She had finally seen her kin on their trail, and now wondered why they did not simply stride into the midst of the Chal Managal, to take up the last of these pathetic lives.
I want to go home. Back to Estobanse. Please, come and get me, before it’s too late.
Suffering could be borne. But even her unhuman flesh was failing. Each morning, she looked upon the survivors of yet another night and trembled with disbelief. She watched them drag the corpses close and she watched them pick the bones clean and then split them to greedily suck at the marrow.
‘Children are quickest to necessity. They can make any world normal. Be careful, daughter, with these humans. To live, they will do anything.’
She looked upon Rutt’s world and saw the truth in her father’s words. With Held cradled in his arms, he called the stronger ones to him and examined the floppy bags of human skin they now used to trap Shards whenever a swarm found the ribby snake. These fleshless, de-boned bodies, flung into the air as the locusts descended, drew the creatures as flames drew moths, and when the seething mass struck the ground the children pounced, stuffing locusts into their mouths by the handful. Rutt had found a way to turn the war of attrition, to hunt the hunters of this glass wasteland.
His followers were hardened now, all angles and flat eyes. Badalle’s poems had turned cruel, savage. Abandonment honed sure edges; sun and heat and crystal horizons had forged a terrible weapon. Brayderal wanted to scream to her kin, there in the blurred haze of their wake. She wanted to warn them. She wanted to say Hurry! See these survivors! Hurry! Before it’s too late!
But she dared not slink away—not even in the deepest of night beneath the jade spears. They would find out. Badalle had made certain that she was watched. Badalle knew.
She has to die. I have to kill her. It would be easy. I am so much stronger than them. I could snap her neck. I could unleash my Holy Voice for the first time ever and so force my kin to come to my aid when Rutt and Saddic and all the others close on me. I could end this, all of it.
Yet, the Inquisitors kept their distance. They must have a reason. Any precipitate act by Brayderal could ruin everything. She needed to be patient.
Huddled beneath layers of rags, ever careful to stand in the way that humans stood—so limited, so bound by physical imperfections—she watched as Rutt walked out ahead of the snake’s head, the flicking tongue, Badalle would say, before snapping open her mouth and sucking in flies, which she then crunched with obvious relish.
The city that awaited them did not look real. Every glimmering line and angle seemed to bite Brayderal’s eyes—she could barely look in that direction, so powerful was her sense of wrongness. Was it in ruin? It did not seem so. Was it lifeless? It must be. There were no farms, no trees, no rivers. The sky above it was clear, dustless, smokeless. Why then this horror and dread?
The humans did not feel as she did. Instead, they eyed the distant towers and open faces of buildings as they would the arrival of a new torment—diamonds and rubies, gems and shards—and she could see the gauging regard in their eyes, as if they silently asked: Will this attack us? Can we eat it? Is its need greater than ours? Is any need greater than ours?
Sickened, Brayderal watched Rutt walk ever closer to the faintly raised track encircling the unwalled city.
He has decided. We are going in. And I can do nothing to stop it.
‘In knowing,’ Badalle whispered, ‘I am in knowing, always. See her, Saddic? She hates this. She fears this. We are not as weak as she hopes. Saddic, listen, we have a prisoner in the ribby snake. She is chained to us, even as she pretends her freedom under those rags. See how she holds herself. Her control is failing. The Quitter awakens.’
Kill her then, Saddic pleaded with his eyes.
But Badalle shook her head. ‘She would take too many of us down. And the others would help her. Remember how the Quitters command? The voice that can drive a man to his knees? No, leave her to the desert—and the city, yes, the city.’ But is this even true? I could—I could . . . She had fled the Quitters, made them a thing of her past, and the past was ever dead. It had no hold, no claim upon her. Yet, none of this had proved true. The past stalked them. The past was fast closing in.
Torn fragments floated through her mind, island memories surrounded in the depthless seas of fear. Tall gaunt figures, words of slaying, the screams of slaughter. Quitters.
