by Tim Lebbon
‘We saw it off,’ Gallan said. ‘Drove it away.’
‘It’s gone,’ Sol said. ‘I’m not sure we factored at all in its decision to dive for the last time.’
‘We saw it off,’ Gallan said again. He was shaking. Sol let him.
They sailed through the afternoon, and Sol put his Blade to work effecting repairs on the ship. They were not taking in water, but whole swathes of the deck boards had been crushed and splintered, railings had been ripped away and one of the sails hung in tatters, marked with the hand-sized imprints of decapus suckers. It was good to keep the troops occupied.
Through a need to keep himself occupied and distracted also, Sol Merry helped.
By late afternoon Skythe was in view. Sol paced the ship’s deck, while his Blade made preparations for landing. The holding pens below were a riot of noise and activity as the beasts were woken from their slumbers. Weapon racks were assembled on deck and loaded, ready for a rapid deployment onto the beaches. The ship’s lookout was joined in the crow’s nest by one of Sol’s best soldiers. It was Gallan who approached, and Sol silently blessed his Side for preventing him having to ask.
‘Nothing from Skythe,’ Gallan said.
‘Thank you, Gallan.’
Gallan nodded. They stood at the bow and watched the land come closer. It looked unremarkable. They had both been to Outer lands on various expeditions, but before them stood a place of legend.
‘I’m sure Leki is fine.’
‘We can’t know that. Let’s prepare for landing.’ Sol saw the flurry of Gallan’s salute from the corner of his eye, then heard the man’s footsteps retreating across the deck. Thank the Fade for solid land beneath my feet, he thought. And despite his concern at Leki’s lack of communication, he felt a deep excitement at the potential conflict to come.
Sol had never before been sent to fight a god, false or not.
* * *
The landing was taking place along a five-mile stretch of coastline. The rough community of Vandemon was ten miles to the west, and navigators had assured the Spike that the beaches chosen were usually deserted and barren, home to nothing but Skythian wildlife. If anyone did happen to be there, they would be fair game.
Sol’s beach – and the landing place for the Engines – would be shared with one other ship’s company. They anchored and rode the waves far enough out and apart so as not to offer a combined target, but close enough to stay in contact via flags and glow lamps. Then they sent in the sparkhawks.
The birds, instructed in their purpose by their handlers, spiralled high above the ships until they were lost in the grey sky. A while passed, and then their handlers pointed silently to show the routes of their rapid descents. Sol could not make them out – as ever, they were plummeting too fast for the eye to follow – but on the beach he saw several sparking impacts as the hawks found targets.
The landing craft went next, disgorging an Alderian army onto Skythian soil for the first time in six centuries. The thought crossed Sol’s mind, but he paid it no heed. He was a soldier, not a politician.
He left the ship with his soldiers, shoving his concerns over Leki deep down, lest they distract him from his mission. He stood upright in the bow of the first landing boat, Gallan by his side. His blood surged and sang with his life’s purpose.
Their first task was to establish a bridgehead, unload the ships, secure the perimeter, send scouts inland and along the coast to investigate any possible resistance to the landing, and then wait for further orders. The rackers, and the Engines and their attendant priests, would be brought onto land. And after that he might express official concern over Leki’s lack of communication. Any comment now might be perceived as a weakness by the generals.
They landed unchallenged, assault sloops being hauled up the beach and used as a command post. Spike soldiers moved left and right along the beach, and a troop of eight probed inland, investigating their surroundings and watching for trouble. Seeing-doves flitted back and forth along the coast, bringing news of sporadic resistance to the east from a community of criminals banished there over the years. They were quickly killed, and their motley camp of huts burned down.
The Engines were landed. They remained covered, and each had a troop of Spike to guard it.
Live weapons enclosures were established using native resources – trees for sparkhawk and merrow roosts, moulded sandbanks for termite and rat. The lyons were tethered to rocks further up the beach, a freshwater stream giving them a source of water to cool their simmering fire-glands.
Finally, the two beautiful, mad rackers were brought over. They were concealed within a tented structure on their landing craft, presumably still surrounded by a haze of shoot dust. The tent was quickly transferred and erected close to the command post, and the rackers walked across the foreign beach, pausing every few steps to squeeze sand between their naked toes and communicate with each other in subdued tones.
Many Spike turned away from them, looking inland or along the coast.
‘No more racks,’ Gallan said. He’d approached Sol from behind, startling him. Sol cursed silently and shook his head. The rackers spooked him as well – their manner and their madness, not what they did – and he knew he should present a stronger front than this to his Blade.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Tell me when there is.’
‘Of course.’ Gallan was alert, eyes wide. Though they had not had a fight, three bodies had been found further along the beach, their skulls shattered by the sparkhawks. From their build, they could only have been Skythian. ‘So what now?’
‘Now we consolidate for the night,’ Sol said. ‘The other Bladers and I will meet with the generals. And then tomorrow we establish the first Engine here. While we’re doing that, the other two will be taken inland, one north-east, one north-west. If Leki contacts us … if she does, then we should be able to position them so that the false Skythian god is within their triangle.’
‘And if she doesn’t?’
