The Devoured Earth

by Sean Williams

  ‘No matter what happens, at least you've got that.’ He looked around the room, considering his companions one by one. The expedition had changed all of them in their own unique ways. ‘I wonder what I've gained from all this?’

  Sal patted him on the shoulder. ‘The chance to give someone a family.’ He stood. ‘If you let her down, I'll take your head off too.’

  Kail watched him walk away, smiling. The Caduceus began to vibrate, and he cupped it as he would a captive cicada.

  If you want it so badly, Abi Van Haasteren, he thought to himself, you'll have to come get it. We're a little busy right now.

  Sal fought the urge, powerful though it was, to join Shilly in the sleeping-bag. His eyes were hot with fatigue and the world seemed to shift underfoot every time he took a step. There was, however, someone he wanted to talk to before giving in to sleep. He felt Mage Kelloman's eyes tracking him as he walked by Marmion and Banner, snoring gently side by side, and Lidia Delfine, curled in a ball near the sole remaining Ice Eaters. Her bodyguard, Heuve, nodded from where he watched over her. The Goddess and the twins whispered furiously in a corner, oblivious to everyone around them. Rosevear was tending the injured, but he was the only other person moving around.

  It wasn't a person Sal intended to talk to. The glast looked up from its contemplation of Mawson's head as he approached. Although its features were in every detail the same as Kemp's, Sal could not mistake the creature for the young man Sal had first met in Fundelry. The glast's smoky black skin had nothing of human flesh about it; Kemp's tattoos, now white, drifted slowly up and down his arms and back. His pupils were pure ivory in a sea of grey.

  Sal almost baulked in the face of that alien gaze, but he kept coming. The Angel, looming over the alien creature like the back of a strange chair, raised its head.

  ‘The Angel acknowledges you,’ said Mawson.

  ‘That's nice, but I'm here to talk to the glast. Do you speak for it?’

  ‘No.’

  Sal was unfazed. He reached into a pocket and tossed a handful of small bone tiles onto the floor at the strange creature's feet. ‘Shilly told me about these. The Holy Immortals used them to communicate with the Panic back in the cloud forests. I thought maybe you'd find them helpful.’

  The glast put Mawson to one side and reached down to touch the tiles. Some had letters printed on them; some had numbers or other symbols. Emitting a soft hissing noise, the glast moved two together to form part of a word, then looked up at Sal.

  Sal tipped the rest of the tiles onto the floor. He had lifted them from the empyricist's pack while the old Panic slept. He felt guilty about that small deception, but figured it paled in comparison to what Vehofnehu had done to him and Shilly. And if the attempt to communicate was successful, everything, he hoped, would be justified.

  Smoky glass fingers moved quickly, forming the words: ALL THINGS.

  The glast looked up at Sal. He nodded encouragingly. Its hands moved again, spelling out: KILL TO LIVE. When it was certain he had absorbed that fragment, it moved on again, spelling out what it could before running out of certain letters and moving on.

  I UNDERSTAND YOUR ENEMY'S NATURE BETTER THAN I CARE TO ADMIT. I KILLED YOUR FRIEND, AND I DO NOT APOLOGISE FOR IT. I KILLED THE SNAKE TOO, AND MANY OTHER LIVING THINGS. THEY ARE ALL INSIDE ME NOW, ALL PART OF ME. THEY ANCHOR ME HERE.

  ‘And who are you, exactly?’ Sal asked. ‘What do you want?’

  I AM A TRAVELLER. I WANT TO EXPERIENCE YOUR WORLD.

  ‘By eating the things that live in it?’

  I HAVE BEEN AN INSECT BORING ITS WAY THROUGH A TREE. THE BORER CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT HARMING THE TREE, YET THE TREE LIVES ON. I SAY THAT WITH SOME CERTAINTY. I WAS THE TREE, TOO, FOR A WHILE.

  ‘What else have you been?’

  MANY THINGS IN MANY WORLDS.

  ‘Why here? Why now?’

  WHY ARE YOU HERE? WHY ARE YOU NOW? THERE IS NO PLAN. THERE IS NO DIRECTION.

  ‘I'm here with you because you killed my friend. Vehofnehu told Shilly that you attacked the boneship because you wanted to communicate with us. I could accept Kemp dying for that, perhaps, but not for no reason at all.’

