The Devoured Earth

by Sean Williams

  ‘Except for us,’ said one of the twins. Hadrian, Skender thought. ‘We're always the same.’

  ‘And you,’ said Seth. ‘Ellis, I'm all for the universe-next-door speech if it'll help us kill Yod. But can't we move on and get this done?’

  ‘Sal needs to understand what's going on. Shilly's all too aware, I think. She's here now because of a great deal of effort on the part of many other people—many other versions of her, in fact. She knows she doesn't stand alone.’

  ‘This is what Tom talked about,’ Shilly said, ‘when he said that we'd argue about the end of the world. To break the realms apart or to join them together. That's the question.’

  ‘But how is the glast going to come between us?’ Sal sounded impatient and exasperated. ‘When I talked to it earlier, it didn't say anything about this.’

  ‘Did you ask it?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘It seems simple to me,’ said Skender, clambering out of a hole in the ground near the edge of the cavern. Heads turned to face him, and he wondered what sort of impression he was making, filthy and black-eyed from where Chu had punched him. ‘Unite the realms,’ he said, ‘and let's blast this fucker back where it came from.’

  Shilly was the first to move. She limped towards him, relying heavily on her cane. Her eyes were full of sympathy and relief. ‘Skender, I wondered if I'd ever see you again.’

  He waved her words away and also the hand she put on his shoulder. ‘That's not important. It's what we do next that matters. We've got to make it count. We might not get another shot.’

  ‘That exactly what I've been saying.’ The owner of the unfamiliar voice wasn't a tall woman but she had tremendous presence. Ellis, Skender remembered one of the twins saying. Ellis Quick, he presumed. The Goddess. ‘Nice to meet you, Skender,’ she said with a knowledgeable smile. ‘Now you're here, the fun really starts.’ She turned back to the others. ‘Did you hear what he said? Let's stop arguing and do this.’

  ‘There's another reason to get a wriggle on,’ Skender said as Kelloman shook his hand, looking absurdly pleased. The bilby scampered up his arm and bit his ear. ‘There are devels everywhere out there. It looks like they're gathering for a big push.’

  ‘We've already seen some of that action,’ said Seth, pointing one of the Homunculus's arms at a pile of pale bodies on the far side of the cavern.

  ‘That's just a welcoming committee compared to what's coming.’ Skender performed a quick double-take as a long, lined face appeared in the Homunculus's usually black features, then retreated. He forced himself to ignore it. A babble of voices had risen up around him, and he had trouble keeping track. He looked around for Orma, but the Ice Eater had gone to stand with the other indigenous survivors. He looked pale and afraid. Skender hoped he hadn't condemned Orma to a horrible death by bringing him back.

  Don't be stupid, he told himself. He'll die anyway if Yod gets past us. Better with hope now than without hope later.

  He wondered if that was how Chu had died, with that thought in mind.

  Sal came up next to him. ‘There's something you need to know.’

  ‘I don't care about the details of the plan,’ Skender said. ‘If you really can make us all wild talents, I'm all for it. You should be too. Don't you want Shilly to have what you have?’

  ‘That wasn't—’ Sal interrupted himself, and looked down at the ground. Shilly watched both of them closely. ‘It's not that simple. The Old Ones are part of the package. We can't have one without the other.’

  ‘Are you saying you'd give up your talent just because you're afraid of the old gods?’ Skender felt a wild urgency rising up in him, driven by his need to take vengeance on Yod. Throwing away the only weapon that he could see before them just didn't make any sense. ‘You'd be crazy to consider that.’

  Sal put a hand on his arm. ‘Actually, I want to talk to you about Chu.’

  Skender felt his face freeze. ‘I don't want to talk about Chu.’

  ‘You need to know what happened to her.’

  ‘She didn't come back. I heard the crystals blow, but she didn't reappear. I can work it out.’

  ‘Again, it's not that simple.’

  The effort of keeping his face neutral was costing Skender more than he expected. He couldn't tell what would happen if he let his muscles relax. He might burst into tears or scream, or both. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Sal guided him away from the rest and, in a voice as leaden as a funeral slab, told him the truth.

