The Devoured Earth

by Sean Williams

  ‘It can't be that easy,’ Skender said, even while he considered just how hard it had been: people dead and wounded; whole communities wiped out; futures uncertain for those left behind. If it had been much harder, they might not have made it at all.

  But it still felt wrong, that Yod should fall before so simple a thing as a wave…

  A splintering sound came from the floating corpse, carrying clearly across the quietening water. One of the upright portions of shell tilted over onto its side, then another, accompanied by a second brittle crack. The body might be disintegrating, Skender told himself, even as his heart quickened and his gut told him that it wasn't over yet, not by a long reach.

  More upraised sections fell, raising a mist of blood and water. The body appeared to be shrinking, sloughing off antennae and stilt-legs as an old man shed hair. A conical mound formed in the centre, coated with overlapping sections of the broken shell. Skender had seen pictures of ancient plate armour and was reminded immediately of them. The carapace would be more flexible this way, and stronger. If struck by another wave, it would flex and ride out the impact rather than break, just like the wall around Laure.

  Sal clutched him more tightly, and Skender understood the sentiment.

  Yod was evolving again.

  ‘Can you repeat that trick?’ Sal asked him. ‘Before it finishes?’

  Skender glanced at Banner, who looked terrified. She shook her head.

  ‘Not to the same effect,’ she said. ‘That was a fortuitous arrangement. If we could lure it to another section of the shore—’

  ‘Not an option,’ said Sal, watching with eyes narrowed as Yod extended numerous fins made of recycled carapace. At the same time, the devels had begun hooting and pressing forward, emboldened by the survival of their master. And in the sky above, dark shapes were massing.

  ‘We had our break,’ Banner said. ‘I suppose we should be grateful for that, even if it didn't work.’

  With a roar louder than any avalanche, Yod surged forward on a direct path to where they stood.

  ‘The alien casts a new light on ourselves

  because that light comes from somewhere else.

  It shines into places the old light

  leaves in shadow.

  What we see may cause us discomfort,

  even pain, but it is always better to look

  with eyes open than closed.’

  SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

  Sal left Skender's side and hurried downslope to where Marmion stood. Yod's speed was formidable. It would reach the shore in a matter of minutes. That left them very little time to put Sal's back-up plan into action.

  ‘I've seen those things before,’ his father said, pointing up at the darting shapes above as Sal went by. ‘The twins knew how to kill them, but I don't.’

  ‘Do what you can to keep them at bay.’ Sal had no more advice than that. ‘I just need a moment.’

  He skidded to a halt next to Marmion and took the warden's arm for more than just balance. Storm clouds still hung low in the sky above. It was a relatively simple matter to revive their inherent wildness and call down more lightning: all Sal had to do was keep them inflamed and create the potentials required in the right places. Yod's earlier machinations had screwed up the weather sufficiently so that a release of energy such as this was welcomed by the natural order of things. Sal fought as though the world fought with him, and was buoyed by that sensation.

  But he had two fronts to fight on now: Yod, and the flying creatures if they got past the foresters and Griel. Marmion Took from him in order to ease some of the pressure. He had plenty of strength, but only one set of eyes and ears. They worked well together. Lightning bolts struck repeatedly into the lake while flickering sheets of energy danced among the flying things, scattering them.

  Yod convulsed. Vivid scorch-marks and deep craters marked where the lightning struck. Its fins flailed without any sense of rhythm or direction. Thunderclaps drowned out any cries it might be making.

  The flying devels retreated to where Yod floundered offshore. Pursuing them, Sal focussed all his efforts on the giant creature, encouraging the clouds to hold nothing back. Marmion supported him, drawing on all his wild talent to push against the invader and send it, beaten, out into the lake. Strange light gleamed off the bald warden's smooth scalp.

  A new stalk, thicker than the others and curved like a bow, appeared on the top of the blistered carapace. Before Sal could target it, it bent back then flicked forward. A single dark speck catapulted through the air, out of range of the lightning and aimed directly for Sal and Marmion.

