The Devoured Earth (38 page)

‘I honestly didn’t expect to see you again, old man. When you fell off Pukje, we thought you were dead for sure.’

‘So did I, Sal. So did I.’ Kail shifted himself into a more comfortable position. His back still sang like an over-plucked wire. ‘I guess I got lucky.’

‘I guess you did. Or someone was
unlucky
.’ Sal’s smile dropped away. ‘I’ve been thinking about how you fell. It strikes me as odd that you, who argued most with the Old Ones, were the only one whose safety line broke that night. Just like it was odd that the avalanche blocked our path.’

‘You think Pukje was responsible for both?’

Sal nodded. ‘I worry about what he might do next.’

‘To who?’

‘To Shilly.’

‘Why her?’

‘Because she wants the opposite of what the Old Ones want.’ Sal sighed and related to Kail an abbreviated version of everything Shilly had told him that morning.

Kail could hardly believe his ears. Here at last was the reason why Shilly had run off with the man’kin during the crisis in Milang. And not just the man’kin, but the Holy Immortals, Tom, the glast, and every other seer in the vicinity. That they had intended to make their own future was bold enough; that Shilly was an intimate part of their planning, thanks to the many versions of herself working together in different iterations of the world, struck Kail as so strange as to be utterly convincing.

He sat up on his elbows and looked around the cavern. She was recognisable only by her wavy, sun-streaked hair, which poked out of a sleeping bag not far from where he lay. A blood-matted clump at the base of her neck indicated that she too was going through the wars.

‘She’s remarkable,’ Kail said. ‘I’d like the chance to get to know her better.’

‘I think that too, sometimes. If Pukje comes anywhere near her, I’m going to take his head clean off.’

The imp was sitting in a meditative pose on the far side of the cavern. His eyes were closed.

‘I think it’d be wise to keep them apart, for now,’ Kail said. ‘And to remember that Pukje can’t change while someone is looking.’

‘Between the two of us, I’m sure we can keep an eye on him.’

Kail nodded. He felt alert enough. Only the aches and pains reminded him of the rigours his body had been through in recent days.

‘It must feel good to have her back,’ he said, thinking of Vania and his occasional pang for what might have been.
A lonely man
, the Old Ones had called him.
Loveless
.

‘You’d better believe it.’

‘No matter what happens, at least you’ve got that.’ He looked around the room, considering his companions one by one. The expedition had changed all of them in their own unique ways. ‘I wonder what I’ve gained from all this?’

Sal patted him on the shoulder. ‘The chance to give someone a family.’ He stood. ‘If you let her down, I’ll take your head off too.’

Kail watched him walk away, smiling. The Caduceus began to vibrate, and he cupped it as he would a captive cicada.

If you want it so badly, Abi Van Haasteren
, he thought to himself,
you’ll have to come get it. We’re a little busy right now
.

* * * *

Sal fought the urge, powerful though it was, to join Shilly in the sleeping-bag. His eyes were hot with fatigue and the world seemed to shift underfoot every time he took a step. There was, however, someone he wanted to talk to before giving in to sleep. He felt Mage Kelloman’s eyes tracking him as he walked by Marmion and Banner, snoring gently side by side, and Lidia Delfine, curled in a ball near the sole remaining Ice Eaters. Her bodyguard, Heuve, nodded from where he watched over her. The Goddess and the twins whispered furiously in a corner, oblivious to everyone around them. Rosevear was tending the injured, but he was the only other person moving around.

It wasn’t a person Sal intended to talk to. The glast looked up from its contemplation of Mawson’s head as he approached. Although its features were in every detail the same as Kemp’s, Sal could not mistake the creature for the young man Sal had first met in Fundelry. The glast’s smoky black skin had nothing of human flesh about it; Kemp’s tattoos, now white, drifted slowly up and down his arms and back. His pupils were pure ivory in a sea of grey.

Sal almost baulked in the face of that alien gaze, but he kept coming. The Angel, looming over the alien creature like the back of a strange chair, raised its head.

‘
The Angel acknowledges you
,’ said Mawson.

‘That’s nice, but I’m here to talk to the glast. Do you speak for it?’

‘No.’

Sal was unfazed. He reached into a pocket and tossed a handful of small bone tiles onto the floor, at the strange creature’s feet. ‘Shilly told me about these. The Holy Immortals used them to communicate with the Panic back in the cloud forests. I thought maybe you’d find them helpful.’

The glast put Mawson to one side and reached down to touch the tiles. Some had letters printed on them; some had numbers or other symbols. Emitting a soft hissing noise, the glast moved two together to form part of a word, then looked up at Sal.

