by Jen Williams
‘Yeah. It’s – it’s like sinking into a bath filled with snakes. I’m doing my best to hide us from them.’
Tor nodded, glad that the human had agreed to come. Slowly, more shapes began to emerge below them. The rounded forms of the Behemoths, lit in eerie yellowish light, looked like no more than strange deformed fruits at this height.
‘This cavern is so deep,’ murmured Bern, awestruck. ‘By the stones, it must reach into the very heart of the world.’
In time, it became possible to see movement too. Tor recognised the skittering movements of various Jure’lia creatures, crawling over the vast Behemoths skins. Some of them appeared to be making repairs, stitching up tears and holes in the moon-metal, while others just moved around listlessly, their many-jointed legs ungainly and unsettling.
There was silence, too, eerie and thick. Every now and then a piece of rock would crumble from the sides, bouncing down into the dark, and it would send echoes across the cavern that seemed deafening to Tor. He winced at every one.
‘What is that?’ rumbled Kirune when they were more than halfway down.
‘What is what?’
Kirune had been descending in spirals, but now he pushed them out across the cavern to the far side. The Behemoths were lost behind them, and suddenly they were flying out over a cave within a cave, and below them were thousands of greenish mounds, all too regular to be rocks. Tor felt his skin go cold, and wondered if this was what Vintage felt when she found something especially significant.
‘Land on the edge,’ he said. ‘I want to take a closer look.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a great idea either,’ murmured Bern from behind him.
‘Come on,’ said Tor, leaning forward over Kirune’s shoulders. ‘I want to know what this is.’
They landed on the ground, Kirune’s huge paws making no sound at all, and carefully they climbed down from his back. Up close and lit by the faintly glowing fronds that sprouted all over, it was possible to see that the mounds were ovoid, and they were the same greenish black as much of the Jure’lia. They sat in a vast lake of shining black fluid, stuff that looked very similar to the dark ooze that formed the body of the Jure’lia queen. A cold hand walked up Tor’s spine: he had been enclosed in that stuff, almost suffocated in it, when the queen had plucked him from the air. He still had nightmares about it surging up his nostrils and closing his throat.
‘I have a terrible feeling I know what these are. Bern?’
He nodded and closed his eyes. ‘I can feel them in the web of Jure’lia minds, but they are . . . sleeping? What’s the word?’
‘Dormant.’
‘Aye. They are waiting to be something. Waiting to be born.’
‘Eggs,’ said Tor, half wonderingly. ‘They’re fucking eggs. How long have they been here?’
‘I don’t know, it’s – I can feel the life of the web flowing to them, around them, as though every part of the worm-people web feels some sort of responsibility towards them.’ He opened his eyes. ‘I don’t think I have the right words for it, Tor, but they’ve been here a very long time. As long as the worm people have, I reckon.’
Tor pressed his fingers to his mouth. He felt the need to laugh suddenly. ‘And they won’t hatch, or whatever it is they do, until the Jure’lia have taken Sarn. Just waiting down here for thousands of years. Vintage is going to go spare.’
Bern, meanwhile, had gone very pale. ‘Thousands of years, the endless quiet, the agony of never quite becoming . . .’
‘Bern, are you all right?’
Suddenly, the darkness on all sides of them became a solid thing, rushing towards them. Kirune roared and leapt up into the air, but strings of black fluid fell over them like a net, catching the war-beast and dragging him back down to the ground. Tor drew his sword and slashed at it, while Bern did the same with his axe, but the stuff reformed instantly, only drawing more tightly around them.
‘It is you.’
A figure approached, caught in the eerie lights. The Jure’lia queen looked different, although Tor could not have said how. She moved more hesitantly, her head cocked to one side, as though she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking at. The white mask that was her face looked yellowed, dirty almost, and lined with cracks at the mouth and eyes.
‘That’s right, it’s me, Tormalin the Oathless, and I’d like to have a word with you about my sister –’
‘Not you,’ snapped the queen. She turned her face to Bern. ‘You are the one who broke us. Who broke the memory chain with your own memory. That should not be possible, human. How did you do it?’
