The Blood Debt: Books of the Cataclysm Two

by Sean Williams

  The body in its arms hung as limp as a sleeping child, although it belonged to a full-sized man. The Homunculus carried him without strain. Dark hair with wide grey streaks framed a face she almost didn't recognise. Shilly knew it could only be one person.

  “Stop right there,” she said as the Homunculus came within a dozen paces of them.

  Much to her surprise—and no small amount of relief—the creature came to a halt.

  “Who are you?” it asked. The words issued fluidly from its mouth but, like its features, the sound possessed an odd distortion, as though simultaneously heard from a great distance and near at hand. Its mouth stretched far too wide. At odd moments it seemed to have four eyes.

  “I'm Shilly,” she said. “Who are you?”

  The creature's oversized head blurred. “You don't need to know. Will you help this man?”

  It stepped forward, offering her the body in its arms.

  “What's wrong with him?” she asked, conscious of Sal watching the exchange closely from behind her. “What did you do to him?”

  “Nothing. He needs water and food or he'll die.”

  “We can help him, but—”

  “Good. It's been a long journey. He couldn't keep up, and you're the first people we've encountered. This land is so empty…”

  The Homunculus's voice was full of sadness as it squatted and put the body of Highson Sparre on the ground at its feet.

  “We'll take care of him,” Shilly said. “Thank you.”

  The Homunculus didn't respond. It simply stood and looked around, getting its bearings. Shilly and the others stood between it and Laure. It turned, clearly intending to walk around them.

  “Wait,” Sal said, speaking at last. “This man is my father. Why did he summon you?”

  “His summoning wasn't successful.” The face turned to look at him, its expression unreadable. The strange eyes swung to focus on Shilly, then moved on. “You—” The Homunculus stared at Skender. “Your name is Galeus. We've met before, but you won't remember. We weren't part of this world, then.”

  Skender's mouth hung open in stunned surprise at the use of his heart-name. He shook his head.

  “But I remember everything,” he protested weakly.

  The Homunculus stood frozen for a moment, staring at them all with intense concentration. Through the peculiar distortion, Shilly thought she saw the features of a young man, not much older than them, coalescing out of the chaos. The details of his face weren't completely stable; they came in and out of focus as though she saw them through ill-matched glass lenses. But there was definitely something trying to get through. Someone.

  Shilly couldn't take her eyes off that strange face.

  “Who are you?” she asked again, caught in a very strange dream.

  For an instant, she thought the Homunculus might answer.

  Then a shout from the south put paid to that possibility.

  “Sal! Shilly! Get down!”

  Shilly turned and saw Marmion and the other Wardens converging on the scene. Habryn Kail swung an arm over his head, and something whizzed towards them with a loud, singing noise.

  She dropped her cane and ducked, recognising the bola for what it was, albeit one much larger than any she had ever used to catch rabbits or dune hens. The weighted rope spun over her and wrapped itself around the Homunculus's chest. It went down with a cry of pain in a furious tangle of limbs. Its form dissolved. She saw at least two heads and far too many arms and legs as the creature tried to right itself. But the bola had tied itself tightly around the Homunculus's torso. It was effectively pinned.

  Then the wardens were among them. Skender gaped as the new arrivals helped Shilly to her feet and stood guard over the writhing creature.

  “What the Goddess do you think you're doing?” Marmion asked her, his face white with fury. “I told you to stay down!”

  “What's your problem?” she said, facing his challenge squarely. “You got what you wanted, didn't you?”

  “I need help here!” said Sal, where he was still quenching the flow of blood from the injured woman's head. “Highson does, too. Argue later!”

  “Eitzen, Rosevear,” Marmion barked at two wardens, “help them!” He turned away from Shilly with a look that told her there would most definitely be a later, and went to study the Homunculus where it struggled on the ground, shouting its frustration.

  “Misbegotten creature,” Marmion said with a sneer. “We'll soon have you back in the earth, where you belong.”