Sal tipped the rest of the tiles onto the floor. He had lifted them from the empyricist’s pack while the old Panic slept. He felt guilty about that small deception, but figured it paled in comparison to what Vehofnehu had done to him and Shilly. And if the attempt to communicate was successful, everything, he hoped, would be justified.

Smoky glass fingers moved quickly, forming the words: ALL THINGS.

The glast looked up at Sal. He nodded encouragingly. Its hands moved again, spelling out: KILL TO LIVE. When it was certain he had absorbed that fragment, it moved on again, spelling out what it could before running out of certain letters and moving on.

I UNDERSTAND YOUR ENEMY’S NATURE BETTER THAN I CARE TO ADMIT. I KILLED YOUR FRIEND, AND I DO NOT APOLOGISE FOR IT. I KILLED THE SNAKE TOO, AND MANY OTHER LIVING THINGS. THEY ARE ALL INSIDE ME NOW, ALL PART OF ME. THEY ANCHOR ME HERE.

‘And who are you, exactly?’ Sal asked. ‘What do you want?’

I AM A TRAVELLER. I WANT TO EXPERIENCE YOUR WORLD.

‘By eating the things that live in it?’

I HAVE BEEN AN INSECT BORING ITS WAY THROUGH A TREE. THE BORER CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT HARMING THE TREE, YET THE TREE LIVES ON. I SAY THAT WITH SOME CERTAINTY. I WAS THE TREE, TOO, FOR A WHILE.

‘What else have you been?’

MANY THINGS IN MANY WORLDS.

‘Why here? Why now?’

WHY ARE YOU HERE? WHY ARE YOU NOW? THERE IS NO PLAN. THERE IS NO DIRECTION.

‘I’m here with you because you killed my friend. Vehofnehu told Shilly that you attacked the boneship because you wanted to communicate with us. I could accept Kemp dying for that, perhaps, but not for no reason at all.’

The glast’s expression betrayed no human emotion. I WAS A SNAKE FROZEN IN THE DEPTHS OF AN ICY LAKE FOR NIGH ON A MILLENNIUM. WHEN IT MELTED, I WAS REVIVED. I GLIMPSED YOUR ENEMY’S RETURN TO THE WORLD IN THE CHURNING OF THE FLOOD, BUT I WAS SWEPT AWAY BEFORE I COULD DO MORE. WHEN I ENCOUNTERED YOU HEADING UPSTREAM, I DETERMINED TO BECOME ONE OF YOU, IN ORDER FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND. YOUR ENEMY IS LIKE ME, YET NOT LIKE ME. IT DOES NOT KNOW RESTRAINT. IT WILL DESTROY THIS WORLD BEFORE I HAVE FULLY EXPERIENCED IT. THAT WOULD BE WRONG.

‘You want to help us?’

I WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND, it repeated. ALL THINGS KILL TO LIVE.

Sal frowned, sensing something important coming together in his subconscious. He had had ideas this way before, where seemingly separate pieces began to combine without his conscious knowledge and only announced their conclusion when the whole had formed. It could be maddening, waiting for the final result to appear, because there was no way he had found to hurry the process along. All he could do was wait.

‘Yod is afraid of you,’ he said. ‘At least, it doesn’t want to get too close to you. Do you know how to hurt it?’

IN ITS PRESENT FORM, NO. I MUST OCCUPY THE BODY AFTER I HAVE DEVOURED THE MIND. THAT IS THE CURSE I BRING TO THOSE WHO FALL PREY TO ME.

Sal nodded his understanding. The black tentacles were as insubstantial as smoke — hardly a body by any stretch of the imagination. Poking a sword into one would be pointless, and would probably get the wielder killed. The same applied to any other form of attack Sal could think of. The only other thing he knew about Yod was that its ghostly flesh could neither pass through stone nor fly through the air. Water didn’t impede it at all.

He had one more question to ask the glast before giving in to exhaustion. ‘How long can you stay in Kemp’s body? How long until you have to kill again?’

DO NOT FEAR FOR YOURSELF OR YOUR FRIENDS, it spelled out via the tiles. I VISIT EACH SPECIES ONLY ONCE. I COLLECT EXPERIENCE THE SAME WAY SHILLY USED TO COLLECT MOTH PUPAE WHEN SHE WAS A CHILD.

Sal frowned. ‘How could you possibly know about that?’

KEMP KNEW.

Sal suppressed a shudder. ‘Uh, okay. Thanks, I think.’

He went to move off, but the rapid shifting of tiles on the stone ground pulled him back.

I WILL HELP YOU, the glast said, IF YOU ASK.

