by Jen Williams
They flew during the long, hot days, and rested for a few hours each night, camping anywhere with shelter, or at least a good view of the sky; they didn’t want to be caught unawares by Hestillion and her tame Behemoths. Tor, who felt as though he’d only just done this journey – and twice, at that – found himself struggling to keep track of the days and nights, or even what hour of the day it was. His arms ached continually, and there was a growing tightness in his chest that was particularly ominous.
‘Do you have enough energy for a quick walk with me, darling?’
Tor stumbled down from Kirune’s back to find Vintage waiting, Helcate already drinking from a big bucket of water someone had fetched for him. It was a clear, cool evening, and they had stopped at the very edge of a wide river, one of many that seemed to spread through the area like the veins in a leaf. The land itself was a strange region of clay and soft, sticky sand; belatedly Tor realised that he remembered flying over it – from far above it had looked unfinished, a scribble on a forgotten map. With some effort, Tor forced all thought of his own discomforts from his mind and straightened his back.
‘You don’t want to rest?’
‘My arse is every bit as tired as yours, I promise you, but you see that sandbank over there? I think it’s a settlement.’
Tor looked where she pointed. Some distance from the river the land rose into a lip of dark orange clay. There were odd marks and formations there – holes in the side of it, places where the wind had formed strange shapes in the sand – but certainly no people that he could see, or even any cooking fires.
‘Settlements usually require people to populate them,’ he said. ‘Also, places for them to live. Shelter. Those are the sorts of things that add up to a settlement, Vintage.’
‘Come on.’ She grabbed his arm, none too gently, and they began to walk together, leaving the makeshift campsite behind them. ‘We’ve time to be a little curious.’
It was a quiet place, where even the wind seemed hushed. The sound of the multiple rivers, a tracery of water and life, was oddly reassuring, and in the far distance it was possible to see a thick band of black that marked the beginning of the deep jungle territory that eventually led to the poisoned forest. Tor found himself wondering what Noon would make of such a place, so different to the plains and to Ebora, and his ever-present sorrow grew a little sharper. As if sensing his thoughts, Vintage sighed abruptly.
‘You miss her,’ she said. ‘I miss her. A huge amount, which is strange really, given that I didn’t know her for very long at all, in the scheme of things. For you, your time together must have seemed like the tiniest drop in the ocean. I don’t understand it. For her to just . . . vanish like that. It’s the cruellest possible blow.’
There were lights ahead after all, a soft glow that seemed to come from the ground itself. Tor made himself focus on those, not quite ready to speak. It wasn’t like Vintage to be so insensitive, which meant that she was trying to trick him into saying something he wouldn’t normally admit.
After a long pause, he said, ‘Who are you talking about again?’
Vintage snorted, although it was a sound without any real mirth. ‘My dear –’
‘Because whoever it is, I’m sure I’ve already forgotten them. I can barely keep track of your brief human lives, you know – here one moment, gone the next. I should keep a list, so I can tick the names off as they depart.’ He turned to her, his voice becoming softer. ‘I beg you, Vintage, please don’t make me talk about this. You share your sorrow to make it smaller, I know, but I can’t even begin to look it in the face. Not yet. I’m not strong enough.’
‘Darling –’ Vintage opened her mouth to say more, but in the end simply shook her head. The lights ahead had grown a little stronger, and it was possible to see holes in the ground. They looked regular and solid, entrances that had been built to some specific design and not simply natural occurrences.
‘You were right,’ said Tor, nodding to places in the clay where channels had been cut. There were footprints in the sand too, lots of them. ‘Are you ever not right about these things?’
‘I have yet to find myself in the sorry situation of being incorrect, that’s true.’ Vintage walked closer to the holes. ‘Hello? Anyone home?’
Tor looked down into the darkness. There was a ladder attached to the sheer side of the shaft, and it was just about possible to see something moving, deep in the depths of it. He leaned closer, trying to make out what it was.
‘I can see something. Is someone coming up the ladder?’
