by Jo Spurrier
As the words left my lips, another tremor set us staggering, and the roar of the storm swelled, Kara and I both clapping hands over our ears. Through eyes squinting against the grit and dust blasted by the wind, I saw . . . something . . . erupt from the earth. Something huge, wreathed in red light and swirling ash. For a moment I couldn’t make sense of it — it was just a vaguely egg-like shape, if an egg could be jagged and ridged and studded with knobs and spikes. But then the massive shape split open, revealing a mouth with row upon row of viciously pointed teeth. A multitude of spikes studded its broad blunt nose, scattered amid dozens of knobbly growths I took for warts — until I saw them rippling open, blinking in the harsh light and scouring sand. Eyes. Dozens of eyes.
‘Lord and Lady,’ Kara whispered beside me.
‘We have to take down those stones,’ I said as the ground shook again. The beast was fighting to push its way through to our realm, and those black gleaming eyes were all fixed on the sky above, straining and striving to reach the portal through to our realm. ‘We should split up; you go with your da, I’ll go with Toro. Collect the trinkets if you can, we might need them later. Go!’
Wide-eyed, she nodded, and set out into the blasting wind, her father hurrying after her.
Toro nudged my elbow with a snort, starting to kneel again. But before he could, I stepped up onto the fallen obelisk, using it as a mounting block to climb onto his back. ‘Quick!’
I expected him to head in the opposite direction from Kara and Brute, but instead he whirled on his heels and galloped past them, leap-frogging ahead to the next stone.
When we reached it, I slithered down from his back with my wand already in my hand. Don’t think, I told myself. Just do. I’d done it before, after all, when I’d brought the path in Minerva’s den crashing down. Before my mind could run away with thinking of all the ways it could fail, I crouched down to press my hands against the red sand, the wand as well. ‘Move,’ I said.
Beneath my hands the grains of sand rippled, trembled, and then they flowed aside like water, parting in a deep trench, a furrow as neat as any made by a plough.
With a snort of surprise Toro whirled on his hindquarters, set his shoulder against the stone and leaned upon it with all his considerable weight. It toppled with a thud and a puff of dust, tearing another strand of support loose from the storm. Moments later there came another, cracking like an enormous whip, while the hell-beast at the storm’s heart bellowed with rage.
I started to climb up on the obelisk again when I remembered to check the base, where I found a pipe, carved from smooth, slick stone. It was uncomfortably warm, like the sand around it — significantly hotter than the sand at the surface, even at only a few feet in depth. I tucked it into my pocket as well and climbed back onto Toro’s back.
As we galloped onwards, again leap-frogging ahead to two stones away, I wound my fingers tight into Toro’s mane and squinted up at the storm. I could see the rift in the sky above, full of shifting lights like the play of colours on mother-of-pearl. At the very edge of the tear in the sky I could just make out a small figure, her hair and dress streaming in the wind, her wand a pinprick of light in her hand. As I gazed up at her, I felt a peculiar prickle of sensation over my skin, a distinct sense of being watched.
When we reached the next obelisk, she was waiting for me — sort of. It was Aleida’s shape, but made up of red dust and ashes caught up from the storm, swirling around inside her form like a whirlpool of coloured sand in a glass bottle. ‘Dee, what the hell?’ her shape said as I slithered down over Toro’s shoulder. ‘What are you doing?’
‘It wasn’t my idea!’ I said. ‘The pathways were like a furnace, we had to get out. Facet didn’t want to let me through but I made him open the door and, well, here we are. And then I saw all this . . . Aleida, I’ve figured out why you couldn’t undo Minerva’s spells. Somehow she had them anchored here in another realm.’
‘So I see,’ she said, looking around with blank red eyes. ‘Well, Dee, I . . . oh shit. I gotta go. Back in a moment, I hope.’ With that, she dissolved, blowing away in a stinging blast of grit.
I gaped for about half a second, and then looked up. I could still make her out, just, silhouetted against the opalescent light, but hanging over her was something else. Something huge and dark, solid as a mountain.
