The Devoured Earth (35 page)

The mirror that is not a mirror.

Whatever trick the Goddess had taught Treya and her predecessors to open the Tomb, it required no fanfare, no chants or drawing of signs. With a powerful crack and flash of lightning, the Tomb simply opened, releasing the Holy Immortals from within. The two groups stepped towards each other in perfect synchrony. Time and space flexed. The world lurched as, soundlessly but jarringly, both groups met — and vanished.

Sal staggered backwards and tripped over Chu’s wing. It cracked as he fell onto it, but it had obviously been severely damaged already. There was no sign of Chu and the golem anywhere. Next to the wing lay the backpack that she had been wearing when the golem had taken her over. He opened the flap and found it full of spiky green crystals that throbbed with potential.

Orange light played across the inside of the tower as a giant armoured figure stepped out of the ruins of the Tomb.

‘
Angel says run
.’ The voice came from near Sal’s shoulder. Sal turned to see Mawson’s head at eye level, held by the glast mounted again on the three-legged man’kin.

‘That sounds like an excellent idea.’ Scooping up the backpack, he hurried after the strange trio for the door.

‘Stop.’ The voice of the armoured giant boomed loudly over the hissing of steam. ‘Stop — your master commands!’

Sal put on a burst of speed as the giant’s heavy footsteps followed him across the stone floor. At the same time, he reached into the backpack and pulled out the crystals he had found — the distraction Marmion had planned for Chu and Skender to deliver. That the distraction had never arrived might be the saving of him now.

He lobbed one of the crystals over his shoulder. It exploded with a loud concussion at the giant’s feet. It roared and kept coming, so Sal threw another. That left two in the pack.

The Angel had reached the door. Through it, Sal could see Marmion and others coming out of the tunnel. Kelloman was among them.

‘Close the door!’ Sal yelled at them. ‘Close it fast!’

A massive orange hand snatched at the air over his head. He ducked, realising only belatedly that the giant wasn’t reaching for him but for the glast.

The Angel bounded through the door with one leap. Sal scrambled after it, swinging the pack over his head and letting go as the stones began shifting beneath his feet. The pack hit the giant figure squarely in the chest.

The explosion threw Sal backwards through the door. With a grinding slam, it shut behind him.

‘Bring the roof down!’ Sal said over ringing ears. Odd-shaped Panic hands pulled at him, forced him to his feet. ‘The door won’t hold that thing long, whatever it was.’

Kelloman stood at the entrance to the chamber with his hands spread palm-up at the ceiling. One by one, the wardens and the Panic and the three surviving Ice Eaters hurried past him. When they were safe, Kelloman flexed his will and the cavern disappeared with a roar under shattered rock and dust.

Sal coughed and spluttered with the rest of them as, unsure whether to count the episode as a victory or a defeat, they turned back the way they had come and began the long retreat to daylight.

* * * *

The balance between life and death was ever precarious. So the observer reflected as the violators of the Tomb fled up the tunnel. It killed to survive, but in their own ways so did they. Morality was flexible; predation was the only true constant.

There were, however, differences in scale to be considered. While a predatory insect ate so little it could never threaten the balance of its environment, many of the path’s larger inhabitants had severely endangered the very existence of their world. Not just humans, but the beings they had once called gods as well. There had been many Cataclysms as realms collided and rebounded; each one held the potential to render the world unliveable. This was just the latest of many such large-scale disasters caused by beings too big for their boots.

The real difference, though, was that this crisis had been triggered by something that wasn’t naturally of the world. Not just one world revolted at that certainty, but many across all three realms. The sheer amount of energy that had gone into saving this particular world-line out of the many available was formidable and impressive.

The alien didn’t entirely understand individual humans — but understanding on that level was overrated. Of greater importance was the awareness of one’s place in the universal perspective. Was one an ant or a god? That knowledge affected every decision. An ant could spare a life with impunity, safe in the knowledge that its decisions mattered little, except to itself and to the other ants. When a god hunted, whole civilisations died.