She caught a fly, crunched it down. ‘The secret is in his arms,’ she said. ‘Held. Held is the secret. One day, everyone will understand. Do you think it matters, Saddic? Things will be born, life will catch fire.’
Badalle could see that he did not understand, not yet. But he was like all the others. Their time was coming. The city called to us. Only those it chooses can find it. Once, giants walked the world. The sun’s rays were snared in their eyes. They found this city and made it a temple. Not a place in which to live. It was made to exist for itself.
She had learned so much. When she’d had wings and had journeyed across the world. Stealing thoughts, snatching ideas. Madness was a gift. Even as memories were a curse. She needed to find power. But all she could find within herself was a knotted host of words. Poems were not swords. Were they?
‘Remember temples?’ she asked the boy beside her. ‘Fathers in robes, the bowls filling with coins no one could eat. And on the walls gems winked like drops of blood. Those temples, they were like giant fists built to batter us down, to take our spirits and chain them to worldly fears. We were supposed to shred the skin from our souls and accept the pain and punishment as just. The temples told us we were flawed and then promised to heal us. All we needed to do was pay and pray. Coin for absolution and calluses on the knees, but remember how splendid those robes were! That’s what we paid for.’
And the Quitters came among us, down from the north. They walked like the broken, and when they spoke, souls crumpled like eggshells. They came with white hands and left with red hands.
Words have power.
She lifted a hand and pointed at the city. ‘But this temple is different. It was not built for adoration. It was built to warn us. Remember the cities, Saddic? Cities exist to gather the suffering beneath the killer’s sword. Swords—more than anyone could even count. So many swords. In the hands of priests and Quitters and merchant houses and noble warriors and slavers and debt-holders and keepers of food and water—so many. Cities are mouths, Saddic, filled with sharp teeth.’ She snapped another fly from the air. Chewed. Swallowed.
‘Lead them now,’ she said to the boy beside her. ‘Follow Rutt. And keep an eye on Brayderal. Danger comes. The time of the Quitters has arrived. Go, lead them after Rutt. Begin!’
He looked upon her with alarm, but she waved him away, and set out for the snake’s tattered tail.
The Quitters were coming.
To begin the last slaughter.
Inquisitor Sever stood looking down on the body of Brother Beleague, seeing as if for the first time the emaciated travesty of the young man she had once known and loved. On her left was Brother Adroit, breathing fast and shallow, hunched and wracked with tremors. The bones of his spine and shoulders were bowed like an old man’s, legacy of this journey’s terrible deficiencies. His nose was rotting, a raw wound glistening and crawling with flies.
To her right was Sister Rail, her gaunt face thin as a hatchet, her eyes rimmed in dull, dry red. She had little hair left—that lustrous mane was long gone, and with it the last vestiges of the beauty she had once possessed.
Sister Scorn had collected Beleague’s staff and now leant upon it as would a cripple. The joints of her elbows, high-wrists and wrists were inflamed and swollen with fluids, but Sever knew that strength remained within her. Scorn was the last Adjudicator among them.
When they had set out to deliver peace upon the last of the south-dwellers—these children—they had numbered twelve. Among them, three of the original five women still lived, and but one of the seven men. Inquisitor Sever accepted responsibility for this tragi
c error in judgement. Of course, who could have imagined that thousands of helpless children could march league upon league through this tortured land, bereft of shelter, their hands empty? Outlasting the wild dogs, the cannibal raiders among the last of the surviving adults, and the wretched parasites swarming the ground and the skies above—no, not one Inquisitor could have anticipated this terrible will to survive.
Surrender was the easy choice, the simplest decision of all. They should have given up long ago.
And we would now be home. And my mate could stand before his daughter and feel such pride at her courage and purity—that she chose to walk with the human children, that she chose to guide her kin to the delivery of peace.
And I would not now be standing above the body of my dead son.
