The Devoured Earth

by Sean Williams

  ‘It's almost done,’ she said. ‘No good reason has come to me to spare these violators, and I have no intention of leaving them behind. The time has come to do what must be done.’

  Skender, Shilly and Vehofnehu stood, keeping their backs firmly against the wall. ‘You can't be serious,’ said Shilly. ‘You'd kill wounded people who can't defend themselves?’

  ‘If you do this,’ added Skender, ‘you'll be as bad as the Death.’

  ‘The guilt will haunt you forever,’ said the empyricist with something like pity in his eyes. ‘You will never escape it.’

  ‘Shut them up.’ Treya clapped her hands and her two thugs moved in.

  Mannie stepped forward. ‘No, Treya. I can't allow this.’

  ‘It's not up to you,’ Treya snapped. ‘It's the law we've upheld for centuries. I'll not break it now.’

  ‘Now is a special case. Never in all our history has there been a time like this. We are decimated and the lake itself has turned against us. I say the old laws no longer apply. We must find new ones.’

  ‘The Goddess herself gave us those laws.’ Treya's eyes widened in anger. Although physically much shorter than her challenger, her certainty was a match for his. ‘Are you saying that we should turn our back on her as well?’

  ‘Why don't we ask her what we should do? If she truly walks among us now, we can do just that. We owe her—and ourselves—that much after a thousand years of service.’

  ‘The time for arguing is past.’ Treya clapped her hands again. ‘We must act.’

  Mannie waved a hand and the two guards stepped forward to confront Treya's thugs. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘I'm sorry it has come to this, Treya.’

  ‘So am I. There are few of us left. I am loath to lose any more.’

  ‘Then listen to reason. Don't take this extreme course of action.’

  ‘I will take whatever course of action I think best,’ she spat. ‘It's not your place to judge. I am doing the Goddess's will. You should learn from my example—or face the same penalty as the violators.’

  As battlelines were drawn, Kail watched the shifting alliances with concern. The divide between loyalists and rebels wasn't clear-cut. Mannie may have turned the guards to his cause, but two of his own companions were clearly not so sure. One, a white-haired man who looked old enough to be Treya's father, fingered a curved bone knife as though eager to use it. If it came to a brawl, Kail decided, he was one to watch.

  ‘I don't want to fight you,’ said Mannie, drawing a knife of his own from within his furs, ‘but I will in order to prevent this terrible wrong.’

  Treya whistled. Out of the shadow veil stepped six more Ice Eaters. Four men and two women, they formed a line to Treya's left with weapons drawn. The teenager Kail had earlier seen with Skender wasn't one of them.

  ‘What say you now, Mannah?’ asked Treya. ‘How do your principles fare in the face of certain defeat?’

  ‘No matter who dies today, I will still be right and you will still be wrong.’ The Ice Eater waved Shilly and the others behind him. ‘Force changes nothing.’

  ‘OH, BUT I VERY MUCH DISAGREE.’

  The voice was so loud it made the walls of the cavern shake. Kail clutched the sides of his narrow chimney to stop himself from slipping headfirst to the ground below. Treya and Mannie put their hands over their ears as they looked around for the source.

  ‘LOWER YOUR WEAPONS OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES.’

  It took Kail far too long to realise that the walls of the cavern were the source of the voice, and that the mind behind it belonged to Mage Kelloman, still feigning unconsciousness on his stretcher. Once he realised, however, it took only a moment to gather the concentration required to weave a familiar weather-working charm and direct it out into the cavern. Mist began to gather around the legs of those below.

  Two of Treya's thugs put down their knives and backed away. Their leader, however, was not so easily intimidated.

  ‘Who speaks?’ she called out, raising her head and turning it from side to side in order to address the entire ceiling. ‘By whose authority?’

  ‘I NEED NO AUTHORITY BUT MY OWN. OBEY ME. OBEY.’ Kelloman added a faint rumble to the final word. A fine rain of dust began to fall into the fog. ‘YOUR LIVES ARE IN MY HANDS.’

  Treya was beginning to look nervous but no less determined. ‘Until you tell me who you are—’ She stopped, noticing the mist for the first time. It had reached the level of her knees. ‘This is a trick. Take them now. Now!’

