The Heretic Land

by Tim Lebbon

  Each time he thought of slowing, Leki’s image appeared in his mind’s eye – head tilted, knife protruding, the truth of her demise sparkling in her one good eye. She knew that to die now was her fate, but there were greater fates at work here. If he let himself die also, he would be failing her.

  Something was building behind him. He felt its terrible weight and repulsion, shoving him onward through the snow, beyond the limits of his stamina, through the barriers erected by his doubts and fears. He ran and ran and then, way behind him, the Engine exploded.

  A great hand lifted him and shoved him forward, up through the leaning and shivering tree canopy, and this time when he fell he was accompanied by other falling things, both living and dead.

  The snow will deaden my fall, he thought, and then he struck the ground.

  Bon Ugane felt nothing else but blackness.

  Chapter 22

  wise

  Wake, Venden thought. Wake … wake … wake … And then he realised that Aeon was awake, and that its inactivity was due to something else.

  Aeon was remembering those old things with which it had once wandered the land. Its memories were vague and diluted through unimaginable time, yet there was a pride and contentment that felt shockingly human. There were also aspirations and fears, most of them old but some still relevant, and strong. There was sadness. And there was hope.

  Hope that what it had done would suffice.

  And then, behind this staggering mass of history and memory, Venden sensed the brutal power of Aeon’s heart in sudden turmoil. Disgust flooded his mind, a sickening sensation that he was surrounded by all that might be bad or rotten in the world, and Aeon’s consciousness writhed where it lay. Its body and mind were both repulsed by what it sensed and felt. Far away, that part it had given became a loaded point of rapidly growing energy, its power shocking, and it sat at the centre of Crex Wry’s burgeoning, pitch-black soul.

  Ready to explode, and cleanse.

  With a sigh, Aeon calmed and settled, and somewhere south of them a massive detonation rocked the land. Two more followed soon after, further away but even more impactful. The three blasts plunged seismic fingers deep down to the icy core of Skythe’s heart and stirred it, rupturing connections, erupting pressured ice and giving violence, for once, to the land itself.

  A distance grew around Venden, as if everything that Aeon had once been was expanding to fill an endless void.

  What’s happening? Venden asked. The distance threatened to consume.

  Fading, Aeon said.

  Dying? Venden wondered. But he was not afraid.

  Only as much as we can ever die.

  As Aeon drifted away, so did Venden, swallowed by the void and settled into nothing. But he knew that sometime – soon, or far into the future – they might wake again.

  Following initiation, the Engine pushes them further and further along the beach. General Cove does not call it a retreat, but there is no other way to view the Spike’s progress along the shore, then inland away from the Engine’s spreading influence. The priest is dead, the rackers are dead, sand is melting, and to the north a snowstorm rages like a beast waiting to strike.

  Cove sent scouts along the coast to contact the other Blades, and more scouts north, and north-west, to make contact with the other Engine and Sol Merry’s Blade. None of them have returned. The Spike do not dig in, because they always have to be ready to move again.

  There have been skirmishes with Skythians all along the coast. The forces are not large, and they are disorganised and easily fought off. But the small combats mean that no one can rest. The soldiers are tired, and the expanding influence of the Engines has started to inspire rumblings of discontent among the ranks. Magic rises for us, the voices protest, so why must we retreat before it?

  Cove has many of the same concerns, but he is their general and cannot voice his worries. All is going to plan, he says. This was all anticipated, and soon magic will be our tool in destroying Aeon, and returning the world to the rightful hands of the Fade. He speaks these words with confidence, but his stomach does turns and jumps as he watches the Engine’s influence scorch its way along the shoreline. He can only assume that the Engine further along the coast is doing the same, and the one to the north …

  But when his scouts do not return, and his suspicions grow, and the discontent amongst his troops turns in some cases to outright questioning of their cause and method, Cove makes a stand. He calls an audience of the Bladers, and as they wait before him the ground begins to shake.

  They look to the north.

  A pillar of fire burns through the hazy atmosphere inland, illuminating snow clouds and sending colourful swirls of flame dancing through the air. Clouds boil, steam billows, and then the sound of the staggering explosion reaches them.

  ‘Back to your Blades!’ Cove commands. It is the last order he issues, and they are the last words the Bladers will hear.

  Along the beach, out of sight around a headland where it stands amidst a sea of molten glass and drifting gas, the Engine erupts. Cove lives long enough to see the land itself rising, and the sea rising with it, as though the world is punching a fist from beneath to destroy some travesty.

  Then all is fire as, in the majestic beat of Aeon’s heart, Alderia’s offensive force is wiped from the face of Skythe.

  * * *

  Venden as he might have been, tall and smiling in his Guild of Inventors graduation robes. At his side stood his Guild invention, a mechanism whose use was hidden, but which impressed Bon nonetheless. There was craftsmanship in its construction, and a gentle pride in the way Venden stood close to it, not quite touching. Perhaps it would win him a scholarship, perhaps not, but Bon was as proud as could be. Venden opened his mouth but could not speak, because this was not real.

