The Devoured Earth

by Sean Williams

  ‘I am inconsequential,’ he said. ‘My forecasts were wrong. The Goddess herself rebuked me. The world has no use for me now.’

  The despair in his voice made Shilly's heart want to break. ‘Don't be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘It's not over yet.’

  ‘We didn't just fail,’ he insisted. ‘I will live to see my friends cursed and bereft. Although I might try to stop it, I have no hope of succeeding. I will fail again. What use is a king who cannot act? Any power I might have retained is spent. I am dead to the world.’

  ‘He's talking nonsense,’ said Treya.

  ‘Am I? You don't understand now, but you will.’

  ‘I have no time for this. Attend your duty, Mannah, with no more talk of clemency. Dark times are upon us.’

  She strode purposefully back into the darkness, leaving Shilly and the others behind. Shilly watched Mannie closely. He was possibly the only hope they had of breaking any future death sentence, either by convincing Treya to rescind it or by outright defying her. The chance of the latter seemed slim, despite his deeply unhappy expression. Shilly would continue to hope.

  ‘Are they serious?’ asked Skender, coming to stand in front of her and talking in a soft, strained voice. ‘Would they really kill us?’

  ‘They convinced me of it,’ she said, unable to completely hide the hurt she felt at his poor welcome of her. ‘Why else would I have told them what I did?’

  The corners of his eyes tightened slightly. Her barb had hit home. ‘But is any of that true? Did you really try to open the Tomb?’

  ‘That was the plan,’ she said, feeling infinitely weary. Putting her back against the wall, she let it take her weight. The cold stone sucked heat from her body, even through her many layers of clothing. ‘If we had separated the realms forever, we could have trapped Yod in one timeline of our choosing, thereby minimising the damage. Getting to the Flame was just part of that process, but I didn't see the Flame when the Tomb opened. I don't know what went wrong there.’

  ‘Separate the realms forever…?’ Skender's forehead crinkled. He was clearly struggling with the thought of it, as she first had. ‘But that would be terrible. We'd lose the Change for starters, and the man'kin too.’

  ‘Better than losing our lives,’ she snapped, although she hadn't thought of those particular ramifications. Would the man'kin really have embarked so readily on a suicide mission? Perhaps that was why Vehofnehu had been keen to keep their intentions a secret. ‘It's not as if we went into it lightly,’ she said. ‘Do you have a better plan?’

  ‘There was talk of something,’ Skender said, leaning next to her against the wall and placing a hand over his eyes. ‘I didn't follow all of it. The Tomb was involved too.’ His hand fell away from his face and he stared up into the darkness. ‘Could the Ice Eaters be right? Could going to the Tomb be exactly the wrong thing to do?’

  Shilly thought of the Goddess's words in the balloon. Not all of it had been an admonition. It's okay. Honestly. I'm outside where I need to be, and I've closed the Tomb safely behind us. It'll work out if we just keep along this path, right to the end.

  But where was the path and what lay at its end? Without knowing either, Shilly had no reason to feel confident of anything.

  Slowly, leaving nothing out she told Skender everything that had happened to her since her kidnap by the man'kin, nine days earlier. She covered her dreams, the glast, the Tomb, and the Goddess. He listened in silence, nodding encouragingly whenever she faltered. He interrupted her only once, when she mentioned the completed charm her future self had created. Still in her pack were the fragmentary sketches she had made. The Ice Eaters hadn't confiscated them, thinking them harmless doodles. She produced them and lay them on the ground before him.

  By crystal-light they looked strange and otherworldly. Skender's gaze tracked steadily across them, taking in every detail.

  ‘This is designed to keep the realms apart,’ he breathed. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘She said it was a map.’ Shilly tried to remember her future self's exact words, and cursed once again the fact that she didn't have Skender's perfect memory. ‘A map of the world as it would be afterwards, when the realms were apart. Metaphorically speaking.’

  ‘I think she was telling the truth,’ he said, ‘but it's not a map as such. It's a map only in the sense that an Engineer's blueprint might be called a map. Without the blueprint, a thing or place would never exist. A map is the other way around.’ He tapped his chin. ‘I've never seen anything like this before, Shilly. It's an incredible piece of work.’