  Kail watched Skender's expression turn from disbelief to shock and then to horror in quick succession. He didn't need to hear Sal's words to know that he was telling the young mage about the golem. Although he hadn't been there when Upuaut had stepped forward in Chu's body, he had heard about it in chilling detail. The question was open as to how the creature had got into someone not known for any ability with the Change. Perhaps she had had some latent talent passed down from her forester ancestors; perhaps the golem was simply taking advantage of the rules flexing so close to a potential Cataclysm. What mattered most was the one thing anyone knew for certain about golems.

  The only way to kill them was to kill the body they inhabited.

  Kail couldn't watch Skender's developing dismay. It was clear he had thought that his lover had died in her flight out to the tower. It was also clear how he had ended up being left behind. His right eye was almost completely shut, thanks to a purple bruise spreading down from his temple. Chu's betrayal and sacrifice had had meaning while she had actually been dead. Now she was host to a creature whose last plaything had been a sadist Kail would only reluctantly call human.

  ‘This is pointless,’ he muttered.

  ‘What is?’ asked Marmion.

  Kail glanced up. ‘This,’ he said, indicating the milling group. The discussion had been thrown into disarray by Skender's arrival. Not even the news that the devels were gathering had galvanised them into action. ‘We should be fighting, not standing around talking.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I agree completely.’ The bald warden whistled piercingly. ‘That's it! We haven't been attacked again while we've stayed here. I take that to mean Yod wants us to go down the tunnel, towards it. Let's find out why. If anyone strongly disagrees, this is your last chance to say.’

  Kail watched Highson closely. Sal's father looked sceptical when told of his part in the plan.

  ‘It's not my decision,’ Highson said with a shrug. ‘If Seth and Hadrian agree, I'll go along with it.’

  Attention shifted to the twins.

  ‘Why would we say no?’ said Hadrian, his face floating to the surface of the Homunculus's body like a corpse rising from a riverbed. ‘If we don't do this, then we've lived all this time for nothing.’

  ‘Yes, and what would be the point without at least trying to get revenge?’ Seth's face joined his brother's, identical in every respect except reflected as though in a mirror. ‘I'm tired of waiting. Let's get it over with.’

  ‘That's my boys.’ The Goddess smiled in satisfaction. ‘And so we shall. Warden, it's your show from here. Tell us what to do.’

  Marmion received her offer of authority with surprise. ‘I thought you—’

  ‘What? Wanted to order everyone around and make an arse of myself? Not likely.’

  Marmion's lips pursed—hiding a smile, Kail suspected. Gathering his dignity, he said, ‘We're packed and ready. I see no reason to delay.’

  Marmion waved the glast forward. The Angel obliged, thudding over Gabra'il's resting place without breaking its step. Pukje rode behind the glast, his narrow face unreadable. Marmion went next, walking alongside the Goddess, his jaw tightly set. The rest of the party followed in bunches: Banner, Vehofnehu and Kelloman; Sal, Shilly and Highson; the twins and Rosevear, each holding one end of Tom's stretcher; Griel, with Skender and the three Ice Eaters; Kail walked with Lidia Delfine and Heuve at the rear.

  As the tunnel swallowed them, Kail glanced over his shoulder at the cavern they left b
ehind. Devels in their dozens were already issuing from the walls to cut off any chance of retreat—or to drive the Goddess and her allies headlong into the Death. He debated telling the others, but decided they had enough to worry about. Getting out alive would be a bonus, if they got the job done.

  Heuve and Lidia Delfine had noticed. They stayed quiet as well. As they walked, both kept their hands near their weapons.

  ‘Do you regret coming?’ Kail asked them in a soft voice.

  Heuve deferred to his fiancée and mistress. She took her time answering.

  ‘When I was young, I asked my mother what lay outside the forest. Nothing, she said. Nothing but cloud and trees forever. I didn't believe her. There had to be more. Even as a child I knew that the further down the mountain you went, the thinner the cloud became. I'd heard stories of places where the air was totally clear and one could see forever. There were even places, some said, where trees didn't grow at all. I didn't believe those stories, of course; if there weren't trees, how could anything live? The world would be nothing but naked earth and stone, and that would just be silly.’

  She laughed without much humour.