  Milian Mu as might have been, a smiling woman with love in her eye and a carefree demeanour. She sat beside Venden at the ceremony and had tears on her cheeks, thankful tears at what they had in their son, and in each other. There were no doubts here, and no shield between her dark secrets and the long, happy life ahead of them. Bon reached out to hold her hand, but she was not there.

  Leki appeared across the Guild parade ground, a thin, fleeting shadow peering between the upright graduates and their many and varied inventions. Bon saw her and raised a hand to wave but Leki showed no sign of seeing him. She was motionless and not breathing – a statue, raised in honour of something none of those present knew – and the shadow of something protruding from her head chilled Bon’s heart.

  He looked to Venden and tried to catch his son’s eye, but the boy was looking elsewhere.

  He turned to Milian, but she was subsumed in sadness once more, and already falling away from him.

  Bon closed his eyes on the vision, slowly, so that he retained a final glimpse of the young man and the two women he had loved.

  And he opened his eyes onto a world in ruin.

  Fire and ice. The two did not belong together, but as Bon staggered across the clearing to a pile of fallen trees at its edge, he struggled against them both. Fire stretched the skin on the back of his neck and probed his clothing, seeking flesh to seed itself in. It rose behind him like a solid wall at the end of the world, and though he guessed it to be several miles distant, it almost scorched the life from him with every breath he took.

  Through the heat fell chunks of ice. Green and opaque with age, he had seen its like before. Deep in the land, where Aeon had lured them, Skythe’s frozen depths had been an illustration of the hurt it had suffered centuries before.

  Now the land was erupting and the ice raining down, and another hurt ensued.

  Snow had ceased falling. Warm rain came down in its place. Trees had tumbled, some snapped off high up, others seemingly shoved by the same heavy hand that had flung Bon through the air. Reaching the shelter of the pile of fallen trees, he hunkered down behind them to assess his wounds.

  There were many, but none appeared life-threatening. Lacerations,
grazes, bruises, some cuts were filthy with mud, others seeping surprising amounts of blood. But now was not the time to tend himself. Chaos had taken Skythe, and the coast lured him.

  Leki had told him to go that way.

  Leki. She was gone. Whatever she had done inside that Engine, the resulting explosion had punched a hole in the land and set the air aflame. There was no sign of Aeon, and no indication that magic – that obscure force, blackened soul of an evil thing – had succeeded in manifesting. She had done Aeon’s bidding, but at such a price.

  Bon headed south through the fire-lit night, across a landscape that had been shattered and reshaped by the Engine’s explosion. The further he went, the less he felt the effects of the huge fire. Ice still rained down around him, but in smaller chunks and quantities. He scooped melted snow to drink, and picked fruit from tumbled trees to eat. He had no way of telling whether what he ate was poisonous or not, but he did not care. If Skythe deigned to kill him after all this, there was little he could do to protect himself.

  As morning dawned and the sun smudged itself against the smoke-filled sky, Bon collapsed in a heap to rest. He found a small cave in a rugged hillside, and though he sat warm and sheltered from the outside, he could not sleep. From the north came the sounds of thunderous impact, transmitted through the ground to kick up at him, as if the world itself was ripping open and spewing out its frozen guts. And to the south-east blazed another incomprehensible fire where another Engine had exploded. Miles across, miles high, there seemed to be an unnatural life to the blaze that Bon knew he must evade.

  Stunned, numbed, he leaned against the cave wall and watched the colours of destruction dancing at the entrance.

  After a small rest he set off again.

  He walked through that day, and found the first dead Kolt just before nightfall. It wore a Spike uniform and was pricked in several places with heavy arrows, but these were not the cause of its demise. It was a thin, wasted thing, limbs and torso shrivelled, face drawn, eyes sunken and picked out by birds or insects. Its mouth hung open in an endless exhalation of rage, and Bon would not draw too close. It was dead, but still exuded malevolence. He passed it by and moved on quickly, glancing back several times while the body was still in view to make sure it had not moved.

  He discovered several more dead Kolts, all in a similar state. Each was on its own, all had fallen in their drive southward, and many still clasped the weapons with which they had done so much killing. It was not the explosions that had ended these corrupted things, nor the many wounds they carried. They had simply burned out and withered away.

  From the land of the dead, as he came close to the coast he began to meet the living. They were always Skythian, cowed and shy and terrified. He tried not to bother them, but he was hungry and thirsty, and they seemed adept at surviving in this changing land. He humbly accepted help from one small family, but felt no compulsion to remain with them. He was Alderian, however his heart might speak otherwise. Alderia was this land’s great abuser, and when they did not kill him, he shed a tear of shame.

  This land, so abused six centuries before, had been subjected to another calamity that must surely mean its end. A disaster initiated once again by the people of Alderia. When Bon’s tears had dried, the shame remained, a constant presence inside. He knew he would never be able to reach in and tear it out, and he was glad for that. Someone had to take responsibility.

