The Devoured Earth

by Sean Williams

  Shilly had barely begun to verbalise the first of many questions she had to ask when her other self silenced her.

  No. Just watch. You don't have to remember this charm. I'll work it out in my world, where it's needed. Just remember that you were equal to the burden placed upon you. You made the sacrifices asked of you. You did everything you could to put yourself in the right place at the right time, and with the right knowledge to do what so many failed to do. Let that knowledge give you the strength we lack. You will need as much strength as you can bear. You cannot fail us, we who are your selves in other worlds, other lives—you mustn't. You are our hope.

  Shilly felt tears joining the sweat on her cheeks as her head tilted back and she stared into the sky. The sun hung high above, as red and swollen as in her other future's world. She felt a moment's concern for all these people, standing exposed to such a terrible glare. Didn't they know how dangerous it could be?

  Then she wondered how she knew it was dangerous, and why.

  Her hand rose to blot out the sun. With that terrible brightness eclipsed, she could see the sky more clearly. Dark threads stretched across the firmament, radiating and branching from the sun's bloody disk. The threads pulsed and flexed like veins. She felt faintly sick at the sight of this new strangeness. Something was very wrong with this world. Something fundamental and foul.

  Hello, Shilly, whispered her other self. Hello and goodbye forever.

  Out of the obscured disk of the sun came something black and awful. It descended with the speed of a falling mountain—not a thing, or even a shadow, but an emptiness, a hunger. Shilly barely had time to acknowledge its imminence before it swept over her vantage point, taking her, the charmed stone and the people surrounding it in one giant convulsion.

  Yod, said her future self, and fell silent.

  Shilly convulsed, thrown back into the frigid discomfort of her real self with a near-physical jolt. The echoes of her sudden, fearful cry came back to her, as sharp and terrified as she felt on the inside. She clutched her man'kin steed so tightly it shook itself as though in irritation.

  No! she screamed inside her head. No, no, no! This can't be happening!

  But there was no consolation in the terrible night. Tom held her awkwardly, certainly aware from her shaking that she was crying and needing comfort, even if he didn't know what for. A nightmare he probably assumed, and so it certainly had been. But in the world they lived in, nightmares had real currency. They were real. Her future self had died.

  The tears froze on her cheeks as the Holy Immortals sang on, and the man'kin didn't pause for rest.

  By dawn, they were barely halfway up the cliff. The man'kin made slow progress, mindful of their weight and their delicate passengers over such treacherous terrain. At noon, they finally reached the summit. There, the passengers dismounted and stood shivering in the cold sunlight, staring down into a vast crater half-filled with water. The lake was kilometres across and as blue as the sky. Several small towns dotted its perimeter, each sending skender wooden piers out towards the water's edge.

  ‘How can it be liquid?’ asked Shilly. ‘Surely it should freeze solid up here.’

  Tom just shrugged. Under their feet and all along the edge of the crater, snow and ice lay densely packed, where it had obviously lain for centuries. A brisk wind painted feathers of white over the highest points. There was no sign as yet of the Angel.

  ‘Look down there,’ said Vehofnehu, pointing with one long finger towards one of the towns. He handed her a brass spyglass. ‘Do you see?’

  Shilly took off her mittens. Her hands flinched from the touch of the cold metal. It took her a moment to make out the tiny cluster of buildings he had indicated. They were low and black, made of wood stained with tar or something similar. The few windows they possessed were shuttered tightly against the cold. She was about to ask what Vehofnehu wanted her to see, when movement caught her eye. Someone was coming around a corner, dressed in bulky dark clothing and a beanie. Then a second person, sporting blue robes over similar garb.

  Her heart sped a little faster. She backtracked with the spyglass to a bulbous shape she had noticed near the town but glossed over in order to focus on the more obvious landmark. The shape was squatting low on the ground and swaying gently from side to side.

  ‘Do you see it now?’ asked the empyricist. ‘The balloon?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, wondering if Sal was among the people down there. Only the Panic flew balloons like that, and that robe had been the blue of a Sky Warden.

