The Devoured Earth

by Sean Williams

  Seth was uncomfortably reminded that Ellis, in another incarnation, had also been Moyo, the lover of Xol and Quetzalcoatl, mirror twins who had brought about the last Cataclysm, in the sixth century AD. Xol had betrayed his own brother in order to have her for himself, and had paid penance for his crime in the Second Realm by helping those caught in the Underworld, like Seth.

  She was the Jaguar, Xol had said of his former lover with reverence in his voice, whose reflection made mirrors smoke and then burst into flame.

  Seth remembered feeling that way, once.

  Pukje continued. ‘Ever since, the world has been poised perpetually on the brink of Cataclysm but not actually tipping over, thanks to your sacrifice. Eventually it found a new equilibrium and the Goddess decided that humanity could continue without her for a while, without anyone but themselves. It's been a remarkably quiet time this last millennium, all things told: no Cataclysms, no religious wars, no messiahs. That doesn't mean there haven't been wars for other reasons, and humanity has more competitors, now, with their land shared by creatures originally from the Second Realm. The Weavers can only do so much to keep the peace, and only for so long. The world is a spring wound as tight as it can get. That tension has to go somewhere, some time. Here and now it is, boys. I hope you're up to it.’

  ‘We'll do whatever needs to be done,’ said Hadrian. ‘We haven't come this far just to give up.’

  Seth, again, was the voice of doubt. ‘How do your plans fit in, Pukje?’

  Pukje's grey eyes gleamed. ‘We'll see what happens.’

  ‘I never found your brand of crisis management very convincing.’

  ‘There's never a crisis if you're prepared for everything.’

  ‘Quiet,’ said Hadrian. ‘Here she comes.’

  Seth looked up and saw Ellis break off a conversation with Sal and Shilly and come walking towards them. Seth was struck again by the difference in her appearance: Ellis wasn't old, but she wasn't the woman in her early twenties that she had been. He could see the latter in the former clearly enough, but her face was lined in ways he hadn't seen before, and her hands were all knuckle and sinew. And her hair…

  He remembered standing with her and Hadrian in long-vanished Europe, staring up at a preserved Viking longboat and wondering about the woman it had once belonged to. Ellis had seemed like a goddess to him then, so obsessed had he been with her. Now she looked like a queen. A queen who had long been absent from her throne and whose subjects had allowed her memory to become a legend—but a queen all the same.

  ‘Thanks for being patient, boys,’ she said when she was in earshot. ‘No, stay where you are.’ She sat cross-legged on the ground in front of them and brushed long wisps of grey hair out of her face. ‘Pukje, take a hike. This is private.’

  ‘As you wish, milady.’

  ‘Cut that out, imp. I don't trust you when you're being polite.’

  Pukje flashed a razor-edged smile and scurried off to talk to Highson.

  ‘Well,’ she said, wrapping her arms around her knees. ‘It's been a long time. Longer for you than for me, of course, but you've aged well, I must say. Have you been working out?’

  Seth was momentarily lost for words. Her voice was exactly the same as it had been. Her eyes moved restlessly from one side of the Homunculus's head to the other. Seth wondered if their faces had materialised in the black depths of the artificial body. Could she really see them, and not just their new home? He wondered what she thought of them now. He and his brother were over a thousand years old, thanks to the Void Beneath, and the glimpses they'd received of their true faces showed that time had been even harder on them than her.

  ‘I'm sorry to fob you off, earlier,’ she went on before he could think of anything to say. ‘It didn't seem right to air our dirty laundry in front of Highson and Pukje. There are things we need to talk about that the others shouldn't overhear. Explanations, old scores—that kind of thing.’

  ‘I don't know what to say.’ Hadrian's voice was strained.

  ‘Ask me a question. You must have hundreds of those. Now's your chance. Take it while it's here.’

  ‘When will this be over?’ asked Seth. It blurted out of him without conscious thought.