  Despite her exhaustion, she felt a flush of pride. Skender had grown up surrounded by Stone Mage scholarship accumulated down one thousand years. He knew what he was talking about.

  ‘But what about you?’ she asked. ‘It's your turn to talk. I'm going hoarse.’

  He gathered up the sketches in a bundle and returned them to her. Then he leaned back and brought her up to date with his adventures. Attacked by strange creatures; downed on the shore of the crater lake; chased by black death-dealing tentacles; rescued then kidnapped by the local indigenes; confronted by strange machines fulfilling mysterious functions deep underground—his story sounded as improbable as hers, but she had no cause to doubt it. When a rhythmic thumping started up on the far side of the veil of shadow beyond them, she had even less.

  ‘They've got it going again,’ Skender said. ‘I'm not sure whether to be relieved or worried.’

  ‘Where do you think the tunnel goes?’

  ‘Under the lake. That's all I know for sure.’

  ‘There's only one place it could go,’ she said, feeling the certainty of it sinking into her like lead. ‘If the Ice Eaters are the guardians of the Tomb, they must be able to get to it, somehow. Maybe when the lake was frozen over they could have just walked across and dug down, but even that sounds like too much work. A tunnel would make more sense, for use in emergencies.’

  ‘There's certainly something going on out there,’ Skender agreed, ‘whether they believe your story or not. The towers and that column of steam you mentioned—it all points to bad things to come.’

  She nodded, thinking of the future where Yod had taken over the sun. Death and destruction hadn't come immediately. It had taken time for the enemy to infiltrate the world and to begin its long-anticipated feast. That was the only thing working in their favour. Even if the last of the impediments holding Yod back dissolved right then and there, they still had a chance. Fast-moving and small, they could slip under its guard and do some damage before the opportunity expired.

  But what could they actually do? Skender and the other Change-workers would naturally resist giving up the Change. They would insist upon looking for another way. Was this what had wrought the destruction of her future self's world? Was this what had cost her Sal? Was this what they were destined to argue about?

  She thought of Tom and the last prophecy he had made. The glast would stand between her and Sal, he had said, as they argued over the ultimate decision. Whoever wins gets to choose the way the world ends.

  She would do anything to avoid having to choose between saving her lover and condemning the world at one stroke.

  As though the pieces of the charm had attracted her attention, Shilly felt her dream-self stirring. Grief and smoke filled her head, making her dizzy. The increasingly familiar lines of the charm overlaid the darkness before her just for a moment, as though reminding her of what was truly important.

  ‘You're very quiet,’ she said to Skender, fighting the distraction.

  ‘So are you. What are you thinking about?’

  Shilly shook her head. ‘You first.’

  ‘I'm thinking about what it means if you're right about that tunnel,’ he said. ‘What if Treya succeeds in getting the water out and opens the door? We know what lies at the end of it.’

  ‘Yes, the Tomb.’

  ‘And?’

  She saw where he was going now. ‘Yod.’

  He nodded. ‘The last thing w
e'd want to do is draw attention to ourselves.’

  ‘Is there any way we can stop her, do you think?’

  ‘Not like this. I'm completely useless with this collar on. And Kelloman…’ He lowered his voice. ‘If he's in this body when the time comes, he might be able to do something, but it'll be hard to make sure of that with the guards watching us all the time. What about you? Does your stick have any potential left?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘That friend of yours is pretty sharp,’ he said, looking at Mannie. The Ice Eater was deep in a whispered conversation with one of the guards. ‘He might be one of the rebels.’

  ‘We can only hope so.’ She watched Mannie closely but couldn't decipher his motives or intentions. He had helped her but only so far. Arguing with Treya was very different to actually betraying her.

  What had she called him? Mannah, not Mannie. That triggered a very faint memory, far back in her brain. Somewhere, and recently, she had heard that name before…

  ‘I'm sorry I yelled at you,’ Skender said.

