The Devoured Earth

by Sean Williams

  Sal had their packs half-full by the time she hobbled over. She stuffed her notes and sketches into hers even though the paper was heavy and she would be hard-pressed to keep up as it was. It had to be useful for something.

  Another cry went up, then a third from the far side of the cavern. All eyes turned to the ceiling in wary expectation. Something moved in the corner of her eye, but it was only the twins, clinging to the cavern's rough walls with all their extra limbs and artificial strength. The overlapping heads turned, seeking the source of the sound. As they moved crablike from handhold to handhold, she held her breath, almost afraid to know what they might find.

  A white shape dropped out of a crack near the wounded, unfolding as it fell. Shilly had a fleeting glimpse of something very much like a human skeleton with black eyes and grinning teeth and limbs like sticks before it vanished behind Lidia Delfine and Heuve. Their swords flashed in the crystal-light. The alien cry sounded again, in defiance and pain. Three more shapes followed in three different places, and Shilly raised her stick in readiness to fight.

  ‘Bravery is not the opposite of cowardice.

  Bravery cannot exist without cowardice.

  A warrior who fights with certainty on her side

  has already fallen.’

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 4:13

  Hadrian could sense the wrongness in the air. He could feel it in the skin of the Homunculus; he could practically taste it in his mouth. As he and Seth climbed the wall and then the ceiling of the cavern, seeking the source of the wrongness, he thought about nothing else. Don't worry about what comes next, he told himself. That's a responsibility you don't want. Concentrate on what's happening right now instead.

  Even so, part of him was still sitting on the floor of the cavern, listening as Ellis counted off the points of her plan, one by terrible one.

  ‘First, we go back down the tunnel to the Tomb. All of us. No one gets out alive this time if things don't go right.’

  Something as pale as a maggot and as gangly as a Halloween skeleton dropped out of a hole in the ceiling, too far from the twins for them to intercept. Hadrian tensed to jump, even though the foresters were already dealing with the attacker, when three more dropped from elsewhere in the ceiling. One landed almost directly under them.

  ‘Devels!’ Pukje cried.

  With a cry of anger, the twins kicked off the ceiling and dropped onto the creature below them. It had snatched at Warden Banner with long white claws and was preparing to bite her throat. Four fists converged on a point inside the devel's skull. With a horrible cracking sound, its head burst open, spraying them and Banner with pink and black flesh.

  ‘Second, I set the Flame burning again. I know that's dangerous, because if it gets into Yod's hands that's the end of everything, but if I don't do it then you'll have to die. Both of you. And I don't want that any more than you do.’

  Hadrian swallowed nausea as he and his brother let the twitching body drop to the ground. He could hear Ellis shouting over the racket and they forced their way to her side. Flashes of the Change thrilled through them, making their artificial body tingle. Fleeting forms flashed in and out of existence, moulded by Change-users from air, light, mist, anything available, cutting, slicing or clubbing the devels as they moved in.

  More of the white shapes dropped from the ceiling, targeting the weak and the defenceless. The strong fought back, filling the air with cries of triumph and pain. The Angel stamped at the devels that tried to mount it. Pink blood mingled with red. A devel jumped on the twins from behind. They brought their gore-slicked hands around and threw it into the cave wall.

  It occurred to Hadrian that for the first time everyone was fighting on the same side. There was no squabbling or bickering about who had the right to lead or whose needs took precedence. Warden, Mage, forester, Panic, Ice Eater and man'kin all worked together to repel the devels.

  The only ones standing apart were the glast, riding high on the Angel's sturdy back, and Pukje, who had taken a perch on the glast's broad right shoulder. Both watched the scene from their elevated, dispassionate perspectives and kept their own counsel.

  ‘Third, Highson Sparre frees you from the Homunculus. He created the damned thing; he can do that if anyone can.’

  Devel after devel fell in brutal defeat. Barely had Hadrian begun to wonder at the point of it all when a new cry went up.

  ‘THE DOOR!’ Kelloman's voice came clearly over the sounds of battle, amplified by the stone walls of the cavern. ‘THE DOOR IS OPENING!’

