The Devoured Earth (6 page)

The source of the avalanche lay far above them. Whatever caused it had sent a vast shelf of ice and snow crashing hundreds of metres down the relatively bare mountainside below. The dirty white scar left in its wake stretched right across the man’kin’s path, fanning out as it hit less precipitous terrain below. For a worryingly large distance, the trail was buried under metres of unstable debris.

‘This isn’t good,’ said Highson.

‘That’s stating the obvious,’ Kail muttered. Mindful of any sudden loud noises, he trotted to the nearest edge of the avalanche’s wake. Sure enough, the trail vanished under it and showed no signs of emerging. Even the shape of the terrain beneath was difficult to make out.

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Sal, tugging back his hood to expose his horrified face. ‘This can’t be happening.’

Kail watched him closely. The young man was perpetually poised on the brink of violence, to himself and those around him, and that only worsened when he became upset. Ever since Shilly’s disappearance, he had been bottling his emotions under incredible pressure. The Change boiled around him like a stormy sea.

Now he had turned pale and stood without moving, eyes fixed on the devastation before them. His hands shook only slightly, but revealingly.

‘Nothing’s going right. Maybe we
should
turn back.’

‘Hey,’ said Highson, looking at him in surprise. ‘You don’t really mean that.’

‘Don’t I? If we hadn’t been held up this morning, we’d be under that pile right now.’

That was a sobering thought. ‘We always knew this climb was going to be dangerous,’ Kail said.

‘Maybe I didn’t. How could I have? I’ve never been on a mountain before. I’ve never tracked man’kin moving at speed. I’ve never had to worry about freezing in my sleep, or being eaten by a bear.’ Sal rounded on him. ‘Can you tell me it’s going to be any easier from here? That we’ve survived this long by skill, not luck?’

‘I think we should take that rest stop we talked about earlier,’ said Kail, not wanting to agree with Sal under these circumstances. He too shared the certainty that all hope of finding Shilly was now lost — unless they could shift several thousand tonnes of debris in a matter of hours, and he doubted if even Sal in a bad mood was capable of such a feat.

Highson agreed immediately. ‘That’s a good idea. My nerves could definitely use some settling.’

‘It won’t make any difference,’ said Sal woodenly. ‘At least if we turn back, it’s downhill all the way.’

Kail untied the water from his hip and took a deep swig. He needed to think. There might be a way around this situation. The man’kin’s tracks would resume on the far side of the avalanche’s trail of debris. All they had to do was find them and they could move on. Yes, it would remain dangerous, and probably become more so the higher they went. But giving up at the first serious hurdle wasn’t in his nature. And it wasn’t in Sal’s, either.

A new thought occurred to him. What if the avalanche had been triggered deliberately to put them off the trail? That was a possibility he couldn’t afford to ignore. But who might do such a thing? The man’kin themselves?

Kail understood, then, exactly what was going through Sal’s mind. Shilly had gone willingly with the man’kin. Perhaps she didn’t want to be found by anyone, Sal included.

Kail felt for him. ‘This was an accident,’ he told Sal, putting a hand on his shoulder that was instantly shrugged away. ‘We’ll find her. Don’t worry.’

‘You won’t,’ said a voice from above them. ‘And your young friend is right. You have every reason to worry.’

Sal, Highson and Kail instantly turned. The Change turned with them, kicking up an expanding bubble of dust and pebbles. Highson put himself physically between Sal and possible attack and formed an open-handed Y with his outstretched arms and body. Kail tugged off his right glove to free his fingers.

On top of the spur of rock they had just passed sat a strange figure, a manlike thing with qualities that weren’t entirely human. The size of a small child, with an underfed, bony look, his face was narrow, as though squashed between two hands. His blade-like nose had a sharp upward bow to it, like a skinning knife, and his eyes formed a disconcerting V to either side. His mouth was pursed in a piercingly sharp smile.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ said the figure, ‘unless you give me good reason to.’

‘Stay back,’ warned Highson.

