The Devoured Earth

by Sean Williams

  Her right hand began to move, almost of its own volition. She opened her eyes a crack to follow its progress. Details were all she had, and she would get them down as best she could. For half an hour, all she did was draw, ignoring Tom and the others as though they, too, were in another world—one she was equally happy to forget for the time being.

  When she was done, she felt exhausted to the very core. Altitude sickness was only part of it. Twice every day, the growing band halted its headlong journey in order to let her sleep in peace. An hour was enough, with the help of Vehofnehu and his strange meditation techniques, for her to dream of her other self. A time of feverish drawing usually followed. Then it would be back onto the man'kin steed she shared with Tom to resume the journey. And somehow, while she slept, their numbers kept on growing…

  Vehofnehu helped her to her feet and rubbed her mittened hands between his to bring circulation back to her fingertips. She could barely feel them. ‘This is hard for you,’ he said. ‘I know.’ His dark brown eyes were recessed slightly above prominent cheeks and whiskery white hairs, but they radiated nothing but compassion. The corners of his wide mouth were very slightly turned down. His fingers were callused, but long and strong and very warm as they wrapped right around her hands. ‘We are asking a lot. If it wasn't so important—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said, dismissing his concerns with a weary nod. She was the only one with a link to the distant future. The vision of all the other seers failed beyond a particular point. Even the Holy Immortals, who travelled backwards in time as naturally as humans travelled forward, couldn't say what happened after that point. That the future Shilly glimpsed appeared to be another life entirely, or was only a possible future rather than a certain one, didn't devalue its importance. A glimpse was better than nothing.

  She counted sixteen of the green figures sitting together at the edge of the campsite. She was sure there had been no more than fourteen when she had gone to sleep.

  ‘Are we almost there?’ she asked, aching to tug off all the layers of clothes confining her and feel warm air against her skin again. ‘Please tell me we are.’

  ‘We'll be at the top no later than tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank the Goddess.’

  Vehofnehu's face split into a broad grin. ‘With luck, you'll be able to in person.’

  ‘And not before time. My arse is killing me,’ she muttered as he let go of her fingers and moved to get the travellers on their feet.

  ‘Here,’ said Tom, pressing a flask into her hands.

  She drank deeply of the ice-cold water within, then winced at the sudden pain in her temples it provoked. ‘I'm so sick of this,’ she said to no one in particular. ‘There must be a better way to travel.’

  Their steed thudded mutely over to her and knelt forward on two legs. A broad-backed statue with a wildly maned bestial head and thick tail, it had an unerring ability to find toeholds in even the sheerest of cliffs. Its claws dug deep into slippery ice walls. Thus far, it hadn't even tripped once.

  But its back was hard, even through the blankets bound around its waist, and the straps that held her and Tom in place were tight by necessity. There had been numerous traverses during which she had kept her eyes tightly shut for fear of slipping free and plunging to her death. When she dozed in transit, she dreamed of wild leaps across crevasses and hanging upside down over bottomless pits.

  The grief of her future self encouraged her to stop complaining and mount her ride. Anything would be better than enduring that fate. A small sacrifice now might make all the difference. What was a little discomfort when the future of the world was at stake?

  She felt someone watching her, and turned to see the glast's white-pupilled eyes fixed in her direction. A chill went through her, colder than the bitter air of the mountains. She forced herself to ignore it, as she had before, while climbing awkwardly onto her steed's back. Arranging her lame leg so it wouldn't cramp, she fastened herself in, then waited patiently for Tom to do the same. His long frame was bony against her back but welcome when the wind kicked up and tried to steal her heat away.

  Vehofnehu rode a stone beast he called a ‘lion’, which looked like a giant cat in a fur coat. The Holy Immortals spread themselves among the many other man'kin that had joined the Angel's band of pilgrims. The Angel itself climbed alone, following routes more suited to its blunt frame. It would meet them at the top, Vehofnehu assured her.