  Sal froze, hypnotised by its graceful arc. Marmion broke the spell by pushing Sal bodily away and throwing himself in the opposite direction. The black speck hit the ground with all the force of one of the Ice Eaters’ exploding crystals, throwing shattered stone in all directions. Hot air scalded the battlefield. Sal felt a piercing pain in his right shoulder and another in his hip, and knew that he had been wounded. When he reached behind him to touch his shoulder, his hand came back red.

  But he could still fight. With head ringing and senses dazed, he clambered to his feet. Distantly he could hear Shilly calling his name from the entrance to the Tomb, and he raised a hand to indicate that he was all right. His first priority was to locate Marmion and recommence the attack. The warden, however, was nowhere to be found. For a moment, his worry about that one man consumed all his attention.

  Skender appeared at Sal's side and put an arm around him just as another explosion blew them both off their feet. Someone screamed. Sal couldn't identify who. He lay on his back and distantly noted dark shapes wheeling across the sky. He told himself to move but couldn't, even as one of the specks stopped wheeling and grew larger and larger, with claws extended.

  A green-grey blur swept across his vision from right to left, dragging the clawed shape with it. Pukje, he thought. His gratitude was remote but genuine. Forces outside his body seemed to make his limbs move, urging him upright. He had to fight for everyone's sake, not just Marmion's or his own.

  Yod had changed again. Its skin was dotted with spikes into which residual lightning bolts discharged harmlessly. More of the catapults were extending, ready to hurl explosions into the defenders’ midst. Sal was unsure of many things at that moment, but he knew he couldn't allow that. Forgetting the target he made and temporarily giving up on finding Marmion, he reached deep into himself for a charm, any charm, and sent it out into the world with all his strength behind it.

  The Change was neither good nor bad. That was what Lodo had taught him, years ago. There was no right or wrong when it came to sources or methods of using it, because the Change simply didn't care. It wasn't human, didn't have values, and couldn't care less whether it was used for good or ill. It simply was.

  So one simple charm could kill or cure in equal measure, depending entirely on how it was applied, and with how much force. He had used that principle against the glast-snake on the flooded Divide and the Swarm in the Hanging Mountains. It had never failed him in the past.

  A rime of frost formed over Yod's jagged shell. In the cold air, it was easy to encourage water to change from liquid to ice. Rime became a coating as thick in places as the armour beneath. Yod's lightning rods and catapults froze, immobile. Its fins were caught in mid-transformation while mutating into limbs more suitable for walking on land.

  Sal didn't stop there. He poured still more effort into the charm. The glast-snake had broken free in the Divide because the ice hadn't been thick enough. If he let up too soon, Yod might break out before people had had a chance to recover their strength.

  Indeed, the monster soon demonstrated its capacity to fight back. Its icy restraints cracked open as sharp spikes burst outward from within. Sal drew more and more water under the aegis of the charm, trying to plug holes as quickly as they could form. But Yod was relentless and as desperate as he was. Even as Sal fought the spikes, new organs formed and radiated an unnatural, alien heat that illumin
ated the ice from below with a flickering purple light.

  Sal dropped to his knees, feeling as though he was being pulled inside-out. He had done everything he could and it wasn't going to be enough. Even he had limits. Yod was going to wear him down and then march out of the lake and kill him and everyone he loved, if something or someone didn't come to his aid soon.

  A shadow fell over him. From it, a familiar voice spoke: ‘I don't think even you are strong enough to freeze an entire lake on your own. Let go and allow your betters to take over.’

  His betters? Sal looked up, blinking, into the bluff, burned face of the Alcaide.

  For a heartbeat he was certain that he had snapped his mind. He had to be hallucinating.

  ‘Didn't you hear me, boy? You're wounded, and we're here to finish the job. Let go before you find you never can.’

  Sal sagged back onto his haunches. The Change left him like tension from an overstressed muscle, and he fell over onto one side. When he looked across the shattered field of battle into Marmion's vacant, dead stare, he could neither move nor feel anything but the most distant emotion. His only thought, which cycled around and around his stunned mind, was, Another gone—and how many yet to fall?

