The Devoured Earth (49 page)

But he could still fight. With head ringing and senses dazed, he clambered to his feet. Distantly he could hear Shilly calling his name from the entrance to the Tomb, and he raised a hand to indicate that he was all right. His first priority was to locate Marmion and recommence the attack. The warden, however, was nowhere to be found. For a moment, his worry about that one man consumed all his attention.

Skender appeared at Sal’s side and put an arm around him just as another explosion blew them both off their feet. Someone screamed. Sal couldn’t identify who. He lay on his back and distantly noted dark shapes wheeling across the sky. He told himself to move but couldn’t, even as one of the specks stopped wheeling and grew larger and larger, with claws extended.

A green-grey blur swept across his vision from right to left, dragging the clawed shape with it.
Pukje
, he thought. His gratitude was remote but genuine. Forces outside his body seemed to make his limbs move, urging him upright. He had to fight for everyone’s sake, not just Marmion’s or his own.

Yod had changed again. Its skin was dotted with spikes into which residual lightning bolts discharged harmlessly. More of the catapults were extending, ready to hurl explosions into the defenders’ midst. Sal was unsure of many things at that moment, but he knew he couldn’t allow that. Forgetting the target he made and temporarily giving up on finding Marmion, he reached deep into himself for a charm, any charm, and sent it out into the world with all his strength behind it.

The Change was neither good nor bad. That was what Lodo had taught him, years ago. There was no right or wrong when it came to sources or methods of using it, because the Change simply didn’t care. It wasn’t human, didn’t have values, and couldn’t care less whether it was used for good or ill. It simply
was
.

So one simple charm could kill or cure in equal measure, depending entirely on how it was applied, and with how much force. He had used that principle against the glast-snake on the flooded Divide and the Swarm in the Hanging Mountains. It had never failed him in the past.

A rime of frost formed over Yod’s jagged shell. In the cold air, it was easy to encourage water to change from liquid to ice. Rime became a coating as thick in places as the armour beneath. Yod’s lightning rods and catapults froze, immobile. Its fins were caught in mid-transformation while mutating into limbs more suitable for walking on land.

Sal didn’t stop there. He poured still more effort into the charm. The glast-snake had broken free in the Divide because the ice hadn’t been thick enough. If he let up too soon, Yod might break out before people had had a chance to recover their strength.

Indeed, the monster soon demonstrated its capacity to fight back. Its icy restraints cracked open as sharp spikes burst outward from within. Sal drew more and more water under the aegis of the charm, trying to plug holes as quickly as they could form. But Yod was relentless and as desperate as he was. Even as Sal fought the spikes, new organs formed and radiated an unnatural, alien heat that illuminated the ice from below with a flickering purple light.

Sal dropped to his knees, feeling as though he was being pulled inside-out. He had done everything he could and it wasn’t going to be enough. Even he had limits. Yod was going to wear him down and then march out of the lake and kill him and everyone he loved, if something or someone didn’t come to his aid soon.

A shadow fell over him. From it, a familiar voice spoke: ‘I don’t think even you are strong enough to freeze an entire lake on your own. Let go and allow your betters to take over.’

His
betters?
Sal looked up, blinking, into the bluff, burned face of the Alcaide.

For a heartbeat he was certain that he had snapped his mind. He had to be hallucinating.

‘Didn’t you hear me, boy? You’re wounded, and we’re here to finish the job. Let go before you find you never can.’

Sal sagged back onto his haunches. The Change left him like tension from an overstressed muscle, and he fell over onto one side. When he looked across the shattered field of battle into Marmion’s vacant, dead stare, he could neither move nor feel anything but the most distant emotion. His only thought, which cycled around and around his stunned mind, was,
Another gone
—
and how many yet to fall?

* * * *

Shilly watched in impotent frustration as the battle raged outside. Skender, Banner and Sal’s attempt to smash Yod into pieces with a giant wave hadn’t succeeded but their tactic had been as inspired as it was daring. Lightning stabbed down into Yod’s cracked shell. She felt awe at every flash. This was war on a scale she had never seen before. This, she thought, was wild talent unleashed.

The Goddess came to stand next to her. Occasionally, devels or one of Yod’s missiles menaced the Tomb, but it was for the most part ignored, thanks to the twins and their protection. The glast stood outside with Mawson’s head dangling from one hand. The knowledge that it could repel Yod at a word was no comfort at all. Repelling Yod wasn’t the objective. Killing it was.