  ‘Your home is beautiful,’ said Kail, ‘but so is mine, and the rest of the world too.’

  ‘Is it?’ she asked. ‘All I've seen outside the forest is stone and ice—and monsters and death and evil on a scale I can barely conceive. Part of me wants to run home and smother myself in the clouds. If I ignore everything outside, it won't notice me. Right? It won't notice my family and friends and all the people of the forest. They can go about their lives pretending everything's just like the stories. It's safe in the forest, where you can't see very far. Sometimes that's not such a bad thing.’

  The crystalline glow from the cavern faded as devels crowded into the tunnel after them.

  ‘I want to tell my mother that she was wrong,’ said Lidia Delfine, ‘and that I was too. The world may be like this everywhere, for all I can tell, but life still exists. There's still beauty, and hope, and love. We take it with us, everywhere we go. The Ice Eaters lived here for a thousand years, and they never lost their humanity. Nor should we, even when all is dark before us and the world seems a cold and barren place.

  ‘So, no,’ she concluded, ‘I don't regret coming. I won't regret losing my life or Heuve's in pursuit of the world's endurance. I will regret only our failure, should it come to that.’

  Kail acknowledged the sentiment with a nod and a smile. He had nothing to add that wouldn't sound trite or pessimistic. He didn't doubt that some of them were going to die in the hours ahead, and no matter what anyone said about world-trees and alternative lives, death was death and there was precious little comfort in knowing that someone had missed out on victory by happenstance or ill design.

  They walked on in silence, keeping a careful watch on the devels matching their pace behind them. The slumped body of an Ice Eater, stiffened but not yet putrefying in the cold air, came and went. Someone had placed a woven grave-shawl around the man's neck and folded his hands peacefully in his lap.

  Kail hoped someone would remain to pay him the same respect, when his turn came.

  Sal held Shilly's free hand as they walked the long slippery tunnel. They conserved their strength rather than talking about the choice awaiting them. So he told himself, anyway. The real reason, he knew, was because they were afraid of the argument they were supposed to have. They had only just found each other again, and the hours they had spent together since had been too few. If these were to be their last moments on Earth, best to savour them, not fill them with any more angst than was absolutely necessary.

  Whispers filled the foul-smelling air with a soft background susurrus, like the wind through trees at night. Highson walked beside them with head angled downward, deep in thought. His question surprised Sal, coming as it did out of nowhere.

  ‘Tell me about your mother. Not everything. Just what you think I need to hear and we'll leave it at that.’

  Sal didn't know what to say. He had no memories of his mother, only the stories his adopted father and Lodo had told him. Those stories had been incomplete, filtered by necessity and rumour. Highson himself had been the source of other details, carrying, as he had, a book and a letter she had left for Sal before her death. To relay that information to her former husband, who had known her better than her own family, struck Sal as bizarre. Perhaps even perverse.

  Shilly came to Sal's rescue. ‘Yours was a political marriage,’ she said. ‘She left the Haunted City with another man before Sal was born.’

  Highson nodded. ‘Is that all? Was I angry with her for leaving me? Is that why I made the Homunculus—to get revenge?’

  ‘No. You were trying to save her. She got herself lost in the Void Beneath.’

  Highson's thick brows knitted together. ‘I don't understand why I would've gone to such lengths for someone I hadn't seen in years and who I only wed out of convenience.’

  ‘You felt guilty for her being lost,’ said Sal, unable to let Shilly assume all of his burden. ‘And, well, you loved her. Perhaps you should know that too, although I can't see how it'll make you feel any better.’

  Highson nodded understanding, then. ‘Yes. It makes sense if I loved her. Otherwise it would've been crazy.’

  ‘It was crazy anyway, Highson,’ said Shilly. ‘Noble but crazy.’

  ‘Don't tell me that you wouldn't do it too,’ Highson said to her, ‘if Sal was trapped in the Void and you needed to get him out.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Sal, ‘I was in the Void for a while. Do you remember that?’

  ‘I do. That's where Skender first met the twins.’

  ‘And he was helped by someone he thought was my mother. That's what first sent you on this journey.’

  Highson shook his head. ‘I don't remember that part. How strange.’

