The Devoured Earth (19 page)

Eat or be eaten. Not everything aspired to transcend. And there was definitely greatness to be found in any extreme, be it one of consumption or of destruction, or of any act that might on the surface seem similarly pointless.
Was
there a point to humanity’s striving to save itself, or were beings who wondered about such things deluding themselves? The alien observer didn’t know, and it didn’t spend a great deal of time worrying about it.

One particularly powerful chimerical discharge lit up the night like a supernatural firework, causing a shockwave that sent ripples cascading out from Tower Aleph. The alien told itself to stop watching water and light and to concentrate on the world right in front of it. Things were coming to a head. It had work to do.

* * * *

THE PRICE

‘We are buds on the outermost twig of a tree

vaster than we can imagine. It stretches in

directions we cannot see or measure, and grows

new branches with every passing breath, thought

and deed. Each branch connects one possible life

to another, so all that might have been is united in

the Third Realm
—
even though it seems

profoundly disconnected to us here in the midst

of our lives.’

SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

e careful with that, you ugly mug!’

Chu’s shout came clearly from the uphill fringes of the lake shore, where she waited out of reach of the deadly black tentacles.

Blacker than the night itself, they rolled like currents of oily smoke across the churned earth where the balloon had rested. They were capable of sudden and surprising turns of speed, especially at their tips, so the twins had learned to be very careful in a very short amount of time.

The fact that the twins were balancing Chu’s wing on their combined shoulders and running uphill at night didn’t make the situation any easier at all.

Remind me again how we were volunteered for this
, Seth muttered.

Later
. Hadrian ignored the determined grumbling of his brother.
Let’s get out of this alive first
.

They circled a long knot of tentacles that had rolled out of the lake a moment before, the tips blindly groping, trying to find them. The tentacles seemed confused, disoriented by the ankh glowing brightly in the twins’ chest, but Yod had numbers on its side. Once already the twins had almost been cornered.

They lost sight of the lake behind a wall of black. Starlight was barely sufficient for them to navigate by, even with the Homunculus’s superior eyesight. Marmion kept a mirror shining at the entrance of the caves. Hadrian did his best to hold that small beacon in sight.

‘To your right!’ Chu shouted.

A new knot of tentacles had burst from the water. The twins changed course, shifting the wing’s considerable momentum with a grunt. One of Seth’s feet slipped on the icy soil and they almost went down. Hadrian lowered his head and
refused
to let them fall; Yod wouldn’t win like this, with them spent uselessly on a barren shore. They would have their confrontation; they would see it done.

Seth recovered. Together they dodged the latest threat and found a clear path up the shore. The young flyer met them eagerly at the entrance to the caves.

‘You did it,’ she said, inspecting the wing for signs of damage before the twins put it down. ‘I knew you could.’

Hadrian said nothing. In fact, Chu had been highly sceptical of the twins’ chances of getting back alive with the wing in one piece. It had been her idea to retrieve the wing from where she had unpacked it from the gondola. Had she tried to do so herself, she would almost certainly have died. The number of tentacles on the shore was rising with every hour.

‘You’re welcome,’ said Seth pointedly.

The flyer looked up and blinked. ‘Oh, yes, thank you. I mean it.’

‘I know,’ said Hadrian.

‘What’s that?’ asked Marmion, pointing at the twins’ chest.

The twins were both startled. ‘You mean you can see it?’

‘Of course. Why wouldn’t I?’

They explained about the ankh — how it had been given to them by the Ogdoad and their suspicion that it might help hide them from Yod. Their proximity to the enemy of life seemed to make the charm more active. As they studied it from their position of relative safety, it began to fade.

‘Is there anything else we don’t know about you?’

‘Nothing springs to mind at the moment.’ Hadrian tried to keep sarcasm from his tone.

Heuve barked an alarm. Lidia Delfine’s bodyguard was watching the distant tower tops through a spyglass. His eyesight was keener than anyone else’s, apart from the twins’.

‘Movement,’ Heuve said. ‘At the tower.’