  Hadrian and Seth craned their heads to see. Sure enough, the stones were shifting where Kelloman and Marmion had so carefully laid them back into place. A baleful orange light filtered through the cracks.

  ‘Gabra'il!’ Seth hissed.

  ‘None other,’ said Ellis, sidling closer to them and clubbing at a devel with the blunt end of a hook Griel had tossed her. ‘Watch Sal. This is his moment.’

  Hadrian reached out with both hands and stopped the devel's heart. Then he did as Ellis had suggested and found the young wild talent walking forward through the crowd, hands held wide above his head.

  ‘Fourth, we lure Yod into a trap. That means stepping outside the glast's protection, and that will be very dangerous. Mage Kelloman will be crucial here, since he's least vulnerable.’

  With a deafening crash, the wall burst asunder. The fiery orange giant that had been Yod's chief minister in the Second Realm stepped easily over the rubble. His armour glowed like molten metal poured over coals, fading to black at the joints and throat. The edge of his tapering crystal sword sparkled fitfully along its length, as though slicing atoms apart as it moved through the air. He towered over Sal, who had stopped directly in front of the giant. Gabra'il's head almost brushed the ceiling as he looked down at the young man in front of him. The sword, hissing, swept back and then forward with awful, unstoppable momentum to slice Sal in two.

  ‘No,’ said Sal.

  The sword stopped.

  ‘Fifth, we spring the trap. Marmion and the others should have the strength to pull this off. If they don't, well, we're all screwed.’

  The sword stopped, and shattered into hundreds of dagger-sharp fragments. Gabra'il staggered, taken off-balance by the blocking of the blow. His face was barely visible behind his orange helm, but Hadrian could feel the shock radiating from him. It might have been a very long time since someone had successfully stood up to him.

  Sal looked a little surprised too, but not for long. As Gabra'il straightened and hooked his giant fingers into claws—each one as long as a sword—and lunged at his much tinier opponent. Sal ducked and pressed his hand against the ground. The Change-flows Hadrian had detected before were nothing to those that swept through the room then. He felt as though a psychic plug had been pulled, exposing a very deep well leading into the earth. Strange energies tugged at him, at every living thing in the cavern, and made the air vibrate.

  Gabra'il went to snatch at Sal again, but missed and flailed uselessly in midair. Not because Sal had moved, but because the ground had shifted beneath him. The stone turned to dust that parted with a slithery hissing noise, sucking him down to his knees. The giant roared in anger, but there was nothing it could do against gravity and the suddenly infirm floor.

  ‘Six, we kill Yod.’

  Sal ignored the swinging hands of his opponent. Gabra'il's golden glow flared brighter and brighter as he sank up to his waist and kept sinking. Only when the stone came up to his chest did it start to fade, first crimson, then a muddy ochre, then, gradually, to an angry hot black. As though the cold earth was sucking all the hateful life out of him, he was almost completely dark by the time his head slipped below the surface.

  ‘Master!’ he cried.

  One massive hand clutched uselessly at the air when the rest of him had gone, then even that vanished. The Change thrilled again, and the stone became solid. Sal raised his head.

  ‘Seven, Shilly uses her charm and Sal's wild talent to freeze t
he realms into the shape of their choosing.’

  ‘Why didn't that drain him?’ whispered Seth to Ellis. ‘Shouldn't he have been sucked into the Void Beneath for pushing too hard?’

  ‘Not now,’ said Ellis. ‘We're too close to a potential Cataclysm. That's where he draws the power from, you see, like an earthquake gaining strength the more two continental plates push against each other. The closer he gets, the more powerful he's becoming. He'll stay that way while the geometry of the world is unsettled.’

  It's all about geometry, Pukje had told Hadrian an age ago. And it still was, it seemed. Not just the shape of things in the world, but the shape of the world itself.

  ‘The world doesn't have continental sheets any more,’ said Seth.

  ‘No, but they still have earthquakes. And you're looking at one in the making.’