Abruptly, a shiny body erupted up from the hole, not using the ladder at all, and skittered straight over Tor’s boots. He gave a somewhat high-pitched yelp and jumped backwards. The thing was a huge ant, the size of a dog at least, and it was followed by two more. All of them were shiny, and a dark red-orange in colour. Mandibles and antennae waggled at them as the creatures circled their legs.
‘Jure’lia?’
‘No,’ said Vintage quickly. She had taken several steps backwards herself, although she looked more curious than alarmed. ‘Look at them, they’re just big ants. Wild-touched, probably. The Jure’lia queen could never make something so colourful.’
‘What do you want? What are you doing here?’
The voice came from the shaft. A short woman with copper-brown skin was pulling herself up on the ladder one-handed; in the other she held a long, wicked-looking knife. Her black hair was cut short and it stuck up at all angles; it was thick with clay dust. She spoke the plains speech with an odd scattering of Catalen – perhaps, Tor reasoned, the southern language had moved west with the natural migrations of people.
‘Are these yours?’ Vintage gestured to the ants, who were circling her boots. ‘We mean you no harm, dear, we’re just passing through and wondered who could be living out here, in this extraordinary place.’ She was letting her own Catalen accent come through a little stronger than usual, Tor noticed.
The woman narrowed her eyes, looking past them to the place where the rest of their party had made camp. There was a pair of large campfires going already, and Tor saw very clearly the look of amazement that passed over her face as she saw what the firelight illuminated.
‘No . . .’ She looked sharply at Tor, who she seemed to see properly for the first time. She made a sharp clicking noise with her tongue, and immediately the three ants trooped back to her side. ‘This is Deeptown. If you’ve come to steal from us, there’s nothing left, and certainly nothing that could feed that.’ Closer to the river, Sharrik could be seen shaking his wings and coat out.
‘A town? I don’t see a town. A hole in the ground, maybe.’ Tor turned to Vintage. ‘Really, you humans need to have a think about how you use these words, it’s all very misleading.’
‘It’s beneath,’ snapped the woman. ‘Below your feet. Deeptown extends for miles, all around here. But the entrances are guarded.’
Vintage’s face lit up. ‘And your ants, did they help you build it? Are they obedient to you? How extraordinary. I would love to see such a thing.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I am Lady Vincenza de Grazon, and this is my friend Tormalin, but do call me Vintage. Please forgive us for being so nosy, but what you’re describing sounds absolutely fascinating.’
The woman tipped her head to one side. ‘You’re fighting the worm people? Is that what you’re doing?’
‘We are,’ said Tor. ‘As much as we can, anyway.’
‘These are bad times,’ said the woman, nodding seriously. ‘What you’re doing is a sacred duty. Maybe your visit here is a blessing?’
Tor struggled to keep his face solemn. It was hard to remember a time when anyone had thought a visit from an Eboran was a blessing.
‘We can hope so,’ said Vintage in a carefully level tone.
‘Then I will take you to see our pathfinder. Come on.’ She turned back to the shaft, then paused. ‘My name is Treen.’
Tor glanced at Vintage, who looked brighter than she had done since she’d heard the
news about Noon. He reached out to Kirune briefly, reassuring him.
We’re just exploring. We won’t go far.
Treen took them past the shaft she had emerged from, and instead they moved towards a larger, more permanent-looking entrance nearer the sandbank. This one had been reinforced with wooden struts, and as they climbed down the first ladder into the gloom, Tor saw that the walls were scratched all over with writing. At first he thought it must be some sort of decorative motif, but when his eyes grew more accustomed to the light he saw that it was more akin to the sort of writing you often saw daubed on the walls of Mushenskan taverns – declarations of love or enmity, rude poems, swear words, opinions on the sexual prowess of acquaintances.
At first they saw only a connecting series of tunnels, lit with neat spherical oil lamps – here and there the red ants moved past them, intent on their own business – but then Deeptown revealed itself in glimpses; a great hall full of people eating and drinking; rounded chambers packed with those bedding down for the night; a room where several neat little stoves cooked flat loaves of bread, the steam and smoke disappearing up into a series of long, narrow chimneys.
