The Heretic Land (38 page)

Close
, Venden said, his voice so strong that it sent Bon staggering against a tree.
Edge along the next valley … then down into cold
… Strong, but not the son he had known.

Leki was watching him from a few steps away, head tilted quizzically.

‘Almost there,’ Bon said.

It was midday. They had walked through the night, and now the snow was halfway to their knees. Still it fell. It muffled their footsteps, obscured their view of the landscapes they crossed. They went west along the next valley, and then the landscape began to change.

The snowfields were pure and untouched, but across the wide valley were what looked like giant white boulders, hundreds of them, a chaotic array of tumbled rocks so frequent and large that even the snow could not camouflage them.

It was only as they approached close to the first rock that it became clear what they were.

‘Ice boulders,’ Bon said.

‘But from where?’ Leki asked. She sounded unsettled, and Bon could not blame her.
Scattered with the huge objects, the landscape was distinctly alien.

‘Below,’ Bon said. ‘The frozen heart of Skythe.’

‘There’s been an eruption.’ Leki walked to the nearest boulder and touched it, scraping snow from its surface until the solid ice was revealed. It was green, deep with age.

‘That’s where we’re going,’ Bon said. Leki turned to look at him, her hand still on the boulder.

‘Venden whispers to you,’ she said, her voice barely louder than falling snow.

Bon nodded because he could not speak. They stared at each other, and he saw fear and fascination in her eyes. Perhaps it was a reflection of his own.

‘Everything I’ve ever learned from Arcanum, and you’re leading us in,’ she said.

‘Perhaps Arcanum doesn’t know as much as it thinks.’

‘No, it knows more. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll know where Aeon is, and then …’ Leki touched the hem of the jacket where she had hidden the shoot dust tube.

I will never let her
, Bon thought, and it felt cool and final. He said, ‘We’re not finding Aeon to harm it.’

‘Then why?’

‘Because it’s telling me to in my son’s voice.’

They walked on, with nothing else to say.

Just as they reached the ragged wound in the land from which the massive ice boulders had been blasted, the snowfall began to ease.

In the utter silence they both heard, from the dark rent in the world that looked bottomless and timeless, a breeze that might have been a breath.

They went down. Bon led, working his way carefully across the rugged, broken ground leading to the fissure. The thick snow camouflaged the sharp
edges of rock and ice, and when he fell it buffered him from injury. Leki grabbed his arm and helped him up, and he thought once again of her husband. He knew that the affection between them was not in his eyes only, but the idea that it had been a part of her ploy – a way for her to remain close to him, and so grow potentially closer to magic and the rumoured rising god – made him feel sick. Not because she had taken advantage of him – he was coming to accept that had happened before, in some way, with Milian – but because his feelings for Leki had been growing. Even before finding Venden, she had given him a reason to look forward to the next day.

The caverns caught light in chaotic ice sculptures, filtering down from above and sucked inward as if those deep, dark places drew it down. Soon there was no snow covering, but ice still covered the ground.

If it erupts again
… Bon thought, but there was no benefit in thinking that way. If the same powers rose once more, he and Leki would be crushed and merged with the eruptions, red smears on ice that had existed at these depths for so long. They were climbing past evidence of Skythe’s tragic history. Before the war, these caverns might have been warm with the fires of Skythe’s contented heart. Now they resounded with the chill of death. It was as if magic’s corruption had made a cadaver of the land.

‘How deep?’ Leki asked from behind Bon.

‘We’ll know when we get there,’ he said. ‘Why? Afraid?’

Leki did not answer. When Bon glanced back at her she was glaring at him as if about to speak. But she remained silent.

‘
I
am,’ he said. A great ice wall stood to their left, and it seemed to glow with an inner light. Shapes and shadows existed deep within. Perhaps this had once been a wall of fire. He placed his hand against the ice. As if the contact was a signal, a waft of warmer air
came from below, deeper down. It carried no scent, but was heavy with moisture.

‘Just listen to your voices and move along,’ Leki said. ‘The time’s long gone for standing still.’

