by JA Hutson
“He plans to betray you,” the poelthari says, its voice flat.
“I knew that already,” I reply. “What else?”
The poelthari nods. “In the deepest chasms there is something he tries to hide even from himself. Something for which he feels immense shame.” The Prophet’s face twitches as the child says this. “This one . . . he is the reason the Shriven first came to your world. One of the demons navigated the broken paths. A Voice from the darkness. It whispered that if he agreed to heal the paths into your world, eternal life would be granted to his people. Your people. So he had a weaver repair what had been broken, then gave her to the demons that passed through that Gate.”
Coldness steals over me. Ezekal did not discover during the war against the Shriven that their blood imparted immortality – he had known it all along. He had sacrificed our world willingly to cheat death. He is even more monstrous than I thought.
“Anything else?” I say hollowly, struggling to comprehend the extent of Ezekal’s crimes.
The poelthari’s serpentine tongue flickers out again, brushing the back of the Prophet’s skull. “There is much more. Betrayals and crimes uncountable. But we sense that these are not your concern right now.”
Ezekal’s face is gray, webbed by the black filaments. His life seems to be leaching away. I’m tempted to let the poelthari finish whatever it is they’re doing, but instead I hold up my hand.
“Stop, please.”
The poelthari’s face is now flushed a deep bronze. It looks sated. “Are you sure, mortal? If I understand your morals correctly, this one does not deserve to live. A small slurp and I will consume his consciousness.”
“No, let him go,” I say, and the poelthari releases him as it draws back a step. Ezekal tumbles forward, crashing face-first into the ground. Only the spasming of his fingers suggests he still lives.
“So he was the first betrayer.”
Valyra has stepped forward. She holds the emerald dagger I had placed in my pack earlier, and hate contorts her face.
“Wait!” I cry as she lunges forward; I’m too far away to stop her, but Deliah is closer and she wraps her arms around the weaver. Valyra struggles against the lamias’s hold, tears running down her face. “He did it!” she shrieks, tossing her head back and forth. “He deserves to die!”
“He does deserve to die,” I say evenly, trying to calm her down. “But he knows something of what awaits us. We need him.”
“He will betray us,” Bell says, and I see to my alarm that she has picked up her crossbow. I’m not sure if she means to shoot Ezekal or the poelthari. She would truly be justified in doing either, I have to admit.
“We can’t simply kill him,” I say hurriedly. “Justice will come for him, I promise you. But not yet.”
The child wanders back to where its brethren are waiting. Golden eyes all focus on me.
“This”
“Gift”
“Repays”
“The”
“Debt.”
Bell shifts her crossbow so that it is pointing at the poelthari. “What about what I am owed?” she snarls, and fear stabs at me. I can only assume that this creature that wanders between the worlds could destroy us with ease if it so chose.
“Gift?” Zev suddenly pipes up cheerfully, breaking the sudden tension. “We are giving gifts?” Without an apparent care, ignoring the taut string holding back a death-delivering quarrel, he ambles between Bell and the solemn-faced children. The old man looks around with a vacant expression on his face. He thrusts his hands in his pockets, sticking out his tongue and scrunching up his face as he rummages around. Then he pulls something forth and takes a step towards Valyra. Deliah releases the weaver as the old man approaches.
Her brow furrowed, Valyra holds out her hand to receive whatever it is Zev is offering. Something small and brown and squirming drops into her palm. She screams, throwing whatever it is away. A mouse bounces on the ground, sits there dazed for a few moments, and then scurries into a chink in the wall. The weaver rubs her hand frantically on her robes, staring at the old man in disgust. Zev smiles back in return, apparently oblivious, and moves past the weaver. Deliah snaps her glaive into a guard position as he comes close, and reaches into his pocket again.
“Give me a mouse, old man, and you lose an arm.”
The hand which had been about to emerge hesitates, then goes back down as if searching for something else. This time he withdraws something small and gnarled and mercifully not moving.