‘Then what happens with the Engines is dependent upon their technicians and priests. I don’t pretend to understand them.’
‘Or even like them,’ Gallan said. ‘Magic is …’
‘Not our concern,’ Sol said.
‘It’s wrong,’ Gallan said. He lowered his voice. ‘And what we were always told is wrong.’
‘Not our concern,’ Sol said again, louder, more slowly. Gallan saluted and walked away, and Sol looked inland. Somewhere out there, Leki, alive or dead.
That was his concern.
He closed his eyes briefly and thought of the amazing woman who had honoured him by becoming his wife.
Venden had always struggled with the word ‘god’, because it implied so much – fealty, homage, rules and fear, and a degree of faith that he had never felt able to give. But these beings in Aeon’s memories were so far removed from what he knew that god seemed as good a word as any.
The endless journey led from one being to another, and eventually to an alliance against a common enemy. Crex Wry, they called this foe, its name a dark whisper. It was the very earliest days of the world, when landscapes were being forged and the chaotic forms of rock and water, fire and air, were observable as a malleable, ever-shifting soup of possibilities. There were vast distances between these interactions, and Venden sensed that they were both geographical and temporal. A quest that might have taken a million years, across an ever-changing and forming landscape, ended finally when the alliance was true and strong, and there was but one abstainer. Venden felt the strength of determination in those old creatures. Their power was staggering, their intention solid.
That single abstainer, Crex Wry, had sought dominion over the world. Venden had no concept of its appearance, but he sensed a heavy dread surroundings its name. It bore powers absent from the other beings. Its ambitions were darker.
The others had formed together to drive it down. Venden caught only a brief sense of the conflict that ensued – perhaps it was too traumatic to recall, too awful for
Aeon to see and remember, again and again. That it was tumultuous and almost apocalyptic he did know, because much that had been made was unmade. The land as it was, changed once again, fractured and shattered, boiled and frozen. The world that emerged from the other side was more similar to the one he recognised. It had been the first war, and Venden was sad that even these beings of such power sought to fight. Perhaps that was simply the nature of existence.
The errant being Crex Wry was put down beneath reality’s veneer, and its sickened soul bled into the world as magic. This final, dangerous evidence of its existence was also drawn from the world, and sealed away within a fold of potential. The act of doing so ruined some of these grand, primeval beings, and the bones of those dead and gone were buried in the foundations of the world Venden recognised as his own.
But, like any sickness, magic had been difficult to eradicate completely. Some of Crex Wry’s influence had escaped and remained as dregs of magic, floating in empty places, echoes of that dead thing’s dark soul and darker intentions.
The idea of what would happen if Crex Wry was raised existed as a deep, dark pit of utter dread in Aeon’s mind, and that was why Aeon persisted. Why it had lived on, while all those other beings had succumbed to time and progress, and lain down, and let history bury them in the past: to guard against these dregs being found and used to raise Crex Wry from its ancient resting place.
But magic had a gravity. And the Ald had felt its pull.
As he explored these grim memories, Venden felt the urging sent out from Aeon, and understood by minds believing its godhood. It invited its followers to listen, and Venden understood that its resurrection had been acknowledged all across Skythe. Those surviving Skythians whom he had met, who had followed him, and whom he had occasionally communed with, would all hear Aeon’s words because they were for ever attuned to its voice.
Gather and go south against the forces who would undo what little you have left, Aeon urged. I am returned, but weak. I am whole, but still lacking. Given time, I can help you rebuild. But the old enemy of truth would seek to deny me that time.
And for the first time, Venden heard something in Aeon’s voice that might have been emotion.
I did nothing to call this down upon myself. I am a wanderer, and would wander again, given the chance. So go south. And when the time comes, I will aid the fight.
Aeon retreated. For the first time since becoming a part of it, Venden was left totally alone, his mind a speck of ice in an eternity of freezing space.
If I was alive, this would drive me mad …
When the emptiness ended after an unknown time, Aeon brought its full regard down upon him. Just once, Aeon said. And Venden knew from its tone – sad, and already weighted with guilt – that this was going to hurt.
They walked through snowstorms that day and night, and several times Leki guided them to a hiding place: a cave in a hillside, a hollow tree, a fold in the land shielded by creepers and tumbled boulders. Hidden away, they watched groups of Skythians walking south.
Bon had only ever seen those few Skythians at the ruined village. Animalistic, wild, they had exhibited everything he had come to believe about them.
Now, the people he saw were moving in groups of twenty or thirty, sometimes more. Men, women and children marched in silence. And there was something else different about them. Everyone believed that the Skythians had been reduced by the effects of the long-ago war, regressing along with their corrupted land until they were considered less than, and lower than, the most savage Outers. They were believed to be illiterate and barely able to communicate through language, and there were rumours of widespread tribal skirmishes and cannibalism.
But these people were different. Though still stooped and twisted by hereditary malformations, they were organised and determined. They moved with purpose, and wore thick furs against the cold. They carried weapons – basic spears, rough bows and arrows, and Bon spotted the glinting of newly sharpened blades on some of them. Most of all, they no longer appeared wild.