Time seemed to distort – frozen, shattered, and melded back together by the ice. They went deeper, along ice tunnels and into crevasses that would have been deadly if another ground-shifting event took place. No water flowed or dripped. This was a completely frozen environment, and though warmer air occasionally wafted up from below, there was no indication of thaw.

Deeper
, Venden whispered in his ear, and Bon looked around, startled. Leki had heard nothing. There was no echo.
Not far now … not far.

‘And what does Aeon want of us?’ Bon asked aloud. There was no reply, other than Leki’s troubled look. ‘Will you know the way out?’ Bon asked her. She was Arcanum, after all.

Leki nodded, but he saw doubt cloud her expression.

They moved deeper, deeper. A solid waterfall threw off a haze as though its spray had also been frozen. Jagged razors of ice promised pain if they slipped. Deep fissures offered dark oblivion. They kept to the easiest routes, and it was almost as if their path was being illuminated for them. The air carried light tainted with the hues of deep time – heavy greens, blues, the solidity of ice formed from the ruins of Skythe’s dreams.

Bon listened for Venden. But his dead son only spoke to him again when they stood before the fallen thing, risen once more.

And
Venden
stood before
them
.

After Aeon’s words came the pain.

Venden’s physical passing had been brief but awful. He had felt his body coming apart, aware of the terrible damage being wrought upon
the shell he had always known, the vessel that had been him. The realisation had been worse than the pain – that this was the end, and that the ripping, rending, splashing finality could never be reversed. Then had come the strange continuation as part of Aeon, not apart from it. His mind persisting, not entirely as it had been and yet still an independent glimmer in the ferocious blaze of Aeon’s new existence.

This was different. The agony of being brought together was a whole new order of pain, because it was not simply a fleeting moment in time. He felt flesh and bone and blood assembling, and every newfound nerve knew it to be wrong. His mind received each signalled agony and held onto it. Bones melded, blood liquefied and flowed, flesh knitted, skin and veins formed, and the most complex form in the world – a living, breathing thing – came into being from the body of Aeon. Venden screamed in his mind, and then realised that he could hear that scream as well, feel it itching his throat and vibrating through his chest, and taste the spray of blood that hazed the air before him. He took in a deep, juddering breath and screamed again, and he felt a wash of pity swilling around him as Aeon shifted position.

It was in his mind, as he had been in its own. It was a connection both physical and ephemeral. He was still a facet of Aeon, a Venden-shaped projection like a limb giving itself to another use, with thin fleshy constructs connecting them. He had his own face, his own hair, and looking down across his naked body he was struck with a startling familiarity.
It’s been so long since I have seen myself
, he thought, although perhaps it had only been a day. Being a solid thing felt so wrong.

Venden opened his mouth to cry out again, but then the pain began to subside. His naked and bloodied body swaying in that freezing
cavern. The mass of Aeon was behind him, and before him were great ice walls glimmering with their own inner light. He shivered. A mist of warm air drifted across him from Aeon to swill the blood from his skin.

Aeon wants me as myself for when my father comes
, Venden thought.

‘Venden Ugane,’ he said, his voice barely a croak. He said his name again, more evenly. And again. By the time he heard scrambling footsteps descending towards the cavern, he could almost believe he was himself again.

‘There have been rumours of Aeon,’ the figure said, and Leki caught Bon beneath the arms as his knees weakened.

It was not
quite
his son. The body was there, and the shape, and Bon even recognised the casual, slightly arrogant stance that had always made him believe his son viewed all others around him as fools. But this was not
only
Venden, because there was something stretching away behind him. Veils of skin, veins, and streaks of something that did not belong in or on a person’s body.

These fragments connected him to Aeon.

‘There it is,’ Leki whispered in Bon’s ear, as if he could not see.

In the half-light, Aeon’s true shape and size were ambiguous at best. It was huge – much larger than the shape they had seen in that clearing further to the east. Long, low, with heavy limbs that seemed to anchor it to the cavern floor, its body performing a gradual change into ice where it touched, it had blended itself with the frozen heart of the land.