  Her gaze dropped. Some of the mask fell away. ‘You know, that's a question I ask myself every day. Am I stuck in this role forever, or will I one day shrug it free? My sisters chose death, so they're off the hook. But me? While the Flame exists, or could exist, someone has to tend it. That's a law, like gravity. Without the Flame anchoring it the Third Realm would drift away and humans would be stuck in one world-line forever. If that happened, we'd be extinct within a generation. You've seen how fragile life is. You know first-hand the sort of predators there are between the realms. Of all the world-lines created since the Third Realm made humanity the wondrous, multifaceted race it is, this is the only one that might outlast Yod. That terrifies me. And that, ultimately, keeps me going. I owe it to everyone, not just myself, to reignite the Flame and create an entirely new world-tree. If, along the way, I can find a shred of happiness or satisfaction, I will count myself lucky.’

  ‘Not just a goddess then, El Alamein, but a martyr too, eh?’ Seth could see clearly in her familiar-unfamiliar face that his words stung her. Or maybe it was him reverting to the way he had addressed her a thousand years ago. ‘And because you're such a saint, I suppose we should just roll over and take it as well, whatever's coming. Right? Bullshit. We didn't ask for this. We're not slumming it in a human body while our sisters tinker with the future. We're caught and we can't get out. Where's the hope in that? Where's the higher purpose? We were on a holiday, for fuck's sake. We can't help that we were born this way.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, Seth, you can't. But that doesn't mean you're powerless and have always been so. You chose to put yourself here when you were in Sheol; you took this life out of the many in your world-tree. You could've ended it a thousand years ago, if that was what you wanted. That may not seem like much of a choice now, but you're not alone in that. Everyone's haunted by death and loss and things we would've or could've or should've done if only the dice had fallen a particular way, if only we'd had just a little longer, if only things had been different. But wishing for what wasn't is futile, in any world-line. You should know by now that the grass isn't any greener on the Other Side.’

  ‘We're not talking about grass.’ Seth struggled to keep his voice down. ‘We're talking about people.’

  ‘Exactly. And there are more people in the world than you or I. They're worth remembering when you're feeling out of sorts. They have a right to a better fate than the one awaiting them if we just give up the game and go home. They want to be victims of Yod no more than you do. You were just the first, Seth, of billions. Maybe that makes you unlucky or hard done by, but it also puts you in a unique position. You can turn this around if you want to. You can save the people who remain and set yourself up as a hero. That seems like an easy choice to me.’

  ‘Don't patronise me.’

  ‘If a Goddess can't be patronising, who can?’

  ‘Take it easy, you two.’ Hadrian's voice poured oil on their rising seas. ‘This isn't what you're angry about, Seth. Not really. You've been waiting a thousand years to get it off your chest. Don't blow it.’

  Seth's ire retreated, but didn't disappear. ‘Now you're both patronising me.’

  ‘No.’ Ellis reached out and took his hand, somehow able to tell which one was his and not Hadrian's. ‘That's not what we're doing.’

  He pulled away. ‘You left us,’ he said. ‘You left us, and now you're blaming me for being upset.’

  ‘I'm not blaming you for anything,’ she said. ‘And neither is Hadrian. But I did let you go. This is true.’ She sighed. Her hazel gaze dropped. ‘I did that because I had no choice. It wasn't just because the fate of the world was at stake. I think I made it clear, at the time, why I was leaving.’

  ‘I think you did.’

  ‘Well, I'm still upse
t about it. At least you've had time to get over it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You've had nothing else to think about for a thousand years, right? It must've got a little boring, stewing over old mistakes.’

  Seth acknowledged that with a nod, but he didn't entirely agree. It struck him as sad and rather pointless that the hurt still hadn't faded.

  ‘So what now?’ he asked her. ‘What do you have planned for us?’

  ‘Well. That's the tricky part.’

  ‘Tricky how?’ asked Hadrian.

  ‘There are two schools of thought in play at the moment, as perhaps you know. One says that you should be permanently bonded to the Flame in order to awaken the powers of the Old Ones. They think they can repel Yod that way and create a new golden age with the gods in charge again. That's what Pukje wants too.’