  The glast's expression betrayed no human emotion. I WAS A SNAKE FROZEN IN THE DEPTHS OF AN ICY LAKE FOR NIGH ON A MILLENNIUM. WHEN IT MELTED, I WAS REVIVED. I GLIMPSED YOUR ENEMY'S RETURN TO THE WORLD IN THE CHURNING OF THE FLOOD, BUT I WAS SWEPT AWAY BEFORE I COULD DO MORE. WHEN I ENCOUNTERED YOU HEADING UPSTREAM, I DETERMINED TO BECOME ONE OF YOU, IN ORDER FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND. YOUR ENEMY IS LIKE ME, YET NOT LIKE ME. IT DOES NOT KNOW RESTRAINT. IT WILL DESTROY THIS WORLD BEFORE I HAVE FULLY EXPERIENCED IT. THAT WOULD BE WRONG.

  ‘You want to help us?’

  I WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND, it repeated. ALL THINGS KILL TO LIVE.

  Sal frowned, sensing something important coming together in his subconscious. He had had ideas this way before, where seemingly separate pieces began to combine without his conscious knowledge and only announced their conclusion when the whole had formed. It could be maddening, waiting for the final result to appear, because there was no way he had found to hurry the process along. All he could do was wait.

  ‘Yod is afraid of you,’ he said. ‘At least, it doesn't want to get too close to you. Do you know how to hurt it?’

  IN ITS PRESENT FORM, NO. I MUST OCCUPY THE BODY AFTER I HAVE DEVOURED THE MIND. THAT IS THE CURSE I BRING TO THOSE WHO FALL PREY TO ME.

  Sal nodded his understanding. The black tentacles were as insubstantial as smoke—hardly a body by any stretch of the imagination. Poking a sword into one would be pointless, and would probably get the wielder killed. The same applied to any other form of attack Sal could think of. The only other thing he knew about Yod was that its ghostly flesh could neither pass through stone nor fly through the air. Water didn't impede it at all.

  He had one more question to ask the glast before giving in to exhaustion. ‘How long can you stay in Kemp's body? How long until you have to kill again?’

  DO NOT FEAR FOR YOURSELF OR YOUR FRIENDS, it spelled out via the tiles. I VISIT EACH SPECIES ONLY ONCE. I COLLECT EXPERIENCE THE SAME WAY SHILLY USED TO COLLECT MOTH PUPAE WHEN SHE WAS A CHILD.

  Sal frowned. ‘How could you possibly know about that?’

  KEMP KNEW.

  Sal suppressed a shudder. ‘Uh, okay. Thanks, I think.’

  He went to move off, but the rapid shifting of tiles on the stone ground pulled him back.

  I WILL HELP YOU, the glast said, IF YOU ASK.

  The creature's strange gaze caught his again, and he had to physically turn his head away.

  ‘Keep the tiles,’ he said. ‘Marmion will want to talk to you, I'm sure.’

  In his peripheral vision he saw the glast shake its head. With a rattle of bone against glass, it gathered up the tiles and proffered them to him.

  Sal took them and hurried away to slip them back into Vehofnehu's pack. If the glast didn't want them, that conveyed a message as clearly as words.

  Halfway back to Shilly he remembered that he had wanted to know about Mawson's head. Later, he promised himself. He needed sleep more than answers at that moment. His brain had enough to work on already.

  As he slipped into the sleeping-bag, Shilly half-awoke and rolled against him, bringing her warmth with her. He slipped his arms around her and lay close.

  ‘What have you been talking about?’ she asked with her eyes still shut.

  ‘Your old pupae collection,’ he said.

  ‘What? I threw that out years ago.’

  ‘I know. Go back to sleep. Everything's okay.’

  Shilly shifted into a comfortable position and they said nothing more.

  The Holy Immortals and the Ice Eaters were arguing with each other about who opened the Tomb. So Shilly dreamed, watching the confrontation as a disembodied observer. The Ice Eaters thought the Holy Immortals had closed the Tomb, not opened it, while the Holy Immortals argued the exact opposite. Shilly could see no logical flaw in either argument, no matter how she tri
ed to find one. They couldn't both be right, she told herself. Could they?

  Then she was back on the prow of the boneship with Marmion, watching the glowing green waterfall come into view. Its roar was absent—for some reason, dozens of high-pitched bells were ringing instead—but otherwise the scene was exactly as she remembered it. Below, trapped by boulders under the crystal-clear water, struggled the man'kin that had been swept down the Divide by the flood. An anomalous shape caught her eye by the waterfall, just as it had the first time she had seen it. A glowing green figure was standing on the rocks, waving at her. Waving in greeting she had thought. Now she knew better. The figure was a Holy Immortal travelling backwards in time; her past was the Holy Immortal's future. She wondered if she actually recognised the figure on the rocks, with the benefit of hindsight. Could it be Treya, waving farewell?