With a sharp snort, Toro nudged me with his nose, hard enough that he almost knocked me over. I shook myself and swept a handful of hair back from my face. ‘Right. Right.’ It didn’t matter what was happening up there, not really — there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I needed to focus on the task at hand.
This time, when I ordered the sand to move, it blasted aside in a veritable fountain, spraying high into the air. In moments the obelisk was toppled, and in the dirt beneath I found a belt-buckle of tarnished silver. I only glanced at the thing for a second before shoving it into my pocket, long enough to see that it was engraved with an image that was, frankly, obscene. ‘I sincerely hope that wasn’t yours,’ I said to Toro as I mounted up again.
I looked up again as we rode on — Aleida was still there, and the huge dark shape, too. It seemed to me that she had her head tipped back to look at the thing, but at this distance I couldn’t be sure. But I could only spare her the briefest glance, for on this plane things were getting worse. The hell-beast let loose another shattering roar, and with a tremor that set Toro stumbling, the huge creature heaved its body out of the ground. It was truly massive — the whole courtyard at the Haven wouldn’t have been big enough to contain it. It looked like a giant lizard, but with three sets of legs along its long, snaking body, its back covered with horny plates and wicked spikes, and its long tail tipped with a boulder-sized club. It raised its ugly head to the tear in the sky above and gave a bone-shaking roar of rage and fury.
Then, it started to climb, clawing its way up through empty air, straining towards the rift into our world. ‘Oh gods,’ I said, though the howling wind stripped the words away as though I hadn’t spoken.
I’m not sure what made me glance back to check on Kara and Brute. It can’t have been anything I heard — I couldn’t hear a thing over the hellish noise of the storm and the beast. I couldn’t even hear the thumping of my heart in my ears. But I did glance back, for whatever reason, and saw the two figures being mobbed by dark flapping shapes. Oh no. Whether I said the words or only thought them, I didn’t rightly know. Oh hells!
‘Stop!’ I howled to Toro, pulling on his mane, but he was thundering on to the next stone, head and neck surging forward with each stride, powerful muscles bunching beneath me. He must have felt the shift in my weight as I craned to look behind, for he tossed his head and glanced back — and then abruptly turned, swinging around to gallop back the way we’d come.
Kara and her father were surrounded, at the centre of a dark cloud of flapping, squalling beasts. Kara had her sword out and was slashing at the creatures that swooped down on her, reaching out with their long, vicious claws. Her father was standing up on his hind legs, swatting and snarling at anything that came within reach. There were half-a-dozen beasties on the ground around them, but dozens more were circling above them, buffeted by the storm. While we galloped I saw where the creatures were coming from — they were rising out of the ground itself, clawing their way up through the sand, shaking it off before they leapt into the air with their dark eyes glowing with reflected light from the storm.
As Toro charged towards Kara and Brute, another glow appeared on the red earth, a pinprick that swelled larger and larger. My heart sank. What now? What else can possibly go wrong?
It swelled until it was roughly the size of our wagon, and then popped like a soap bubble. Inside was Aleida, and the huge dark shape I’d glimpsed through the rift above. At this range, it looked like a heap of boulders, stacked together in the vague shape of a human trunk and arms, though in place of legs was just one huge rock.
Aleida hurried towards the mob of nether beasties, staff in one
hand and her wand in the other, and let loose a jet of flame, driving the creatures off. Behind her, the stone-man raised its massive arms and pounded its fists together.
I felt the shockwave ripple through the air, striking my skin like a stinging slap. But the nether beasties, it seemed, felt it as something else entirely. In a wave, they simply fell from the air, raining down like stones.
Aleida and I reached them at the same time. As she blasted the creatures nearest to Kara and Brute, Toro and I circled around to deal with the rest, and once again I felt the scorching blast of the ring.
‘By all the hells, Dee,’ she shouted. ‘I’ve never met anyone with such a talent for being in the wrong place at the right time!’
I let that pass without comment. ‘Who’s your friend?’ I shouted back instead, nodding past her to the hulking creature of stone.
‘It’s a mountain lord. Remember what I said about drawing too much power? Well, luckily it’s decided this is a fight worth having. Come on, the beast is nearly through — we have to move!’
