by Tim Lebbon
‘We should go,’ Leki whispered to Bon. ‘I fear this. Something isn’t right. Something is wrong. We should go.’
‘After we’ve come all this way?’ Bon asked, his voice low. He did not take his eyes from Juda.
‘You only have his word that your son—’
‘I told no one his name,’ Bon said. ‘Yet he knew.’
‘And you trust him?’
‘No. But I can’t just run away from this. Not after we’ve come this far.’ He glanced at Leki, saw that she was shivering. She didn’t seem to him like someone easily scared. ‘What is it?’
‘Can’t you feel it?’ she whispered.
‘I feel hope.’
‘No,’ she said, waving one hand. ‘No, no.’ She gestured at their ice-speckled surroundings, fine webbing between her fingers transparent in the rising sun.
‘Just hope,’ he said, searching for something else, not finding it.
‘I think it’s terrible.’ She pressed close to him, sounding so wretched.
‘Leki—’
‘It’s here!’ Juda shouted. He stood, eyes wide and a grin making a mask of his face. ‘It’s so close!’ He dashed around the fallen tree, staring across the wooded hillside towards a depression in the land. He looked back at Bon and Leki, but his eyes barely settled on them. ‘So close,’ he said, quieter and almost to himself.
‘Venden?’ Bon said, but he knew that was not right. Leki had pushed away from him and moved forward, reaching for Juda.
‘What’s close, Juda?’ she asked.
‘Aeon,’ Juda said. ‘The murdered god.’ He laughed, and several large birds took flight from a nearby tree. Another laugh chased them away.
‘Aeon,’ Leki said. It was not a question. As Juda broke from her and ran, she turned to face Bon, and her expression of hopeless terror made his heart sink.
‘Leki?’
‘Again,’ she said. ‘If it’s really true, then it’s all going to happen again.’
Venden could not bring himself to touch the heart. Every other artefact he had found and brought back to the remnant, he had excavated from the ground, dragged from their hiding places, and manhandled onto the cart. He had felt no fear whilst doing so, and no sense of being disrespectful. But the heart, he could not touch. It was Aeon’s centre, lost for generations. And it was still wet.
When the figures who had brought it vanished, dusk allowed mysterious lights in Kellis Faults to rise, drifting like mist with a sense of direction. Venden dragged the blanket from the stretcher, and the heart came with it. He felt observed in everything he did more than ever before. Trying to ignore the sensation, he folded the blanket’s corners and tied them together.
The heart was lighter than he had expected. As heavy as light, he thought, turning his back on the city where wraiths might dance. He tied the blanket sling to the saddle and mounted the shire, expecting it to be skittish and unresponsive bearing what he had loaded onto it. But the creature seemed unconcerned.
Not once glancing behind, Venden kneed the shire and headed back the way he had come.
He rode hard and did not camp for the night. The shire obeyed his urging, but still trotted slowly enough to watch its way, avoiding trips that might have broken a leg and spilled Venden, and his cargo, to the ground.
Venden glanced back constantly to ensure the blanket was still adequately tied. Sometimes he sensed the thing hanging there against the shire’s right flank, bobbing occasionally when its swing matched the shire’s movements. Other times it was a blank to him, as impenetrable as if he was trying to see inside the mind of the shire itself. At these moments he feared the heart had spilled to the ground, and he leaned from the saddle to ensure he could still see its bulk within the material.
Dawn came, and Venden stopped to water the shire. He slipped from the saddle. If the heart still bled, it did not stain the material. If it bleeds, it beats, he thought, but there was nothing about Aeon that could be obvious, or which must obey rules. He had learned that even before leaving Alderia and coming here.
He rode through the day, back towards the part of Skythe that he had never called his own, but which sang with the presence of the remnant. Sometimes he felt eyes upon him again, and he rode with caution, scanning the surrounding countryside for any signs of trouble. But if someone or something did watch, they left him alone. Perhaps they recognised what he carried. Maybe from a distance, he and the heart exuded the same kind of wraith-like glow he had seen above the ruins of Kellis Faults.