Bern was standing very still, the muscles in his big shoulders bunched. His face had gone an alarming shade of grey. Kirune had pressed himself flat to the ground to avoid the tendrils of black ooze.
‘We can feel you,’ continued the queen, in a conversational tone of voice. ‘Pushing against us. You are telling us, let us go, let us go. As though you could command us. It is very interesting, Bern of the Shining Axe.’ She placed one long-fingered hand against the black netting, and a tendril of the substance slid around Bern’s neck, a rustling snake. ‘Tell us how you broke the memory, human.’
‘Leave him alone,’ said Tor.
‘I’m not telling you anything,’ said Bern.
The tendril moved up his cheek and slid across his face, but Bern did not move. Tor went to go to him, but the stuff whipped around his arms and dragged him back.
‘Bern!’
‘We could just tear it from your mind. We don’t know if that’s possible, but we are willing to try. It would not be pleasant for you, we suspect.’
‘Go piss on a rock, you hag-witch,’ spat Bern.
Tor opened his mouth, again filled with the terrible urge to laugh, but the black fluid around them spasmed away, throwing him to the floor. He scrambled to his feet in time to see the queen retreating rapidly, Bern pulled along behind her in a pulsing net of strands.
‘Wait!’
She gestured roughly over her shoulder. ‘I do not want you here, bloodkin of Hestillion Eskt, and you will die now.’
Scuttling shapes that had been tending the Behemoths loomed out of the darkness. These were things that Tor had not seen before, larger versions of spider-mothers, strange segmented things that were somewhere between worms and beetles. A swarm of burrowers, each as big as fists, converged on Kirune.
‘Shit!’ Tor kicked away a creature that was curling its legs around his boot and made to run after Bern, but almost instantly he was pushed back. There was a bellowing from above, and Sharrik crashed into them all, throwing Tor to the ground for the second time. Kirune was shaking his head back and forth, backing away towards the eggs as several creatures crawled over the war-beast’s back and wings.
Sharrik dispatched a host of spider-mothers with a few lethal darts from his beak, and then he was in the air again, heading for the queen. Tor got up to follow, trying to ignore a soft bloom of pain in his chest as the crimson flux uncurled itself a little deeper inside him, but the queen had reached the nearest Behemoth. Bern was clutched to her, barely visible inside a writhing net of the Jure’lia fluid, and the moon-metal behind them flexed open.
Tor had time to glimpse the fleshy grey interior of the place, and then Bern and the queen were gone, hidden behind the hardened metal-skin of the Behemoth. A bare second later, Sharrik crashed into the place where they had vanished, his claws raking over the surface frantically. The big griffin’s panic and horror washed through them, as cold and as threatening as an unseen current in a fast-flowing river.
‘My brother!’
Tor turned and ran back to Kirune, who was in danger of being overwhelmed and tipped over the edge into the egg pit. Sword slashing, he chopped away at the segmented hide of a vast centipede-like thing; it had curled itself around Kirune’s middle, preventing the big cat from flying away. Meanwhile, there were other things approaching from the dark corners of the cavern, huge, shambling things with many glistening eyes and sharp, k
nife-like legs. One of these things seemed to split in half, revealing a pulsating interior lined with serrated bands, until Tor realised it was simply opening its mouth.
‘Sharrik, we have to go! Now!’
‘I will not leave my brother!’
The segmented creature fell away from Kirune’s midsection in bloody lumps, and Tor gladly scrambled back onto the harness.
‘We’ll come back for him, Sharrik, I promise, but if we stay, we’re all going to be torn to pieces.’
Kirune jumped up into the air, his wings opening with a sharp crack, and somewhat awkwardly they began to rise. Sharrik was still attacking the side of the Behemoth, crashing his beak and claws into the moon-metal. He had barely made a dent in the surface, while all kinds of Jure’lia minions converged on him.
Go. Get away.
It was faint, but Tor felt Bern’s presence nonetheless – a brief touching of minds. Sharrik bellowed in protest, but Kirune called out to him, his voice uncharacteristically loud.
‘You heard him, brother. The human is wise! We must not die here.’