  Shilly watched in impotent frustration as the battle raged outside. Skender, Banner and Sal's attempt to smash Yod into pieces with a giant wave hadn't succeeded but their tactic had been as inspired as it was daring. Lightning stabbed down into Yod's cracked shell. She felt awe at every flash. This was war on a scale she had never seen before. This, she thought, was wild talent unleashed.

  The Goddess came to stand next to her. Occasionally, devels or one of Yod's missiles menaced the Tomb, but it was for the most part ignored, thanks to the twins and their protection. The glast stood outside with Mawson's head dangling from one hand. The knowledge that it could repel Yod at a word was no comfort at all. Repelling Yod wasn't the objective. Killing it was.

  They watched in silence for a moment. At Shilly's gasp on seeing Sal shoved to safety by Marmion a bare eye-blink before an explosion rent the stone between them, the Goddess reached out and took her hand.

  ‘I can offer you few reassurances,’ the Goddess said, ‘but I can tell you this: you're seeing something few alive today have witnessed. I'm talking, of course, about the Cataclysm. When the boundaries between realms are in flux, as they are now and were a thousand years ago, talents such as Sal's blossom. And where there is power, there is always conflict.’

  Shilly tore her eyes away from the sight of her lover struggling to his feet, bleeding from shoulder and hip, and stared into the Goddess's cool hazel eyes.

  ‘This kind of power is what the Old Ones want,’ she said. ‘Are you saying I shouldn't give it to them?’

  ‘I'm saying nothing of the sort. Life has survived such conjunctions before, many times. The transition would be difficult for your world, but not insurmountable. You have an appreciation of the Change already, unlike those of Seth and Hadrian's world. That's why it was so chaotic, last time. Now, you would be better prepared. You might be able to weather it.’

  ‘The world would still be very different,’ Shilly said, turning back to the conflict outside. Flying devels stabbed at the foresters and the Panic. Vehofnehu wasn't a career soldier like Griel, but he demonstrated a surprising ability to dodge and stab with the others. Two devels had already fallen under his hand. Another dropped twitching to the stone as she watched. ‘This would be permanent, not temporary.’

  Skender had Sal now, but not for long. Another of Yod's explosive projectiles landed directly in front of them. Shilly cried out in sympathetic pain and pressed her right palm against the crystalline wall of the Tomb.

  ‘Wars will always happen,’ said the Goddess. ‘Only the means of killing change.’

  ‘That's true,’ said one of the twins. Shilly didn't turn her head to find out which one. ‘Our world didn't have anything like this but our wars were the worst ever seen.’

  I don't care about your world, Shilly wanted to tell them. I just care about Sal and my friends.

  ‘Now you know how I felt,’ the Goddess said to her, ‘when I defied my sisters and took a human body. Watching is an empty pastime. To live one must act. And one cannot act without risk. You have seen the consequences of risk, as have I. To live one's life alone, in mourning, is not a pretty fate.’

  Shilly thought of her future self, killed by Yod after a long, fruitless labour conducted under the constant shadow of her loss. If Sal died today, how would she feel about having stood by and letting it happen. But what could she do to stop it that Marmion or Highson could not? She would be devel-fodder out there, and her vulnerability would only distract Sal from the work he had to do.

  She knew that, but she didn't have to like it. Her moment was still to come.

  ‘Behind you,’ said the twins at the same time. ‘Ellis, quickly!’

  Shilly and the Goddess turned to see Chu sitting up with a knife at Tom's throat.

  ‘Open the Tomb,’ Chu said in the ghastly, leaden tones of the golem.

  ‘Why?’ asked the Goddess.

  ‘Don't ask questions. Just do it or I'll spill this one and the one I'm inhabiting. Do you want that on your conscience?’

  Shilly looked at the Goddess. She made no visible move to open the Tomb. She made no move at all, except to fold her hands patiently in front of her.

