The Devoured Earth (11 page)

Potential, refined and strong, flooded through him. The mage gave him everything he could spare, keeping only enough to maintain the link between his host body and the one lying far away in the Interior. The exchange was swift and total, leaving Skender feeling full of light, as though his bones were glowing.

‘Brilliant,’ he said, looking up from his kneeling position to the entrance of the cave. His scalp tingled. He wondered if his hair was standing on end. It certainly felt that way. ‘Now, I’ll have to time this right.’

Down the slope they had followed, he could see the village and its three piers. The surface of the lake roiled like the surface of a saucepan of water on a stove. A mist had risen up over the water, hiding the tops of the towers from view. Strange shapes danced in the mist; inhuman figures came and went.

The twins stiffened. Their odd double gaze was fixed on the village. Breath hissed out of them like steam.

A moment later, Skender saw what they had spotted. Something black and fluid wound along the narrow streets, snake-like but as tall as a human. Skender couldn’t tell if it was made of water or smoke; it possessed a little of both in its translucency and flexibility — yet the shape of it was fixed in cross-section along its length. It progressed in the same way that a drop of water trickled down a window pane, growing longer at its leading edge rather than wriggling like a snake.

The tip of another tentacle appeared, sliding soundlessly along a second street. Its path curved to intersect with a house, which it passed right through as though the wooden walls weren’t even there. Behind it, Skender glimpsed a dark mass bulging out of the restless water — the source of the black tentacles, he was sure — and imagined it sniffing out life in the town. Drawn by their movement, perhaps, or by subtle disturbances in the flow of the Change, this strange limb of the creature living in the lake had been woken and sent forth to investigate.

And to feed.

Skender roused himself. He had been frozen with horror for far too long. Chu and the others would surely not have reached cover yet, and he didn’t dare doubt that another such deadly limb would be rising to devour them. What happened when the tentacles touched something living, he didn’t know for certain, but he wasn’t going to wait to find out. A village full of dead people suggested it wasn’t anything good.

A distraction. That was what he needed. The back of his mind had been riffling through the many charms he had glimpsed once and never forgotten. Charms to turn solid stone into liquid and liquid stone into solid; charms to create bizarre metal alloys and extract impurities from mixed samples; charms to make fire burn cold or to make it invisible; charms, in particular, to focus sunlight into brightly coloured beams powerful enough to split a tree in two. Even on a frosty plateau where the sun seemed hardly to have any strength at all, the potential was obvious.

There wasn’t time to physically prepare the pattern required. He would have to do all the hard work with his mind alone. Keeping his cold-numbed hand tight against the rock, he bent forward and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, imagining a series of concentric circles radiating out from him, through the entrance of the cave and onto the beach. Adjacent circles spun in opposing directions, creating a strange, highly stressed tension in the air. He could feel the Change throbbing all around him. Beside him, Marmion drew in a sharp breath.

That was only the beginning of the charm. The art lay in what came next. Ordinarily a mage would draw the lines together, forming a cone leading from the focus up into the sky, to where the sun hung overhead. The cone would concentrate the sun’s radiant energy, which could then be directed away from the mage in whatever direction he or she chose. Skender didn’t want a tight beam. That wouldn’t be distracting enough. Instead he gathered what sunlight he could from as wide an area as he could reach, held it for a moment, feeling as though he was holding the world’s breath in a giant set of lungs. Then he set it free.

Even in the cave with his eyes shut, he saw the charm take effect. Dull afternoon turned to brilliant daylight in an instant — and went beyond even that, to a powerful, searing glare that burned the skin where it touched and made ice crystals flash instantly into steam. It pulsed to a rhythm much faster than a heartbeat, a rhythm he could almost hear with his ears as well as see through his closed eyelids. Around him, Marmion, Rosevear and the twins fell back with their hands over their eyes.

Not too much, he told himself. He didn’t want to blind anyone. Tweaking the charm again, he encouraged the light to focus on a patch of earth midway between the balloon’s crash site and the village. With luck, the tentacles would be drawn to that spot, to the energy concentrated there, rather than follow the life signs of those fleeing from it.

The light ebbed in the cave. Someone edged towards the entrance. A moment later, one of the twins — Seth — said, ‘It’s working. They’re getting away.’