The creature’s strange gaze caught his again, and he had to physically turn his head away.

‘Keep the tiles,’ he said. ‘Marmion will want to talk to you, I’m sure.’

In his peripheral vision he saw the glast shake its head. With a rattle of bone against glass, it gathered up the tiles and proffered them to him.

Sal took them and hurried away to slip them back into Vehofnehu’s pack. If the glast didn’t want them, that conveyed a message as clearly as words.

Halfway back to Shilly he remembered that he had wanted to know about Mawson’s head. Later, he promised himself. He needed sleep more than answers at that moment. His brain had enough to work on already.

As he slipped into the sleeping-bag, Shilly half-awoke and rolled against him, bringing her warmth with her. He slipped his arms around her and lay close.

‘What have you been talking about?’ she asked with her eyes still shut.

‘Your old pupae collection,’ he said.

‘What? I threw that out years ago.’

‘I know. Go back to sleep. Everything’s okay.’

Shilly shifted into a comfortable position and they said nothing more.

* * * *

The Holy Immortals and the Ice Eaters were arguing with each other about who opened the Tomb. So Shilly dreamed, watching the confrontation as a disembodied observer. The Ice Eaters thought the Holy Immortals had closed the Tomb, not opened it, while the Holy Immortals argued the exact opposite. Shilly could see no logical flaw in either argument, no matter how she tried to find one. They couldn’t both be right, she told herself. Could they?

Then she was back on the prow of the boneship with Marmion, watching the glowing green waterfall come into view. Its roar was absent — for some reason, dozens of high-pitched bells were ringing instead — but otherwise the scene was exactly as she remembered it. Below, trapped by boulders under the crystal-clear water, struggled the man’kin that had been swept down the Divide by the flood. An anomalous shape caught her eye by the waterfall, just as it had the first time she had seen it. A glowing green figure was standing on the rocks, waving at her. Waving in greeting she had thought. Now she knew better. The figure was a Holy Immortal travelling backwards in time; her past was the Holy Immortal’s future. She wondered if she actually recognised the figure on the rocks, with the benefit of hindsight. Could it be Treya, waving farewell?

The guilt will haunt you forever
, the empyricist had told Treya when the Ice Eaters’ leader had threatened to kill Shilly and the others.
You will never escape it
. That hadn’t stopped Treya then. A few days and a deeper understanding of her fate could make a huge difference.

Shilly remembered the woman tearing out her hair, backwards in time, near the top of the mountains. She heard the Holy Immortals singing their sorrowful song as they approached the crater with her and the man’kin — another farewell, she realised now. She saw the shock on the faces of Elomia and Tarnava, royal caretakers of the Holy Immortals, upon discovering that their charges had suddenly departed; an arrival, this time, from the point of view of the Ice Eaters, banished forever into their own past. Vehofnehu had brought them to the Panic city in the knowledge that they would be safe there, that he himself, in founding the city, had created a space in which they could live and perhaps be useful by auguring events in the near future, their past. Perhaps they had told him to do that, in his past, when from his point of view they had met for the first time. Or perhaps it had just happened to work out that way in this world-line, entwined as it was with the lives of the Ice Eaters and the Holy Immortals as their destinies came steadily into collision.

She woke tangled in Sal’s legs and with a numbness up her right thigh. Shifting position to restore circulation brought a wave of pins and needles that had her twitching and disturbing his sleep. She slid carefully out of the sleeping-bag and hopped shivering on one leg, noting while she did who was awake and who asleep during this rare moment of rest.

Most were asleep, including the Goddess, who had found an empty bedroll and lay on her side with her mouth open. The twins sat in a tense, uncomfortable pose with four legs and four arms in wildly different positions, as though on the brink of explosion. Griel paced in front of the exit to the cavern, keeping watch with Lidia Delfine to make sure nothing sneaked into the chamber. One of the younger Ice Eaters was going through the supplies gathered by Kelloman and the others earlier that morning, his posture and expression dispirited.

Shilly felt eyes on her in turn, and found Marmion watching her as she struggled with her leg. She limped over to where he sat on one of the pump’s thick pipes.

‘How are you faring?’ she asked softly so as not to disturb anyone. ‘You’ve hardly said a word since our new friend arrived.’

‘There’s a reason for that,’ he replied, just as softly. ‘There’s not much I
can
say until she tells us her plan. If I react now, before she gives me anything, I look like a fool. Not that I can’t be one, sometimes,’ he said, raising his truncated arm to cut off her jibe before it could leave her lips, ‘but getting some rest first was a good idea. I’m prepared to listen now to find out what comes next.’