It’s as if they were hiding everything from us, he thought with shame. Bon had always considered himself a fair man, but he had regarded them as below him.
‘Where are they going?’ Bon asked after their fifth encounter.
‘Into chaos,’ Leki said. But she looked troubled. She had also seen her perception of the Skythians shattered. Which meant that the Ald, her employers, had vastly underestimated them.
‘It doesn’t have to come to war,’ Bon said. He felt hopeless and helpless. He knew of some of the weapons available to the Spike, and suspected there were many more he had never seen or heard of. The Skythians were carrying sticks and stones.
Leki did not answer. They walked on.
Close, Venden said, his voice so strong that it sent Bon staggering against a tree. Edge along the next valley … then down into cold … Strong, but not the son he had known.
Leki was watching him from a few steps away, head tilted quizzically.
‘Almost there,’ Bon said.
It was midday. They had walked through the night, and now the snow was halfway to their knees. Still it fell. It muffled their footsteps, obscured their view of the landscapes they crossed. They went west along the next valley, and then the landscape began to change.
The snowfields were pure and untouched, but across the wide valley were what looked like giant white boulders, hundreds of them, a chaotic array of tumbled rocks so frequent and large that even the snow could not camouflage them.
It was only as they approached close to the first rock that it became clear what they were.
‘Ice boulders,’ Bon said.
‘But from where?’ Leki asked. She sounded unsettled, and Bon could not blame her. Scattered with the huge objects, the landscape was distinctly alien.
‘Below,’ Bon said. ‘The frozen heart of Skythe.’
‘There’s been an eruption.’ Leki walked to the nearest boulder and touched it, scraping snow from its surface until the solid ice was revealed. It was green, deep with age.
‘That’s where we’re going,’ Bon said. Leki turned to look at him, her hand still on the boulder.
‘Venden whispers to you,’ she said, her voice barely louder than falling snow.
Bon nodded because he could not speak. They stared at each other, and he saw fear and fascination in her eyes. Perhaps it was a reflection of his own.
‘Everything I’ve ever learned from Arcanum, and you’re leading us in,’ she said.
‘Perhaps Arcanum doesn’t know as much as it thinks.’
‘No, it knows more. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll know where Aeon is, and then …’ Leki touched the hem of the jacket where she had hidden the shoot dust tube.
I will never let her, Bon thought, and it felt cool and final. He said, ‘We’re not finding Aeon to harm it.’
‘Then why?’
‘Because it’s telling me to in my son’s voice.’
They walked on, with nothing else to say.
Just as they reached the ragged wound in the land from which the massive ice boulders had been blasted, the snowfall began to ease.
In the utter silence they both heard, from the dark rent in the world that looked bottomless and timeless, a breeze that might have been a breath.
They went down. Bon led, working his way carefully across the rugged, broken ground leading to the fissure. The thick snow camouflaged the sharp edges of rock and ice, and when he fell it buffered him from injury. Leki grabbed his arm and helped him up, and he thought once again of her husband. He knew that the affection between them was not in his eyes only, but the idea that it had been a part of her ploy – a way for her to remain close to him, and so grow potentially closer to magic and the rumoured rising god – made him feel sick. Not because she had taken advantage of him – he was coming to accept that had happened before, in some way, with Milian – but because his feelings for Leki had been growing. Even before finding Venden, she had given him a reason to loo
k forward to the next day.
The caverns caught light in chaotic ice sculptures, filtering down from above and sucked inward as if those deep, dark places drew it down. Soon there was no snow covering, but ice still covered the ground.
If it erupts again … Bon thought, but there was no benefit in thinking that way. If the same powers rose once more, he and Leki would be crushed and merged with the eruptions, red smears on ice that had existed at these depths for so long. They were climbing past evidence of Skythe’s tragic history. Before the war, these caverns might have been warm with the fires of Skythe’s contented heart. Now they resounded with the chill of death. It was as if magic’s corruption had made a cadaver of the land.
‘How deep?’ Leki asked from behind Bon.
‘We’ll know when we get there,’ he said. ‘Why? Afraid?’
Leki did not answer. When Bon glanced back at her she was glaring at him as if about to speak. But she remained silent.
‘I am,’ he said. A great ice wall stood to their left, and it seemed to glow with an inner light. Shapes and shadows existed deep within. Perhaps this had once been a wall of fire. He placed his hand against the ice. As if the contact was a signal, a waft of warmer air came from below, deeper down. It carried no scent, but was heavy with moisture.
‘Just listen to your voices and move along,’ Leki said. ‘The time’s long gone for standing still.’
Time seemed to distort – frozen, shattered, and melded back together by the ice. They went deeper, along ice tunnels and into crevasses that would have been deadly if another ground-shifting event took place. No water flowed or dripped. This was a completely frozen environment, and though warmer air occasionally wafted up from below, there was no indication of thaw.
Deeper, Venden whispered in his ear, and Bon looked around, startled. Leki had heard nothing. There was no echo. Not far now … not far.
‘And what does Aeon want of us?’ Bon asked aloud. There was no reply, other than Leki’s troubled look. ‘Will you know the way out?’ Bon asked her. She was Arcanum, after all.
