The Devoured Earth (48 page)

The natural flows of the Change flexed and tied themselves in knots. Marmion and Sal were already at work. A stiff wind sprang up; dark clouds gathered overhead, further dimming the sun. Skender cut across the jagged scree, looking for a spur of bedrock. Banner followed, limping and taking great care with every step.

‘Perfect.’ A lump of pure gabbro bulged from the side of the crater wall, darker and rougher than the surrounding granite. Skender put both hands against it, wishing Kelloman was there to assist him. He’d never done anything like this before. Mages had died in avalanches from pushing too hard or in the wrong place.

Banner wasn’t a Stone Mage, but she was an Engineer. ‘Where’s the weak point?’ he asked her when she caught up with him. ‘Where do we focus our effort?’

She studied the cliff face, breathing heavily. A quick and piercingly cold squall flattened her hair and turned the dirt on her face to mud. ‘Here, I think.’ She guided his vision to a complicated intersection between weight-bearing slabs and the tonnes of rock they supported. ‘Nudge that — or break it, even — and you’ll start a chain reaction. The whole lot should come down after that, and the slope should channel the force into the water. We should be safe here.’

He took her at her word, even though a lot of them were ‘should’. There was no point doubting her now. ‘Sal!’ Skender let go of the rock to call for his friend. They would need him to supply the big push. ‘Sal, we need you over here!’

Marmion and the others had their hands full fighting the devels. Strange silhouettes leapt and screamed as they tested the defences of the knot of humans and Panic guarding the Tomb from direct assault. Blood in a variety of colours splashed on the icy ground. Screams from all manner of throats shocked the air. Skender gripped his knife more tightly and hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.

Sal was visible in the middle of the throng, reaching up with one hand as though to catch the sky. Lightning flashed down, blowing a cluster of devels apart and leaving a vivid purple line across Skender’s vision. The crack of thunder was loud enough to hurt. Into its ringing wake, a tube of fiercely spinning wind descended. With a throaty roar it snatched screaming devels up into the air and threw them far away.

The last phenomenon was Marmion’s work. Skender recognised the charm as similar to the one the warden had used on the Swarm in Milang. The man’s focus and energy were formidable. Sweat dripped from his bald head as he wielded the necessary concentration.

Skender’s gaze was drawn to Yod, now more than twice as close to the shore as it had been earlier. The flying devels he had noticed were leaving their giant master behind and swarming for his location.

‘Sal!’ Skender shouted with as much volume as he could muster. ‘Here — quickly!’

Sal heard him. His head came up, brown hair flying loose. He saw Skender and nodded. Taking strong, measured steps he hurried up the slope to where they stood. He quickly absorbed the situation, and nodded at their request. As the battle continued below, he closed his eyes and put his hands on Skender’s shoulders.

Skender shivered, feeling the full force of Sal’s wild talent rush into him. It wasn’t the first time they had joined forces in this way, but even though he had prepared himself it still took him by surprise. Sal’s reserves had grown dramatically as the end of the world approached. With such strength behind him, Skender felt that he could not only move mountains, but make them from scratch.

‘
Be careful
,’ Sal told him through the Change. ‘
It’s dangerous. We don’t want to wreck the landmark too
.’

Skender nodded. ‘
Just a tap
,’ he replied. ‘
Just one perfect tap
.’

His mind, linked with Banner’s, swept along the bedrock into the shelf before them. The weak point hung before him, a tangle of forces poised to spring free. He slipped mental fingers into the knot and began undoing it, using charms he had never dreamed of employing before. Nothing stood between him and his goal; while Sal remained connected to him, his will was absolute.

‘
Good
,’ breathed Banner. ‘
That’s it. Keep going. You’re doing well
.’

It took longer than Skender had expected. Not one tap, but many, all at precise intervals, as the sounds of battle grew louder around him. Yod’s rhythmic chuffing grew. He could feel the knot unravelling, centimetre by centimetre. Piercing cries from above reminded him of the dart-like flying devels, and he urged himself to hurry.