  ‘Good.’ Vehofnehu took the spyglass from her. His smile was wide and his eyes sparkled. ‘Because we're going to steal it.’

  ‘Some say the Lady sleeps and will one day

  awaken. Some say She watches over us even now,

  and speaks to us through dreams and prophecies.

  There are, of course, those who say She died long

  ago or never existed at all but such heretics are

  few in number. The evidence of Her presence is

  writ large on the Earth: the Divide is Her

  signature, the Change Her awesome will.

  Her Flame still burns steady and true,

  somewhere in the world, and from that

  knowledge we take great comfort.’

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 14:41

  The twins had never been in any kind of air accident. They were surprised at how well the people around them took it. Then they remembered that all of them had experienced similar situations in recent times: most during the Swarm attack on Milang, and Skender and Chu on numerous previous occasions. It helped that the deflating air sac had retained enough buoyancy to prevent a full-on crash, thereby keeping injuries to a few scrapes and sprains. The damage to the bottom of the gondola, however, was extensive. Momentum dragged the balloon for dozens of metres, scraping and tearing the wooden hull and ripping off one of the starboard engines entirely. A steady stream of cursing accompanied Warden Banner, Griel and Chu as they inspected the damage.

  ‘Is it fixable?’ Marmion wanted to know.

  ‘Yes,’ said Griel. ‘That is, we'll be able to get off the ground again once the bladder and charms are repaired.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A few hours. But don't expect any great mobility. We'll be down to two propellers—barely enough to get us airborne.’

  ‘The air is calmer here,’ put in Chu. ‘And we only have to go down, ultimately.’

  ‘Then that's all we need.’ Marmion looked out across the cold expanse of the lake, at the distant nubs of the submerged towers. He took off his beanie and rubbed at his bald scalp for a moment, thinking hard. ‘Get started,’ he told the trio of aviators and Engineers. ‘We'll post a guard in case any more of those scissor-creatures come back to finish the job. The rest of us will explore the village.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Lidia Delfine in a rich contralto. ‘No one's come to see what's going on out here. That worries me.’

  ‘You think the devels might have got to them too?’ asked Skender.

  ‘Best not to think anything at all,’ said Marmion, ‘until we have some evidence.’ The warden divided the expedition into two halves. Warden Banner, Chu, Griel and the surviving Panic crew member would work on the balloon with Lidia Delfine, while Heuve and Mage Kelloman kept watch. The mage looked relieved to have avoided the walk to the village, although it probably wouldn't take more than ten minutes. The twins bet he would change his tune if the balloon was attacked.

  That left Wardens Rosevear and Marmion, Skender, and the twins themselves to explore the village. The curly haired healer looked tired, having spent the time since the crash patiently treating those injured in the impact, and Skender would obviously have rather stayed with Chu.

  A motley crew, said Hadrian to his brother, who had been strangely silent since the near-disaster.

  So what's new?

  Are you worried about what we'll find in the village?

  No. It bothers me more tha
t this looks like a volcanic lake even though the world no longer has a molten core. How do you figure that works?

  I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with the towers.

  Maybe. We know they're connected to Yod, so…

  You think it's under the water?

  I think the devels might have been nothing but a warm-up act.

  Hadrian shuddered. With jagged, teeth-like mountains all around them, he felt like a morsel in a yawning man's mouth. The ankh will hide us, won't it?

  Maybe. Maybe not. Your guess is as good as mine.

  Seth's thought about volcanoes nagged at Hadrian as Marmion distributed appropriate clothing and packs—an extra-large one for the Homunculus’ body—and made final preparations for moving out. The sun was high in the sky, shining weakly through the thin air. The air was less agitated inside the wide crater, but there was a real bite to its stillness. Something like hunger niggled at the back of their minds. They took a strip of jerky from their pack and munched absently on it.

  Marmion gave the order to move out. Skender and Chu hugged farewell. ‘Bring me back a souvenir,’ she told him.