  The Homunculus replied with a babble of words too fast to understand.

  Through it all, Skender simply stared in shock. He didn't react until Tom joined the throng. Shilly watched the young Engineer as he checked on Highson then came around to Skender. Tom ducked under the wing and whispered rapidly into his ear.

  Skender snapped out of his daze and stared at Tom with a matching intensity. “My mother?” he said in disbelief.

  Tom nodded and stepped away. He put his right hand under his robes.

  Shilly watched him closely.

  What's he up to now? she wondered.

  The two wardens Marmion had named had taken over from Sal, checking the injured woman for broken bones then gently rolling her over so they could inspect her head wound properly.

  Two more wardens examined Sal's father, lying ashen between them. Highson Sparre's lips were cracked and swollen. When they poured a trickle of water between them, he coughed weakly but didn't wake.

  Tom crossed to where a tight knot of Sky Wardens stood over the flailing Homunculus. Marmion snapped his fingers and one of them handed him a long, thin staff that tapered to a wicked-looking point. Marmion raised it, whispering words under his breath.

  Shilly realised then that there would be no careful probing into the Homunculus's nature, no exploration of why it had come into the world or what it wanted. Marmion had been sent to dispose of the creature, and he wasn't about to waste any time obeying his orders.

  “You can't do this!” she exclaimed, remembering the Homunculus's concern for Highson. It hadn't seemed dangerous in the slightest. It had seemed simply different, and that was no reason for anything to die.

  It was too late. The staff came down, and she was too far away to stop it striking home.

  “No!” she shouted.

  Sal was watching over Skender's friend, liberally covered in her blood, when Shilly cried out. He summed up the situation instantly. The Homunculus lay sprawled before its executioner, hopelessly struggling. There was no way, especially without the Change, to intervene in time.

  At the last moment, Tom shoved Marmion to one side. The point of the staff buried itself in the dirt. Marmion overbalanced and fell. Before any of the wardens could stop him, Tom bent over the captive creature and cut the bola with his work knife.

  The Homunculus sprang to its feet and pushed Tom away. The wardens fell back as four arms spread in anger, like a spider about to strike. With one of its arms, it pulled the staff out of the ground and pointed it at Marmion, where he lay sprawled on the dirt. Their positions were now completely reversed.

  “Don't!” called a weak voice.

  The Homunculus's strange head turned to stare at Highson Sparre, who had raised one hand in warning from where he lay cradled in the arms of a Sky Warden.

  “Don't,” he repeated.

  The Homunculus hissed in anger, but said, “No. You're right.” It threw the staff to one side. “There has been enough death.”

  Then, without another word, it turned and ran for the edge of the Divide. Its manifold limbs moved in a blur, propelling it with inhuman speed.

  “Stop it!” screamed Marmion. “Don't let it get away!”

  Kail produced another bola and swung it over his head, picking up speed with each flex of his wiry muscles until it became a shimmering, humming disk. Sal didn't dare interfere for fear of losing a hand.

  Kail set it free an instant before the Homunculus reached the precipice. The bola hurtled through the air
with the speed of an arrow, flying swift and true. The Homunculus didn't slow as it ran out of space. It simply ran right off the edge. The bola sailed over its shape-shifting head as it dropped out of sight.

  In that instant, the Change returned. The world, flat and dead in the Homunculus's presence, suddenly regained its usual life. The creature's wake had vanished, as though leaving the Earth's surface, however temporarily, caused the effect to evaporate. Sal could feel Shilly's anxiety and alarm where she stood near Kail. He could feel the buzzing of the pointed staff as Marmion recovered it and stuck it angrily in the dirt.

  “Idiots!” the warden snarled. “Now what are we going to do?”

  “We're going to keep tracking it,” Shilly said, her anger a match for his. “And this time, when we find it, we're going to keep you well away from it!”

  Marmion raised an arm to strike her, but Kail grabbed his hand.