  ‘I feel sorry for you,’ the Goddess said. ‘Do you think Yod will reward you for giving it the Flame? Do you think you will be spared? I know you came here with the intention of spying on us, lying low in this young woman's body and listening to everything we said. But you couldn't get out, could you? You're trapped here unless I permit your exit. By coming here, you've sealed your own fate.’

  ‘Don't worry about me,’ the golem hissed, pressing the knife close to Tom's skin to draw blood. ‘Worry about him.’

  Shilly raised a hand, once again able only to watch the conflict play out.

  ‘You're frightened,’ the Goddess said. ‘I understand that. You're desperate, too. You can see your death ahead of you, and you take the steps you think necessary to ensure your survival. You're not so different from us, really. That's exactly what we're doing, but we know there's no bargaining with Yod. All deals will be dishonoured. Shilly has seen that, and so have I. You're wrong if you think that this is a way to live.’

  ‘Why should I believe you?’

  ‘Because I'm offering you a deal. Changing sides is not anathema to you; you've done it enough times in recent weeks for me to be sure of that. Join us, or at least stop fighting us, and you will survive. I will free you when Yod is dead. You have my word on that. What's Yod offering you? To take Gabra'il's place? That deal might not look so attractive in a few minutes.’

  ‘What good is your word if you're dead?’

  ‘What good is Yod's if it's defeated? Trust us, Upuaut. I offer you life and freedom in exchange for just one thing.’

  ‘And that is?’ the golem sneered.

  ‘You leave the girl's body and enter one more appropriate. You'll damage her if you remain inside much longer. Take the mage's former vessel instead. That's my condition. Accept it or there's no deal at all, and you'll stay in here forever.’

  The golem glared at her through Chu's almond-shaped, bruise-rimmed eyes. Every line of her face was filled with hatred and despair, but despite itself Shilly could sense the creature's resolve wavering. It would change its mind; she was sure of it, and that would save Tom and Chu's lives. But what would happen afterwards? She knew first-hand how perilous it was making deals with golems.

  Before it could answer, its gaze slid past her and the Goddess to the world itself. It straightened, and the knife came down. Puzzled, she turned to see what was going on.

  A hole had opened in the world next to the new scar in the crater wall. Through that hole Shilly could see tall glass buildings and a sky of blue. Air from a warmer, damper clime issued through the hole and turned instantly to fog. Out of that fog
walked figures robed and armoured in blue with shining torcs around their throats.

  ‘Who—?’ she began.

  ‘The cavalry has arrived,’ said the Goddess matter-of-factly. ‘And not a moment too soon.’

  Chu's body slumped across the unconscious seer. With a clatter of steel on crystal, the knife fell from her grasp and dropped to the floor. Hadrian watched the body that Mage Kelloman had formerly occupied, looking for signs that it had been taken over. He might be unable to play an active role in the events unfolding, but he could at least watch Ellis's back.

  The young girl twitched and sat up. Her stare was dark and malignant, but the golem made no move for the knife or the people lying unconscious nearby. The deal, it seemed, was holding—for the moment. Hadrian could fully understand the power of the threat of imprisonment.

  Hadrian turned his attention outside. Out of the hole in front of the raw stone scar poured a river of fog and, no less impressive, a small army of Sky Wardens. Freshly provisioned and clean-robed, but already partially spent from opening the space-bending Way to the battlefield at the top of the world, the shock of what they saw before them was naked on their dark-skinned faces.

  Yod was coated in white except for where spikes had broken through the icy crust in a bid to free itself. Fully a third of the defenders were on the ground, dead or injured, but twice as many winged black shapes lay crumpled among them. Lightning bolts still stabbed from out of the leaden clouds, but they landed at random, striking the lake's surface or the tops of the crater wall.

  The new arrivals rallied quickly. One in particular stood out—an imposing man in his late sixties, with grey hair and square jaw, and a broad brown scar covering much of his temples and scalp. He pointed and shouted orders, and stooped to help Sal upright with one strong motion.