  Only the glast out of all the non-man'kin had the strength and stamina to keep up without help. She didn't know where its energy came from, but it seemed inexhaustible. It scurried up the mountain like a glossy, dark-shelled beetle, decorated with the white symbols that had once been Kemp's tattoos. She was certain the tattoos moved when no one was looking, but that was the least of her problems with it.

  Upon its awakening—or its birth—three days ago, the glast-Kemp had stood up steadily on two legs. Out of all the people standing around it nervously watching to see what it would do next, it had faced Shilly.

  It was trying to become one of you, Vehofnehu had said, days earlier, in order to communicate.

  Instead of speaking, it had opened its mouth and emitted a long, low hiss, as filled with threat as a leaky balloon.

  The memory of it still made her shudder.

  ‘Here we go again,’ she muttered as the broad back moved under her, and the icy stillness of the mountains was broken by the sound of bouldery footsteps.

  After seven days of nonstop climbing, Shilly had become immune to spectacle. Before the sunlight faded, the man'kin procession crossed a river of blue ice, scaled a sheer cliff topped with a crown of snow, and negotiated a field of debris left in the wake of a recent avalanche. The steeds traversed every type of terrain with equal ease, jumping surely or creeping with painstaking care across, around, under or over every imaginable obstacle. Shilly dozed through most of it, and was partly ashamed of herself for doing so. While she hung limp in her saddle, Tom took in everything with eyes wide open.

  ‘I wonder what people back home are doing,’ he said breathlessly in her ear as their steed skated down an ice shelf to more stable footing. She almost didn't hear him through the scarf protecting her neck from the cold.

  ‘Which home? The Haunted City or Fundelry?’

  ‘Fundelry.’

  ‘Fishing, probably,’ she said. ‘And farming and selling stuff at the market and arguing about stupid things. The usual. Why?’

  She felt him shrug. ‘I don't know, Shilly. It just seems we've led the most incredible lives. Who'd have thought, all those years ago, when Lodo adopted you and I applied for Selection—who'd have thought we'd end up here, at the top of the world?’

  ‘What happened to the caves of ice and the thing that wants to eat us? That doesn't sound like much fun.’

  ‘Oh, sure.’ He waved that protest away. ‘But right now, in this present moment, we're the luckiest people alive.’

  She didn't respond to that immediately. It was hard to think through the aches and pains and the second-hand grief from her future self and the fear that she might fail at the task set before her. Once she'd pushed through all that, though, she did see his point. The scenery, and the company she was enjoying it with, were magnificent. If she'd seen herself from a distance, she would have been jealous. That didn't mean she was wrong to feel less than excited all the time. It just meant that the view from a distance showed less than everything. It didn't show the scrapes and saddle sores and constant headaches and rising nausea. It didn't show how it felt to reach out for Sal in the middle of the night and not find him beside her. And it didn't show their destination, where awakening a Goddess might be the last thing they ever did.

  ‘I didn't expect to end up here,’ she said, holding on tight as their steed galloped around a boulder set square in its path, ‘but if this was as far as I got, I'd be pretty upset, overall.’

  ‘I don't think you'd be the only one.’

  ‘Mind you, if we aren't around to be upset, would it make
any difference?’

  It was Tom's turn to take his time replying. They bounced roughly over a region of tumbled boulders and icy spurs. When their steed levelled out, she was simply glad to be in one piece.

  ‘I think it does make a difference,’ Tom eventually said. ‘Our lives matter. They have to—or what's the point?’

  ‘But who or what do they matter to? The Goddess—if she really exists—is asleep, so she obviously doesn't care much. And The Book of Towers tells us we're better off without gods in general. If Yod's a typical example, then I'm inclined to agree. Maybe it's all just wishful thinking.’

  ‘It would matter to me, Shilly.’

  ‘We're back where I started. If you're dead, how can anything matter to you at all?’ She sighed, not wanting to think about the version of herself she saw in her dreams. ‘Maybe there's no answer.’

  ‘Or no answer we can comprehend.’

  ‘That's the same thing, from where I'm sitting.’

