The Devoured Earth (42 page)

‘Bodiless,’ said Shilly.

‘Yes. But the Goddess said she’ll look after that.’

‘Once we’re at the Tomb.’

Highson nodded. Shilly wondered what he was thinking. Did he try to imagine what it must be like to be in the twins’ shoes? Murdered and hunted in a world she couldn’t comprehend; then trapped in the Void Beneath unnoticed for a thousand years, cheek by jowl with their great enemy; then given the chance to emerge and save humanity from a threat that would never go away — only to be told that, ultimately, their role had already been played out.

It would be galling, without a doubt.

Marmion followed the Angel through the hole at a cautious distance, his mirror held high. The glast walked beside him, gleaming smokily in the flickering light. Kelloman went next, his slight host body dwarfed by the weight of stone poised around him. When both men called to say the way was clear, the rest of the group followed. Shilly splashed nervously through the water, dreading what lay ahead. The manner in which Kail and the two foresters kept looking behind them made her nervous too. Thoughts of a trap wouldn’t leave her mind for a moment.

The bottom of the tower was much as she remembered it, except for the lack of pyrotechnics. The walls were still and dead, to all appearances ordinary stone. The floor remained rough underfoot, and crunched when she stepped on fragments of the Tomb. They sparkled in the light like salt crystals.

‘Where is it?’ asked Skender. ‘Where’s Yod?’

‘You’re too late,’ said a voice from the shadows. ‘It’s gone.’

‘Chu?’

The throaty laugh of the golem answered him. ‘What do you think, rabbit?’

Skender stiffened as the body of his girlfriend stepped into view. He wasn’t the only one to react. Shilly suppressed a gasp at the girl’s distorted features. Her face was stretched forward into a snout; sharp-tipped teeth glinted between moist pink lips; black fur covered her cheeks and elongated ears. Her posture was even more hunched than a Panic’s. Hunger shone from her dark slitted eyes.

‘Leave her, Upuaut,’ said Hadrian, speaking loudly and clearly from the Homunculus. ‘She’s not yours to take.’

‘By whose authority do you speak?’ the golem snarled. ‘That of your mistress, you pussy-whipped fool? She has no dominion here — and never has had, these last thousand years. The world has a
dei
again. Her time is over.’

Ellis Quick didn’t respond to the gibe. As Upuaut talked, she stepped onto the dais and brought her hands together in front of her. Her eyes closed.

‘Leave that body,’ Hadrian repeated. The twins walked forward with arms bent, ready to attack. ‘Now.’

The golem crowed with laughter. ‘Sacrifice this young life if you will, but you’ll earn yourself disfavour among your new friends. I would enjoy watching that — just as I enjoy watching
you
suffer, rabbit.’ Upuaut turned back to Skender. ‘She is an uncomfortable fit, I’ll admit. A young Change-worker would do much better. Would you give your life for hers?’

‘Yes,’ he said without hesitation.

‘No!’ Sal stepped in front of Skender.

A strange light played across the floor of the tower, distracting them. Shilly looked down in wonder. Every piece of the Tomb, no matter how small, had come to brilliant life, glowing bright blue.

With a gentle sigh, they began to move, converging on the kneeling figure of the Goddess as though drawn to her by gravity.

‘Enough talking,’ snarled the golem in Chu’s body. ‘I’ve played with you too long as it is.’

The golem pointed at the tunnel. The ceiling collapsed a second time, thundering down on a handful of devels who had gathered to watch. The thundering continued even when the stones had tumbled to a halt. The ground shook beneath Shilly’s feet.

Marmion ran to Sal’s side just as three separate jets of water shot out between the fallen stones, fuelled by the weight of the lake above. One knocked Banner flying. Kail retrieved her, splashing through water that was already rising up his shins.

‘Quickly, Ellis!’ shouted Seth over the roar, but it was clear to Shilly that the restoration of the Tomb was going to take too long. Evanescent petals were forming around the Goddess, but the water brushed them aside as though made of snow.

Marmion’s flesh-and-blood hand gripped Shilly’s and pulled her up onto the dais. She felt a tingle as their minds connected. A charm fell into her head, intricate and thick-boned. With one practised glance, she assessed its form and function and made two small improvements. Then Marmion reached out for Sal and, using all of his wild talent, put the charm into powerful effect.