  The four explorers set off for the village at a brisk pace, walking parallel to the shoreline across frosty mud that had obviously been under water until very recently. Delicate spines of ice crunched underfoot, reminding Hadrian of autumn leaves. Only then did he consciously note that there were no trees on the lake's shoreline. No bushes, either. The Homunculus's keen eyesight picked out black circles that might have been caves.

  A line of thin white bones, like a high-tide mark, ran parallel to the waterline two metres inland. The air stank of rotting fish.

  ‘Who would live up here?’ asked Skender, echoing the twins’ thoughts. He looked twice his usual size under numerous coats and jumpers, woollen hats and gloves. His breath fogged the air.

  ‘How would they?’ Rosevear added, his curly hair flattened by the wind coming off the lake.

  ‘There's an old story I heard as a child,’ Marmion said, ‘about a tribe of people who live at the top of the world. They have nothing to eat but ice and snow, and that's how they get their name: the Ice Eaters. They hate the warmth of the sun and melt if exposed to a naked flame. They come down in winter and take away naughty children—of course—to live in their village, where they wait for the day when the sun will go out forever and they inherit the frozen Earth.’

  ‘Charming,’ said Skender. ‘Ice Eaters, huh? They're not in The Book of Towers.’

  ‘Not everything's in The Book of Towers, Skender—and not everything in The Book of Towers is true.’

  ‘I know that, but…’ The young mage shrugged and concentrated on walking.

  Hadrian couldn't imagine Marmion as a child, frightened by his mother's horror stories into being a good boy. The image was faintly ludicrous.

  He turned his attention to the village ahead. Dark-stained wooden buildings huddled together for warmth against the old shoreline. Hadrian counted three piers, two of which looked oddly truncated, as though they had been snapped off in mid-length by some catastrophe. Looks to me like the villagers ate fish rather than ice, Seth commented.

  Still there were no signs of life.

  ‘The water level has definitely dropped,’ Hadrian said.

  ‘It must've gone somewhere,’ said Skender, worrying at his bottom lip.

  ‘The flood?’ asked Rosevear.

  ‘I've been wondering just that.’ Marmion walked with his eyes fixed on the buildings ahead. ‘If the wall of the crater was breached, perhaps by one of the recent earthquakes, then that would allow some of the water to escape. Not all of it would reach the Divide, but enough to cause the flood we saw. And if the gap were to widen, more would spill, causing the second surge the foresters reported ten days ago.’

  The proposal prompted nods all around. Over three weeks had passed since the first deadly deluge had swept down the Divide. Marmion's secondary mission—after finding Highson Sparre and the Homunculus—had been to locate the source and see if it posed any further threat. On one level, Marmion had succeeded at every task given him. Looking at the man, though, Hadrian knew that he himself didn't view his actions in such a positive light.

  Every discovery prompted new uncertainties. Life was like that. The twins knew nothing about the Alcaide, Marmion's boss in the distant and mysterious-sounding Haunted City. He seemed a larger-than-life figure, one of impenetrable moods and ruthless disposition. They wondered if the Alcaide would understand—and if he didn't, whether it would make any difference.

  ‘It's a big dyke to plug,’ said Seth, looking at the jagged crater wall.

  ‘It is indeed,’ said Marmion glumly.

  As the fringes of the village approached, the members of the small expedition slowed their pace. They spread out, taking different perspectives on the first hut. The top of its curved roof barely reached Skender's head, prompting Hadrian to wonder if it was partly submerged in the earth. That would make sense in terms of keeping out the cold. None of the shutters was open. The single door faced the lake and was also soundly shut.

  Skender raised a hand to knock, but Marmion shook his head. They moved on to the next hut, and the next. They were the same. No voices disturbed the silence. Only the wind moaned through the narrow, cobbled streets.