  ‘It's okay.’ And it was. ‘I've yelled at you plenty of times and you never complained.’

  ‘Yeah, but you always had good reason. I was just running off at the mouth.’

  ‘You think I never do that? Ask Sal next time you see him. He can tell you some stories.’

  ‘I bet he can.’ He smiled briefly then sobered and asked, ‘What's wrong with Tom?’

  That was a topic she didn't like to think about. ‘Beats me. He's neither unconscious nor asleep, and he isn't playing dead, either.’

  ‘He has lost his connection to the Third Realm,’ said Vehofnehu softly. ‘As have I, Shilly. I saw the stars as we left the Tomb and they meant nothing to me. Nothing.’

  She hadn't known the empyricist was listening to their conversation. She leaned past Skender to whisper, ‘So why are you awake, unlike him?’

  ‘Tom dreams the future the same way you remember the past. To lose your memory would be a terrible thing, and perhaps you would prefer the oblivion of sleep as Tom does. Who can say?’ The empyricist folded his long arms around his knees. ‘I thought opening the Tomb would solve everything. Instead, I have put the realms into a disequilibrium that only the Goddess can repair. The Third Realm has abandoned us all.’

  ‘Most people live that way and cope all right.’

  ‘That's not true. All societies in this world are guided by those who can see the future, whether it's through humble market seers, the Weavers, man'kin or empyricists such as myself—people who exist at least partly in the Third Realm. They influence decisions large and small. How will such decisions be made now? Badly, and at great risk to everyone, is my thought. We need wisdom now more than ever.’

  ‘You don't have to see the future in order to be wise,’ Shilly said. ‘That's exactly where the Weavers went wrong with Sal, all those years ago. He made his own future—’

  ‘He jumped to another world-line rather than accept the destiny that had been shaped for him,’ the empyricist corrected her. ‘See? Even he employs the Third Realm to get what he wants. Without it, without the Goddess and the Flame to facilitate the proper interaction between her realm and ours, this world will certainly unravel.’

  ‘But you wanted the world to unravel,’ she said.

  ‘Only one. Not all. With Yod spread across the world-lines, its victory will be complete.’

  Thinking about alternate futures and worlds made her head hurt. Most people would go to their doom unaware of the world-tree and their other lives, but not her. If the Flame never burned again, access to her future selves and their grief would cease. To be rid of them would come as a consolation, if not necessarily a victory.

  Something clattered to the floor beside her left leg, distracting her. She leaned forward and picked up a small blue pebble she was sure hadn't been there before. As she stared at it, another joined it, dropping from above and skittering to a halt by her left foot. She looked up with her mouth open, ready to sound the alarm at the first sign of a cave-in.

  Instead of a wall of rock about to topple on her, she caught a brief flash of yellow light. It was gone as soon as she saw it, giving her barely enough time to register Kail's face, with a finger pressed firmly to his lips, peering down at her from the ceiling of the great stone cavern.

  Shilly blinked and dropped her head back down lest someone notice her gawping up at the roof. Her heart beat more quickly at the thought that he had come to rescue her.

  Skender had gone completely rigid beside her. ‘It can't be,’ he whispered.

  ‘Why on Earth not?’ she hissed back.

  ‘Because Kail is dead. He fell from Pukje's back around the same time the balloon went down.’

  Shilly resisted the impulse to glance back up. Her heartbeat quickened again. ‘Perhaps he survived.’

  Skender met her gaze under knotted brows. ‘I guess we must assume so.’

  The small of Shilly's back itched as she took her cane and placed it across her lap, ready for anything.

  Kail watched Shilly, Skender and Vehofnehu with no small feeling of uncertainty. He could tell that his appearance had given them hope. Their postures were straighter and they paid more attention to their surroundings, particularly to the guards. But it was a hope he didn't entirely share. The Ice Eaters were growing in numbers as far-flung survivors converged on the chamber, summoned by a call through the Change that he had barely detected. There were now perhaps two dozen in all. If many more arrived, the prisoners would have no chance of escaping.