Eventually, they came to another chamber. This one was wide and low, and lit with so many oil lamps that the warmth from them was stifling. It looked like a place of teaching, with low stools, a long shelf filled with old books, and many flat trays covered with slate, yet the only people in the room were an old woman seated in an over-stuffed chair, and a man and a woman standing with her. There was also an enormous ant in the room, four times as big as any they’d seen before, and this one was a deep dark red, like human blood. It was curled at the feet of the old woman like a faithful dog. All of them looked up as they came into the room.
Treen scampered forward to have a quick whispered conversation with the group, and then she waved at them to come over. Tor couldn’t help glancing at the ant as they came. It had an elongated, swollen body, and its eyes were like fat blobs of oil.
‘It’s the queen of this colony,’ murmured Vintage, so he alone could hear. ‘She’s the mother of all these ants.’
‘You are Eboran?’ The standing woman spoke first. She looked worried, her mouth pinched into an uncertain frown.
‘Tormalin here is,’ said Vintage smoothly. ‘You can tell well enough that I’m not, but the lost lands are my new home, and I fly with a war-beast. Thank you for seeing us, Pathfinder.’
The woman smiled, a slightly pained expression, while the man next to her openly scowled.
‘I am not the pathfinder.’ She gestured to the elderly woman in the chair. ‘Mother, some strangers have come to see you.’
The old woman shifted, her jaw working. She was small and somehow soft, her skinny legs hanging off the end of the chair, leather slippers dangling into space. Her skin was brown, like her daughter and Treen, but her hair was pearly white and wispy, curling up towards the ceiling as though it were caught in some errant breeze. With one hand she reached down to the ant, and smoothed her fingers across its broad head.
‘They tell me the Ninth Rain has fallen,’ she said. ‘The old enemy, creeping back. They say even the corpse moon fell from the sky. I haven’t been above ground in twenty years, so I don’t know, but all my children tell me.’
‘You run Deeptown?’ asked Tor. The pathfinder lifted one bony shoulder.
‘Deeptown runs itself, mostly. I just listen to my children, and tell them where to build.’ Again she stroked the head of the giant queen ant. ‘The earth has its dangers, so you have to listen – unless you want to find yourself burrowing into a dead drop, or a cave full of flood water.’ She seemed to brighten a little. ‘There are worm-touched rodents around here, you know. Great ugly bastards. Have to keep away from them and their dens, too.’
‘These are dark times we live in,’ said Vintage.
‘But we still have some heroes, it seems.’ The old woman smiled, her cheeks creasing with wrinkles. ‘You fight the worm people?’
‘We’re trying to,’ said Tor. ‘We’re taking the fight to the jungle south of here. If we’re lucky, the worm people will regret this latest Rain.’
The pathfinder sat back in her chair, glancing at the woman and Treen, who both looked somewhat stricken.
‘The Dead Wood is haunted,’ said Treen. ‘Not safe for anyone, the Dead Wood.’
‘It’s true, there will be terrible things beyond the woods, but we have to go there anyway.’ Vintage smiled at the small figure in the chair. ‘Pathfinder, would you bless us for our journey? It would be a great honour.’
The old woman gestured, and Vintage went to kneel before the chair. The pathfinder scooted forward and reached down to take her hand. As she did so, the great queen ant brought its head round, mandibles moving busily. It almost looked like it was smelling Vintage, its big bristly head nudging her elbow.
‘Go with the blessings of Deeptown, for what it’s worth.’ The pathfinder and Vintage exchanged a smile. ‘Now then, young man. Come closer. I’ve never seen an Eboran – I would like to see what all the fuss is about.’
Tor plastered a smile on his face, and knelt before the woman. The ant ran its mandibles up and down his leather coat, while the pathfinder took his hand and squeezed it. Up close her eyes were as black as the ant’s, and glittered with a wily intelligence.