They watched in silence for a moment. At Shilly’s gasp on seeing Sal shoved to safety by Marmion a bare eye-blink before an explosion rent the stone between them, the Goddess reached out and took her hand.

‘I can offer you few reassurances,’ the Goddess said, ‘but I can tell you this: you’re seeing something few alive today have witnessed. I’m talking, of course, about the Cataclysm. When the boundaries between realms are in flux, as they are now and were a thousand years ago, talents such as Sal’s blossom. And where there is power, there is always conflict.’

Shilly tore her eyes away from the sight of her lover struggling to his feet, bleeding from shoulder and hip, and stared into the Goddess’s cool hazel eyes.

‘This kind of power is what the Old Ones want,’ she said. ‘Are you saying I shouldn’t give it to them?’

‘I’m saying nothing of the sort. Life has survived such conjunctions before, many times. The transition would be difficult for your world, but not insurmountable. You have an appreciation of the Change already, unlike those of Seth and Hadrian’s world. That’s why it was so chaotic, last time. Now, you would be better prepared. You might be able to weather it.’

‘The world would still be very different,’ Shilly said, turning back to the conflict outside. Flying devels stabbed at the foresters and the Panic. Vehofnehu wasn’t a career soldier like Griel, but he demonstrated a surprising ability to dodge and stab with the others. Two devels had already fallen under his hand. Another dropped twitching to the stone as she watched. ‘This would be permanent, not temporary.’

Skender had Sal now, but not for long. Another of Yod’s explosive projectiles landed directly in front of them. Shilly cried out in sympathetic pain and pressed her right palm against the crystalline wall of the Tomb.

‘Wars will always happen,’ said the Goddess. ‘Only the means of killing change.’

‘That’s true,’ said one of the twins. Shilly didn’t turn her head to find out which one. ‘Our world didn’t have anything like this but our wars were the worst ever seen.’

I don’t care about your world
, Shilly wanted to tell them.
I just care about Sal and my friends
.

‘Now you know how I felt,’ the Goddess said to her, “when I defied my sisters and took a human body. Watching is an empty pastime. To live one must act. And one cannot act without risk. You have seen the consequences of risk, as have I. To live one’s life alone, in mourning, is not a pretty fate.’

Shilly thought of her future self, killed by Yod after a long, fruitless labour conducted under the constant shadow of her loss. If Sal died today, how would she feel about having stood by and letting it happen. But what could
she
do to stop it that Marmion or Highson could not? She would be devel-fodder out there, and her vulnerability would only distract Sal from the work he had to do.

She knew that, but she didn’t have to like it. Her moment was still to come.

‘Behind you,’ said the twins at the same time. ‘Ellis, quickly!’

Shilly and the Goddess turned to see Chu sitting up with a knife at Tom’s throat.

‘Open the Tomb,’ Chu said in the ghastly, leaden tones of the golem.

‘Why?’ asked the Goddess.

‘Don’t ask questions. Just do it or I’ll spill this one and the one I’m inhabiting. Do you want that on your conscience?’

Shilly looked at the Goddess. She made no visible move to open the Tomb. She made no move at all, except to fold her hands patiently in front of her.

‘I feel sorry for you,’ the Goddess said. ‘Do you think Yod will reward you for giving it the Flame? Do you think you will be spared? I know you came here with the intention of spying on us, lying low in this young woman’s body and listening to everything we said. But you couldn’t get out, could you? You’re trapped here unless I permit your exit. By coming here, you’ve sealed your own fate.’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ the golem hissed, pressing the knife close to Tom’s skin to draw blood. ‘Worry about him.’

Shilly raised a hand, once again able only to watch the conflict play out.

‘You’re frightened,’ the Goddess said. ‘I understand that. You’re desperate, too. You can see your death ahead of you, and you take the steps you think necessary to ensure your survival. You’re not so different from us, really. That’s exactly what we’re doing, but we know there’s no bargaining with Yod. All deals will be dishonoured. Shilly has seen that, and so have I. You’re wrong if you think that this is a way to live.’

‘Why should I believe you?’

‘Because I’m offering you a deal. Changing sides is not anathema to you; you’ve done it enough times in recent weeks for me to be sure of that. Join us, or at least stop fighting us, and you will survive. I will free you when Yod is dead. You have my word on that. What’s Yod offering you? To take Gabra’il’s place? That deal might not look so attractive in a few minutes.’