A bubble formed around the three of them, pushing the water down from her knees to the floor. Marmion pushed again, and the bubble widened to cover nearly everyone in the party. Kail passed through the bubble wall, spluttering, with Banner draped over his shoulder.

‘Where’s Chu?’ Skender shouted over the noise. The air inside the bubble might have been dry, but the sound of the rising torrent was unabated. ‘Where is she?’

Kelloman took Skender’s arm as he went to leave the bubble. The water was chest-high and rising fast.

Shilly could feel the stress on Sal and Marmion rising with the water. The walls of the bubble shrank as the pressure swiftly mounted. Furious currents raged outside, sending broad bulges sweeping back and forth. Shilly found herself pressed against Lidia Delfine and Vehofnehu.

An idea struck her. She pulled away from Marmion and forced the bodies around her to part, looking for the glast. It stood to one side with Pukje on its shoulders, just inside the bubble. The imp watched curiously as she took Mawson’s head from the glast’s right hand and held it up to her eye level. It was surprisingly heavy.

‘We’re on a new world-tree,’ she shouted over the roaring of the water. ‘There are numerous possible “nows”. I remember Shorn Behenna playing dice with you in Laure. You could choose particular outcomes, ones that relied on small moments of chance. That’s what I want you to do. Give her a chance. We’ll do the rest.’

The man’kin stared at her long and hard. For a moment she thought he was going to ignore her.

‘
That will not be necessary
,’ he eventually said. ‘
Look to your right
.’

A large shadow loomed out of the water. She recoiled. The Angel, unconcerned by either the flood or her reaction, pushed forward through the bubble with Chu draped across its snout. Shilly grabbed at her and eased her to the ground. She was completely human in form again, although mottled with bruises and very cold to the touch. She didn’t appear to be breathing.

All other concerns faded into the background as Shilly worked at the young woman’s clothing and tipped her onto her side. Foul water gushed from her mouth and nose. Shilly cleared her airways and rolled her onto her back. Her lips were cold as Shilly blew warm air into her lungs.

Chu coughed. Her body jackknifed, catching Shilly across the temple with the bridge of her nose. Hands clutched at both of them, took Shilly’s weight as stars filled her vision. Voices asked if she was all right. She blinked up at Highson. Behind him, she saw only water. The bubble was completely enclosed, and still shrinking.

Highson pulled her to her feet. She glimpsed Chu caught tight between Skender and Rosevear. Blood streamed from Chu’s nostrils. She was unnaturally pale and unconscious. There was no sign of the golem’s presence inside her. Shilly reached for her but was pulled away by the people around her.

Light flashed. The bubble flexed. Waves of the Change flowed through her as the Tomb took shape, growing out from the Goddess like an ethereal blue flower. It passed through the bodies of those around it as it expanded, revealing their skeletons and possessions in eerie cross-section. A small object in the pouch around Kail’s neck briefly flashed a brilliant ruby-red.

The Goddess rose to her feet. ‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘Just a moment longer.’

Shilly closed her eyes as the walls of the Tomb swept over her. She could see right through her eyelids, just for a second, by that brilliant blue light. The twins stood out clearly as separate entities, standing side by side in the umbra of the Homunculus; the Goddess had three shadows; Vehofnehu was as young and vital as she had seen him once in a vision; Pukje appeared in the winged form that Sal had described to her; Kelloman was a large corpulent man with numerous chins; the glast loomed above them all, lacking any obvious form or colouring.

Then the walls of the Tomb closed over her and darkness returned. She opened her eyes, and found that both water and bubble had vanished. She and the others were standing in a complex, many-walled space that shone baby blue. The air was suddenly still and warm, the ground beneath her feet smooth and steady.

They were inside the Tomb — dripping wet and battered, but very much alive. Even from across the wide space, Shilly felt Sal gratefully relax his grip on the bubble charm.

‘Thank you,’ Marmion said to the Goddess. ‘That wasn’t going to hold forever.’

The Goddess didn’t reply. Her expression was one of furious concentration. A sound of rushing wind, distant at first but growing rapidly louder, filled the Tomb. A tiny point of light began to burn in the exact centre of the glowing space, between the Goddess’s outstretched hands. It flickered, steadied, and the rushing sound faded into silence.

‘The Flame,’ breathed the twins.

‘I’ve never seen it with my own eyes,’ said Pukje, peering excitedly from the glast’s shoulders. ‘It hasn’t burned in a thousand years.’