‘A hero out of stories,’ she said softly. ‘I never thought I would see such.’ She closed her eyes, and Tor was alarmed to see the glitter of tears on her cheeks. All at once he longed to be elsewhere, out of this hot little room and back above ground with the sky a comforting darkness overhead. The woman’s grip on his hand tightened, and her eyes popped open. ‘You’re suffering, old one,’ she said. ‘She can taste it, you see. Smell and taste, they’re all the same for our ants, and what she tastes from you is bitter, bitter. So much pain. It seeps through you.’
Tor pulled his hand out of her grip, and stood up, ignoring the way the ant’s antennae followed his movements.
‘Thank you,’ he said tersely. ‘Thank you for your blessing.’
Later, when they had climbed the final ladder and said their farewells to Treen, Vintage turned to look at him.
‘What did the pathfinder mean, do you think? About you being in pain?’
With some difficulty, Tor resisted clutching his arm, still bandaged under his coat sleeve.
‘She’s an old woman who talks to ants, Vin, I don’t think she means anything.’ Somewhere ahead of them, the two campfires they had left behind were still burning. Tor could make out the familiar shape of Kirune, standing silhouetted against the flames. He was watching them come, his keen eyes no doubt seeing their every movement in the dark. ‘Shouldn’t we have told them more about the Jure’lia in the jungle? Or the poisoned creatures that live there? Hardly seems fair to let them carry on thinking the place is haunted.’
‘So, we tell them that they are neighbours with the ancient and feared enemy, that the worm people have been under their noses all along,’ Vintage shrugged, ‘and then what? Where do they go, Tor? Deeptown is their home, they’ve all lived there for generations, and it’s just as safe as anywhere else. Safer, even, given it’s so hidden.’
Tor thought of the Jure’lia’s maggots, pumping varnish down the entrances to Deeptown. He thought of being in those corridors when the green resin slowly closed off any chance of escape – hundreds of people and ants, crushed and suffocating together. He could think of better places to be if the worm people came. Yet he did not want to argue the point. After the pathfinder’s grim words to him, he was happy to leave the discussion of Deeptown for the time being. Forever, hopefully.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We should get some rest while we can.’
Chapter Thirty-four
The pain was too much.
Bern had always considered himself a strong man; physically capable, level-headed in most aspects. But he was no fool. Every few hours or so the queen would drag him back into the chamber of crystal shards, and methodicall
y, relentlessly, she peeled his mind back to the core, siphoning off his every memory and thought. He watched through eyes streaming with tears of agony as his life made a strange, fragmented parade across the walls, the only distraction from the pain the occasional glimpse of a face he’d thought he’d forgotten, or places he hadn’t visited since he was a child.
And then the queen would question him, poring over each memory like a weaver examining substandard thread. What did this mean? Why had he done this? Why was he so connected to people and places that he had not seen for years? Above all, what was his bond to the Eboran Aldasair, what did it mean?
After every session he would be slung back in the chamber with the dragon, left to try and reconstruct what was left of his mind. His understanding of who he was, of where and when he was, felt broken, as though he were a delicate vase, his pieces shattered on the floor, no way to put it back together. Once or twice he had tried to leave the chamber, gathering what small amounts of energy he had left to try and use his connection to the Jure’lia to peel the walls back and escape, but each time Celaphon would lumber after him, shove him back with his big blunt head, or, if the dragon happened to be absent, various minions of the queen watched him instead, spidery things with multiple, pale eyes.
The pain was too much, and he wouldn’t survive much longer.
‘You know,’ he said, staring up at the ceiling. ‘I haven’t eaten in days. I will die of that if nothing else.’
Celaphon lifted his head. Bern had been lying in silence for some time, and the dragon had seemed content to ignore him.
‘Humans are fragile,’ said Celaphon. ‘My Lady Hestillion is not. I have learned this now.’
‘I reckon you’ll find she still has to eat.’ Bern took a slow breath. His body felt incredibly heavy, impossible to move, almost as though he were sewn to the floor. There were a series of heavy thumps as Celaphon moved across the chamber to look down on him.