It was understood—it had always been understood—that no human was an equal to the Forkrul Assail. Proof was delivered a thousand times a day—and towards the end, ten thousand, as the pacification of the south kingdoms reached its blessed conclusion. Not once had the Shriven refused their submission; not once had a single pathetic human straightened in challenge. The hierarchy was unassailable.
But these children did not accept that righteous truth. In ignorance they found strength. In foolishness they found defiance.
‘The city,’ said Scorn, her voice a broken thing. ‘We cannot permit it.’
Sever nodded. ‘The investment is absolute, yes. We cannot hope to storm it.’
Adroit said, ‘Its own beauty, yes. To challenge would be suicide.’
The women turned at that and he flinched back a step. ‘Deny me? The clarity of my vision?’
Sever sighed, gaze dropping once more to her dead son. ‘We cannot. It is absolute. It shines.’
‘And now the boy with the baby leads them to it,’ said Sister Rail. ‘Unacceptable.’
‘Agreed,’ said Sever. ‘We may fail to return, but we shall not fail in what we set out to do. Adjudicator, will you lead us into peace?’
‘I am ready,’ Scorn replied, straightening and holding out the staff. ‘Wield this, Inquisitor, my need for it has ended.’
She longed to turn away, to reject Scorn’s offer. My son’s weapon. Fashioned by my own hands and then surrendered to him. I should never have touched it again.
‘Honour him,’ Scorn said.
‘I shall.’ She took the iron-shod staff, and then faced the others. ‘Gather up the last of your strength. I judge four thousand remain—a long day of slaughter awaits us.’
‘They are unarmed,’ said Rail. ‘Weak.’
‘Yes. In the delivering of peace, we will remind them of that truth.’
Scorn set out. Sever and the others fell in behind the Adjudicator. When they drew closer, they would fan out, to make room for the violence they would unleash.
Not one Shriven would ever reach the city. And the boy with the baby would die last. By my husband’s daughter’s hand. Because she lives, she still lives.
Something like panic gripped the children, dragging Brayderal along in a rushing tide. Swearing, she tried to pull loose, but hands reached out, clutched tight, pushed her onwards. She should have been able to defy them all, but she had overestimated her reserves of strength—she was more damaged than she had believed.
She saw Saddic, leading this charge. Plunging after Rutt, who was now almost at the city’s threshold. But of Badalle there was no sign. This detail frightened her. There is something about her. She is transformed, but I do not know how. She is somehow . . . quickened.
Her kin had finally comprehended the danger. They waited no longer.
Scuffed, tugged and pushed, she waited for the first screams behind her.
Words. I have nothing but words. I cast away many of them, only to have others find me. What can words achieve? Here in this hard, real place? But doubts themselves are nothing but words, a troubled song in my head. When I speak, the snakes listen. Their eyes are wide. But what happens to all I say, once the words slip into them? Alchemies. Sometimes the mixture froths and bubbles. Sometimes it boils. Sometimes, nothing stirs and the potion lies dead, cold and grey as mud. Who can know? Who can predict?
I speak softly when all that I say is a howl. I pound upon bone with my fists, and they hear naught but whispers. Savage words will thud against dead flesh. But the slow drip of blood, ah, then they are content as cats at a stream.
Badalle hurried along, and it seemed the snake parted, as if her passage was ripping it in two. She saw skeletal faces, shining eyes, limbs wrapped in skin dry as leather. She saw thigh bones from ribbers picked up on the trail—held like weapons—but what good would they do against the Quitters?
I have words and nothing else. And, in these words, I have no faith. They cannot topple walls. They cannot crush mountains down to dust. The faces swam past her. She knew them all, and they were nothing but blurs, each one smeared inside tears.
But what else is there? What else can I use against them? They are Quitters. They claim power in their voice. The islands in her mind were drowning.
I too seek power in my words.
Have I learned from them? This is how it seems. Is this how it is?