“What is that?” says the lamias, not yet lowering her weapon.
“A gift!” the old man exclaims. It looks to me like a large nut.
Valyra’s expression has changed from disgust to confusion. She steps closer to Zev, her gaze locked on the object he holds.
“What is that?” she breathes. “The air around it . . . trembles.” She slowly holds out her hand.
“The seed of things to come,” the old man says, passing it over to her. She gasps as it falls into her hand, staring at the nut in wonderment.
A hissing has arisen, coming from the poelthari. I glance at them in startlement as they edge farther away.
“This”
“Elsewhere”
“Becomes”
“Too”
“Dangerous.”
The light in their eyes shifts from gold to amber.
“What do you mean?” I ask, but they do not respond. Instead, the air around them seems to fold and twist unnaturally. In the next eyeblink they are simply gone.
“Keep that,” the old man says, closing Valyra’s fingers around the nut. “Plant it where it will grow.” Then, without glancing at where the poelthari have suddenly vanished, he resumes his whistling and saunters over to Bell. She watches him approach warily, but instead of offering her some other useless clutter from his pockets he reaches up and taps her lightly on the forehead.
“And for you, some advice. Remember, clarity comes from the mind. And sometimes all one needs is a fresh perspective for changes to take root.” She flinches as he pats her on the cheek affectionately, and then stares after him as he wanders away humming.
We all stand in stunned silence until Ezekal groans and pushes himself up on shuddering arms. He turns a haggard face to me.
“What happened?” he rasps.
I reach down, grabbing him by his robes, and haul him to his feet. “We are leaving now.”
15
I crouch at the edge of the forest, looking out on a shattered landscape.
“A copper for your thoughts?” Deliah murmurs into my ear, and I can’t help but jump. The lamias left to go scouting some time ago, and I hadn’t heard her return. Whatever forester skills she learned on the island where she grew up have translated well to this wilderness.
“Well, I – ack!” I give a little cry as her tongue flicks out to touch my ear.
“I couldn’t resist,” she says softly, settling in beside me.
I glance at her reproachfully, and then back at what lies before us. The thick vegetation we’ve been traipsing through for the past three days has been dwindling all morning, and we’ve halted our journey among the few remaining trees. The last of any sort of cover, in fact. The terrain in front of us, stretching all the way to the base of the skull, is a cracked and broken plain of hard black earth. Some of the crevices look small enough to step across, while others yawn so wide they could easily swallow a careless elephant. There are no shrubs, no structures, just a few jagged fingers of black rock thrusting up occasionally from the badlands.
“Nothing has moved out there while you’ve been gone,” I tell her, wiping my ear clean. “What did you see?”
She shrugs. “There is nothing of interest. The forest skirts this place for a thousand paces in each direction.”
I glance behind me, to where the others are sprawled against gnarled boles. They are all exhausted – Deliah has set a punishing pace through the forest ever since we left Zev and his ruined temple. Bell and Valyra look wan and drained,
but still determined. What softness once filled their faces has been winnowed away, revealing a new hardness. Ezekal, on the other hand, seems to be on the verge of tumbling into the abyss. Faint black lines still web his face, darkening around his tarnished eyes. His breathing over the last day has been hoarse and ragged, as if there was something clotting his lungs. To be truthful, I’ve been expecting him to collapse, but he must have known that we would leave him behind if he did. We haven’t encountered any more Shriven, but Deliah has informed us with certainty that they are out there. She’s pointed out signs of their passage, gouges made by their scythes where they sharpened them on tree trunks, and a few times she has had us hide when she thought they were close. Ezekal – despite that we now know of the depths of his ancient betrayal – apparently fears being abandoned in these demon-haunted woods more than he is frightened of us.
Looming over the black plains is the skull. The thought that it was part of a living creature is beyond my comprehension, but up close it is clear that it is truly made of bone. Despite its age it hasn’t yellowed much, remaining a shade of white that gleams in the harsh daylight. Fingers of vegetation crawl up from where it rests upon the dark earth, but these do not extend even to its gaping nostrils, where large winged creatures are roosting. I’ve been watching these things with some trepidation while Deliah was gone, but they do not give the sense of being predators. Perhaps that is just wishful thinking.