The shadow inside rested comfortably. It did not stir, even when Venden probed. There was contentment there, and excitement, a potential that the near future might realise. Relaxed as the shadow was, Venden had never felt so apart from it.
He did not question what he was doing, or why. He did not try to project forward. This was simply his meaning, and the task that fate had set him. This was what he had come to Skythe to do, whether or not he had known it at the time.
Late that afternoon he entered the valley he knew as his own. He approached the remnant’s clearing from the north, and the first thing he recognised was the sheer cliff where the orange spiders made their home. He breathed a sigh of relief. Without knowing until now, he had spent his whole life waiting for whatever might happen next.
A shred of fatigue settled over him as he arrived in the clearing. The remnant was arched across from the dead tree; perhaps it had shifted a few steps to the east, perhaps not. Neither possibility troubled him. He rested the shire and prepared to dismount, and then—
The shadow rose inside, greater than it had ever been before, more terrifying and deep and expansive. And sharper.
From the far end of the clearing, past the remnant, a man emerged and ran towards Venden.
And behind Venden, resting against the shire’s sweating flank, Aeon’s heart let out one delicate, thunderous beat.
‘Venden,’ Bon whispered when the figure rode into the clearing. He recognised him instantly, even though he was no longer a boy. Though only sixteen, Venden was a man now, as tall as his father, thinner, stronger. His face was tanned and weathered. He looked tired but excited, and as he came into view of the strange shape—
(Juda calls it a god, says it’s the remains of Aeon, but can a god be stone, or wood, or whatever else makes up that shape? Can a dead god really be touched?)
—his face lit up. The creature he rode looked like one of the wild shires from Alderia’s northern plains, but almost twice the size and with heavier features. There was something bulky slung across its back.
Venden’s gaze flickered across the shape, and the hairs on the back of Bon’s neck rose.
What’s that in my son’s eyes? He recognised a flash of it from when Venden had been younger, and the boy had asked his mother or father about things that were forbidden in schools and polite conversation. Why did Skythe die? Was there really a god, and who killed it? Did anyone ever say sorry? It was intelligence and fascination, and a love of hidden, dangerous things.
The three of them were hiding behind a howthorn bush. Juda had been shivering and sweating since arriving close to the structure, and countless times he had reached into the small bag tied at his waist, bringing his hand out empty again. His fever was madness and fear. He muttered words that Bon did not know, and Bon wondered whether they were now seeing the real Juda at last.
Leki had remained close to Bon, staring out at the thing in the clearing. He’d asked her whether this could really be the remains of a god. He could not believe, but saw in her silence that she did. That frightened him more than anything Juda could do or say, and even when the man brought out a smear of light and spread it across the soil, and started working it with hands that seemed to flex and bend unnaturally, Bon kept his attention on Leki. There was something more to her that he had never seen before. A look of determination beneath the fear.
‘Venden,’ Bon said. Leki looked at him, and she understood. Juda worked at his dreg of magic, sensing things neither of them knew.
Bon stood and walked around the howthorn bush, and when Venden looked up he began to run.
‘Venden!’ he shouted. ‘Venden, my son, my lost son!’ His heavy footfalls shook his voice, but even motionless it would have broken with emotion. He had come so far, and spent so long never expecting to see his son again – indeed, in his darkest moments believing him dead – and now they would be reunited.
The shire reared slightly, its stomping feet shaking the ground. Venden’s mouth fell open. He brought the beast under control.
Bon ran past the shape arching out of the ground from the foot of the dead tree. His attention was on his son, but this close his eyes were drawn to the shape, and the strangeness presented there. It was like nothing he had ever seen – a tree, living or dead; a sculpture; a skeleton of something huge, like corpses he’d heard about washed up on Alderia’s southern shores. This thing was static and yet exuded life, the potential of movement made solid. Every part of it seemed about to shift from where it was frozen, and Bon thought perhaps it was stuck in a moment between perceptions. Each facet of the shape was moving, yet he was seeing it in a blink. If I only let it move on, he thought, but such a feat was beyond him. He was only a man.