She turned her face to the howling storm and forged into the stinging wind. Behind her, where the bubble of blue light had appeared, there was a perfect circle of dark, crumbling stone, the same stuff that had made up the ground of Minerva’s cavern. The sight of it made me wonder if, back in our world, there was now a perfect circle of red sand.
The mountain lord rolled after her, the huge boulder of its lower body rolling across the red sand. As it passed me, the stone of its head turned my way, and I met the blue pools that were its eyes. For a moment, my head was full of the roar of waterfalls, the dizzying heights of stony cliffs, the biting cold of rarefied air. Then, the elemental looked away, releasing the hold it had on me, and I was left with the distinct impression that I’d been examined, assessed and found at least somewhat acceptable.
Without a word, the rest of us followed them. Kara was splattered with blood, but aside from a few scratches she seemed unharmed — most of the gore had come from the flapping horrors, I guessed. Her father hadn’t been so lucky; I could see fresh blood matting his fur, and he was limping on one front paw as he loped along at Kara’s side.
Up ahead, Aleida had her wand in one hand and her staff in the other, held wide as an arc of power rippled and shimmered around her. Her voice was chanting an incantation, the droning words lost in the howl of the wind. Above us, the shifting pearly hues wreathed around the portal intensified, and I saw the edges of the rift ripple and waver. She was fighting to close the fissure, sealing the beast out.
The hell-beast gave an ear-rending screech and strained upwards, redoubling its efforts to reach the portal. Ahead of me, the mountain lord halted, and leaned down to the ground, pressing both its stony fists to the desert floor. I felt power ripple around me, squeezing me like a huge snake wrapping me in its coils, and then it stretched away from us like the roots of a plant. Up ahead, thick ropes of power burst out of the red sand and shot up towards the beast, wrapping around it like vines, hauling it back towards the desert’s barren floor. For a moment, the beast faltered, falling back, but then it clawed its way upwards once again, surging ahead with a force that dragged the Mountain Lord skidding and grinding across the red sand.
I watched with a sinking feeling as the beast fought its way upwards. The portal was shrinking, but it wasn’t closed, not by a long shot. And it wouldn’t shut, I realised — three interwoven strands of power still reached up into the sky. We’d taken down five of the pillars, but it wasn’t enough.
I turned to Kara. ‘We have to finish those pillars! Come on!’
She turned to me with wide eyes, and nodded. ‘Let’s go!’
We both scrambled onto Toro’s back, Kara in front and me clinging to her waist, and as soon as we were seated he was off, his hooves pounding in the soft sand and Brute charging alongside us. He kept pace easily, despite his wounds. Never in my life would I have imagined a creature so large could be so fast.
At the first pillar I was sliding down while Toro was still moving, and parted the sand. Kara helped pull me back up again while Brute reared up to knock the stone over. As it fell I heard the hell-beast raging, but we were already riding on again. Holding tight to Kara’s waist as we charged across the sand, I snatched a glance at the struggle at the heart of the storm. The portal had shrunk — now it was barely as big as the beast’s head, but the beast was only yards beneath it, straining and striving to climb the empty air.
Then we were at the second-to-last stone. Again I ploughed a furrow in the sand and scrambled back up to my perch, leaving the rest of the work to Brute. It was only as we were galloping away that I realised I’d forgotten all about the trinkets buried beneath them. Exactly why they mattered, I couldn’t have said, but some niggling sense deep within me insisted that they did. My stomach sank, but there was no turning back. There was no time.
The last stone. I slid to the ground with shaking legs, and for the last time I willed the sand to move. Brute wasn’t here yet — I glanced back to see him charging towards us, more flapping horrors beating around his head. There was no time to wait, no time to help him. All that mattered was the stone. Kara and Toro were already straining against it, heaving it over. I ran to join them, but I couldn’t help but glance back at the storm, at the hellish creature determined to reach our world.