  As it was, their position was desperate. Kail had followed the trail from crash site to temporary shelter, then through the caves to the place they were currently being held. Along the way Kail had notified Marmion and given him directions. Until reinforcements arrived, it was up to Kail to step in should Treya decide to do as she threatened and enact the traditional punishment. Kail's back and neck were stiff from the fall and the cold, and the wound he had received from the Swarm felt as though it had reopened. He was lying face down in a narrow crack that led to the chamber from another section of the caves and feeling very much the worse for it.

  Getting old, he told himself. I should rely less on the body and try using the brain instead.

  He half-lidded his eyes and studied the tense group below. Apart from Sal, Shilly and Vehofnehu, there were four Ice Eater guards and the more senior personage called Mannie or Mannah watching under the halo of light cast by a strange crystal lantern. The rest, presumably, were on the other side of the cavern, hidden from sight by a dense charm. Tom lay out cold on a stretcher next to Kelloman, whose quiescent host body wasn't collared. That observation provoked an interesting possibility.

  Gently so as not to arouse the suspicions of Mannie, Kail reached out with his mind and felt for the ‘sleeping’ mage's thoughts.

  ‘Kelloman, can you hear me?’

  ‘Great galloping galoshes! Half the cavern probably can!’

  Kail winced at the stinging rebuke. ‘Is this better?’

  ‘Significantly. Now, Warden Kail, what do you want?’

  ‘To get you out of there, of course. I'm close. In fact, I can see you.’

  ‘Don't worry about me. I'm perfectly safe. You should worry more about the others.’

  ‘I was including them.’

  ‘How far is that fool Marmion? He said something about being on his way but I haven't heard a tweet from him since.’

  ‘Neither have I. He should be here with Sal and the others soon.’

  ‘Are you expecting us to sit around and wait?’

  ‘I think it's sensible to make plans.’

  ‘I'm glad you agree. Now, tell me the layout—everything you can see from your vantage point. Nothing more fancy than that, and for the Goddess's sake don't do more than whisper. If we bungle this, they'll kill us for sure.’

  Kail did as he was told, describing where everyone was sitting, lying or standing in relation to the recumbent mage. Mannie had stopped whispering to
the guards and was now pacing back and forth in a line between the prisoners and the shadow veil. His pacing matched the rhythm of the machine pounding away on the far side. To Kail's eye the man seemed to be tracing out a line between the prisoners and their main threat, the woman called Treya. He could, perhaps, side against her when it came to the crucial moment, but Kail felt it unsafe to rely on him. As a likely Change-worker, he would have to be the first targeted.

  ‘There's no way to talk to Skender,’ Mage Kelloman said. ‘What about Shilly? Is she sensitive enough to hear you now you have her attention?’

  ‘I could try.’

  ‘I suggest you do. It could make all the difference.’

  Kail sent Shilly a brief request to tap her bad leg if she heard him clearly. Without hesitation, she reached down and rapped twice on her knee.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Kelloman when Kail reported his progress. ‘That gives us three possible angles of attack. What do you suggest we do with them?’

  Kail had already begun thinking along those lines. ‘Well, we're in a powerful position here. You've got access to lots of stone, and the air is cold and moist. If you can create a distraction, I can whip up a fog that'll hide Shilly and the others from view. They should be able to move Tom before the guards work out what's going on. Once the collar is off Skender, things should become easier, too. It's just a matter of finding the right moment.’

  The sounds of footsteps on stone came over the pounding of the motor. A young Ice Eater male ran out of the shadow veil and spoke rapidly to Mannie. The older man nodded and glanced, frowning, at the prisoners.

  With a rattle and a prolonged grinding sound, the mysterious machine wound down into silence.

  ‘I think you might have your moment,’ said Kelloman as, unnoticed by everyone but Kail, his body's hand slipped off the edge of the stretcher and dropped so its knuckles brushed the cold stone below.

  ‘Be ready,’ whispered Kail to Shilly, barely thinking the words to himself. ‘You'll know when to act.’

  Treya followed the young Ice Eater out of the dark veil, walking slowly but purposefully. Two large men trailed her. All four of them wore solemn black robes over their normal insulating garments.