‘No!’ Yet Sharrik did leap away from the Behemoth, and when they rose up through the cavern walls, the great griffin came with them. Tor could feel his anguish bleeding through into his own heart, heavy and hot. He looked up and focussed on the thin strip of sky high above them; darker now, and stippled with the first stars of the evening, it was still a beacon against the black cave walls.
‘We’re nearly there,’ he said aloud, unsure if he was comforting himself, or comforting Sharrik. ‘We’re nearly there.’ The Jure’lia minions fell away the higher they got, as though the queen had lost interest in them, and once they had cleared the chasm and landed some distance from it, nothing followed them. Tor jumped down from Kirune’s back and fell to his knees on the ground. For a long moment no one spoke. Sharrik paced back and forth, his head moving from side to side in distress.
‘Ah, curse Sarn, curse the tree-father, curse all of it.’ Tor leaned forward, planting one hand in the black earth. His arm was on fire, and his chest felt as though it had been flayed open. ‘Ah, fuck. Bern. Bern.’
‘It is your fault,’ thundered Sharrik. His eyes were wild, showing a white circle at the very edge, like a horse driven mad by the smell of wolves. ‘This was your idea! And we have lost him. Because of you, we have lost my brother! My companion!’
‘He’s not dead,’ said Kirune quietly. He was splashed all over with Jure’lia gore. ‘I can feel him. We can all feel him, still.’
Tor shook his head. His hair had come loose in the fight, and now it hung in his face. ‘What have we left him to, though? Why didn’t she take us, too?’
‘Useless questions,’ snapped Kirune, a clear note of disgust in his voice. ‘Better ask, how quickly can we get home? How quickly can we get help?’
The pain in Tor’s chest was a liquid thing, running down through his arms and legs, filling up his throat. The cough that he knew must come eventually was close, lurking somewhere deep inside. With a great deal of difficulty, he got to his feet and staggered to Kirune’s side. There was an alarming sensation of falling, and then he pressed his hands to the big cat’s fur and some of the disorientation fled. Kirune, always so solid, so dependable.
‘You’re right,’ he said, forcing some certainty into his tone. ‘We need to get help, so that we can rescue our friend. We’ll fly through the night, and rest only when it’s absolutely needed.’
‘Tor –’ Kirune turned his big yellow eyes to meet him. ‘You are –’
‘I am fine,’ he said quickly. ‘Let’s get going.’
They rose up into the air again swiftly, not looking back at the chasm that lay behind them. The night sky felt welcoming after the sticky humidity of the Jure’lia base, and the wind against Tor’s face felt very fine indeed. Yet none of it could ease the dread in his stomach, or the knowledge that he was about to break his cousin’s heart.
Chapter Thirty
Such a strange case today.
We arrived in the humid region of Liguilia, just south-east of Catalen, after many days of weary travel. I was sore from flying and Agent Lin was in an even worse mood than usual, but it is a beautiful part of Sarn, and my spirits lifted as we flew over those densely forested hills. Most of the larger settlements in Liguilia have a single, tall white tower at their heart, so that travellers on the roads can navigate safely towards them, and I understand that at night the towers send messages via a series of lamps in their upper windows. We saw some of this as we reached its borders: white lights flickering on and off like hesitant stars, across a great blanket of darkness.
The girl we had travelled so far for was gone, however. Her family seemed as confused about it as we did, at first. The girl, named Russini, had been confined to her rooms for the last week, and had seen no one. By her family’s reports, she was a good, obedient girl, not one to go against the wishes of her elders. And then I caught the eye of an old woman, apparently the great-grandmother of the girl, and her eyes were bright with some other emotion. I asked her what had happened to Fell-Russini, and she bared her teeth at me and said: ‘The Good Women have taken her, and thankful I am too.’
After some lengthy questioning, I discovered that the ‘Good Women’ are something of a folktale in rural Liguilia, a secret order of women and girls who live out in the forest somewhere, appearing only in times of great need. Sometimes, it is said, they leave treats for good children, and if the Liguinese offer up prayers for them, they keep the worst of the Wild-touched creatures at bay. It reminds me very much of the stories I heard growing up in Yuron-Kai about sand spirits and water sprites, but the old woman claims they are very real, and what’s more, that they have a connection to the winnowfire.