From afar, it had looked like the dead thing’s jaw was missing, but now I think it is actually beneath the ground. There’s a large gap between its huge blunted teeth and the plains below, as if the god or creature was buried with its mouth open in an endless scream. A chilling thought. The inside of the skull is dim and hazy, but I can sense something large recessed within.
I turn back to the others. “We should get moving soon.”
Ezekal groans, pushing himself from among the roots of a tree. His complexion is sallow, and for a moment the black veins spread across his face seem to writhe. I shake my head and they settle again – I must be more tired than I thought.
Valyra and Bell are already on their feet shouldering their packs. I catch the weaver’s eye and she nods grimly, as if to show that she’s ready. A tremor of regret goes through me – she’s so young, barely a woman, and even after losing nearly everything she is ready to sacrifice the little she has left.
“There are things flying around higher up the skull. If they swoop down, get behind Deliah or me and we’ll try and make them understand we’re not helpless prey. Keep your eyes on them – but don’t forget to be careful where you step. The ground is riven with fissures, and there could be sinkholes as well.”
“What is the plan?” Bell asks.
My hand drifts to the hilt of my sword. “We enter the skull, find the Shriven called the Mother, and then kill her.”
A ragged snort from Ezekal. “Kill her,” he repeats, his words dripping with sarcasm. “With what? Your sword?”
I shrug. “I’ve yet to find something that can survive being reduced to pieces.” I jerk my head towards the massive mountain of bone. “Even gods.”
“What will we find in there?” Bell asks the Prophet, her voice hard. “Your life depends on this as much as ours. I can’t imagine you’ll be spared if we fail.”
Ezekal coughs wetly and spits something out among the leaves at his feet. Whatever it is squirms away into the mulch and quickly vanishes. I’m getting more and more unsettled by his condition.
“I can’t remember, girl. The memory is too . . . difficult to hold. Jagged. All I know for certain is that you are doomed. We all are.”
A heavy silence settles among us. I see a flicker of fear in Bell’s face as she weighs the Prophet’s words.
“Enough,” Deliah drawls from behind me. There’s no dread in her voice, at least. “We leave now.” A rustling comes as she moves from the trees.
Turning away from my companions, I follow her onto the cracked plain. The black earth crumbles beneath my boots, as if it is volcanic. Deliah moves quickly, skirting the largest fissures and leaping across the smaller. I glance down into one of these cracks and see only darkness, the walls smooth and glassy as obsidian. I wonder if somewhere beneath us is the rest of the great skeleton, entombed deep within the earth, or if the skull tumbled by itself from the heavens and came to rest here. I’m not sure which idea I find more disquieting.
The flying creatures flitting around the nose-holes of the skull do not seem to notice us, or if they do, they care little about our approach. A small mercy – from this distance they look like insects, but I suspect their wingspan is in fact longer than the wagons the Prophet brought into the wastes.
Halfway across the broken expanse Bell comes up beside me, breathing hard.
“How are you?” I ask, but she dismisses my concern with a shake of her head.
“I’m fine. I’ve been thinking about what the old man said to me. His gift.”
I try to remember what he said and fail. “And that was?”
“Clarity comes from the mind. And sometimes all we need is a fresh perspective for changes to take root.”
I frown. “I wouldn’t waste your time. He was clearly mad.”
“I have no doubt that he was mad,” Bell admits, squinting up at the skull that now blots out most of the sky. “But there is a saying I once heard from a philosopher, a friend of my papa: ‘Madness is a river flowing from the wellspring of Truth.’ I asked him what he meant, and he told me that minds are fractured when they glimpse the true shape of reality. Yet in the ramblings of those who have parted the veil for those blinding instants – the mystics, the oracles, the madmen – there is truth, if one dares to look.”