And when two gods fought over the same territory…?

Time, the alien supposed, would tell.

* * * *

THE CONJUNCTION

‘The bud cannot know the tree as a whole.

But it can dream.’

SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

hilly heard the Angel’s heavy footfalls long before it appeared in the doorway. She didn’t know how long she had been standing over Kail, dreading what might appear in that dark hole. Her whole body trembled with exhaustion. She couldn’t have slept if the safety of the world had demanded it, but her eyelids were so heavy she could barely keep them open. Sometimes she wanted to scream, just to surprise herself back to full alertness.

A low moan came from her throat at the sound of voices. Both the words and the identity of the people speaking were obscured by the man’kin’s thunderous footsteps, but at least she knew now that
someone
had survived.

When the Angel stepped from the tunnel, still bearing the glast proudly on its back, and Sal followed close behind, she thought her good leg might fail. Marmion came next, shouting orders to get the door closed, but she had neither ears nor eyes for him. Sal had seen her, and his face lit up.

She couldn’t move. He had to run to her. She felt like one of the Ice Eater’s explosive crystals, trembling on the brink of detonation. When Sal put his arms around her and pressed his face into her hair, it was all she could do just to hold him without hurting him.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

Trembling had become shuddering. She wanted to bury herself in the smell of him, detectable even under mud and other foulness. ‘I thought you weren’t going to come back.’

‘Why did you think that? Couldn’t you feel me?’ He reached between them and touched her gently above her heart, which beat so hard he must surely have felt it even through the layers of clothes keeping her warm.

‘I did, but —’ The words tangled inside her. ‘I was confused. I died in another world, another version of me — and she remembered you dying a long time ago. She knew what it felt like to lose that connection, so I did too. At the end I wasn’t sure which me was
me
any more.’

He didn’t ask her any more questions for a while after that. She could almost have laughed at herself. It sounded ludicrous even to her ears and she knew what she was talking about. He probably thought she was crazy, especially after running away from him in Milang and not once telling him what she was doing. But he didn’t let go, and for that she could have fallen in love with him all over again.

Eventually, her legs
did
give way, and she had to ease herself down onto the end of Kail’s stretcher.

He squatted in front of her, cupping her face with one hand.

‘Is he okay?’ he asked her, indicating the sleeping tracker.

‘I think so. Rosevear should examine him again, though, to be sure.’

‘And Tom?’

‘Much the same.’ She couldn’t look at him. Part of her was afraid that he might dissolve if she so much as glanced into his blue-flecked eyes. ‘What about Skender and Chu?’

‘That’s difficult to say,’ he said hopelessly, quickly outlining what had happened to Chu. Of Skender there had been no sign at all. ‘Are you sure
you’re
all right?’

‘There’s just so much we need to talk about. I don’t even want to start.’ She did look at him, then, and was saddened to see him as dirty, tired and dishevelled as she felt. ‘Let’s run away. Get as far from here as we can before Yod decides to follow. There’s still time. The others can do what needs to be done without us.’

‘That’s the best plan I’ve heard all year.’

‘We can build a house and catch fish and have kids and —’ She could no longer hold the tears back, and she pressed her face into his shoulder to smother them. ‘Oh, Sal, I’m so afraid.’

‘Me too.’ He put his arms around her and rocked her gently. He stank of stale blood and sweat, and the bristles of his week-old beard prickled her neck, but she didn’t mind at all. ‘I’ve never been so scared in all my life.’

They stayed like that for a long time, not noticing what was going on around them until the sound of raised voices proved impossible to ignore.

Shilly pulled back and wiped her face. ‘Some things will never change.’

Kelloman and Marmion were shouting at each other on either side of the Angel. The glast looked down at them with a blank expression on its glassy face. Its features were Kemp’s yet at the same time they were not. Nothing remained of the person whose body it had once been.