During this time Agent Lin had been investigating the estate and found a trail leading into the woods. We went together, on foot, but very quickly it was clear that if the girl had gone into the trees, she would never be found again – the paths are treacherous and bewildering. I asked Agent Lin what she thought about the ‘Good Women’, and to my surprise she told me that she had heard stories like it before, in many parts of Sarn.
‘They worship the winnowfire as a kind of god,’ she said. ‘Can you believe that? Idiots.’
But I find that part of me does believe it.
When night fell, we made our way back to the settlement, picking our way through a forest that had grown dark and unfriendly. At one point I looked up into the trees and saw a green light that wasn’t our own, and a face suspended above it, watching. Our eyes met for a handful of moments, and then whoever she was, she was gone. I did not mention it to Agent Lin.
Extract from the private records of Agent Chenlo
The fever had burned through Noon so fiercely that she had lost all sense of time. When she came back to herself, they were down on the coast, looking out across a vast stretch of sea. For an entire day and night she watched the sky and clouds changing, the colours – blue, grey, green, yellow, pink, velvet black – moving across the restless water. Vostok made fires – somewhat awkwardly pushing driftwood into a pile with her nose and igniting it – and brought water, and when Noon felt ready, fish to eat. The sulphur stink of the island no longer seemed so strange.
‘Where are we?’ Noon asked eventually, when she could sit up by herself.
‘You asked that before,’ said Vostok. ‘An island. Nowhere interesting, bright weapon. You slept a lot, and you raved a great deal in your sleep. It was very strange.’
‘I’m ill.’
‘Yes,’ said Vostok, with clear distaste. ‘It’s unseemly.’
Noon smiled. ‘War-beasts are not nursemaids.’
‘I should think not.’ But Vostok bent her head and pressed her warm scales to Noon’s cheek. ‘The world moves on without us, bright weapon.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Using Vostok to balance herself, Noon got to her feet. The wind was blowing in across the sea, bringing cold air and salt with it. She opened her mouth to taste i
t, and she was reminded of eating her first tomato when she’d escaped from the Winnowry. Life was full of extraordinary things, even when they looked like normal things. Especially so, perhaps. ‘Do you have any idea what’s happening?’
‘They are all too distant, and too chaotic,’ said Vostok, a touch sourly. ‘But something is happening. We should go back to them, bright weapon. We must go back soon.’
‘We should.’ But as she said it, a new wave of fear moved through Noon. She knew what she was now. She knew the full horror of what she had done. How could they look at her and not see it, too? She imagined the smell of burned flesh hanging over her like a shroud, the last screams of her people echoing in her every footfall. How could they know her, and love her?
‘They will,’ said Vostok, very quietly, her voice softer than the surf. ‘They do.’
Noon swayed on her feet. Standing up no longer seemed like a good idea, and her vision was dimming at the edges again. Warmth, too close and prickly against her skin, swarmed up from her feet and she felt a fresh coating of sweat break out across her forehead.
‘Noon?’
Vostok’s voice was distant, as though she were shouting down a long, echoing tunnel.
‘I don’t think . . .’
The sea slipped away and darkness claimed her again.
Vintage crashed into the wall behind her, propelled there by the force of her stolen crossbow. Her bolt clattered against the wall opposite, but it had the desired effect of forcing back the guards who were trying to make their way into the tower chamber.
‘Sarn’s arse, this thing has a kick to it! Do you have the bats yet?’
‘Almost there.’ There were four giant bats in the makeshift chirot tower, and Agent Chenlo had loosened their ties. She had four silver whistles around her neck, and she was stepping over the unconscious body of a fellow fell-witch. ‘Will these be enough to carry everything as far as Ebora?’
‘I think it’ll have to be, darling.’ Vintage reloaded the crossbow. From the noise on the stairs, the guards had summoned reinforcements. ‘We’ve got exactly as long as it takes for someone to alert Queen Windfall, and if we’re not out of here by then –’
