The Devoured Earth

by Sean Williams

  The hypnotic suggestion holding Skender in its thrall evaporated in a rush. He blinked, confused. Shilly dropped to the ground, and Sal crouched over her with one hand upraised to ward off the creature expanding at a furious rate above him. Skender could see no sense to the manifold forms it assumed one after another in an insane progression. Parts of it were sinuous, others angular; furred skin replaced feathers, which had previously been scales. All vanished from view as fast as they appeared, reabsorbed and turned into yet another shape and colour. The air was full of a terrible sound, like a thousand butchers working at once.

  Something very much like the crown of a tree appeared, then an immense clawed foot, easily ten metres long. Tentacles waved in another quadrant. The expanding thing already blotted out half the sky, yet floated in the air as weightlessly as a balloon. Skender quailed as its shadow fell over him, fearing what would happen if it became heavy again.

  A long coiled shape with a spiky head caught his eye as it wiggled into being then was gone again. He recognised that instantly: the watersnake that had killed Kemp. From that realisation, the truth emerged and combined with his thought about balloons.

  Skender picked up a knife left lying on the battlefield and ran with its point upraised towards the base of the thing. Sal and Shilly were barely visible beneath the Homunculus's expanding boundary. As Skender grew closer, he saw the constant transformations occurring on small scale as well as large. Every square centimetre of the unnatural skin shifted through all possible textures. A knothole that looked disturbingly like a mouth unfolded into a dense flower of butterfly wings, which in turn became a single crystalline eye, blinking myopically at him. He wondered how far the transformations went, and if by looking closely enough, he would see pores opening and closing like tiny mouths.

  When he was within arm's reach of the ballooning mass, he reached up with his blade and cut into it.

  It didn't explode or suck him into its empty depths. A rustling sound spread out from where his knife had slashed the skin. It sounded to Skender as though a flock of birds was alighting around him, brushing him with their wings. The furious expansion ceased and the rustling sound grew louder. Within a single heartbeat it was deafening. Skender backed away with his hands over his ears, abandoning the knife in the process. The surface of the thing undulated like the sea, rising and falling at the whim of forces he didn't have a hope of understanding. The rip widened, exposing nothing within but darkness. There was no blood.

  It began to shrink. Still the transformations continued, but with less urgency, than before. Common themes came and went: whole patches of striped fur that lasted a full second; a field of regularly spaced teeth; three perfectly formed sets of mandibles that looked big enough to bite Skender's head in two, but which did nothing more threatening than clatter in imperfect synchrony.

  What is it? Sal asked through the Change when Skender bent down to help him and Shilly to their feet.

  The glast! he shouted back. There was no time to explain properly, although Sal should have guessed by now. He had told Skender about his conversation with the glast in the Ice Eaters’ secret chamber. The glast had bitten the Homunculus in order to kill Yod and take over that body, just as the snake-glast had taken over Kemp. But the Homunculus was no ordinary body. It gave the mind within a home representative of that mind's self-image. What image would a glast have of itself, given that it had inhabited thousands of creatures in its long lifespan? And what would happen if it tried to assume all those images at once?

  Skender didn't know what might have happened had that chain reaction been allowed to continue unchecked. Each one had been literally no more than skin-deep, but even so the Homunculus might not have been able to expand quickly enough to keep pace. Perhaps it would have popped of its own accord, or else grown so thin all over that it would have evaporated into nothing.

  The rustling sound began to ebb. The shadow retreated. Skender looked back over his shoulder and found that the glast was already half its former bloated size. He stopped, and so did Sal and Shilly. They stared in awe as the Homunculus shrank down to the height of Yod before the glast had killed it; then it shrank even further.

  A human shape resolved out of the chaos. Skender recognised the features immediately. It was Kemp. Not the glassy white-on-black being that the glast had turned him into, but Kemp exactly as he had been before his death: white-skinned, tattooed, and as naked as the day he had been born. Even before the transformation finished, the imitation Kemp looked around and flexed its hands, arms and shoulders as though testing their strength. Its eyes were the only aspect that looked different: they were as black as the Void Beneath.

  One last wave of non-human textures rippled across the glast's new body, then the process ceased. The calm left in its wake was broken only by the sound of Panic combat blimps coming in to land. The glast knelt down on one knee before Sal, Shilly and Skender and lowered its head.

  ‘Thank you,’ it said in a voice that matched Kemp's perfectly in terms of timbre and pitch but was utterly unlike Kemp's in qualities more difficult to measure.

  ‘What for?’ asked Skender.

  ‘We should be thanking you,’ said Shilly, shakily. ‘You killed Yod.’

  ‘Is it dead?’ asked Sal with a frown. ‘You told me that everything you've ever killed was still inside you. Is that the case now too?’

  The glast stood, unconscious or unashamed of its nakedness. The cold didn't seem to bother it either.