‘Oh, I will. I can smell you from here.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Pukje, and I’ve come to do you a favour. In fact, I’ve already done you a favour, although you might not see it that way. I’ve been watching you for a while now. You’re determined to get yourselves killed, aren’t you? Perhaps I should let you, but I feel oddly compelled to offer you my aid instead. I have these flashes of selflessness occasionally. One day I’ll get them seen to.’

‘You’re the one who searched our camp last night,’ guessed Kail, not believing for a second that the creature’s motives were so ill-defined.

‘What if I am? I did you no harm.’

‘You want something from us,’ Kail persisted. ‘Something you didn’t find, otherwise you would’ve just robbed us and moved on. What is it?’

‘Wouldn’t you like to know, warden man?’ The creature’s eyes narrowed and his smile became markedly malicious. ‘It’s not in that pouch around your neck, if that’s what you’re wondering. I took a good look at your pretty bauble while you snored on. Do you have any other secrets you’d like to share with the group? Who Vania is, perhaps, and why you carry her letter with you everywhere you go?’

Kail felt himself flush from the top of his head down to his chest. ‘That’s none of your business.’

The creature laughed. When his mouth opened, Kail saw no teeth. ‘You have nothing I want
except
your business.’

‘Pukje.’ Sal spoke the unfamiliar name with deliberate emphasis:
Pook-yay
. ‘We don’t have time for this. If you’ve got something to tell us, get it over with and let us do what we have to do.’

‘I know why you’re here,’ said the creature, sobering. ‘I know who you’re looking for. I know where they’re going, and I know you’re too late to get there in time.’

‘How can you know all this?’ asked Highson.

‘I have eyes and ears, and other senses,’ said Pukje. ‘I use them.’

‘Will you tell us where they’re going?’ said Sal.

‘I can do better than that, Sal. I can take you there.’

‘Why?’

‘Out of the goodness of my heart.’

‘We don’t even know you’ve got a heart,’ said Highson.

Casually, and as lightly as a leaping possum, Pukje jumped down from his perch. Although he was barely a metre tall, the sudden move prompted the three men to scatter. Kail had a bola spinning in his right hand before Pukje landed and started brushing himself down. What Kail had taken to be skin was in fact a grey-green covering of some kind, like felt or densely-compacted moss.

‘I’m not human, gentlemen,’ Pukje said. ‘That should be immediately obvious to you. But I’m not without feelings you’d recognise: compassion, curiosity and fear among them. I do have a heart of flesh and blood, and it will stop as surely as yours if Yod ever breaks loose in this world.’ One canted eyebrow raised at their reactions to the name. ‘Yes, the ancient enemy. I’ve been around. I’ve seen a few things. You’d be wrong to assume I don’t have my own agenda — but for the moment it’s aligned with yours. You might as well take advantage of that fact while it lasts. I know, and you should be suspecting it by now, that I’m your only chance of getting up these mountains alive.’

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Sal, tight-lipped.

‘Why do young men always ask stupid questions?’ Pukje strolled close to Sal and stared up at him. Although the impish creature barely reached Sal’s waist, his presence was such that they seemed to be talking eye to eye. ‘You remind me of someone I knew a long time ago. Someone else caught in a situation well beyond his knowledge, but not his ability. He changed the world, him and his brother. You might have heard of them: the twins Castillo.’

Sal’s indrawn breath was audible in the still air. ‘You’re talking about Hadrian and Seth.’

Pukje smiled. ‘Hadrian once carried me up a mountain, in a manner of speaking — just as you’re about to let me carry you. I’ll show you the way to the top, as I showed him, because that’s where you have to go. That’s the intersection; the meeting point of everything. The beginning and the end; the cusp between this world and the next. You need to be there, but the way you’re going won’t take you. You need a short cut, like the one I have in mind.’

‘A short cut.’ Sal’s scepticism was obvious. ‘What sort of short cut?’

‘The only sort that matters. One that will get you where you need to be in a manner appropriate to your needs.’ The hungry little smile widened. ‘Trust me. I’m offering you your only chance of seeing this done. Take it or you really might as well turn back — and say goodbye to your beloved Shilly forever.’

Sal bunched his fists at the strange creature’s threatening tone. A gust of unnatural wind swept down the mountainside, spinning around the two of them and buffeting Kail with freezing dust. Sal’s dark hair swirled around his head. His eyes glittered.