  The guilt will haunt you forever, the empyricist had told Treya when the Ice Eaters’ leader had threatened to kill Shilly and the others. You will never escape it. That hadn't stopped Treya then. A few days and a deeper understanding of her fate could make a huge difference.

  Shilly remembered the woman tearing out her hair, backwards in time, near the top of the mountains. She heard the Holy Immortals singing their sorrowful song as they approached the crater with her and the man'kin—another farewell, she realised now. She saw the shock on the faces of Elomia and Tarnava, royal caretakers of the Holy Immortals, upon discovering that their charges had suddenly departed; an arrival, this time, from the point of view of the Ice Eaters, banished forever into their own past. Vehofnehu had brought them to the Panic city in the knowledge that they would be safe there, that he himself, in founding the city, had created a space in which they could live and perhaps be useful by auguring events in the near future, their past. Perhaps they had told him to do that, in his past, when from his point of view they had met for the first time. Or perhaps it had just happened to work out that way in this world-line, entwined as it was with the lives of the Ice Eaters and the Holy Immortals as their destinies came steadily into collision.

  She woke tangled in Sal's legs and with a numbness up her right thigh. Shifting position to restore circulation brought a wave of pins and needles that had her twitching and disturbing his sleep. She slid carefully out of the sleeping-bag and hopped shivering on one leg, noting while she did who was awake and who asleep during this rare moment of rest.

  Most were asleep, including the Goddess, who had found an empty bedroll and lay on her side with her mouth open. The twins sat in a tense, uncomfortable pose with four legs and four arms in wildly different positions, as though on the brink of explosion. Griel paced in front of the exit to the cavern, keeping watch with Lidia Delfine to make sure nothing sneaked into the chamber. One of the younger Ice Eaters was going through the supplies gathered by Kelloman and the others earlier that morning, his posture and expression dispirited.

  Shilly felt eyes on her in turn, and found Marmion watching her as she struggled with her leg. She limped over to where he sat on one of the pump's thick pipes.

  ‘How are you faring?’ she asked softly so as not to disturb anyone. ‘You've hardly said a word since our new friend arrived.’

  ‘There's a reason for that,’ he replied, just as softly. ‘There's not much I can say until she tells us her plan. If I react now, before she gives me anything, I look like a fool. Not that I can't be one, sometimes,’ he said, raising his truncated arm to cut off her jibe before it could leave her lips, ‘but getting some rest first was a good idea. I'm prepared to listen now to find out what comes next.’

  She nodded and sat next to him, taking the weight off her lame leg. The pins and needles had faded to a dull throb.

  ‘Still,’ she said, ‘I'm impressed. She had to practically knock me out to get me in line.’ She rubbed the back of her head where a tender bump had formed. ‘Punched by a Goddess. Not many people can claim that.’

  He smiled and Shilly thought that for every new wrinkle his smile created, at least five stress-related lines vanished.

  ‘You should do that more often,’ she told him.

  ‘When this is over, perhaps I will,’ he said. The smile slipped away. ‘I've called the Alcaide and asked for help. To be frank, I don't think he believed half of what I told him.’

  ‘It does sound a little unlikely.’ Glasts, goddesses, and golems were just the tip of a preposterous iceberg. ‘What help were you looking for?’

  ‘I'm not sure exactly. Advice, at the very least. He said he would consult with the Conclave and get back to me. Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen quickly enough.’

  ‘Somehow, I think you're right. And that's not the worst of it.’ Shilly decided then, on instinct, to share with him the broad details of her conversation with Sal. ‘We're caught between two competing factions. The seers want to separate the realms and destroy the Flame so that there's no chance of creating a new world-tree infected with Yod. Pukje's side wants the realms reunited so the old gods can come back and help us kick Yod's arse. I'm not sure I like either option, but I've yet to think of a third one. Until we do, we're going to stay stuck.’

  ‘But we have to decide soon.’ Marmion nodded. ‘And I don't feel particularly qualified to make that decision.’

  ‘Would you defer to her,’ Shilly asked, nodding at the recumbent Goddess, ‘if you had to?’