“You think there is some hidden meaning to his rambling?”
Bell shrugs away my skepticism. “I don’t know. But I will continue to consider what he said.”
A waste of time, in my opinion, but I don’t tell her that. Any distraction right now that keeps her from considering the direness of our situation is probably welcome.
We pass into shadow as the sun disappears behind the curve of the skull’s pate. In front of us, the mouth looms like a vast cavern. A pale light suffuses the gloom inside, but it’s not until the enormous teeth hang suspended above us that I can see what waits within.
“Tainted Saints,” Bell breathes.
The skull is hollow. Whatever organic substance once filled it has vanished, leaving barren walls that curve upwards to form an unimaginably vast dome. The light that permeates the space comes from both the eye and nose sockets, and also where a section of the skull up near its apex has been ripped away. A lance of daylight stabs down through the murk from this hole, illuminating a massive chunk of bone. This looks to be the fragment of cranium that tumbled free. There is nothing else except for this fallen shard, although the farthest reaches of the skull are draped in shadow. No Shriven that I can see, no demon goddess.
But something waits for us here.
The air is heavy with its presence, and I feel its awareness crawling across my skin as I stare up at the shaft of light. Somehow, I know that whatever intelligence is behind that feeling is coiled atop the piece of fallen skull.
To my surprise, it does not radiate malice. I have the sensation of being regarded with something almost like . . . amusement. Surprise, perhaps, that we have entered this sanctum, but not anger or fear.
The way to reach the top of the great chunk of skull is clear enough. The skeleton of some unimaginably long serpent stretches from the dark earth, the end of its tail close to our boots and its fangs sunk into the top of the plateau above. The bones of the snake are as black as obsidian and look to have been lacquered somehow – the spine is just wide enough for us to edge our way along single file, and there is nothing to keep us from plummeting down if we fall. A tingle of fear goes through me at the thought of how slippery those bones must be, and what would happen if the winged creatures we’ve seen lairing in the skull swoop down upon us wh
ile we are ascending. I glance upwards at where the light from the outside is trickling through the nose-sockets, but I can’t see any of those creatures.
“She’s up there, isn’t she?” Valyra says quietly, her gaze fixed on the great knob of bone.
No one bothers to reply. We all know the answer to that question.
“Do you remember this place, Prophet?” Deliah asks, and I see that she’s now holding her glaive.
Ezekal sniffles and rubs at his nose, swaying. He stares for a moment at the smear of blood on the back of his hand, then wipes it off on his robes. “Just . . . images. When I ascended this snake with Alesk the ground here teemed with countless Shriven. I looked down and saw them wriggling together like a great nest of termites. And the sound they made . . .” He shudders. “But of what awaits us at the top I remember nothing. Blinding light and a voice that promised us salvation . . .”
“So where are the Shriven?” Bell asks as the Prophet’s words trail away.
“Let us not wait to find out,” Deliah replies, beginning to climb the dead serpent. She keeps ahold of her glaive, which sends a pang of worry through me, but every step she takes on the vertebrae is as sure as if she is hurrying up a set of stairs.
“You next,” I tell Ezekal. The Prophet gives me an empty look, and then he follows the lamias. He’s much more tentative, leaning forward to grip the ribs curving away from the spine as he climbs.
Then I turn to Bell and Valyra. “I’ll be last.”
My companions nod. I can still see resolve in their faces, but it is now clearly tempered by fear. They are probably imagining exactly what I am: our combined weight causing the fragile-looking skeleton to break, and us tumbling to the ground. Wouldn’t that be an ignoble end to our quest, dashed to pieces among the fragments of a dead snake.
“Talin.”
I glance up. Deliah is perched halfway up the spine, pointing with her glaive at the skull’s mouth. I turn, something in her voice concerning me.
There is movement on the broken plain. Things are emerging from the fissures – Scythes, using their bone limbs as climbing hooks to haul themselves up from the depths.