‘Shilly’s not mine. She’s her own person, which is exactly how we got into this mess. If she’d only give us a sign. If she’d only
explain!

Sal stopped and shook his head. His long hair hung down over his forehead like a veil. When he opened his eyes again, they were clear.

‘All right. I’ll go with you and take my chances as they come.’

‘Sal, wait —’ Highson stepped forward with his hand raised.

‘Don’t argue, Highson. I have to do this. And you’re not coming with me.’

‘No.
Really
no, now.’ Sal’s father’s face flushed with anger. ‘You’re being stupid as well as reckless.’

The wind swept higher. ‘I said, don’t argue. It has to be like this.’

‘It doesn’t. I haven’t come this far to let you leave without me, and I’m not going back to Milang without you. There’s only one other option, Sal.’

The air suddenly stilled, freezing into swirling vortices and tangled currents that dissolved away in bitter silence. Kail felt father and son’s clash of wills echoed by the Change in the world around them.

Pukje’s low chuckle broke the silence. ‘Looks like you’re the tiebreaker, Habryn Kail. What say you? Where does your heart lead?’

Back home, he thought instantly to himself, to the low, dry flatlands of the Strand, where mountainsides don’t collapse and water — what little there was — stayed comfortably liquid. Where his duties were simple and well defined, and the world might end between one day and the next but he would know nothing about it beforehand. Free of dread and doubt, he could live his life as he had always wanted, no matter how short it might be.

He suppressed a sudden apprehension. The bola was still spinning. Its insistent hum was an anchor to the present, to what he needed to say.

‘We’re with you, Sal,’ he said, ‘whether you choose to follow Pukje, or try to find the trail here, or go back the way we came. Shilly would want it that way.’
As you well know
, he added silently to himself.

Sal bowed his head and some of the tension left the air. ‘If you both end up dead, I’ll blame her.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about that. Anything that gets both of us is going to get you too.’ Kail forced a smile. ‘You’re not
that
strong.’

‘This has nothing to do with strength,’ said Pukje in serious tones. ‘It’s about being in the right place at the right time. It’s about symmetry and shape, and geometry. Give me a lever long enough and I’ll prove to you that strength is nothing more than an illusion — an illusion that can kill, gentlemen. Don’t let me hear you making that mistake again.’

With that, Pukje turned to face the precipice on their right and took a running jump out into space.

Sal gaped in shock as the little creature dropped from sight. Highson cried out. Kail had no time to do more than take two steps towards the edge, already dreading what he would see.

A large beast rose up in front of him, grey-green wings cracking mightily.

‘Now,’ it said in Pukje’s voice, ‘let’s get this show on the road.’

* * * *

THE CRONE

‘For every present there are many futures,

distinguished by details as small as a cough or as

large as a Cataclysm. There are many pasts, too,

just as many roads can have the same destination.

And for every discrete now, there are a multitude

of other nows, all existing side by side with the

one we know, related but not connected to each

other. This is the world-tree, revealed to us in all

its glory when we die and enter the Third Realm.’

SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

he sun was a bloated red ball in the sky, too bright to gaze into directly but casting little heat and no comfort at all across the blasted landscape below. Shilly had stopped looking at it long ago, keeping her head bowed as she hobbled along the open sections of the ravine. When she reached shade, she stopped to take a breather.

Ever since the sun had stopped moving across the sky, light had become a baleful force in the world. Only shadows and darkness offered sanctuary. Night was an alien concept, a dream she occasionally woke from with wet cheeks, like the dreams of Sal that still plagued her after so many long years.

She walked the ravine once a week, going from her workshop to the struggling community where the people traded precious supplies for her remedies and advice. No one ever offered to help carry the supplies back for her. She was on her own in the Broken Lands as far as the villagers were concerned, and most of the time she liked it that way. But every now and again, with her back aching and her bad leg on fire, she pined for a little more generosity of spirit in the world. The track seemed longer every time she walked it, although she supposed that said more about her advancing years than the route itself. But, on the positive side, the weight of her supplies shrank as she got older and ate less. Maybe one day, she idly thought, she’d become so thin she wouldn’t need to eat at all.