  ‘Ah.’ Hadrian nodded. ‘So that's what the imp has been stopping Highson from telling us.’

  ‘I would think so. He'd assume that you want to be separated, not joined together forever.’

  ‘What about the second plan?’ asked Seth.

  ‘The other faction wants you separated—but not just from each other. From the Flame too, forever, in the hope of stopping Yod's spread through the world-tree. This method would effectively kill the Change and restrict any creature that feeds on will, like Yod, to just the former Second Realm.’

  Seth's head was spinning. Both plans sounded dangerously apocalyptic to him—and he felt no wonder that Highson too had been so cagey about telling them anything. Everyone with a stake in either conspiracy would be looking to Highson as creator of the Homunculus to know how best to break or bind it forever. He was probably as freaked as the twins were.

  ‘Which do you favour?’ Hadrian asked.

  ‘Both have their merits. I can see that clearly enough, although I don't like some of the methods either group has used. Each group is vulnerable to small factors outside its control. And neither plan, ultimately, cares what you two want. Remember that when I explain what I have in mind.’

  Seth briefly considered asking her not to bother, but knew he was only being petulant. ‘Go on. Get it over with. Tell us what you want us to do.’

  ‘You won't like it.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So it's still your choice, Seth. Yours and Hadrian's. Don't ever mistake that. No one can force you to do something you're not willing to. And I say “willing” in every sense of the word. I'm not Yod; I don't devour lives to further my own ends. If I was, I wouldn't be here to explain it to you. I'd just do it, and to hell with you. Hell, or worse.’

  ‘Just tell us,’ said Hadrian. ‘How are we going to kill Yod and get on with our lives?’

  ‘You don't,’ she said. ‘You don't do either of those things—and that's the part you won't want to hear.’

  Seth felt as though a bubble had formed at the back of his head, a void of thought and feeling that threatened to consume his brain if he let it grow any larger.

  ‘You're right about that much,’ he heard Hadrian say. ‘Now, give us the rest. If we're not supposed to kill Yod, then why the fuck are we here?’

  Ellis Quick, the Goddess of the new world, laced her fingers together in front of her, and began to explain.

  ‘The truth is: dreams have no purpose, like many

  things in life. But that doesn't mean we can't use

  them. They are glimpses of the world-tree,

  snatched from the Third Realm while our minds

  come unstuck during sleep. Adrift on a sea of

  possibilities, we return with half-remembered

  visions of worlds that might have been—and are

  very real indeed, somewhere else.’

  SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

  Skender woke squinting and, for one awful moment, unable to remember how he had come to be lying in the open with solid stone at his back. There was a cliff to his right and an open expanse of water to his left. Above were only clouds, grey and thick yet too bright for his eyes. His injured arm and head ached, and more than that: his face ached. When he raised a hand to touch it, his fingers came away brown with half-dried blood.

  Then he remembered, and that was even worse.

  ‘Chu?’ He managed to get upright even though his head spun and his muscles felt as limp as week-old noodles. ‘Chu!’ Her name echoed off the crater wall but prompted no response.

  Her wing was gone. She was gone. The sun was obscured by the clouds, so he couldn't tell how long it was since she had left on her crazy solo mission. She could have been dead for hours.

  The world swayed and tipped, and he dropped to his knees, afraid that he might accidentally stagger the wrong way and tumble to the bottom. He threw up instead. The pain in his gut and head was more than he could take. He wept as though the bottom had fallen out of the world, and the only thing he had left were tears.

  Whether you love me back or not…

  He could have wept forever. The only thing that stopped him were three sharp retorts, carried across the lake from the tallest tower, which was barely visible even in daylight through the column of steam. The sounds were too sharp and well defined to be natural. They were undoubtedly explosions.

  The lake convulsed. Black fronds swayed under the surface like deadly seaweed. The water level swelled and then shrank as though the lake itself was breathing. Skender stared at it, shocked out of his grief by a sight too alarming to be natural.