Everyone clustered around the bodyguard: the twins, Marmion, Chu, Lidia Delfine, Rosevear, Banner and Griel. Skender was still recovering with Kelloman in the Ice Eaters’ underground sanctuary, ordered to return there via the cave system riddling the crater walls despite his insistence that he could help with matters on the surface. His protests fell flat in the face of the abortive attempt to recover the balloon from the man’kin earlier that evening. Any chance they might have had vanished when Yod’s tentacles had emerged from the lake to drive them off. Since then, all they had been able to do was watch as the man’kin had performed rudimentary repairs on the craft and flown it away.

Heuve and the twins had monitored its progress from the caves, first to the top of the crater wall to collect some more passengers, then out across the water to the submerged towers. Even at night, it had been easy to follow. Apart from the golden chimerical light of its propellers, a bright green glow had filtered through the holes in the gondola, indicating that at least some of the passengers were Holy Immortals. Unmolested by Yod or anyone else, the balloon had flown in a straight line to the largest of the towers then apparently landed.

When Kelloman had suggested the wardens raise a storm to knock the balloon out of the sky, Marmion had vetoed the idea immediately.

‘Shilly might be aboard,’ he had said. ‘Or Tom. I’ll do nothing to risk their lives until I know for certain, either way.’

‘Even though they ran away,’ asked Chu, ‘and stole our only means of getting home?’

‘Even so. Our options aren’t as limited as you think.’ And there had been no changing his mind, no matter how much Kelloman had argued. The debate had only ended when Chu had come up with the plan to get the wing to safety and fly it out to the towers in an attempt to find out what the man’kin were up to.

‘Something’s leaving the tower,’ said Heuve. ‘The balloon, I think, but it’s hard to be certain.’

The twins took the spyglass from him and trained it on the distant tower. Their, eyes detected subtle flashes and currents of energy that the human eye couldn’t see. Earlier that night, the sky had been lit by brilliant white streaks visible only to the Homunculus’s senses. Now, they saw a black lozenge rising against a growing maelstrom spewing out of the tower. The lozenge was clearly the balloon, but it was missing its green glow. Whatever had happened in or around the tower top, the Holy Immortals hadn’t made it back.

‘It’s the balloon.’ The twins confirmed Heuve’s guess. ‘It’s not flying so well. There’s a lot of turbulence out there.’ They explained about the missing Holy Immortals.

‘Should we set that mirror shining again?’ asked Lidia Delfine. Marmion had extinguished the light upon the twins’ return with the wing.

The warden nodded and gestured for Rosevear to see to it.

Hadrian thought the attempt to attract their attention important but didn’t see that it would make much difference. The balloon was making speed at a wide angle to the cave they huddled in, fleeing rather than making a dignified retreat.

Fleeing from what?
he wondered.

I’d have thought that was pretty obvious
, said Seth.

At that moment, a bright orange flash lit up the sky. Hadrian pulled the spyglass away with a pained gasp as night turned suddenly to day. He wasn’t the only one to react with shock. The flash lasted barely an instant, but its intensity remained, painting the gloom of the cave a virulent purple no matter how often he blinked.

‘What the Goddess now?’ exclaimed Banner. A noise like thunder rolled over them, making the air shake.

Seth took control of the spyglass from Hadrian and trained it back on the distant towers. A column of steam was belching from the lake, as though a volcano had erupted under the water. The balloon wasn’t anywhere to be seen for a moment, and the twins felt a stab of concern that it had been knocked out of the sky by the shockwave following the blast. Sweeping the spyglass in wider and wider arcs, they eventually found it limping through the air, much further from where they had last seen it. One of its two working engines emitted streamers of red sparks. The gasbag itself seemed to be leaking again. Crippled, it made for the nearest shore as best it could.

The twins relayed what they could see to the others. Marmion listened, tight-lipped, to their prognosis.

‘The balloon’s going to crash again for certain,’ they said. ‘The only question is, can it make the shore in time?’ The water under the balloon was too far away for the twins to make out clearly, but they had no doubt that it was as full of black tentacles as anywhere else.