A resounding crack, as loud as thunder but very different in quality, came out of the earth. He pressed on, taking that as a sign of progress. Another came, then a third, each higher in pitch, communicated to his ears through his feet rather than the air. Then a deep, drawn-out groan rose up, so low as to be almost inaudible.

All resistance fell away. The knot hung loose. Stones shifted freely, lowing like giant cattle released from a crowded pen. Jostling, impatient, steadily building up momentum, subterranean boulders began to move.

Skender opened his eyes. Nothing had changed on the surface, but that wouldn’t last long. The noise was deafening. A cloud of dust rose from the base of the shelf. He was, momentarily, appalled by the audacity of Banner’s plan. At their instigation, an amount of rock heavier than most cities was about to fall into the lake, creating a wave large enough to knock down a hundred buildings. That just one warden, one not-quite mage and a single wild talent had dared so much terrified him. That they might succeed was even worse.

Finally, in slow motion, the shelf began to slide. At first it moved in one piece, driven by processes taking place out of sight. Then the subterranean forces became too much for it. The shelf began to break up into sections, which then themselves fragmented. The view was almost instantly obscured but Skender could still read the movements of the stone through the bedrock. He followed its evolution from a single, discrete mass to a flood of smaller pieces in a matter of seconds. He observed the short-lived journey of the avalanche down the crater wall and into the water. He felt the shockwave rippling out across the lakebed, stirring up sediments from their long rest.

And he felt Banner reach into Sal, through him, to add extra impetus to the pressure building in the water. As incomprehensible tonnes of stone slid heavily into the lake, a shelf of water spread towards Yod.

Sal took his hands away, radiating a surprise that echoed Skender’s own. They had changed the face of the crater forever. And with any luck they would crush their enemy with one powerful stroke.

Don’t underestimate the power of water
, Banner had said.
Or stone
, Skender added to himself. Together, they were unstoppable.

All heads had turned to watch the spectacle. The devels fell back, waving their misshapen limbs in confusion, as the seemingly innocuous bulge reached the giant creature making its way towards shore. It was close now, close enough to see the joints at the base of the antennae, no different to the joints of the legs below. If it was flipped over, Skender thought, it might look exactly the same. Its crab-like carapace was white around the edges and jagged, like a rough-toothed saw. When the leading edge of the wave reached the stilt-legs, it snapped them cleanly off at the joints and tipped the body’s forward edge down into the water. A curtain of spray rose up, and an instant later the roaring noise it made followed. Splitting sounds heralded the cracking of the carapace itself. Antennae tipped and fell like trees under the axe. A deafening shriek added to the cacophony.

Skender put his hands tightly over his ears. Could this be it? he wondered. Could they really have killed the embodied Yod with one decisive stroke? The wave rolled on, breaking over the splintered carapace as he had seen the ocean break over a reef protecting the Haunted City, years earlier. Great slabs of shell rose up on their end, revealing dark grey flesh on their underside. He thought of crabblers with their exoskeletons broken, and remembered being teased in Milang by the forester called Navi. If Yod’s flesh was edible, there would be enough to feed scavengers for years.

Then he noticed isolated fragments dissolving in the weak sunlight, vanishing into nothing as their connection to the central charm of the Homunculus was severed. There would be no scraps left for anyone once Yod was dead.

The shriek reached a new height. The wave swept on across the lake, carrying with it a tide of alien detritus. Skender strained to penetrate the mist and spray enveloping the mighty corpse. It had sunk lower in the water and appeared to be drifting, rocking slowly back and forth like some grotesque, unmoored island. Shards of carapace still stood upright, perhaps held there by lingering muscular reflexes.

The last of the disturbed rock rattled down the side of the crater. A raw new scar marred the ancient crater wall, testimony to the defiant forces Yod had woken as it attempted to invade the world. Skender began to feel a sense of relief even as those closer to the Tomb absorbed what had happened.

Heuve had his sword in the air, waving it in triumph. Orma was jumping up and down, cheering. Sal clapped one hand on Skender’s back.

‘It can’t be that easy,’ Skender said, even while he considered just how hard it had been: people dead and wounded; whole communities wiped out; futures uncertain for those left behind. If it had been much harder, they might not have made it at all.