  “Don't do something you'll regret,” said the tracker in a low, threatening voice.

  “My only regret is surrounding myself with fools.” The warden pulled free. Seething, he rounded on Tom next. “Do you intend to explain yourself?”

  “What you were doing was wrong,” Tom said without a hint of fear or remorse.

  “That's not your concern!” Marmion yelled into his face. “The Alcaide sent us to do a job, and you just got in the way of it. Consider yourself warned. One more stunt like that, and I'll see your torc smashed into pieces.”

  Tom shrugged, his expression one of utter disinterest. Shilly went to him as a gesture of solidarity in the face of such vehement criticism. Marmion shook his head in exasperation. His gaze took in the severed bola, the discarded staff, Highson Sparre—who had fallen unconscious again—and Skender's injured friend. He seemed to be disbelieving his own eyes.

  “Would someone like to tell me what he's doing?” he asked, nodding past Sal.

  Sal turned. Skender was walking in the direction the Homunculus had taken, moving with difficulty under the weight of the wing still strapped to his back.

  “I'll find out,” Sal said, wiping his bloody hands on his robe and setting off in pursuit. Marmion turned to someone else and shouted at them.

  Skender didn't look up when Sal came abreast of him just metres from the edge of the Divide. He was bent almost double and concentrating on carrying the wing.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “I have to. Tom told me that if I follow that thing it'll lead me to my mother.”

  “Your mother?” Sal was confused, realising only then that he knew nothing at all about what Skender was doing in this place. “What has happened to your mother?”

  “I don't have time to explain, Sal. I have to go now. If it gets away from me, I might never find her.”

  “Is that what Tom said?”

  “Yes!”

  Sal came around the wing and stood in front of his old friend, forcing him to stop. Skender's face was lined with black markings that hadn't been there before.

  “I can't let you fly like this,” he said. “That's what you're going to do, right? Fly over the edge and chase it?”

  “I don't have much choice.”

  “Sure you do.” Sal looked at the fragile-seeming wing. Its flying surfaces were intact, and the delicate struts holding the wing-shape hadn't buckled or broken. Numerous fine glyphs and charms had appeared on its surface, indicating that it flew by more than natural means.

  “You could take someone with you,” he said, following his heart, not his head.

  Skender's response was immediate. “No, Sal. I'm not going to take a chance with you. Chu and I were grumpy with each other; I talked her into flying over here; I didn't want to get her hurt, but she did. It was all my fault.”

  “It's not that simple. You flew into the bubble around the Homunculus. That's why you crashed. If you just keep away from it, we should be okay.”

  “But I wasn't flying it. Chu's a miner from Laure; she was doing the work. I was just telling her where to go.”

  “So what makes you think you can do it now, with or without me?”

  “I remember what she did.” Skender looked sick at heart, but he was weakening. No one wanted to go chasing monsters on their own.

  Finally his eyes came up. They were completely black; all colour had vanished under the effects of the charm possessing him.

  “Just tell me she's going to be okay. I couldn't bear it if—if she wasn't.”

  Sal put a hand on Skender's shoulder. “She's got a nasty gash on her head and plenty of bruises, but I think she'll be all right. I'm worried about you. How are you feeling?”

  “I'm fine. Just shaken. Look, you can't stop me from trying—and I won't stop you from coming, if you really want to, but don't tell me I didn't warn you.”

  Sal took a deep breath. “That's settled, then,” he said. “Show me how to strap myself in and let's get going.”

  Skender worked hurriedly to ensure that Sal was harnessed securely to the wing. Sal could hear his friend's laboured breathing in his ear, and quashed any visible sign of nervousness. Skender needed his support, not his doubts.

  Sal only hoped that he was doing the right thing. With Highson found, there was no reason to stay behind—and if he went with Skender now, there was every chance he could track the Homunculus to Laure more quickly than Marmion and Kail.