‘What good is your word if you’re dead?’

‘What good is Yod’s if it’s defeated? Trust us, Upuaut. I offer you life and freedom in exchange for just one thing.’

‘And that is?’ the golem sneered.

‘You leave the girl’s body and enter one more appropriate. You’ll damage her if you remain inside much longer. Take the mage’s former vessel instead. That’s my condition. Accept it or there’s no deal at all, and you’ll stay in here forever.’

The golem glared at her through Chu’s almond-shaped, bruise-rimmed eyes. Every line of her face was filled with hatred and despair, but despite itself Shilly could sense the creature’s resolve wavering. It would change its mind; she was sure of it, and that would save Tom and Chu’s lives. But what would happen afterwards? She knew first-hand how perilous it was making deals with golems.

Before it could answer, its gaze slid past her and the Goddess to the world itself. It straightened, and the knife came down. Puzzled, she turned to see what was going on.

A hole had opened in the world next to the new scar in the crater wall. Through that hole Shilly could see tall glass buildings and a sky of blue. Air from a warmer, damper clime issued through the hole and turned instantly to fog. Out of that fog walked figures robed and armoured in blue with shining torcs around their throats.

‘Who —?’ she began.

‘The cavalry has arrived,’ said the Goddess matter-of-factly. ‘And not a moment too soon.’

* * * *

Chu’s body slumped across the unconscious seer. With a clatter of steel on crystal, the knife fell from her grasp and dropped to the floor. Hadrian watched the body that Mage Kelloman had formerly occupied, looking for signs that it had been taken over. He might be unable to play an active role in the events unfolding, but he could at least watch Ellis’s back.

The young girl twitched and sat up. Her stare was dark and malignant, but the golem made no move for the knife or the people lying unconscious nearby. The deal, it seemed, was holding — for the moment. Hadrian could fully understand the power of the threat of imprisonment.

Hadrian turned his attention outside. Out of the hole in front of the raw stone scar poured a river of fog and, no less impressive, a small army of Sky Wardens. Freshly provisioned and clean-robed, but already partially spent from opening the space-bending Way to the battlefield at the top of the world, the shock of what they saw before them was naked on their dark-skinned faces.

Yod was coated in white except for where spikes had broken through the icy crust in a bid to free itself. Fully a third of the defenders were on the ground, dead or injured, but twice as many winged black shapes lay crumpled among them. Lightning bolts still stabbed from out of the leaden clouds, but they landed at random, striking the lake’s surface or the tops of the crater wall.

The new arrivals rallied quickly. One in particular stood out — an imposing man in his late sixties, with grey hair and square jaw, and a broad brown scar covering much of his temples and scalp. He pointed and shouted orders, and stooped to help Sal upright with one strong motion.

‘Alcaide Braham,’ whispered Shilly. Louder, to the Goddess, she said, ‘I never thought he’d come himself. Not for us.’

‘Don’t underestimate yourself,’ Ellis said. ‘And remember: this isn’t about you. It’s about the world and everyone in it. Sometimes even the most myopic of people see beyond their horizons.’

‘I wish I was out there,’ said Seth, hovering at Hadrian’s side. His clenched fists rested impotently against the Tomb’s crystal walls. ‘It’s not fair that we’re in here, watching everyone else fight.’

‘Fight — and sometimes die.’ Hadrian’s gaze was drawn to the bodies sprawled on the cold ground.

‘That’d be a better way to go than trapped in here forever.’ Seth turned his head to look at him. ‘Isn’t that why we came here — to finish it once and for all?’

‘That’s not the same thing as finishing
us
.’

Seth sighed. ‘Maybe you’re right. But I’m
tired
, Hadrian, and I don’t see us ever having much of a life in here.’

Outside, the hole closed; another opened not far away from which issued figures in red, marching in clearly defined ranks across the broken ground. Stone Mages, Hadrian thought, the first they had truly seen. Skender hadn’t graduated and Kelloman wasn’t in his real body. These were much lighter in colour than the Sky Wardens — some of them were fair enough to have passed for Swedes from the old world — and all, even the eldest, were adorned with tattoos. Again, one taller man caught Hadrian’s eye. Dark-haired and severe, with deep wrinkles, a triangular nose and prominent cheekbones, he didn’t call out orders, but set to searching among the people of Marmion’s party, as though looking for someone.