  ‘I would,’ said Shilly suddenly. ‘I would definitely do it for Sal. I'd build a Homunculus to bring him back. I'd cross whole worlds to give him a fighting chance at living again.’ There were tears in her eyes, sparkling in the mirrorlight reflected from ahead. ‘I've seen exactly what I'd do. And it was crazy, too.’

  ‘Is it crazy to love someone?’

  ‘Only if there's no hope,’ she said. ‘Love isn't about what was. It's about what's to come. Without hope, you're just loving a memory, or a ghost. And that's dangerous.’

  Highson glanced behind them at Skender plodding along beside the Ice Eaters. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I can see how it might be that.’

  Skender's resolution to reunite the realms so he could avenge Chu's supposed death hadn't changed now he knew that Chu had in fact been possessed by Upuaut. In fact, it had only made it worse. If Sal gave Skender access to wild talent, there would be no end to the revenge he would pursue.

  Sal remembered all too clearly how it had felt to destroy Gabra'il. The energy available to him had been vast and terrifying. He could sense it within himself now, kept barely in check by his will. That dangerous feeling was one he hadn't known since his days in the Haunted City—as though at any moment he might explode.

  ‘Was she beautiful?’ Highson asked Shilly.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘she was. We have a picture in Fundelry that your mother gave Sal, if you'd like to see it one day.’

  ‘Maybe I will.’

  The silence returned, broken only by wet footfalls and soft voices from further back. As the tunnel levelled out, Sal experienced a terrible feeling of déjà vu. A mere handful of hours had passed since he had come this way in pursuit of Treya and her band of doomed Ice Eaters. This time, however, he was with friends, and they had something approaching a plan.

  That, he told himself, had to make a difference.

  ‘Who has beheld a golem's true face?

  No one, for they have none. If they did,

  what they showed would ever be false,

  though their words would never lie.’

  THE ROSLIN CODEX

  At the end of the tunnel, they foun
d the lower cavern full of half-submerged rubble, with only a rough path left from Gabra'il's passing through. Marmion and Banner took stock of the situation and decided it was negotiable, or would be with some help from the man'kin. Shilly stood well back as the Angel, having deposited its passengers safely to one side, shouldered through the rubble, widening the path and taking the brunt of any unexpected rockfalls.

  Icy water dripped incessantly from the ceiling and licked at Shilly's ankles; were it not for Sal warming her with regular doses of the Change, she was sure her toes would have fallen off long ago. Lidia Delfine had outfitted her with some of Milang's finest thermal gear, but still the ice crept in. It was as relentless as sleep.

  ‘Getting cold feet?’ she asked a nervous-looking Highson.

  He winced at the poor joke. ‘I know I can do it, if that's what you're asking.’

  It hadn't been, but if he wanted to talk about it she would let him. ‘Is it a complex procedure?’

  ‘Not terribly. The trickiest part was making the Homunculus. Once that was done, I had only to put the mind inside it and make sure it stayed there. Mind and matter don't naturally meld when one hasn't grown around the other; you have to force it to happen. Going the other way around, as I will be with the twins, won't be difficult. Break the bonds and they'll be free again.’

  ‘Bodiless,’ said Shilly.

  ‘Yes. But the Goddess said she'll look after that.’

  ‘Once we're at the Tomb.’

  Highson nodded. Shilly wondered what he was thinking. Did he try to imagine what it must be like to be in the twins’ shoes? Murdered and hunted in a world she couldn't comprehend; then trapped in the Void Beneath unnoticed for a thousand years, cheek by jowl with their great enemy; then given the chance to emerge and save humanity from a threat that would never go away—only to be told that, ultimately, their role had already been played out.

  It would be galling, without a doubt.

  Marmion followed the Angel through the hole at a cautious distance, his mirror held high. The glast walked beside him, gleaming smokily in the flickering light. Kelloman went next, his slight host body dwarfed by the weight of stone poised around him. When both men called to say the way was clear, the rest of the group followed. Shilly splashed nervously through the water, dreading what lay ahead. The manner in which Kail and the two foresters kept looking behind them made her nervous too. Thoughts of a trap wouldn't leave her mind for a moment.