But it still felt wrong, that Yod should fall before so simple a thing as a wave…

A splintering sound came from the floating corpse, carrying clearly across the quietening water. One of the upright portions of shell tilted over onto its side, then another, accompanied by a second brittle crack. The body might be disintegrating, Skender told himself, even as his heart quickened and his gut told him that it
wasn’t
over yet, not by a long reach.

More upraised sections fell, raising a mist of blood and water. The body appeared to be shrinking, sloughing off antennae and stilt-legs as an old man shed hair. A conical mound formed in the centre, coated with overlapping sections of the broken shell. Skender had seen pictures of ancient plate armour and was reminded immediately of them. The carapace would be more flexible this way, and stronger. If struck by another wave, it would flex and ride out the impact rather than break, just like the wall around Laure.

Sal clutched him more tightly, and Skender understood the sentiment.

Yod was evolving again.

‘Can you repeat that trick?’ Sal asked him. ‘Before it finishes?’

Skender glanced at Banner, who looked terrified. She shook her head.

‘Not to the same effect,’ she said. ‘That was a fortuitous arrangement. If we could lure it to another section of the shore —’

‘Not an option,’ said Sal, watching with eyes narrowed as Yod extended numerous fins made of recycled carapace. At the same time, the devels had begun hooting and pressing forward, emboldened by the survival of their master. And in the sky above, dark shapes were massing.

‘We had our break,’ Banner said. ‘I suppose we should be grateful for that, even if it didn’t work.’

With a roar louder than any avalanche, Yod surged forward on a direct path to where they stood.

* * * *

THE WAY

‘The alien casts a new light on ourselves

because that light comes from somewhere else.

It shines into places the old light

leaves in shadow.

What we see may cause us discomfort,

even pain, but it is always better to look

with eyes open than closed.’

SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

al left Skender’s side and hurried downslope to where Marmion stood. Yod’s speed was formidable. It would reach the shore in a matter of minutes. That left them very little time to put Sal’s back-up plan into action.

‘I’ve seen those things before,’ his father said, pointing up at the darting shapes above as Sal went by. ‘The twins knew how to kill them, but I don’t.’

‘Do what you can to keep them at bay.’ Sal had no more advice than that. ‘I just need a moment.’

He skidded to a halt next to Marmion and took the warden’s arm for more than just balance. Storm clouds still hung low in the sky above. It was a relatively simple matter to revive their inherent wildness and call down more lightning: all Sal had to do was keep them inflamed and create the potentials required in the right places. Yod’s earlier machinations had screwed up the weather sufficiently so that a release of energy such as this was welcomed by the natural order of things. Sal fought as though the world fought with him, and was buoyed by that sensation.

But he had two fronts to fight on now: Yod, and the flying creatures if they got past the foresters and Griel. Marmion Took from him in order to ease some of the pressure. He had plenty of strength, but only one set of eyes and ears. They worked well together. Lightning bolts struck repeatedly into the lake while flickering sheets of energy danced among the flying things, scattering them.

Yod convulsed. Vivid scorch-marks and deep craters marked where the lightning struck. Its fins flailed without any sense of rhythm or direction. Thunderclaps drowned out any cries it might be making.

The flying devels retreated to where Yod floundered offshore. Pursuing them, Sal focussed all his efforts on the giant creature, encouraging the clouds to hold nothing back. Marmion supported him, drawing on all his wild talent to push against the invader and send it, beaten, out into the lake. Strange light gleamed off the bald warden’s smooth scalp.

A new stalk, thicker than the others and curved like a bow, appeared on the top of the blistered carapace. Before Sal could target it, it bent back then flicked forward. A single dark speck catapulted
through the air, out of range of the lightning and aimed directly for Sal and Marmion.

Sal froze, hypnotised by its graceful arc. Marmion broke the spell by pushing Sal bodily away and throwing himself in the opposite direction. The black speck hit the ground with all the force of one of the Ice Eaters’ exploding crystals, throwing shattered stone in all directions. Hot air scalded the battlefield. Sal felt a piercing pain in his right shoulder and another in his hip, and knew that he had been wounded. When he reached behind him to touch his shoulder, his hand came back red.