  ‘I thank you because you have released me from my curse. I kill to live, yes, and have grown rich in experience for it. But each body was imperfect in its own way; each was insufficient to my long-term needs. This body, however, can be all the things I have ever known.’ In a series of startling transformations, the glast became a giant eagle, a horse, a monstrous crabbler, and a translucent blob Skender could not identify. Then it was Kemp again, exactly as it had been a moment earlier. ‘I can communicate with you. I can walk among you as one of you. I am truly of the world, now.’ It bent down and picked up the head of the man'kin, Mawson. ‘Can you see my future, man'kin? Do you know my new fate?’

  ‘The future remains clouded,’ replied Mawson with no sign of rancour at the way he was being treated. ‘I am still disconnected.’

  The glast nodded in understanding, not satisfaction, and to Sal it said, ‘Yes. The one you called Yod is inside me now. But you need have no fear of it, or of me. It is dead, and I have no interest in conquest. My appetites are very different.’

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Shilly.

  ‘I fear,’ said the glast, ‘that you would not understand.’

  ‘Try us,’ said Skender as the survivors gathered around them to see what manner of creature the glast had become.

  The alien regarded the crowd with curious eyes. The conflict was over. It had survived. It had, in fact, snatched total victory from its rival, assuming not only effective control over the territory in dispute but also everything its rival had held dear: its memories, its personality, its self. Had the creature the humans and their allies called Yod suspected that its defeat would be so complete? The alien believed so. Yod had been more than just cautious. It had been frightened. The alien saw it in its mind, in the memories it had absorbed from the fallen creature. In all the world-lines Yod had infected, there had been just this one visited by another alien, another creature unique in all the universe, whose power exceeded Yod's.

  And in the end, Yod had had no defences. It had capitulated just as surely as everything else consumed by the alien—which refused to feel shame or regret for its actions. It had, after all, only taken one life. When members of a species numbered thousands or millions, that was no great loss. When a species consisted of just one, extinction was inevitable, but Yod was guilty of genocide on uncounted worlds. Looked at from a particular perspective, its fate might even appear to be just.

  The alien had no desire to mete out justice. Its motivations were purely selfish. Yod had threatened the world
it had found, the world that it would make its home. It didn't want to be protector or ruler or god, but it would take action when its contentment was threatened.

  It reached into the life of the one called Kemp and found words that went some way towards explaining how it felt.

  ‘I want to explore,’ it told the beings waiting patiently for an explanation. ‘To experience. While this body lasts, I can roam as I will, in whatever form I choose, without taking a single life. Until now I have been a parasite, feeding off this world in a way different only in scale to that which Yod planned. Now, I can be a symbiont. We hold the potential for each other's mutual destruction as an unspoken truth, and we will proceed to live unfettered.’

  A light blossomed at the base of the scar in the crater wall. The alien directed its attention to the source of the light, and found the singularity called the Flame exposed for all to see. The arcane walls that had previously protected it melted away now the threat of Yod was eradicated.

  The being the humans called Goddess stood before it, radiant in the glow of the entrance to the Third Realm. A young male human with no hair blinked and sat up beside her, as though waking from a deep sleep. Another human, a female inhabited by a parasite—clearly visible to the alien's senses as a swirling, many-tentacled mass clumping in knots around the young woman's braincase—backed nervously away. One of the three young humans standing before the alien hurried uphill to check the condition of his mate, who remained unconscious on the floor of the Tomb.

  Two ghosts flickered like mirages in the grey daylight, barely visible even to the Homunculus's superior eyesight.

  The alien looked down at Mawson; it had rescued the man'kin's head from the wreck of the balloon in order that it could act as a barometer of the world's connection to the Third Realm. ‘Is your vision clearing now?’ it asked the head. ‘Are you coming unstuck?’

  ‘I perceive…potential,’ was the reply.

  Better than nothing, the alien decided. Turning back to the two remaining humans standing directly before it, the alien told them, ‘You stand at the dawn of a new age in this world's long history. The seed of a revitalised world-tree has been planted. All it requires is the impetus to grow—the permission, if you will, and the direction. In times past, such was granted by those you would have called gods. Here and now, the moment is entirely in your possession. You are your own gods.’

  The faces of the two humans in front of the alien changed in ways expressing dismay and alarm. Behind them, an animated murmuring rose up. Exactly what the newcomers had expected, it certainly wasn't this. The end of the world, perhaps, but not the chance to literally build a new one.

  ‘If you are gods,’ it told the two, ‘the time has come to act as such.’

  ‘A crooked mirror casts a crooked reflection.

  So too in all things. We reflect the architecture

  of the world-tree—and we, in turn,

  are its architects.’

  SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

  Sal resisted the impulse to turn and run. He had known this moment was coming ever since Shilly had started walking down the hill. Tom's awakening only confirmed it. The seers were seeing again. The time that he had been dreading for two weeks had finally arrived.

  Kemp is the only thing who stands between you and Shilly when the end comes, Tom had said when Kemp had been killed by the glast. On that day, the path of their particular world-line had been decided. Whoever wins gets to choose the way the world ends.

  Sal could tell without looking at her that Shilly was worrying about exactly the same thing.

  All around them, wardens and mages were talking excitedly. Relieved by the defeat of Yod, their interest was aroused by so many new apparitions: the Homunculus, the glast, the Goddess, Pukje. They could babble on forever, he knew. An argument had already sprung up between the Alcaide and Skender's father, which Abi Van Haasteren was moving in to resolve.