  ‘Eight, I save your life the only way I know how.’

  Shilly limped to Sal and put a concerned arm around him, but he stood without her help. He looked like someone walking away from an aeroplane crash, unable to quite believe what had just happened. He crossed to the point where Gabra'il's hand had last been visible and touched the stone.

  ‘It's hot,’ he said with wonder in his voice.

  That broke the stunned silence which had formed around him. The devels had pulled back in shock, temporarily, and they moved in again hoping to take the humans and their allies by surprise. The fight had gone out of them, however, and their remaining number were soon killed or driven away. Within minutes of Gabra'il's fall, the cavern was silent apart from the sheathing of weapons and the soothing of the injured. Few were unscathed, but only one, a skinny Ice Eater who had leapt into the fray too readily, had died.

  Marmion had a similar expression to Sal's on his face as he moved from person to person, checking their wellbeing. The victory took a while to truly sink in, and Hadrian could see the new energy it brought to those who had previously been half awake. They had prevailed where they should have failed. Their spirits lifted.

  ‘Nine, we leave the world to manage itself—until the next Cataclysm or until the next invader comes along.’

  ‘Chalk one up for the good guys,’ said Seth, responding to the charged atmosphere. ‘We should keep moving while we have the advantage.’

  ‘We will,’ said Ellis. ‘We have to before Yod finds out what has happened and the next wave of creatures comes along. The list of things to do isn't getting any shorter.’

  ‘Is there a number ten on your list?’ asked Hadrian as the survivors gathered around Marmion to plan their next move.

  ‘Of course.’ Ellis smiled without humour. ‘We die. We all do, eventually.’

  Without waiting for a response, she forced her way to the centre of the crowd and raised her hands for silence.

  ‘Okay, it's time. Listen closely because I only want to explain this once. There are now devels all through these mountains, and some of them are a lot worse than Culsu's bad boys here.’ She gestured at the stinking corpses. ‘I'm afraid we don't have time for an argument. You're either with me or you're staying behind. Is that understood?’

  ‘I understand,’ said Marmion, ‘that uncertainty is a luxury we can't afford at the moment. But I won't make a choice until I've heard everything you have to say. You can't expect us to follow you blindly—especially if you are who you say you are.’

  The Ice Eaters looked shocked, but Ellis just smiled.

  ‘Ah, yes: my message about not following gods without question,’ she said. ‘Well, you're spot on there, and it's my own fault if I've backed myself into a corner. But I think we can come to an agreement. The pieces of the plan are all around you. If you'd had the perspective I had in the Tomb, you would've seen it too.

  ‘First,’ she said, explaining to the others what the twins already knew, ‘we return to what's left of the Tomb, all the way back down there.’ One short-nailed finger stabbed at the gaping doorway. ‘No exceptions. We've had two strikes already. One more and no one's ever going home again…’

  Skender waited until the last of the bug-eyed creatures scuttled past before coming out of his hiding place. The tunnels were swarming with devels of all shapes and sizes, some passably human but others so improbable they barely looked alive. A couple of mixed-species gangs had spotted him but had kept moving rather than take him on. They were massing together, it seemed, not far from his own destination, for their numbers grew the closer he came to the Ice Eaters’ secret cavern. He was becoming increasingly nervous about what lay ahead. Only his determination to avenge Chu's death kept him going.

  Barely had he taken a single step from his nook when a shockwave thrilled through the Change, sending a chorus of angry chitters, howls and whispers echoing along the rough stone passageways. He didn't know what had happened to stir the devels up, but he determined to take advantage of it. Putting his head down, he hurried as fast as he could to the next junction and followed his memory of the route he and Chu had taken in reverse.

  He made it a surprising distance before encountering resistance. A clot of snake-tentacled, upright bugs blocked the way ahead when he was just three junctions from the cavern. He cursed and hastily backtracked. He didn't know how they saw him—since, as far as he could tell, they didn't have any eyes—but they emitted a series of squeals so high-pitched he could barely hear them and followed him with tentacles waving.