He passed the shape and slowed, stopping ten paces away from Venden and the huge creature.
‘Venden,’ he said. ‘I know you. I see you.’
‘I felt its beat,’ the young man said.
Doubt flickered briefly at Bon’s mind. But these were his son’s eyes, and that was his voice. He had his mother’s face; strong, defined. He had Bon’s eye colouring.
‘I’m your father, Venden. I can see that you remember.’
Venden’s eyes narrowed slightly, and he looked past Bon at the shape.
‘I can’t believe I’ve found you,’ Bon said, more to himself than to his son. He thought fleetingly, powerfully, of his dear dead wife, and how she had seemed to change from the moment they knew they were having a baby together. It had caused arguments, because Bon believed she did not want a child. And those arguments were the only times she had seemed to find her passion, because she had raged at him that a child was all she had ever wanted, and that he might save her life. There he had found the only hint in Milian that her history was, perhaps, more complex than she had ever revealed, even to him. He had pushed, and she had pushed back. She had died revealing nothing.
Now, here she was again in this young man’s face. For the first time in years Bon felt close to his wife once more, instead of remembering her as a memory with fading sharpness and bleached colours.
‘What are you …?’ Venden asked. ‘How …?’
‘After you left, my interests in Skythe caught up with me,’ Bon said. ‘But what about you? What happened to you? How did you come to be here?’
‘Father,’ Venden breathed.
‘Son.’ Bon went to step forward, but Venden kneed the animal and it backed away several steps. It snorted, stomping one heavy hoof. Bon glanced back, and Leki was standing beside the howthorn bush. He had never seen her so naked and exposed. She had something in one hand, and the other hand was delving into a pocket.
Of Juda, there was no sign.
‘Aeon needs me,’ Venden said. The words slammed home, shaking Bon as surely as if the ground had erupted. The strength with which they were spoken made him realise how different his son now was – a man, where once a boy. And the words themselves exposed a possibility that Bon had not been ready to entertain.
‘Venden—’
‘I’m not your son any more. I’m not Venden.’
‘Yes you are!’
‘No, I’m … no name. I’m all for Aeon.’ Venden’s eyes lit up as he spoke. He turned on the beast’s back, looking down at the object suspended from the rough saddle.
‘What do you have?’ Bon asked, and Leki echoed his question, louder, more fearful.
‘What do you have?’ She came forward, skirting around the clearing to keep as far from the shape in its centre as possible. She pressed against the cliff face, pushing past creeping plants, gasping and shoving aside a fist-sized spider that fell onto her shoulder. ‘What do you have? What have you done?’
‘Only what I wanted,’ Venden said. Bon saw a flicker of doubt in his eyes.
‘Venden, will you come down? Can we talk?’
‘Who is she?’ Venden asked. ‘Who have you brought with you?’ For the first time, his own voice was edged with fear.
‘She’s a friend. She—’
‘She doesn’t look like a friend. There’s deceit in her.’
‘No,’ Bon said, shaking his head and thinking, I’ve only known her for days. She was warm pressed against him in that giant tree in the gas marshes, and they had supported each other on the journey Juda had brought them on.
Venden calmed the shire. Bon noticed that he could not look away from the shape for long. Is that really Aeon? he wondered, and realised that he did not care. If it was, that was amazing and staggering and terrifying, because they were in the presence of a dead god. If it was not, it altered nothing. The thing at the centre of his world now was his son, his beautiful son, vanished and laid to rest in all but Bon’s most optimistic, unrealistic moments.
‘There’s so much we need to do together,’ Bon said. He thought of everything he had done with his own father, and how that had shaped him – the learning, the sports, the exploring and work. There were still such sights to show his child.
‘Bon, we need to leave here,’ Leki said.
‘What?’