  The twins spotted a window without shutters and moved off to inspect it. Leaning close to the thick black glass, they brushed away a rime of ice that frosted over it and peered inside. The view was as black as coal, and for a moment all they could see was their own reflection: the empty silhouette of the Homunculus and, around that, a glimpse of the crater and sky. Hadrian leaned closer, and something loomed at him out of the darkness—a face so thin as to be skull-like, with wide eyes, pale skin and mouth in an open O. He flinched away, knocking him and his brother off-balance. They sprawled backwards onto the hard ground, limbs waving.

  He or Seth cried out in alarm; it was hard to tell who. The others came running.

  ‘What is it?’ barked Marmion. ‘What have you found?’

  The twins rose shakily to their feet. ‘There's someone in there,’ Hadrian said. ‘I saw them.’

  The door was shut but not locked. Rosevear took off his gloves and knocked. On receiving no response, he cautiously nudged the door open and peered inside. For a breath he didn't move. Then he went down a step and through the door, out of sight. Marmion, Skender and the twins waited nervously.

  ‘You say you saw someone?’ came the healer's voice from inside the house.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hadrian. ‘Someone looking back out at us. An old man, I think. It was hard to tell.’

  ‘Well, you must have been mistaken. The people in here aren't old at all, and they've been dead for some time.’

  Marmion, Skender and the twins exchanged glances. ‘How many?’ asked the bald warden.

  ‘Three. A man, a woman and a young child. A girl. By the looks of them they died in their sleep.’ Rosevear's curly head appeared from the doorway, making Skender jump. ‘You can come in. It appears to be quite safe now.’

  The bald warden followed Rosevear through the door, and Skender did the same, albeit more warily. The twins came last, hesitating on the threshold for a moment, almost defiantly.

  I know what I saw, said Hadrian. I didn't imagine it.

  I don't think you did, his brother replied. I saw it too.

  Then what do you think it was? A ghost?

  No. But let's take a look inside.

  They stepped into the low-ceilinged house. It was sparse and simple, with a central hearth under a flared chimney surrounded by cooking utensils and pots. The ashes were grey and cold. One corner of the single room was curtained off for privacy. A surprising array of digging tools—picks, shovels, spikes, and more—leaned against one wall, below an impressive selection of patched coats hanging from wooden hooks. In an alcove on the far wall was a narrow bed, inside which were curled the three people Rosevear had described.

  It did look like
they were sleeping, except their faces were withered and shrunken, perfectly preserved by the dry, cold air. Only the child looked at all disconcerted by the death that had befallen them. Her eyebrows were frozen in a perpetual frown over eyes tightly closed, and her mouth was turned down. She might have been suffering a nightmare. Her parents had died beside her, protecting her from the cold with their body heat. Their expressions were peaceful and calm, even though everything in the house was now equally frigid.

  ‘What happened to them?’ asked Marmion. ‘A disease? Poison?’

  ‘Neither, I think.’ With a tug of a thick curtain, Rosevear brought a shaft of grey light into the room and bent to examine the bodies more closely. ‘They died without great suffering.’

  ‘The cold, then?’ Skender put his arms around himself and shivered. ‘Or water? Perhaps the lake rose before it fell, and drowned them.’

  ‘Unlikely. Something killed them in their sleep, and killed them quickly.’ He lifted back their bedclothes. ‘There's no blood, no disturbance, no nothing. Unless someone killed them elsewhere then put them to bed afterwards…’ He screwed up his nose as though at a bad smell and lowered the bedclothes. ‘No, I don't think so. What killed them wasn't physical in nature.’

  ‘The Change?’ asked Hadrian.

  Rosevear nodded. ‘The Change can kill like this, although the deadly arts aren't often taught any more. Mages and wardens haven't been at war for centuries.’

  ‘Who says anything human was behind it?’

  Seth's question hung in the frigid air, unanswered, as Marmion prowled the room looking for evidence. His injured right arm moved oddly, as though touching furniture and walls with invisible fingers. He muttered under his breath.

  ‘This doesn't explain what you saw,’ said Skender, watching uncomfortably. He glanced at the twins. ‘You said you saw someone looking out at you, through the window.’