  ‘If I had to, of course.’ He sighed. ‘Just like you did with Vehofnehu. I honestly don't blame you for running off with him. I don't even blame him for stranding us up here. Sometimes it's best not to wonder what will happen after.’ There was a wealth of expression in his simple shrug.

  She nodded, thinking of her future self and what might have been had Sal died in the tunnel. She had been rescued from that fate by the glast but exposed to all manner of uncertainties now. What did it mean that the future-Shilly hadn't known what the glast was? Where would that particular detail lead her?

  Such thoughts reminded her of her dream of the Holy Immortals. It had been a relief to ponder something else, for a change, during her sleep. A different situation, but a similar kind of grief…

  ‘I have a horrible feeling,’ she said, ‘that, whatever happens, not all of us will be going home.’

  He surprised her by reaching out and taking her right hand. ‘Whatever happens, as you put it, you have my word that your sentence will be lifted. You and Sal will be free to live as you please, anywhere in the Strand. I don't care what it takes or whose arm I have to twist. I don't care if I have to come back from the dead and haunt someone until they make the right decision. You've earned that right, and I will ensure it happens.’

  Shilly surprised herself in turn. ‘Well, you'll always be welcome in Fundelry, should you ever want to visit. Sal and I will show you the sights, what few there are. We can talk about old times.’ She blinked back an unexpected sorrow. ‘I can't promise to bake a cake, but—’

  She stopped suddenly, realising exactly how Marmion was holding her hand. She could feel his fingers around hers, warm and comforting and definitely ten in number. Yet there were only five visible. His left arm ended in a puckered stump that had yet to completely heal.

  ‘It's still there?’ she asked in a whisper, fighting the urge to pull away in revulsion.

  He nodded. ‘It's going to make a wonderful party trick when I get home.’

  The thought of Marmion going to a party was as shocking as the revelation that he still had a piece of the Swarm inside him. ‘Why have you kept it a secret?’

  ‘Only you and Kail know. I don't want to frighten or worry people. But I've been thinking about what the Goddess said. If we're all here for a reason, then maybe everything's happened for a reason.’

  ‘Like losing your hand?’

  ‘And gaining a new one.’

  ‘Is that a comfort?’

  ‘Which? The new hand or the knowledge that it might be needed?’

  Her head was beginning to hurt. ‘I don't know. Both.’

  �
�Yes,’ he said, ‘to both.’

  ‘Well, that's something.’ She pulled her hand away, not able to maintain that eerie contact any longer. The ghost hand he had stolen from the Swarm felt as solid as a real one. It was even warm to the touch. ‘Can you—’ She faltered, then ploughed on. ‘Can you reach through walls or into closed boxes with it?’

  ‘No. Although I've tried, when no one was looking. It works the same way as an ordinary hand.’

  ‘It's hard to see how it could be useful then.’

  ‘It's already come in handy once,’ he said. ‘It stopped a lightning bolt from killing me. And I'll never have to worry about frostbite—or burns for that matter.’

  ‘The indestructible hand.’ She found a glimmer of humour in the situation, then. ‘You sound like one of those old legends. You know: Spider-Man, the Silver Surfer and all that. Perhaps you should get a fancy outfit too.’

  He smiled. ‘Perhaps I will.’

  A rattle of stone distracted both of them. Shilly turned in time to see a shower of dust fall in a curtain from a point high above. Marmion was on his feet in an instant, snapping his fingers to bring the crystals to full brightness. In the suddenly blinding light, Shilly saw a strange, bone-white shape scuttle into a hole in the ceiling.

  ‘Ware!’ the warden cried to the sleepers and those on guard. To the shape in the ceiling he called, ‘Who goes there?’

  There came no response, and Shilly saw no repeat of the movement. Neither she nor Marmion raised the possibility that they might have imagined it.

  Concerned people began to gather around them, in various stages of alertness.

  ‘What's going on?’ asked Lidia Delfine. ‘Have we been found?’

  ‘Safest to assume so,’ said Marmion. ‘Either way, we're moving. Pack enough food for one day. Leave the bedrolls. Rosevear, bring everything you have. Spread the load. Assign stretcher bearers for Tom. We're not leaving him behind. Quickly, everyone! Move!’

  The gathering dispersed and went hurriedly about their tasks, moving as rapidly as fatigue and surprise allowed. A call too high-pitched for a human throat echoed through the cavern, setting the hair on Shilly's neck upright, and encouraging people to move faster. She eyed each indentation in the ceiling with nervous attention, ready for anything at all to burst into view.