he had before they’d entered the forest. ‘I am trying very hard not to.’
‘They don’t know what they are,’ said Kirune, with feeling. ‘They have been left, halfway between beings. It is terrible, to not truly know what you are.’
Tor leaned down and briefly placed his cheek to the top of Kirune’s head.
I know what you are, he thought to Kirune. You are my brother.
They walked on through the ruins of the town, moving slowly so as not to startle the strange insect-people. There were many more of them, hiding in amongst the stones and the fungus. To Tor they seemed confused and lost, clinging to the ruins as though some half-forgotten memory was still telling them it was home. In one place they found a group of around ten of them, all pressed closely together, their grey heads in the dull light looking like the eggs of some vast spider, and a soft clicking sound arose from them as their mandibles quivered.
When finally they left the ruins behind, Bern stopped to wipe some of the sweat from his face. Sharrik was carrying his head low. The big griffin had not spoken in some time.
‘Do you think we’ll be able to forget any of t
his?’ said Bern. He looked as miserable as Tor had ever seen him. ‘The things we’ve seen. They haunt me. And not just because of this.’ He held up the hand with the Jure’lia crystal embedded in it.
Tor shook his head, uncertain what to say. He was thinking of everything he had seen: a little boy butchered by his own sister, bleeding out on the roots of Ygseril; men and women turned inside out by the merest touch of a parasite spirit; people eaten alive by scuttling carnivorous beetles; the terrible prisoners of Origin, kept alive and senseless by alien roots; the boy Eri lying with his guts in the snow; and Noon, vanishing in a blossom of her own fire. Four hundred years old, and not even the oldest of these memories had dimmed, or grown less painful. If he lived for another four hundred years, he doubted they would fade. Unconsciously, he touched his bandaged arm. Not that he would live that long, of course. Not now.
They walked on further through the jungle, avoiding anywhere with the fibrous spider webs in the canopy and skirting around anything that looked like a ruin. The day was dying, and Tor began to wonder what it would be like to walk through such a place in the dark.
‘How far away are they? If you had to guess.’
Bern did not lift his head. The big man was still sweating.
‘Very close now,’ was all he would say.
An hour or so after they’d left the insect people behind, Tor felt his left arm begin to prickle. He set his jaw, determined to ignore it, but soon waves of pain were throbbing in his arm and his chest, hot and constrictive. It became difficult to breathe. Cursing himself even as he did it, he stumbled over a thick wad of vines and fell to his knees.
‘Tor!’ Bern was at his side in an instant. ‘What is it? Are you wounded?’
Tor clutched at his chest and shook his head, unable to force any words out. Bern looked stricken.
‘Is it the blood? Do you need some? By the stones, you should have just asked.’
Tor smiled weakly and shook his head again. The flesh of his left arm felt like it was splitting open.