‘Bon … I need to tell …’ She was looking at the shape, not at him. Had it moved? Bon was not sure. Was its arched spine slightly higher? Had that gouge in the soil where it touched been there before? Motionless, it resembled nothing alive, nor anything that should live, and yet it was the most animated thing he had ever seen.
‘It’s too late, father,’ Venden said, and he rode past Bon towards the shape. The shire snorted and shook its head, agitated, but Venden steered it true. He could ride well. Bon’s father had taught him how to ride, but Bon had only ever taken Venden a couple of times. One more thing I have yet to do, he thought, and then everything changed. The past ended, the future began.
‘There’s no more magic!’ Juda shouted, his voice a wretched cry.
Previously so static, the scene exploded into movement.
Juda’s heart strived to betray him, but he grasped on to life. Holding it tight, dear to him, even though his reason for being seemed so small now, and so pointless.
Because there was no magic here.
The dregs sat in his bag, weak, pitiful echoes of what had been. They might show him sights from afar, perhaps. It could be that, used properly, the magic would heal one wound, or cause another.
But the great magic he had expected to discover the moment he found Aeon … there was none.
And there never had been.
‘There’s no more magic!’ Juda said. It did not sound like his voice, though it came from his throat. It was the sound of a man bereft, the whimper of a wretched someone who has discovered one of life’s truths is a lie. Life is dead, moving is stillness, love is hatred … Aeon is not magic. It might have been used to put the god down, but it had never been wielded by the destroyed deity.
The ground here, and the air, was as empty of magic as anywhere Juda had ever been.
Behind him, along the valley where a stream cut down from the hillsides with deceptively cheerful music, he heard movement. Stamping feet, harsh breathing. The clank of metal against metal.
Juda could not turn to look, and the noises were remote to him. Everything was remote, all reality circling the huge empty space that had formed inside him. It was the void where all his desires had dwelled, along with everything he had ever lived for. The Brokers sought magic like people who climbed mountains or navigated long rivers – they wanted it because it was there.
But Juda sought magic to live. It had become his heartbeat, yet to be found. It was his love and
desire, waiting for him in the wild. It was—
The movement came closer, and he slowly looked up.
The female slayer emerged from behind a copse of trees further down the valley. She ran at him, unhitching the bow from over her shoulder, sweating and foaming at the mouth like a shire that has been pushed too far, too fast.
The male slayer was close behind, swinging his pike from his shoulder and aiming it as he ran. There was a burst of steam from its end, a low whistle and a heavy impact against Juda’s booted foot, twisting his ankle. The stench of shellspot poison wafted around him and scorched the insides of his nostrils. A finger’s width higher and the shot would have broken through skin and flesh and killed him.
Juda did not care. He stood and stumbled into the clearing, and all eyes turned to him. The young man on the shire, Bon behind him, Leki sheltering against the cliff from the thing at the centre of the clearing … none of it mattered. Tears blurred his vision, so he only caught a shadow of Leki rushing across towards Bon.
‘Behind him!’ she screamed. ‘They’ve found us!’
I’ve found them, Juda thought. He imagined himself in the belly of the Engine once more, swimming in dregs and thinking himself immersed, but really only touching ancient, ineffectual echoes of what magic really was – Crex Wry, another fallen god. Perhaps the dregs were its final, dying exhalations. Perhaps Juda had spent his whole life chasing ghosts.
And in a flash of revelation he knew, suddenly, what he had to do.
He turned to run, and something punched him in the shoulder. Blood sprayed the air before him, turning his view of the bleached, dead god red. He looked down at the arrow protruding from his armpit and it did not matter. The pain was fuel to him as he ran.
He touched the wound with his dreg-soaked right hand, and the heat began to fade.
Yes, he thought, now I know the way.
Another arrow hissed past his ear and tugged at his hair, and behind him he heard a scream.
Everything is moving so slowly, Venden thought, and he nudged the shire closer to the remnant. The creature was antsy, but Venden exuded calmness and control.