  Kail cursed and put all his energy into the charm. At the same time, he sent a chill wind through the chamber, stirring up the mist. Kelloman triggered a series of small rockfalls that sent people running in all directions with their hands protecting their heads. Dust and mist mixed, forming an impenetrable smog through which people ran like mice.

  The time had come to leave his hiding place. Kail worked his aching limbs loose and inched forward onto the ledge below the chimney. Once on the ledge, he found solid grips for his arms and swung his legs over into space. A flash of bright red light signalled that Kelloman was openly fighting to defend the prisoners. Wisps of fog swirled into strange, sinister shapes. A single Panic voice rose up in challenge.

  ‘Shilly!’

  That was Skender. Kail let go and dropped to the floor. Pain flared from the base of his spine to the back of his head on impact. Shoving aside a bleeding Ice Eater, he made his way to where he had last seen Shilly. The wall was empty now.

  His strength was ebbing, but the fog continued to build. He cursed it as he searched through it for Shilly and the others. Vehofnehu and one of the Ice Eater guards stood protectively over Tom. The guard lunged at Kail but the empyricist held him back.

  ‘Have you seen Shilly?’ Kail asked him.

  Vehofnehu shook his head. ‘Treya was trying to get to her, the last I saw.’

  Another flash turned the world blood-red. Black silhouettes stood out in strange poses. Kail dived into the thick of it, grabbing Ice Eaters and pushing them bodily aside. The sound of fighting grew louder even through the deadening air. Someone lunged at him with a knife and he jerked away too quickly, too awkwardly for his back to bear. He went down with a cry and his chest exposed, certain to be stabbed.

  A sword wielded by a brown-uniformed arm intercepted the blow. Metal clashed with bone and the metal won. Fragments of knife went flying, and the woman wielding it dropped away with a cry.

  Heuve leaned down to help Kail to his feet. Lidia Delfine stood beside her bodyguard, watching his back. ‘Looks like we arrived none too soon,’ she said bleakly. ‘We decided to rendezvous with Marmion and the others before moving in, otherwise we could've been here earlier.’

  ‘Your timing is excellent.’ Kail felt as though every muscle down his left side was torn. He could barely walk. ‘Look for Shilly. She's the most vulnerable. If she's been taken—’

  ‘We'll find her.’

  ‘Do you know where to go?’

  ‘Yes. They're retreating to the far side of the chamber.’

  Heuve slipped a knife into Kail's hand and hurried with his fiancée into the swirling fog. Kail wondered where the others were: Griel, Marmion, Rosevear and Sal. It wouldn't be long now, surely, before the fight was over.

  It soon became clear, however, that the Ice Eaters had more up their sleeves than simple illusions. When he reached the shadow veil, determinedly following the fringes of the fighting, his faltering steps became even slower. The floor seemed to be covered in a dense pool of molasses. The harder he tried to walk, the slower he went.

  Another voice called Shilly's name—Sal's this time. Her return cry was muffled by the distance and the veil. A shockwave rippled through the Change, carrying the wild talent's distinctive flavour along with a hint of Skender. The obstruction around Kail's legs dissolved. Suddenly he was running unencumbered through the veil of darkness and to the far side.

  The fog had reached there too. Ice Eaters ran past him, briefly glimpsed. He had neither the means t
o tell which side they were on nor sufficient energy to stop them. Many wore black robes, although why they needed extra layers he didn't know. The air was hot and sulphurous on the far side of the veil. A series of powerful flashes only made the atmosphere more foul still.

  Then a rush of cold, damp air blew the fog to streamers. Kail gagged on a stagnant fishy smell. Lights coalesced out of the gloom, revealing a mighty stone wall truncating the far end of the cavern. At its centre hung a wide rectangular door. Several black-robed shapes slipped through the open door to the darkness on the other side and he raised his voice to sound the alarm.

  ‘They're getting away! Stop them!’

  The door was already swinging closed. Sal rushed out of the veil, right hand outstretched in a futile pushing gesture. The stone was too heavy even for him. Smoothly and without any sound at all, the gap between door and lintel kept shrinking.