  They rode in silence until their next rest stop, an hour later, when they dismounted to stretch their legs and unkink their spines. Her buttocks were completely numb. The procession had reached a plateau abutting a sheer cliff face above them that, apparently, stretched to infinity.

  ‘The last climb,’ Vehofnehu told them, adding that it would probably be the most difficult stretch of all.

  ‘You know we make it, right?’ she asked the gathering in general. ‘Someone's seen that far ahead?’

  Vehofnehu put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Do you think we'd be here, otherwise?’ His wry brown eyes didn't reassure her one iota.

  Four of the Holy Immortals were fiddling with alphabet tiles not far from her. For the first couple of days, they had been willing to talk, answering her questions before she'd actually asked them, which made for strange and tense conversations. In recent times, however, they had avoided her, averting their faces when she approached and putting the tiles away. This time was no exception.

  As she watched, two more joined the group. One of them seemed to be weeping, while the other spoke tonelessly in their strange, backwards language. The others looked up at her from beneath their dark-coloured hoods. Thick and warm, they seemed to be doing a far better job of insulating their wearers than all the layers Shilly wore.

  ‘Are they all right?’ she whispered to Vehofnehu.

  A frown flickered across his oddly wrinkled features. ‘Yes. No. I don't know. A long time ago, I wove a charm for my friends to help them communicate on their travel backwards through time. It would be a lonely life otherwise, to be so few in number and surrounded by people you couldn't talk to. Now, that charm is wearing thin, and there's nothing I can do about it. That saddens me. It doesn't augur well.’

  ‘Why wouldn't they want to talk to us?’ Shilly asked, but Vehofnehu only shook his head. Everything about the Holy Immortals puzzled her. The weeping woman refused to look at Shilly. Her hands made strange clutching motions at her hair, which seemed to be growing longer before Shilly's eyes. Dismayed, Shilly realised that from the woman's point of view, she was actually tearing out clumps of hair.

  Vehofnehu checked that Mawson's straps were tight. ‘Are you comfortable, my friend?’

  ‘'Kin don't carry ‘kin,’ was the man'kin's huffy reply. The high-templed stone bust lay strapped, with dignity wounded, on the back of a stone lizard sporting long horns and a forked tail.

  ‘Well, they do now.’ Vehofnehu clapped him on the chest and moved on.

  Shilly followed him. ‘What about that?’ she whispered, nodding at the glast. It stood perfectly poised on the tip of an upthrust spur, uncannily as though about to dive off into the air. The sun caught its crystalline body, making it appear to glow from within.

  ‘That, my human girl, is a very good question. One I'm not equipped to answer just yet. The stars are difficult to interpret so far away from my observatory and instruments.’

  ‘Screw the stars,’ she said. ‘Why don't we just ask it?’

  ‘Why don't you, Shilly?’ Vehofnehu broke his inspection of the man'kin steeds to turn and face her. ‘Have you tried? Has it given you an answer you can understand?’

  Shilly felt her face turn red. She had never heard Vehofnehu berate anyone before, and his tone definitely had the sting of reproach in it now. That she deserved it didn't make the verbal slap any easier to take.

  ‘I—I'm afraid to,’ she said.

  ‘To ask or to hear its answer?’

  ‘Both.’

  Vehofnehu nodded. ‘Me too, Shilly. Me too.’ One long-fingered hand patted her cheek lightly. ‘One job at a time. Maybe when we reach the top it'll talk to us, eh?’

  The Panic empyricist moved off and she let him go. She shot another glance at the glast, and saw it balancing Kemp's massive frame on the tips of its toes with arms outstretched at shoulder-height.

  Just jump, she urged it. Go ahead and do it, if that's what you're thinking. You're not wanted here!

  If it heard her unspoken wish, it didn't obey. It closed its eyes in alien bliss, and basked in the weak sunlight until it was time to leave.

  If climbing during daylight was nerve-racking, climbing at night was positively terrifying. Shilly didn't know how the man'kin could find their handholds and toeholds by starlight, let alone keep to the route they silently agreed to, but somehow they managed it. She just clung tight to the near-vertical back of her steed and tried not to shake too much. Tom clutching her didn't help either. With every sway and lurch of the man'kin, she felt him grip a little harder.