‘That’s amazing, Skender,’ added the other twin. ‘How do you
do
that? It’s like magic’

‘Who says it isn’t?’ asked Seth. ‘A spell by any other name…’

‘Tell me when they’re safe,’ Skender grated through clenched teeth. The necessary concentration was taking its toll. He could feel himself rocking back and forth on the spot. His arms tightly clutched his stomach and sides, as though holding his insides in. Kelloman and the sun might have provided the energy for the distraction, but he was responsible for making it behave in an unnatural way. There was a price to be paid for that.

‘Give them a bit longer,’ Hadrian urged him. ‘Almost there, almost there… That’s it. You can kill it now.’

Skender let his concentration unravel and fell back with a gasp. His hand came free from the stone with an audible snap, like a miniature lightning strike. He flexed his fingers, wondering if he would ever feel them again. Bonelessly, helplessly, he slumped over onto his side.

Chu was safe.

‘That was very well done,’ said Rosevear, putting a cool hand against his forehead and peeling back both eyelids to inspect his condition. ‘You’ll be okay, and so will the others, thanks to your quick thinking.’

‘What’s happening down on the beach?’ he asked. ‘Is it leaving?’

‘No,’ Marmion said from the cave entrance. ‘It’s spreading out again, searching for us.’

‘I’m sure it’s Yod now,’ said Seth.

‘So am I,’ added Hadrian.

Marmion didn’t argue. ‘That would make sense.’

‘We call it the Death,’ said a voice from deeper inside the cave.

Everyone turned. Skender -managed to crack open an eyelid.

Out of the shadows stepped a skinny boy of about thirteen dressed in dirty skins. His expression was haunted and hunted both, mixed with a strange kind of desperate hope. He came for them, ready to bolt at the slightest odd move, but it was clear he wanted to do anything but.

‘It was you,’ said the twins. ‘You’re the one who warned us, who led us here.’

The boy nodded.

‘Are you from the village?’ asked Marmion.

Another nod, abrupt and fearful.

‘What’s your name?’ asked Rosevear more gently.

‘Orma.’ The boy looked close to tears. ‘I ran away the night the Death came to my home. I didn’t know until the next morning, when I went home and found —’ He swallowed. ‘Have you come to save us?’

‘We certainly hope so,’ said the twins. ‘Are there more like you, living back here?’

The boy nodded a third time. ‘It can’t feel us in the caves. Or if it can, it can’t reach us. We’re safe here while food lasts. There’s room for all of us, and more.’

‘These caves must go a fair way, then,’ said Marmion. ‘Could you lead us to where our friends have taken shelter?’

‘I could.’ Orma’s gaze settled on Skender, still sprawled on the cold ground. ‘Is he all right?’

‘He will be,’ Skender grunted, forcing himself to move. His lassitude didn’t stem from any physical injury. He simply felt so drained as to be almost transparent. ‘Just give me a moment.’

‘Orma.’ Marmion took the boy by the arm. ‘Tell us more about this thing, this Death. How fast does it react? How far can it reach? Can it be in more than two places at once? We need to know everything you do if we’re going to stop it before it hurts anyone else.’

‘Y— yes, sir.’

The boy stammered answers as best he could while Skender struggled to his feet. He made it, but the air in the cave seemed suddenly too thin. His head spun. Stars sparkled before his eyes.

‘No way,’ he said, putting a hand to his forehead. He could feel the world receding, growing faint and dim. ‘I can’t — I have —’

The thought that he had too much work to do remained unfinished. He was unconscious before he hit the stone.

* * * *

He dreamed of the hearths of home, of the busy Keep kitchens and the chatter of his fellow students; of his father’s stern face and his mother’s voice coming from an adjoining room. A real fire was burning in the commonroom, which struck him as odd because the Keep wasn’t well ventilated and smoke tended to accumulate in the upper floors. This fire was special, though: its flames gathered in long slender ropes that twisted and snapped at the ceiling. Their focus was on a shadow in a corner that grew deeper and broader the more they whipped at it. A wave of cold radiated from the shadow, sucking all the heat of the fire out of the room. Skender shivered. How could it be so cold? And why did the shadow seem to be sucking him in too? He sensed something ageless and malign staring out of the shadow at him, exerting all its will to draw him nearer…