  The convulsions died down. There were no more explosions, even though four crystals had gone into the backpack that Chu carried. He peered at the towers across the lake, but saw no sign of her wing.

  ‘Selfish,’ he told himself, noting the tears flowing again but neither completely giving in to them nor stopping them. ‘You had your chance to tell her, and you didn't take it. You blew it.’

  He stood, and this time managed to stay upright. A new feeling began to burn in his gut. Not sorrow or guilt or regret, or even irritation that she hadn't let him fly with her. It was anger.

  ‘I'll make them pay, Chu,’ he told the lake and crater and sky, and the remains of the Ice Eater villages and towers and the unnatural clouds. They would be his witness, now she wasn't there. ‘I'll make those bastards pay.’

  Then he turned and began the long, careful climb back down the slope to the cave mouth far below.

  A vibration on his breastbone woke Kail from a dreamless sleep. He reached up with one hand to cup the leather pouch resting there. The Caduceus fragment was twitching like a baby mouse. Clutching it tight, he fell back asleep and dreamed of being buried alive in the belly of a giant man'kin.

  The second time he opened his eyes, he found Sal sitting next to his stretcher on a heavily stuffed pack. The crystal-lights of the cavern had been turned down. People lay stretched out on bedrolls, sleeping or talking in low voices. The Caduceus was quiet.

  ‘What time is it?’ Kail croaked through a voice as dry as summer.

  Sal turned. ‘Midday.’ He produced a flask of water and handed it to Kail. ‘Rosevear told me to tell you to drink. You'll feel better afterwards.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Kail swigged gently, wary of overloading his stomach. The water was icy cold and hurt his teeth. He felt as though the man'kin in his dream had chewed him up and spat him out, then trodden on him for good measure.

  ‘I honestly didn't expect to see you again, old man. When you fell off Pukje, we thought you were dead for sure.’

  ‘So did I, Sal. So did I.’ Kail shifted himself into a more comfortable position. His back still sang like an over-plucked wire. ‘I guess I got lucky.’

  ‘I guess you did. Or someone was unlucky.’ Sal's smile dropped away. ‘I've been thinking about how you fell. It strikes me as odd that you, who argued most with the Old Ones, were the only one whose safety line broke that night. Just like it was odd that the avalanche blocked our path.’

  ‘You think Pukje was responsible for both?’

  Sal nodded. ‘I worry about what he mi
ght do next.’

  ‘To who?’

  ‘To Shilly.’

  ‘Why her?’

  ‘Because she wants the opposite of what the Old Ones want.’ Sal sighed and related to Kail an abbreviated version of everything Shilly had told him that morning.

  Kail could hardly believe his ears. Here at last was the reason why Shilly had run off with the man'kin during the crisis in Milang. And not just the man'kin, but the Holy Immortals, Tom, the glast, and every other seer in the vicinity. That they had intended to make their own future was bold enough; that Shilly was an intimate part of their planning, thanks to the many versions of herself working together in different iterations of the world, struck Kail as so strange as to be utterly convincing.

  He sat up on his elbows and looked around the cavern. She was recognisable only by her wavy, sun-streaked hair, which poked out of a sleeping-bag not far from where he lay. A blood-matted clump at the base of her neck indicated that she too was going through the wars.

  ‘She's remarkable,’ Kail said. ‘I'd like the chance to get to know her better.’

  ‘I think that too, sometimes. If Pukje comes anywhere near her, I'm going to take his head clean off.’

  The imp was sitting in a meditative pose on the far side of the cavern. His eyes were closed.

  ‘I think it'd be wise to keep them apart, for now,’ Kail said. ‘And to remember that Pukje can't change while someone is looking.’

  ‘Between the two of us, I'm sure we can keep an eye on him.’

  Kail nodded. He felt alert enough. Only the aches and pains reminded him of the rigours his body had been through in recent days.

  ‘It must feel good to have her back,’ he said, thinking of Vania and his occasional pang for what might have been. A lonely man, the Old Ones had called him. Loveless.

  ‘You'd better believe it.’