  ‘No!’ cried Skender, sporting a bloody gash down his left arm.

  Sal kept running after the fleeing Ice Eaters. In the time it took Kail to manage two steps, Sal had dived headlong into the gap with barely a finger's-width to either side. The heavy door slammed shut behind him.

  Complex charms danced across the joins, locking it tight. Skender pounded on the stone with his good hand, to no avail.

  ‘Well,’ said Kail, hobbling to join him, ‘at least he's in a good position to help Shilly.’

  ‘Don't be so sure about that,’ said a voice from behind them.

  Kail turned and saw Marmion bending over a small figure lying near the edge of the shadow veil. Rosevear hurried to join him. The sound of fighting faded into insignificance as Kail limped over, his heart pounding.

  ‘Is she alive?’ he heard Marmion ask.

  Rosevear nodded. ‘Stunned, I think.’

  Under his healing hand, Shilly stirred. ‘What happened?’ she asked, trying to sit up. There was blood in her hair, but less than Kail feared he might see. ‘Did I hear Sal?’

  ‘You did,’ said Marmion.

  ‘Where is he?’ She looked around, the whites of her eyes showing. ‘Is he all right?’

  Marmion pointed over her shoulder, at the wall. She took the situation in at a glance.

  ‘What's he doing in there?’

  ‘Looking for you,’ said Skender, squatting down next to her with his injured arm tucked close to his stomach. ‘We thought you'd been kidnapped.’

  She laughed once, then put her head in her hands. ‘Typical.’ There was no mirth in her voice, just fatigue and grief.

  ‘He'll be all right,’ Rosevear soothed her.

  ‘You don't know that,’ she said. ‘You don't know that at all.’

  ‘I think we can trust him to look after himself,’ Marmion said.

  ‘There are no guarantees.’ She let herself be pressed back into a reclining position. ‘Get that bloody door open as fast as you can. They're on their way to the Tomb. I don't know what's waiting for them there, but I think we can assume they'll need reinforcements.’

  The big bad wolf is waiting, Kail said to himself, his thoughts spiralling from the scene in front of him to his encounter with the Goddess. He was the last to reach Shilly's side. He leaned heavily on Skender to lower himself next to her. Even so, the pain was incredible. He barely managed a gasp, but that was enough to catch Rosevear's attention. The last things he saw were the healer's outstretched hands coming up to catch him.

  ‘Where She lies, the Flame will burn.

  When the Flame burns, the world will be whole.’

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, FRAGMENT 117

  It was cold and dark on Pukje's back, under the starless sky. Highson Sparre had gone into a deep trance to preserve his body heat, and responded only when directly spoken to. Even the twins, in their unnaturally resilient body, were beginning to feel the effects of such prolonged exposure. As they finally approached the towering column of steam rising from the taller of the three towers in the middle of the lake, the twins decided to rouse their companion to see what they had found.

  ‘Nothing? You can't be serious.’ The wind caught his voice and tried to snatch it away, but Pukje was for the moment not bucking the currents swirling around the immense vertical cloud, and it was relatively easy to talk.

  ‘See for yourself,’ they told Highson, not quite believing it themselves. Compared to the immense column of steam rising above them, they were smaller than a fly circling a Doric column. Apart from the odd flash of orange or green sheet lightning, the strange atmospheric phenomenon was utterly dark, and whatever was causing the water to boil far below did so in complete silence. Tower Aleph was dimly visible through the steam. Seth could see that it was still hollow, as it had been in the memories he had gleaned from Ron Synett, and that its exterior was still enigmatically carved. In essence, it seemed, it had hardly changed—except it now poked out of the new world like a syringe through a rubber sheet.

  Around it he could feel the presence of Yod. The dreadful spoor of the world-eater stifled his thoughts and smothered the breath in his throat, making him feel smaller than ever, if that was possible.

  His life may have been ruined by Yod, but the closest Seth and his brother had previously come to it in person had been a thousand years earlier, in the Second Realm, when Seth had glimpsed the hulking black pyramid in the bizarre city of Abaddon. It had looked more like something inanimate, a built object rather than a living being. It is alien, Xol's friend Agatha had told him when he had asked what it was. Its nature is hidden from us. That hadn't helped him understand, but it had gone some way towards stopping him from trying.