  Midway through the final stretch, a strange sound became audible through the thin night air. It was a woman's voice, singing. The tune was haunting and exotic, following no familiar rhythm or key. Its words, also, were unfathomable. She wished—not for the first time—that Sal was with her, since he might have recognised it from his travels across the Strand. He might even have joined in, adding his soft baritone to the others now joining the original thread.

  The Holy Immortals were responsible for the song. Softly, sadly, their voices rose and fell in inconsolable unison. A lament, Shilly thought. That was what it sounded like to her. A song for the dead or dying. She remembered the one she'd seen earlier that day, weeping while others of her kind stood around in shock. What was happening to them? Why, after centuries of being one way, were they suddenly changing?

  She couldn't possibly know, and it didn't seem likely that she would ever find out. She forced herself to put that mystery—along with all the others—out of her mind as best she could. The long climb might be the last chance she had to rest before things reached a head. At the top lay possibly nothing at all, or anything at all, including Yod itself with maw open to swallow the world. She let the plaintive song carry her like the ebbing and flowing of a gentle sea. Her thoughts wandered to Fundelry, to the harbour, and the dunes, and the friends she had left behind there.

  Leaving home is the hardest thing to do, whispered the voice of her future self, half-in and half-out of her mind.

  Part of her knew that she wasn't completely asleep and could wake at any moment, if she wanted to. But she didn't, not yet. This was the first time she had felt that she could reply, and she wasn't going to waste the opportunity. Why are you telling me this?

  You'll understand later.

  I don't want to understand later. I want to understand now.

  You don't need to. You have more important things to worry about.

  I know, I know. Draw the charm, save Sal, stop myself from becoming you…She felt instantly bad for the harshness of her tone. I'm sorry. I know you're just trying to help.

  No, no. The response came heavy with infinite weariness. You're right. You don't want to become me. Why would you? I don't want to be me either. It's not an easy life.

  Do you have to do it alone? Why don't you live with other people?

  How do you know I don't?

  Because I've seen you, in your workshop. You showed me. There's just you and Bartholomew—

  That's no
t me. I'm another version of you, Shilly, the one making possible the link between our many selves. Without me, you wouldn't see anything at all.

  Shilly's head spun. Another version of herself? How many could there be?

  The task before us is too much even for two lifetimes, said this third version of her as though she had read her thoughts. Do you want to know why?

  She nodded, and a new vision unfolded within her closed eyelids.

  Undulating orange sand stretched to a shimmering horizon under a sky as blue as coloured glass. The sun burned her head and shoulders, and she felt sweat trickling down her back and between her breasts. She wasn't as old as she was in the other world; here she might have been no more than forty years, with back straight and hands steady. Her leg still ached, though; that seemed to be a constant, wherever and however she lived.

  The owner of the eyes she saw through gave her a moment to take in the sudden shift of her perception before swivelling them downward. She saw that she was standing on a giant red stone that protruded from the desert like a pimple from a cheek. Strange signs had been scratched across the stone, forming a charm that was indeed quite different from the one she glimpsed in her other dreams. This one fairly throbbed with power, and she realised belatedly that this Shilly wasn't alone, as she had hinted. The base of the hill was surrounded by man'kin—hundreds, maybe thousands, of them, of every possible shape and size—all facing inwards with their arms outstretched to touch the stone or, if they couldn't reach, the backs of those in front of them. The Change rippled through them like liquid heat, focussed inward on the pattern at Shilly's feet.

  This charm wasn't for use in another time and place. This charm was for right then—and right where she really was, climbing up a sheer cliff face like a bug up a wall.

  Do you see it? asked her other self. Do you see us?

  I do. It's…wonderful.

  It is, and it won't last long. Long enough, though, to do the job, for once in place this charm will reverberate through time. You don't have to worry about that. We've done our job here. We're not needed any longer. I just wanted to say hello. I wanted you to know that, no matter what happens, you aren't on your own.