The column of steam grew thicker and more turbulent. It mushroomed as it ascended, forming a ceiling that slowly spread to occlude the stars, one by one. Hadrian followed his brother’s lead and concentrated on the descending balloon, wishing there was something he and the others could do to help.

With a distant red flash, the balloon came down near an outcrop that resembled the silhouette of an old man’s face. His bulbous nose stood out clearly from a wrinkled, sagging cheek. ‘I think they made it down in one piece,’ Seth said, ‘but it’s hard to tell’

Beside them, Marmion stiffened. He gripped their shoulder and pointed in a completely new direction. ‘Look over there, quickly.’

They did so. A winged black shape was coming towards them. Too large to be a bird, it looked like a pterodactyl or even a —

Dragon…

Hadrian stood a little straighter, straining to see more closely. By starlight, both of them could make out two people clutching its muscular back. One of them wore blue.

Could it be?
Hadrian asked, unable to believe his eyes.

I don’t know. Let’s wait to find out.

‘They’re following the light,’ Marmion said. ‘It’s Sal and Highson.’

‘What are they flying on?’ asked Chu, squinting. ‘That’s not a wing. Not one like I’ve ever seen before, anyway.’

‘I don’t know.’ Marmion stepped out of the cave to meet the new arrivals. She followed close behind.

Seth took one last look at where the balloon had crashed. The wreckage wasn’t directly visible, just a lingering red glow that flickered and faded even as he watched.

The sound of beating wings drew their attention back to the shore. The creature was coming in low and fast, just metres above the ground. As it approached the cave it tilted backwards, and angled its cavernous wings to catch the air. Two wide-spaced eyes in the beak-nosed face shone silver in the reflected mirrorlight. Strong legs pedalled as the ground came within reach, bringing it to a running stop a short distance away.

The motley group cautiously approached the creature. Chu stared at the winged beast with a shocked, fascinated expression that didn’t change as it folded its wings and turned to allow its passengers to dismount. Sal and Highson rode without bridle or harness, hanging on by little more than determination and a rope around the creature’s belly. One end of that rope swung free, reminding Hadrian that there had been a third member of the hunting party that had set out after Shilly and the man’kin, the day before the balloon had left Milang.

Sal dropped to the ground with a tired, pained expression. His cheeks were pinched red with cold. Marmion walked up to him, hesitating only briefly when the winged beast brought its head around to examine him.

‘You have a story to tell, no doubt,’ the warden said.

Sal nodded. Hadrian was shocked by how thin the young man had become in so short a time. His thick clothes and stubble were encrusted with dried blood.

‘What was that flash?’ Sal asked. ‘Was it your doing? It almost knocked us right out of the sky.’

‘We don’t know what caused it, yet.’

Rosevear helped Highson down from the back of the beast, which shifted from foot to foot like an impatient horse. Sal’s father moved slowly, stiffly. He looked older than Hadrian had ever seen him. ‘We lost Kail.’

Marmion nodded once, his expression rigid. ‘Sal told me as you were landing.’

‘And we’ve lost the balloon,’ said Griel. ‘I hope you have access to more creatures like your friend here.’

‘I think he’s the only one,’ said Sal, acknowledging the Panic soldier with a nod. ‘This is Pukje. He’s… not what you expect.’

Hadrian felt himself smile tightly.
I knew it
.

The broad head came around to focus on them. ‘Two for the price of one, eh?’ said a familiar voice, barely deepened at all by the larger throat and chest cavity. ‘Fancy that.’

‘And you’ve put on weight.’ The twins walked down the slope to confront the creature that had helped Hadrian escape the Swarm and meet his brother in the Second Realm. ‘So you’re a dragon, now.’

‘I always have been.’

‘How can that be possible?’

Pukje’s tail swished across the dirt. ‘I did say you were better off not knowing.’

‘You’ve met?’ asked Marmion, looking from one to the other with a frown on his face.

Hadrian nodded. ‘Before the Cataclysm. He’s a friend, sort of. He saved my life twice, maybe three times. Although he definitely had his own reasons for helping me, he wasn’t on Yod’s side. That was good enough, back then.’