  His mind reached out for Shilly. “Don't say anything, Carah,” he told her through the Change. “I'm going with Skender to help him find his mother. We're flying down into the Divide after the Homunculus.”

  Sal knew that Shilly didn't have any natural source of the Change, so technically she couldn't reply, but a moment later her voice burst loud and clear in his head.

  “What? Are you crazy?”

  Sal could tell from the flavour of her thought that she was Taking from Tom—using their friend's natural talent to do what she could not do alone.

  “Don't worry. Tom dreamed it, apparently.”

  “Well that makes everything all right.”

  He forced himself to ignore her anger. There wasn't time to deal with that. “Look after Highson while I'm gone. And Skender's friend; her name's Chu, I think. Get them to Laure if you can. I'll meet you there afterwards.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Okay, finished,” said Skender in his ear. For better or for worse, they were now strapped together under the wing. “This is going to be hard, but we have to get right to the edge and jump off as far as we can. From there, just hang on. I'll do the rest.”

  “Okay.” They walked awkwardly forward.

  “I have to go now, Carah,” he sent to Shilly. “Sorry to leave you with Marmion. He's going to pop.”

  “I can handle him. You worry about yourselves,” she said more evenly. “Just don't fall, Sayed. Come back to me in one piece.”

  “Be sure of it.”

  Her concern came loud and clear over the link in the seconds it remained open. He was glad when it closed, because he was able to concentrate solely on what he was getting himself into. Before him, the vast gulf of the Divide looked very deep and very rugged. There were far too many jagged rocks on which he and Skender could be dashed to a bloody pulp.

  But Skender's hands were covered with marks that weren't tattoos. He could feel the Change flowing through them. If Skender trusted the charms, so would he.

  “I'm ready,” he said, gripping the harness with sweaty, bloodstained hands.

  Skender's knees bent and Sal bent his, too. Then they were jumping outward away from the safety of solid rock. A wall of wind hit them. The world flipped upside-down. Sal closed his eyes and hoped Tom had dreamed him surviving, too.

  First the shadow had taken flesh and come to life. That had been bad enough. Then more shadows had come out of the darkness and pressed in around them, yabbering at them, forcing them to connect. It was too much all at once. Flight was the only solution.

  But for a moment the connection had been pure and powerful. Anger was a white-hot stream pourin
g through the body they inhabited, washing away accumulated grief and confusion in a wonderful torrent. The air had been pure and the taste of iron-rich dust sweeter than any feast. Memories of life flooded back in. The world had been within their grasp, just for an instant.

  And death. So long had they lived in the shadow of the void that the deepest shadow of all had seemed to forget them. Their beginnings stretched so far back as to be almost forgotten; their endings, likewise, had seemed an infinite distance away.

  But even infinity had a way of drawing close, if stared at for too long. They were standing in it now, and death had almost reclaimed them.

  Their new life had started with the light. It blazed like a sun at midnight, blinding them. They had woken, quivering and disoriented like a newborn, inside a body that wasn't designed for them, couldn't possibly contain them, and yet somehow held them, trapped together like twin yolks in an egg. They had panicked.

  Then the light faded to black and a shadow had confronted them. Substance had overwhelmed them. Sensation flooded through nerves as new as dew. They felt air on their conjoined skin, heard sounds that might have been words, staggered on ground that felt as solid as the bedrock of eternity. They were in the world again. They were standing. They were alive!

  But something was obviously wrong. The shadow hollered and fell away. Darkness pressed in again, and their panic deepened. The sense of wrongness grew stronger, took on a clear if distant form. It tugged at them, giving them purpose even as it sickened them, undermined any joy at being back.

  They weren't the only things stirring in this strange, scarred world.

  Their new body took some effort to coordinate, but it wasn't capricious. It possessed a strange internal logic that woke distant, disturbing memories.

  One leg swung in front of another. Then another, and another.

  They walked, and the cold, hard ground moved beneath them.