‘Don’t get too sentimental about it,’ said the Goddess, straightening and flicking her long ponytail back behind her. ‘It’s just a door.’

‘Not every door can stop time,’ said Vehofnehu, ‘and change the fate of worlds.’

The Goddess smiled. ‘Time doesn’t stop, just like the Flame never really goes out. It always burns somewhere; time always flows for someone. Here, in the Tomb, we see the process more clearly. Through the door, we can glimpse the world-tree.’ She looked around with excited eyes at the faces before her. ‘All you need to know for now is that time
is
stopped outside. That gives us an edge, for the moment. But we can’t stay here forever. We’ve got to get a move on.’

‘All right.’ Marmion stepped forward, dripping with water and fouled with slime from the tunnel, but dignified and determined all the same. ‘Highson, it’s over to you now. Do you need any help?’

Sal’s father shook his head. ‘I think I can manage.’

Marmion turned to the twins. ‘Are you two ready?’

The Homunculus shivered and hugged itself with all four arms. ‘As ready as we’ll ever be.’

‘Then I suggest we do it.’

Marmion stepped back and allowed Highson and the twins to come together in the centre of the Tomb, near the speck of light. Sal’s father wore a frown of concentration as he raised a hand to touch the Homunculus’s broad chest. The twins retreated from him, then came back and held their ground. Gently, almost lovingly, Highson ran his fingers across their unnatural skin.

‘Be careful,’ said Hadrian weakly. ‘I’m tickl— ah!’

The twins flinched as Highson’s right hand suddenly plunged deep into their chest, exactly as though exploring a hole in the side of a tree trunk.

The twins’ faces, wide-eyed with alarm, came and went; their limbs contorted into strange shapes. Highson groped through the Homunculus’s chest cavity, searching for something, then moved lower, into the gut.

‘Ah,’ he said in satisfaction. His arm stopped moving. His muscles bunched.

He closed his eyes in concentration, then pulled. His hand encountered resistance of some kind and didn’t emerge. He pulled a second time, provoking a startled ‘Hey!’ from the twins. His jaw clenched, and he pulled a third time.

His hand came free. Shilly had expected the Homunculus to collapse instantly into whatever shape it naturally possessed, but although it briefly trembled on the brink of dissolution, it ultimately stood firm. Highson stepped back, clutching something tightly in his fist. Gently, almost reverently, he opened his fingers.

In his palm lay a piece of black parchment folded into a tight square. With his left hand, he unfurled it. Strange silver patterns crawled across the paper much as Kemp’s tattoos crawled across the glast’s glassy skin. Shilly’s eyes watered as she tried to read them.

‘This is where it all started,’ said Highson, staring fixedly at the patterns. ‘If I hadn’t made this, the twins wouldn’t have come out of the Void, and Yod wouldn’t have followed.’

‘It started long before that,’ said Sal. ‘If my mother hadn’t become lost in the Void, you wouldn’t have tried to rescue her.’

‘And if she hadn’t left you,’ Shilly added, ‘she wouldn’t have got lost.’

‘It all comes back to her.’ Highson sighed. ‘If Sal hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t even know her name. Seirian, I’m sorry.’

The combined voice of the twins came from the Homunculus as though from a great distance away. ‘The Lost Mind who saved Skender, Sal and Kemp in the Void wasn’t called Seirian.’

‘She wasn’t?’ A frown flickered across Sal’s face. He looked at Skender, who was holding Chu in his arms. She hadn’t stirred since being abandoned by the golem. Presumably she had been left to die the moment her usefulness had expired.

The young mage nodded, red-eyed. ‘People are known by their heart-names in the Void, so she wouldn’t have been called Seirian there.’

‘What was that woman’s name?’ Sal asked.

‘Eda,’ said the twins.

A wave of gooseflesh rolled down Shilly’s arms. She remembered a moment two weeks earlier when Tom had hidden on the boneship and she and Sal had gone to find him. As they had coaxed him back to the others, Shilly had complained that they deserved bad luck for sailing on a ship with no name.

‘
It does have a name, you know
,’ he had told them. ‘
It’s called the
Eda.’

‘
Really
?’ Sal had asked. ‘
Where does that come from
?’

‘I don’t know, but that’s what it’s called.’

And there the matter had been left: another of Tom’s mysterious portents, perhaps never to be verified.