* * * *

When he woke up, the air was smoky and close but surprisingly cool, much as it had been in the dream. Someone had loosened his clothing, making it easier to breathe. His cheek rested on a furry, animal-smelling surface that, when he opened his eyes, turned out to be some sort of skin. Three fist-sized crystalline lanterns cast a still, sterile light across rough-hewn ceilings and walls. The chamber was one of several linked by broad circular portals much taller than him. On the walls and in some of the portals hung ornate decorations of woven multicoloured cloth. He wondered if they were charms of some kind, even though the patterns rang no bells with his extensive memory.

A deep black silhouette drifted across his vision. ‘If your eyes are open,’ said the twins in unison, ‘then you must be awake. That’s an improvement.’

Skender groaned and lifted his head. ‘Where am I?’

‘The shelter, in the caves. Orma took us here after you blacked out.’

‘How —?’

‘We carried you. Don’t worry. We won’t tell Chu.’

Skender flushed. He had a bad enough reputation as it was, always tripping over or freezing up in a crisis. But he supposed he had done better than usual by giving Chu time to reach safety in the caves before passing out.

‘Rosevear went with Orma and Marmion to find them,’ the twins explained when he asked about the others. ‘You seemed like you might recover after a bit of a snooze.’

‘How long ago?’

‘Did they leave? Not long. How you tell time down here is a mystery. They’ll be a while, anyway. Orma said he’d take the back tunnels, to be safe.’

Skender rested his head on the fur and let his eyes drift shut again. He felt so tired, but he didn’t want to lie around uselessly while everyone else did the work.

‘We’ve met some more survivors,’ the twins told him. ‘They’re actual Ice Eaters, straight out of Marmion’s story.’

‘Really? They’re not just something to frighten kids with?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Tell me about them. What are they like?’

‘If you open your eyes all the way,’ said a new voice, ‘you’ll see one.’

His eyelids flickered. Sitting opposite him, where the twins had been a moment ago, a woman of middle years squatted on her knees with her broad, strong hands crossed in front of her. She wore skins with fur poking out of the collar and sleeves, and her face was handsomely lined. Long grey hair hung in a dense plait as far as her waist over a loose shawl of knitted string and thread that draped from her shoulders. It wouldn’t provide much warmth, Skender thought. A sign of rank, then.

‘Oh,’ he said, sitting up so quickly his head spun, ‘I didn’t know you were there.’

‘Clearly.’ A cautious smile danced across her features. ‘Are you feeling better?’

‘Yes. Mostly.’

‘Good. Orma told me what you did to save your friends. You’re smarter than you look.’ Again the smile came and went. ‘I can offer you some tea, Skender, if you’d like.’

‘I would like,’ he said, sensing that she was taking the measure of him, bit by bit. ‘You know my name. What’s yours?’

‘People call me Treya.’

‘Is that what I should call you?’

She nodded. ‘If you like.’ From a nearby hearth she produced a kettle and poured him a small bowl of dark-coloured tea. ‘I don’t come from the same village as poor Orma. No one else survived there, apart from him. I come from the east, from further around the lake. The Death visited my home during the daylight hours, so we had some warning. Not enough, though. Out of one hundred people, only three survived. If I hadn’t been dragged away, I probably would’ve died too.’ Her expression was deeply funereal. No trace of a smile now.

‘Did you lose someone close to you?’ Skender asked, warming his bare hands on the bowl.

‘In a village of that size,’ she said, ‘everyone is close to everyone.’ With a smooth economical gesture, she brushed at imaginary dust on her lap.

‘I’m sorry,’ Skender said. ‘I really am.’

‘We are used to hardship. Our lands are unforgiving and the sun cold. The Song of Sorrow is a familiar tune to our ears. But we endure, and we
continue
to endure, despite the creatures you call devels. They roam the mountains freely, as you have discovered to your detriment. We are too few to keep them in check, as we used to.’

‘If there’s anything I can do —’

‘Your strange friend here tells me that you’ve come to fight the Death. You Sky Wardens and Stone Mages and foresters and Panic — and maybe other things, about which we know little. I ask that you let us help you, to honour those who have fallen.’