  ‘I think we should go lower,’ said Seth. ‘There's nothing but cloud up here. The real action must be on top of the tower, or inside it.’

  Hadrian disagreed, of course. ‘That's exactly why I think we should stay up here. We're risking enough as it is. The closer we get to Yod, the more dangerous it's going to be.’

  ‘You think we should return to the shore?’ Highson asked, peering over Pukje's bony spine at the sight ahead of them.

  ‘I think there's only so much we can learn out here,’ Hadrian said. ‘We need to find another way into the Tomb.’

  ‘But if it's as quiet down there as it is up here,’ protested Seth, ‘we might be able to land on it.’

  ‘Do you really think that's likely?’

  ‘Do you think any of this is likely?’

  Highson waved them silent. ‘I agree with Seth,’ he said, ‘but not because you're wrong, Hadrian. Because we're desperate. I think we have to put our faith in Pukje to get us out of any trouble that might come our way. Does that sound reasonable?’

  ‘I'm in no hurry to die,’ the imp-dragon rumbled in agreement. ‘The moment anything so much as looks at us, we'll be out of there.’

  That went some way towards mollifying Hadrian, who until then had stubbornly refused to accept Seth's opinion on anything. He had been like that all the way from shore. Something had changed since Highson's announcement that the Homunculus might be able to give them separate bodies.

  Or maybe it was just the thought of being close to the resting place of Ellis's body. No matter that she was revered now as a Goddess. To both of them, she was still the woman they had loved.

  The ankh will hide us, Seth told his brother. Don't forget that.

  ‘I suppose.’ Hadrian spoke aloud, giving in to the pressure from all sides.

  ‘All right,’ Highson said to Pukje. ‘Take us down to the top of the tower, as slowly as you like. I may be freezing to death out here, but that's better than the alternative.’

  ‘At least it'd be quick,’ Seth said.

  ‘It would at that.’ Highson actually smiled.

  Losing his memory seems to have done him a world of good, said Hadrian with more than a hint of surliness.

  Perhaps we should go back to the Old Ones ourselves, Seth said. There are a few moments I'd lose quite happily.

  Pukje angled his left wingtip and sent them on a broad spiral that would take them at le
ast twice around the column of steam before reaching the top of the tower. Through the Homunculus's night vision, Seth could dimly make out the surface of the column. Although it looked smooth from a distance, rising like the stem of a mushroom to the spreading pancake of cloud above, it was in fact roiling and tempestuous. He thought of a bath tap on full, but upside down, pouring the contents of the lake into the sky. How long it would take for the lake to boil dry he couldn't guess.

  ‘What did the Old Ones tell you about saving the world?’ he asked Highson. ‘You mentioned something about that before but didn't get a chance to tell us anything.’

  ‘Well, it's a long story,’ said the warden. ‘Maybe now's not the right time.’

  ‘I think we should keep our voices down,’ Pukje said.

  ‘Do you?’ asked Seth.

  ‘Yes. Just because we can't see any danger doesn't mean it's not out there waiting.’ The big eyes glanced back at him. ‘Let's not give it a reason to find us.’ Pukje flapped his wings once for emphasis.

  Interesting, said Seth.

  Yes, Hadrian agreed. Pukje cut Highson off last time too. Do you think he's trying to hide something?

  I think Pukje's always hiding something.

  Something about us?

  Undoubtedly. He thinks we're going to help him get rid of Yod—otherwise why would we be here?

  Not for decoration, that's for sure.

  Seth simmered in silence as Pukje glided down the outside of the rising column of steam. If Pukje didn't want them to talk, there wasn't much they could do about it just then. But later there would come an opportunity. He would make sure of it.

  Not far now, little brother, he whispered. The end is almost here.

  He felt Hadrian shift inside the Homunculus's body. Their strange, overlapping head flexed, stretched, and it seemed for a moment as though they were looking eye to eye. Hadrian's face, the same as Seth's but reversed, stared back at him with an agonised, anguished expression, older and more haggard than they had ever been.