The Devoured Earth (56 page)

Seth blinked. At first it seemed that nothing had changed. They were still in the sealed space where Ellis had hidden Hadrian’s body for all the years they had been in the Void. The dark, damp-stained walls still closed in around him like the walls of a coffin. Hadrian sat next to him, close but feeling light-years away. And Ellis —

That was when he saw the difference. It wasn’t that the Flame cast its light on her in a new way, but that he was seeing her as she really was: stretching across all the world-lines at once, like a reflection trapped between two mirrors, repeated over and over again. The Goddess revealed. He had only seen her look like that once before, when he and Hadrian had stood before her and her sisters in Sheol, before trapping Yod in Bardo. Then, as now, he had felt overawed by her strange power, and unnerved by the evidence of her innate inhumanity.

She has ways about her that you and I can barely imagine
, Pukje had said.

‘I said that I would save you,’ she told them, her voice coming at them from multiple branches of the world-tree at once. ‘I wasn’t talking only about making you ghosts and keeping you here. That saved you, temporarily — but not from yourselves. The same with sticking you into that body. It’d be a disaster, as you both quickly realised. I need to save your lives, not just keep you living longer.’

‘What, then?’ asked Hadrian, climbing to his feet and holding out a hand to help Seth do the same. They stood side by side before her, two united against her multiplicity. ‘What else do you have in mind?’

‘Well, this.’ She held out her hands. All the versions of her did the same, in more or less perfect unison.

‘Welcome to the new world-tree. Once Sal and Shilly have picked the branch that’s right for their future, possibilities will begin to expand exponentially. Like any tree, the world-tree needs to be tended. That’s what the Sisters of the Flame were for, you know. Not so much for helping individuals negotiate their fates, although we did do a measure of that, but for weeding out unnecessary duplications, tying off severed world-lines, grafting disjointed fragments together — all the tasks needed to create a work of art out of what would have been, left to its own devices, a complicated tangle. When I embrace this form, I can see the great work my sisters and I performed, before I became Ellis Quick and met you. I can see the necessity of it, and the problems caused by my absence this last thousand years.

‘Take Shilly, for instance, and the way she used different versions of herself to make this world-line the one that survived. That’s not so different from the sort of work we used to do. Taking from one and giving to another; overlapping lives to create a new, tougher hybrid. In legends we were sometimes weavers, snipping and tying fates as we willed. But we were more like gardeners in my mind, letting nature do most of the work. The delicate art of the nudge is a difficult one to learn, and we were mistresses of it, achieving maximum effect from minimum intervention.’

She came around the squat stone structure, half walking to the left and half to the right. When she coalesced on the far side, she faced both the twins all at once.

‘Shilly’s hard work, although essential, was clumsy and dangerous. It wouldn’t have been allowed in my sisters’ time. The connections between her and her other selves would have been severed before they ever existed. The purity of the world-lines would have been protected at all costs. But if that had happened, she would never have devised the charm. The rules needed to be broken in order to save anything — and that’s why I went away for so long. My sisters opted for oblivion rather than be part of my plan; I placed myself in stasis for a thousand years, until the Ice Eaters woke me, letting me know that the time had come for the Flame to burn again, for its one remaining guardian to take control.

‘So, now Shilly has what she needs, normality can resume. I’ll return to keeping the world-tree in shape, and Shilly can stop playing hard and fast with causality. But that doesn’t solve everything. This won’t be the first time I’ve done this kind of work on my own, and I know two things about it with great certainty: it’s hard and it’s lonely. My sisters carried the load while I was gone well enough, but even they found it tough. That’s how Yod managed to get a toehold in the First Realm, when otherwise they might not have allowed it. Even they would have taken action rather than risk the destruction of the entire world-tree. That’s the worst possible outcome.

‘No, it’s like you said, Seth: three is the magic number. Not two or one.
Three
. Do you understand me?’

Seth glanced at Hadrian, who looked as though he was hypnotised. ‘What are you saying?’ he asked.

‘What
exactly
?’ Seth echoed. ‘Stop beating about the bush.’