  He saw Highson standing with Rosevear over one of the bodies at the centre of the former battlefield. The healer wore a haggard, haunted expression that Highson's face echoed perfectly. Sal wondered who they were looking at.

  Feeling Shilly's gaze on him, he turned back to her. Perhaps, he thought, it was time to trust his instincts.

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ he said to her in a voice too soft for anyone to overhear. ‘Do you remember how to open a Way?’

  ‘What?’ She frowned. ‘I don't know. We'd need a familiar destination, somewhere we can picture in our minds.’

  ‘I know. Like last time.’

  He saw understanding dawn on her face.

  It seemed an eon ago, their flight from the Haunted City with a dying Lodo in their arms, but the memory was burned into his mind. He would never forget that bittersweet farewell, the realisation that he was both gaining and losing something incredibly precious.

  Freedom was a tricky thing. He knew that now. It carried a heavy price and could be lost in a moment, like love and respect, and safety, and happiness. He had been happy in Fundelry, and safe, but to be in such a situation had meant turning his back on Skender and his real father, on the ability to roam and on the chance of a proper education.

  And it had, ultimately, led to this moment, where he stood on the shore of an ice-rimed lake preparing to make the greatest decision of his life. And all he could hear was the arguing of the very people he had been hiding from for five years.

  ‘Let's go,’ he said, and took Shilly's hand in his.

  Shilly felt as though the world was about to drop out from beneath her. Did Sal know what he was asking of her? To reach back five years and put into effect one of the most complicated charms any Change-worker could employ was inspired madness—but it was exactly the kind of madness she had been asked to perform by the Goddess, by the glast, by her other selves in innumerable doomed worlds.

  So…why not?

  She squeezed his fingers as she searched through the mental images required. What she didn't remember precisely she could patch together well enough. Visualising their destination was the least of her worries—as was the concern that they might be followed. Of all the people in the world, they were the only ones who could go where they were going, just as they were the only ones who could decide what needed to be decided.

  The pressure was intense. Part of her wanted to disappear completely, as she and Sal had done once before, and leave the decision-making to others. But that was not even remotely possible now. Everything had to be taken into account. She needed, more than anything else, time to think.

  When the charm was ready, she signalled to Sal by squeezing his hand again. He took her in his arms and held her for a moment with her head against his chest and his nose in her hair. They breathed together, twice, then stepped apart. Their hands remained tightly clenched, and she could feel his palms beginning to sweat. Nervous, my love? she wanted to ask him. You should be. One slip and we'll end up in the middle of a mountain.

  The charm turned in her mind like the world's most precious jewel. A floodgate opened between them, and all Sal's strength flowed into her. She was a spark whirling up into the hot air above a bonfire. Stars turned around her. Every thought was exhilarating.

  I could have this, she thought as the Way opened before them. I could have this forever, for my very own.

  Then the smell of the sea struck her nostrils and all doubt vanished.

  Sal saw the circular hole open up in the world before them, peeling away the view of the lake and the gutted remains of Yod's servants and replacing it with a dark, close space illuminated only by the small amount of light coming down a chimney on the far side of the room. Little was visible, but he knew the outlines of the room exactly. His heart hammered on seeing it.

  Behind him, gasps of surprise rose up as others saw the Way. He heard Highson calling his name. Sal turned and raised his right hand with palm outward. The warning was obvious. Come no closer. The Alcaide's face turned a familiar red behind the vivid outrage of his scar. Eluded again. />
  Shilly tugged his left hand, and he let her hurry him down the Way to where their home waited. A familiar stuffiness greeted him at the end of the short, circular passage. The smell of it, even after so long shut and empty, made him want to drop to the ground and kiss the dusty floor.

  At the other end, grey daylight made the battlefield look almost too real to accept. Had they really been there just a second ago? The hubbub grew louder, more urgent. Two wardens went to follow. Highson put himself between the crowd and the entrance with arms held wide.

  Sal took that as his cue and broke the charm. The Way collapsed like a tornado blowing itself out. In an instant the tunnel shrank to nothing with a sound like a hundred hands clapping. Facing him in the gloom was nothing but a wall-hanging Sal had woven from thick dyed threads.

  ‘We did it,’ Shilly said. ‘We really did it.’

  ‘We sure did.’ He didn't find the fact hard to accept, but the reasoning behind it was more difficult. Had he really jumped halfway around the world in order to get a little peace and quiet? How much simpler could their trip have been, when they had first set off, if they had been able to visualise their destination so easily!

  The thought of what had to come next was heavy in his mind. Whoever wins…He didn't want to argue with Shilly. They had argued enough in their time together. He just wanted to hold her, to waken the lights in their home and to find something to eat. He wanted to revisit their old life, just for a breath or two, before the new one came crashing in. This might be the last moment of stillness they ever found. For so long Fundelry had been their refuge. There was a freedom in hiding which was very different to the freedom of an official pardon. Broader horizons meant greater responsibilities. Greater responsibilities were heavier burdens. As it was he felt bent over with the accumulated weight of his life. More baggage he didn't need!