Stragglers. The sickened, the weakened, and then she was past them all, standing alone on the glass plain. The sun made the world white, bitter with purity. This was the perfection so cherished by the Quitters. But it was not the Quitters who cut down our world. They only came in answer to the death of our gods—our faith—when the rains stopped, when the last green withered and died. They came in answer to our prayers. Save us! Save us from ourselves!
Emerging from the heat shimmer, four figures, fast closing. Like wind-rocked puppets, every limb snapped back until broken, wheeling loose, and death surrounded them in whirlwinds. Monstrous, clambering out of her memories. Swirls of power—she saw mouths open—
‘YIELD!’
The command rushed through Badalle, hammered children to the ground behind her. Voices crying out, helpless with dread. She felt it rage against her will, weakening her knees. She felt a snap, as if a tether had broken, and all at once she lifted free—she saw the ribby snake, the sinuous length stretched out as if in yearning. But, segment by segment, it writhed in pain.
As that command thundered from bone to bone, Badalle found her voice. Power in the word, but I can answer it.
‘—to the assault of wonder
Humility takes you in hand—’
She spun back down to lock herself behind her own eyes. She saw energies whirl away, ignite in flashes.
‘HALT!’
Cracking like a fist. Lips split, blood threading down. Badalle spat, pushed forward. One step, only one.
‘—in softest silence
Enfold the creeping doubt—’
She saw her words strike them. Stagger them. Almost close enough, at last, to see their ravaged faces, the disbelief, the bafflement and growing distress. The indignation. And yes, that she understood. Games of meaning in evasion. Deceit of intent in sleight of hand.
Badalle took another step.
‘Yield all these destinations
Unbidden jostle to your bones
Halt in the shadow thrown
Beneath the yoke of dismay—’
She felt fire in her limbs, saw blinding incandescence erupt from her hands. Truth was such a rare weapon, and all the more deadly for it.
‘Do not give me your words!
They are dead with the squalor
Of your empty virtues
YIELD to your own lies!
HALT in the breathless moment
Your lungs scream
And silence answers
Your heart drums
Brittle surfaces
BLEED!’
They staggered back as if blinded. Blue fluids spurted from ruptured joints, gushed down from gaping mouths. Agony twisted their angled faces. One fell, thrashing, kicking on the ground. Another, a woman closer to Badalle than the others, dropped down on to her knees, and their impact with
the crystalline ground was marked by two bursts of bluish blood—the Quitter shrieked. The remaining two, a man and a woman, reeling as if buffeted by invisible fists, had begun retreating—stumbling, half-running.
The fires within Badalle flared, and then died.
The Quitters deserved worse—but she did not have it in her to deliver such hard punishment. They had given her but two words. Not enough. Two words. Obedience to the privilege of dying. Accept your fate. But . . . we will not. We refuse. We have been refusing things for a long time, now. We are believers in refusal.
They will not come close now. Not for a long time. Maybe, for these ones, never again. I have hurt them. I took their words and made them my own. I made the power turn in their hands and cut them. It will have to do.
She turned round. The ribby snake had begun moving again, strangely mindless, as if beaten by drovers, senseless as a herd of cattle crossing a . . . a river? But, when have I seen a river?
She blinked. Licked salty blood from her lips. Flies danced.
The city awaited them.
‘It is what we can bear,’ she whispered. ‘But there is more to life than suffering.’
Now we must find it.
Darkness passed, and yet it remained. A splinter pure, promising annihilation. Onos T’oolan could sense it, somewhere ahead, a flickering, wavering presence. His stride, unbroken for so long, now faltered. The bitter rage within him seemed to stagger, sapped of all strength. Depression rose like flood waters, engulfing all sense of purpose. The tip of his sword bit the ground.
Vengeance meant nothing, even when the impulse was all-consuming. It was a path that, once started upon, could conceivably stretch on for ever. The culpable could stand in a line reaching past the horizon. An avenger’s march was endless. So it had been with the vengeance sought against the Jaghut, and Onos T’oolan had never been blind to the futility of that. Was he nothing but an automaton, stung into motion that would never slow in step?
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