‘I want you to join me here, in the Tomb, and help me do my job. As equals, not subordinates, in an alchemical marriage between the twins and the Three — Siblings of the Flame, if you will.’ She flashed a quick smile, one that echoed down every world-line at once. Then it was gone. ‘Or a triumvirate. I’m not joking, just in case you’re wondering. I don’t want to rebuild Sheol, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a tomb of any kind. I want to find a new way of doing my job. You can help me do this, and I can make it happen. You’re already in all the branches of this world-tree, like me. All you have to do is decide,’

‘But — why?’ asked Seth. ‘Why us?’

‘Because you deserve a chance to prove yourselves. All your lives you’ve been pushed around, on the back foot. You’re quite right in feeling that you don’t matter, that it’s what you are that counts. So here’s an opportunity to show that you do matter, after all.’

‘And?’ asked Hadrian.

‘And, well…’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘And we get to finish what we started all those years ago.’

‘In Europe?’

‘In Europe. Yes, I know it’s not going to be easy. It could, in fact, be a disaster. But what’s new? Life is all about taking risks and stumbling from one fuck-up to another. At least here we’ll be outside the world-tree — off the permanent record, if you like. There’s a lot to explore when we’re not busy, and if it doesn’t work out there are plenty of places to slot you back in, together or apart. I’m not saying this will fix everything,’ she concluded, ‘but it’s the only way I can think of that gives you the choice you badly need. What do you think? Do you want to take it?’

Seth and Hadrian exchanged glances.

Seth wondered what his brother was thinking.
He
was thinking about travelling back along the world-line to see their parents, and the world as it once was. He couldn’t change anything, but he could at least visit what had been lost. He could
remember
. A thousand years in the Void Beneath had scoured so much away. He had forgotten almost everything that didn’t come back, ultimately, to Hadrian and Yod.

And as for Ellis — he had forgotten a lot of that, too. He remembered the anguish and jealousy of juggling her and his brother while on holidays somewhere. Would it be any better now they were older and given a new purpose? He didn’t know. Older wasn’t necessarily wiser.

An alchemical marriage
… Maybe it wouldn’t work. Maybe age hadn’t made them any smarter. Maybe old jealousies and fears would rear their familiar slimy heads. But was it better than nothing? Better than death?

Yes
. That, he knew with certainty. It had to be. The world was beginning again, and so might he too. Time to stop merely living and find himself a life. He had only himself to answer to — himself, in all possible worlds — if he failed to do that.

Hadrian leaned in close and whispered to his brother, ‘I bet you like the idea of being a legend one day.’

‘I hadn’t even thought of it that way. But, hey, that’s a good point. When they write the next edition of
The Book of Towers
, we’d get a starring role for certain.’

‘Who’d be mad enough to take on that job?’

‘Someone madder than Ron Synett?’

‘As if.’

‘Well, boys?’ asked Ellis. ‘Stop whispering and make a decision.’

‘I think it’s worth a try,’ said Hadrian.

Seth nodded. ‘Me too.’

She didn’t hide her relief. ‘Good. I’m more glad than I can properly convey.’

‘When do we start?’

‘Not immediately. There’s a fairly complex procedure we’ll have to undergo to introduce you properly to the Flame. Not just anyone can do this job, you know. And then there’s Shilly’s charm. That’ll have to be properly in place before you go anywhere.’

Seth reined in a slight disappointment. He was keen to get moving. But he recognised that feeling as a desire to run away from his problems rather than to a solution.

‘Shall we go back to the others, then?’ he asked. ‘Maybe Shilly’s already starting. We wouldn’t know down here.’

‘I’d know,’ Ellis said. But she nodded. ‘All right. It’s done.’

She indicated the body, which had already lost all sense of connection to Hadrian, symbolic or otherwise. It was just another corpse, lifeless and empty. Like St Elmo’s Fire, a faint blue glow rose up around them. Then the stone walls began to buckle and crack under the weight of the water above. Cold rushed through them. The body vanished under a tide of bubbling darkness and disappeared forever.

* * * *

THE RESCUE

‘Who survives and who dies is determined

as much by chance as by will,

on the battlefield and off.’