  At the coast, little remained of the scattered communities. A tsunami had swept in from the sea and reclaimed the beaches and much of the low-lying ground inland. Everything was changed. Countless people were dead. He met few survivors, and those he did meet – all Skythian – were heading west, away from the great cataclysm that was still visible as a boiling tower of flame along the shore. Massive clouds of steam glowed from the chaos within.

  From the north, the thunder of ice and the fading heat of another great explosion.

  Bon followed the survivors.

  Three days later he found a cave. It was a mile inland, sheltered from the sea breeze by a lip of rock, and it had once been home to others. There was a fire pit close to the entrance, and inside he discovered blankets and a sleeping roll, a blunted sword, some clothing and a few basic cooking implements. They were of Alderian origin, and Bon wondered who had lived here, and what perceived crime they had committed to deserve expulsion to Skythe.

  Maybe they were alive; perhaps they were dead. Either way, all that remained of them here were a few roughly painted scenes on the walls deeper in the cave. They were of a man and a woman and two small children. Bon thought they were a girl and a boy, and the images made him sad. They gave evidence of an adult desperate to record his family, lest it fade from memory.

  He wandered the area, gathering wood for a fire and considering what he might eat. He was not a hunter – not yet anyway – and he could find no fruit trees, so that evening he would likely go hungry. But by the time the fire was roaring, deeper in the cave he found fat grubs emerging as the heat filtered through to them, and he cooked them wrapped in heavy leaves. They were bland but filling.

  From the north came the constant thunder of change. A grinding, cracking sound, as ice rose and then flowed. It’ll erase everything, Bon thought. And he decided, as he bedded down, that might be no bad thing.

  Dawn broke, Bon rose; during the night he had decided to stay. He was alone again, cast adrift with memories of extraordinary people, and the incredible things they had done.

  Venturing back into the cave to view those old images afresh, he thought perhaps he might begin to paint. He hoped that if anyone ever discovered his images painted onto a cave wall, they might become wise.

  Pursuing, pursued, as Juda worked his way south he began to understand.

  He was guided by something inside that was not wholly him. This presence sat deep and quiet, yet asserted its influence. It was larger than him, and Juda fled and followed because he had no choice. To contradict was not permitted. This presence had calmed his dreams and given him proper sleep for the first time in his life, and for that he owed it a measure of loyalty.

  There was little to the landscape here that he recognised, and he was several miles out to sea before he realised he had even passed the coast. The ice he walked over was thick and jagged, and when he came across a deep ice ravine and heard water surging and withdrawing deep down, he knew that he travelled over the ocean. He had left Skythe behind.

  ‘What will I find on Alderia?’ he asked the leaden sky. It had ceased snowing, but the threat of more snow was still heavy.

  The presence inside did not reply, but he could sense something of its mood. Here was patience, an ancient contemplation of time as a means to an end. Here was fury at actions that had been taken against it, and pride in the way it had escaped that intended fate. Here was madness.

  Juda shivered, but the shadow inside warmed him. It came forward, brief and powerful, to give him a glimpse of what it was, and what he had become … and he was awash with more magic than he had ever dreamed of. I am everything I always sought, and all that I wanted to be. Yet he had never felt so wretched. The immense and dreadful half-formed mind hid within his own, and he found hints of the truth. Perhaps it was letting him see this, perhaps not. But once seen he could not unknow.

  His time in that old broken Engine had been centuries beyond counting, not days. Hidden away and protected, he had been a vessel for the hiding thing after its full re-emergence into the world had been sabotaged and halted. And now that ages had passed, and Alderia had moved on to whatever fraught future its false gods might have inspired, he was walking across the frozen sea to visit.

  Juda carried the seed of Crex Wry. He would find someone, or something, in which to plant it. And then the people of the world would cower in fear of new rumours of old gods.

  extras

  about the author

  Tim Lebbon is a critically acclaimed, award-winning author of fantasy and horror novels and also writes screenplays. He has won t
he British Fantasy Society Award four times for his novellas and novel-length works and the Bram Stoker Award for his short fiction. His New York Times bestselling novelisation of the movie 30 Days of Night also won him a Scribe Award. Tim writes full-time and lives in Monmouthshire.

  Find out more about Tim Lebbon and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net

  interview

  Have you always known that you wanted to be a writer?

  I’ve always known that I wanted to write. But it wasn’t until my late teens that I even entertained the idea of being a writer.

  I’ve written stories since I could hold a pencil, and before that I probably told them. Analysing why that’s the case is something I no longer do … not because I’m afraid of questioning the urge to tell stories, but because there’s no easy answer. My grandmother always had a saying about why people are like they are: ‘It’s the way their parents put their hat on.’ That might partly be the case here, because my folks always encouraged me to read from a very early age, and one of the first TV programmes I ever remember watching was Doctor Who. I always loved using my imagination, and stretching it, and that meant that I naturally loved telling stories. I did so all through my teens, starting dozens of novels, finishing a few. And then it struck me that because I loved doing this so much, maybe it’s what I could do for a living. That took some time to achieve, but the efforts to get there are a large part of the reward.

  But I also believe that people are wired a certain way notwithstanding any outside influences. Some people are born sports-people, or scientists, and some are born with a driving urge to tell stories.