The stone fell with a dull thump, and with the snap of a gargantuan whip, the last of the ethereal supports melted away. With that sound, the storm died. The wind simply stopped dead, like closing the door on a gale. The sudden cessation of noise left me reeling, my ears ringing, as all the sand and grit that had been carried on the wind rained down in a shower. Suddenly I could hear Aleida’s voice, still chanting, and above us the hissing crackle of the portal.
The beast had its head through the rift, along with one great clawed foot. The webbing of power that had lifted it this far was gone, but it didn’t matter anymore, it seemed. That vast body twisted, clawing at the empty air, but with its head and one foot inside the portal it could still climb through . . .
But as Aleida’s voice rose to a shriek, I saw the portal cinch tight like a noose. The huge body stiffened, writhed with a muffled shriek, and then it fell, an empty space where that hideous head had been.
The quake as it hit the ground made me stagger. A moment later came a gust of wind, bearing with it a blast of sand and an awful, sulphurous stink. The beast didn’t lie still as it fell, but writhed and twitched like a headless snake, claws and club-tail scything through the sand.
For a moment that was the only sound, and then the alien world around us erupted into shrieks and jibbers as all the circling beasties swooped towards the fallen hell-beast.
I heard someone shrieking my name. Then, Kara was at my side, mounted on Toro’s back, screaming at me to climb up behind her. Brute was there too, more blood in his fur now, something clutched in his mouth. It was silver, curiously bright in this dark world. As I scrambled up behind Kara he lifted his great head and pressed it into my hand. It was a flask, a silver flask. Just why it was so important to him I couldn’t begin to imagine, but I shoved it into my pocket along with the other trinkets. I could still hear someone calling me, and realised it must be Aleida, on the far side of the fallen beast.
The moment I was settled, Toro took off once more, galloping across the sand, weaving between the flapping horrors that joyfully shrieked and howled as they clawed their way up through the sand to join the chaos.
We met her on the far side, leaning heavily on her staff as she backed away from the fallen beast. Her eyes lit up when she saw me, her face flushed with triumph. ‘Did you see it, Dee? Did you see that? Took its head right off! Like a cork from a godsdamned bottle!’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said. ‘That’s amazing, good work! Now can we get out of here?’
‘Gods, yes. Back to where I came in. Quickly!’ She turned away, leaning on her staff, only to stagger after a couple of steps. ‘Oh, for pity’s sake . . .’
On
ce again I swung down from Toro’s back. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Ugh, I’m cut off. Godsdamned elementals, they’re very literal, you know. I convinced him to give me power to deal with the beast, and now it’s dead he’s not letting me have any more.’
The words sent a chill through me. ‘But he’s going to take us home, right?’
‘Oh, yes. I was very clear about that, believe me.’
‘All right, good. You’d better get on Toro if you can’t walk. Kara, help me!’
Brute caught up with us as Kara and I got Aleida up on Toro’s smooth back, though Kara was left frowning at the strange feel of Aleida’s feet, their true shape hidden beneath the folds of her skirts. As I helped heave my teacher up, I felt something shift in my overloaded pockets, topple out and fall, and once Aleida was settled on her perch I stooped with a curse to pick it up from the sand. The flask. It was engraved, I realised, with a picture of a bull. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Toro, this was yours!’ Perhaps that was why Brute had been so insistent on bringing it to me.
‘What’s that?’ Aleida said sharply as we started towards the circle of crumbling stone. The elemental was already there, waiting for us with the calm patience of mountains.
‘A trinket. There was something buried under each of those stones. Something personal, I think? I can feel power clinging to them, it’s odd.’
‘Mm,’ Aleida said, frowning. ‘Interesting. Actually, that would explain how she was able to anchor the spell here, and why I couldn’t undo the blasted thing. Very interesting. Come on now, hurry!’
I was going as fast as my weary legs would take me. But we were close now, just a few dozen yards away.
There came a sound from behind us, a kind of startled grunt. I glanced back, and saw that Brute had fallen behind. He was stopped still, biting and clawing at his foot.
No, not his foot. There was something wrapped around it, something dark, like vines or rope.
‘Uh oh,’ I said.
Aleida looked behind. ‘Oh hells. Dee—’