‘It’s not your decision,’ Marmion was saying. ‘I have authority here.’

‘And you’re just going to take them back without a word of protest?’

‘I don’t care what they did. At this point in time, I don’t even care
what it is
. They saved us back there. That’s enough for me.’

‘You’re a trusting fool,’ Kelloman sneered.

‘Actually, I’m a suspicious son of a bitch. Just ask Sal and Shilly. They’ll tell you.’ Marmion walked to the Angel’s side and held up his hand to the glast. ‘We need all the allies we can get at the moment.’

Instead of shaking his hand in return, the glast raised Mawson’s head.

‘
I
may be unstuck in time
,’ said the man’kin, ‘
but I am not without eyes. I have seen Yod, and now I know it for what it is. The alien is not alone.’’

‘Clear as muck,’ said Kelloman. ‘I don’t trust
you
either — you and him and her and
them
...’ The mage’s right index finger stabbed at Mawson, Vehofnehu, Shilly, the Angel and the glast in quick succession. ‘You’re all suspect in my book.’

‘We did go behind your back. There’s no denying that.’ The empyricist stepped forward, his posture even more stooped than usual. Griel watched from the entrance to the cavern with a sorrowful look. ‘But we were acting with the best intentions. All the information at our disposal suggested that this was the path to take.’

‘And so it was,’ said a woman’s voice from behind the far side of the cavern. ‘For a while.’

All heads turned to face the new arrival. Shilly rose to her feet without thinking, impelled by an emotion she couldn’t have defined. Not respect, for less than a day before the same woman had almost cracked her head open to stop her from using the charm; not surprise either, for she had suspected that she and the Goddess would meet again. It was hope, she decided.

The Goddess walked with an assured gait across the space where the shadow veil had once hung. She still wore her black robe with the hood down, only now it was looking considerably dirtier. Its cut and lines were similar to those worn by the Holy Immortals when they had gone down the tunnel, and Shilly wondered which was modelled on which. If the Goddess had truly given the Ice Eaters their strange duty a thousand years earlier, she supposed this was the original.

Only then did she realise that the Ice Eaters’ robes also reminded her of those worn by the Holy Immortals. And then, as though a series of dominoes had started falling, she remembered where she had heard the name ‘Mannah’ before.

There was no time to pursue that thought. Behind the Goddess walked the twins, their Homunculus body looking misshapen, almost stretched. Behind them came Highson Sparre, even leaner than he had been in Laure, and an odd-looking dwarf with a narrow face and restless gaze.

‘That’s Pukje,’ Sal whispered to Shilly. ‘Don’t underestimate him.’

She made a mental note not to.

The Goddess did not approach Marmion or Lidia Delfine or the glast, but went straight to Vehofnehu and went down on one knee before him.

‘My friend,’ she said.

The Panic empyricist’s face twisted in anger — perhaps even hatred. Shilly had never seen him look so savage. Even Griel looked at him in surprise.

‘You tricked them,’ he snarled. ‘You promised them a reward and gave them a curse. Is that how you repay their loyalty? Don’t you remember how they took you in and brought you to me, a thousand years ago? Is your memory so short?’

‘I have forgotten nothing,’ she said, still bent before him. Her black robe pooled behind her like tar. ‘For me, it has been just twenty-five years.’

‘Then — why?’ Anger turned to puzzlement and hurt. ‘Why was this evil deed necessary?’

She looked up at him, then. ‘Because all things must have a beginning. Because my destiny in this world-line and theirs are inextricably tangled. Because such things happen when you mess with the Flame. Because Treya and her ancestors accepted their fate willingly, even if they only saw a small part of it at the time. And because I have responsibilities that override personal concerns. You know that. Seth and Hadrian know that. If I was to emerge from the Tomb at the right time, they had to be there. And if they were there, this was always going to happen. I do not say I wish it weren’t otherwise, but at the same time I do not apologise. Great works require great sacrifice.’