THE BOOK OF TOWERS
, EXEGESIS 4:15

fter hours of waiting, everything seemed to happen at once. First the Goddess and the twins returned, blurring into view at the base of the scar in the crater wall where they could best observe the clean-up operation. Skender noted their reappearance from his own vantage point not far away, under a makeshift shelter in which the injured were being cared for. The interior of the shelter was warm thanks to the efforts of Kelloman and the other mages, and wardens had set up an extensive system of mirrorlights by which the former battlefield was easily visible. As he sat with Chu’s head in his lap, stroking her hair with one hand and the bilby with the other, he had plenty of time to observe what was going on. Despite his injured arm, black eye and strange sunburn, he didn’t regard himself as one of those needing care.

The Goddess made no move to intervene in the clean-up and no one went to her for advice or to ask where she’d been. A line had been drawn, it seemed, without anyone speaking of it. The Goddess had her business to attend to; everyone else had theirs. For a while their aims had been identical, but now the crisis was over all allegiances were negotiable.

Then the Way opened from Fundelry, and Sal and Shilly emerged from it looking weary but resolved. Their voices didn’t carry to where Skender sat, and he made no move to get closer. He knew he should care more about what would happen next, but he was tired of world-shattering decisions, and he suspected both Sal and Shilly felt the same. As people gathered around them, he could see the stiffness in Sal’s posture and the way Shilly clutched the top of her walking stick. Their work was probably just beginning, Skender thought. He wished them luck with it.

Whatever they had decided, a whole new flurry of activity sprang up around them. Orders radiated throughout the camp. Dozens of people stirred into motion, dropping their former duties and setting off on new ones. Skender was reminded of ant nests in the greater deserts, roused by a single dropped pebble. The Magister of Laure moved among the others like a praying mantis, stooped and predatory. He looked away.

Griel had taken a devel spike through his arm and been sent to the healing tent. His dark eyes moved back and forth, taking everything in. Skender could practically hear the turning of the wheels of his mind.

‘Oriel’s taken a lot of credit for turning up at the last minute, don’t you think?’ Skender said as Oriel consulted with the Alcaide over the repairs to one of the larger blimps. Now that compasses were working again, the Panic didn’t plan to stick around long. ‘That’d bother me, if I were you.’

Griel’s attentive eyes flicked to him, then back to the scene before them. ‘No. This is war. You need people like him.’

‘But the war is over now, and you’ll be stuck with him.’

‘For a while, yes. Not forever.’ Griel emitted a whuffing noise that might have been a laugh. ‘My guess is he already had the flotilla on its way when Kelloman tracked him down, probably following us to make sure we didn’t get up to no good. Covering his bets. How else could he have got here so quickly?’

Skender hadn’t thought of that. It had taken Marmion’s expedition days to make the difficult ascent to the top of the mountains. Oriel had appeared within an hour or two of Sal and Shilly calling for help. He could never have assembled such an armada in time had it not already been on the way.

‘He’s lucky,’ Skender said. ‘Does that make for a good leader?’

‘Absolutely!’ Griel’s eyebrows went up as though Skender had said something amusing. ‘That’s the best trait a wartime leader can have.’

Skender felt himself flush. ‘I think I’ll go for a walk,’ he said. ‘My leg’s going numb. Will you call me—?’

‘I’d call you if you’re on the other side of the world,’ Griel promised with no trace of irony. ‘Go. You deserve a break.’

Skender eased Chu to one side and stood on wobbly knees. The bilby chattered at him through the bars of its makeshift cage, and he sympathised.

‘Okay,’ he told it, opening the stays. ‘You can come too. But no running off this time, all right?’

It crawled onto his shoulder and bit his earlobe as though daring him to change his mind. He had no intention of changing his mind, unless Upuaut in the body of Kelloman’s former host put in an appearance. The golem had been missing since nightfall, as had Pukje and the glast. The absences were probably nothing to worry about, he told himself, but he knew he wasn’t the only one concerned.

He walked downslope past a smoky bonfire, not heading for Sal and Shilly and the others, just moving his legs. Piles of devel flesh crackled and popped in the intense flames. The stench was unbearable. He did his best to stay upwind. Idly, he looked for his parents, but they were nowhere to be seen.