  The clicking of their chitinous feet pursued him as he ran back the way he had come, wishing he had Sal's wild talent or Kelloman's skills with the Change. What small potential he had would be of no use against even one of the devels chasing him, and he wasn't going to waste that until he thought of a particularly clever way to use it—or until he had absolutely no choice.

  He took a different turn to the one he had followed earlier, hoping it might reveal another way to the cavern, but instead found himself running towards another clutch of devels. With scissor-hands ahead of him and cockroach-tentacles behind, he skidded to a halt and told himself to think fast.

  A hand reached out of the wall behind him and pulled him into a crack he hadn't seen.

  ‘Quickly,’ said Orma. ‘Come with me. They haven't found this passage yet.’

  Skender followed the young Ice Eater along a circuitous—and sometimes uncomfortably tight—route through the naked stone. The way hadn't been fashioned by hand; it was a natural feature linking narrow cracks and chimneys that doglegged so often Skender's sense of direction was soon completely scrambled. He didn't waste time or stale air asking questions, though. He just thanked the Goddess for good luck and Orma's excellent timing.

  ‘I was dead back there,’ he told his guide when they stopped to catch their breath in a relatively large chamber. There was just enough room to sit face to face. ‘Thank you for saving me.’

  Orma shifted uncomfortably. ‘I thought about leaving you. If those things had followed us, we'd both be dead.’

  ‘You did the right thing, and I hate to ask you for anything else, but I need you to take me to the others. Are they in the cavern? I can't get a fix on them in here. There's too much weird interference on top of all the stone.’

  Again, the Ice Eater looked uncomfortable.

  ‘What's wrong?’ asked Skender, feeling suddenly colder than ice. ‘They're still alive, aren't they?’

  Orma nodded. ‘Yes, but—I ran. That's what I'm doing out here. I ran like a coward and hid while the others fought. I'm afraid of the Death.’

  Skender put a hand on Orma's shoulder. ‘You should be afraid. There's nothing wrong with that. And you wouldn't be the first person to run from something scary. I've done it myself.’ Images of the Swarm in the trees of Milang came unbidden. He pushed them down with an effort. ‘But I'm not going to be a coward this time and I need you to help me. You don't have to fight. You can just take me where I need to go, and then you'll be free to run. I promise you. Will you do that for me?’

  Orma hung his head. ‘All right. I know how to get there. The way should still be cle
ar.’

  They crawled through cracks that looked too small for a rat, let alone two teenagers. The background levels of the Change continued to fluctuate as though the very essence of the world was uneasy. Skender had never felt anything like it before, and he tried not to think too much about it now. It was tricky enough finding toe- and finger-holds with digits that had lost all feeling. Were he to get stuck in the ground just as he had under Milang that would do no one any good.

  Images of Chu's face from their first encounter, four long weeks ago, goaded him on when all other motivations ebbed.

  Then he was suddenly, miraculously, sliding into a much wider space and could hear voices in the near distance. Orma had brought them to a chamber below the main level of the cavern. As Skender and his guide clambered up the last few natural steps, he listened to what the others were saying.

  ‘—works like this.’ A woman's voice, one he didn't recognise, speaking in firm, certain tones. ‘We're near a critical juncture in this world-line. All possibilities exist side by side, as the man'kin will attest, so neighbours can influence each other. In one world-line, the realms are severed and the Change disappears; in another, where the realms are joined, everyone has the Change. Sal is drawing on this latter version of the future. That's why he's a wild talent in the first place. If this critical juncture couldn't possibly exist anywhere, he would be the same as anyone else.’

  ‘But why me?’ came Sal's voice. ‘What did I do to deserve this?’

  ‘Why is a crooked letter, Sal. Your parents were gifted in particular ways, and that was important. But there were other wild talents born at the same time. It could be one of them standing here, instead of you, if they hadn't burned out or died before their time. And perhaps there could be someone else in Shilly's place, too. It's entirely likely that in a world-line one or two over, I'm standing with a completely different group of people, pleading exactly the same case.’