‘Rumours,’ Venden said again. His mouth moved, but did not quite match the words. His eyes shifted left and right, alighting finally on Bon. They did not change. They did not smile.

‘There have always been
rumours of Aeon,’ Bon said. ‘I was one who believed.’

‘Belief is immaterial,’ Venden said. ‘Faith is meaningless. Human things, and humans …’ He blinked, frowned, then continued. ‘What matters is that magic cannot be allowed. Crex Wry must not rise.’

‘Venden—’ Bon began.

‘I am Aeon.’

‘Son,’ Bon whispered. Leki leaned into him, her contact welcome, fresh.

‘They will raise magic against me,’ Venden said, ‘as they did before. Before, they caught me by surprise. This time I will be more able to withstand it. But also, magic itself will be more ready.’

‘Ready for what?’ Bon said.

‘To hold on, and not be put back down by their … Engines. Ready to gain a foothold, so that Crex Wry can claw its way back. And if it does …’ Venden’s face creased as if in sudden pain, and Aeon shivered.

‘We’ll do anything to stop you raising your Kolts again,’ Leki said. Bon flinched at her aggression, but he could not help admiring her as well. In the face of this thing, she still spoke what she thought.

‘More rumours of Aeon,’ Venden said.

‘Your
death
brought the Kolts,’ Bon said, appealing for the whole truth. ‘Didn’t it? The magic destroyed you, and polluted the whole of Skythe, and created those things that wiped out everything they touched?’

‘It can say whatever it wants,’ Leki said.

‘Rumours,’ Venden said, and the smile in his voice was chilling. ‘The truth matters little to those who can only lie.’

‘And you can’t?’ Leki scoffed.

‘Aeon has no need of lies.’ Venden shimmered before them, seeming to blur as if
the ground moved. Bon had felt nothing. His legs were firm. He blinked, and Venden was still again.

‘You
do
lie,’ Leki said. ‘It’s revenge you want, and—’

‘Magic
must not
be touched,’ Venden said, harsher. ‘It is the dark soul of a fallen thing.’

‘Like you?’ Bon asked.

‘
Nothing
like me,’ Venden said. ‘Crex Wry is …’ He raised his arms slowly, and veils of thin skin connected them to the sides of his body. ‘I can show you.’

Bon stepped forward without hesitation.

‘Bon, no!’ Leki said.

He didn’t answer, but walked across the frozen cavern floor to the simulacrum of his son. One more chance to touch, however strange the touch might be. One more chance to let Venden know that his father loved him.

‘Bon!’ Leki said again.

‘Don’t you want to know?’ he asked without turning around. As he reached for Venden’s right hand, he heard Leki’s cautious footsteps behind him, and saw her reaching for Venden’s other hand.

‘Oh!’ Leki gasped. Bon glanced sidelong at her – her eyes were wide, jaw slack, and she was looking past Venden at the massive shape beyond. Her fingers were splayed around Venden’s, the thin webbing enveloping his hand. Bon thought perhaps she might be reading his blood, and then—

A lurch. Dislocation, confusion, and he is amongst a landscape in turmoil. Mountains shaking, valleys folding, rivers boiling, lakes erupting. The sky is on fire and the land flows, malleable and not yet set, and a figure stands solid within the upheaval. A terrible, powerful sentience oversees everything. It has intelligence of an order and type that Bon cannot understand. It has intentions beyond the scope of mere human ken. But he knows its ambition is not pure, and the sense of wrongness exuding
from the vision sets his skin on fire. It is shattering and mind-blowing, like the worst nightmare that can never be explained, but which comes again and again. A personal horror, but one which Bon knows will be personal to everyone who touches it. He vomits, but has only a distant awareness of the acid tang spewing from his mouth. The image is everything – timeless, terrible, violent, merciless. The shape stands tall and strong. Its personality sets the world aflame.

The vision was snatched back as quickly as it had been granted, and Bon fell to his knees before Venden. The stink of vomit, the chill of ice, he wiped his hand across his mouth and tried to catch his breath.

‘By all the gods,’ Leki whispered beside him, but she was using a curse that had no meaning.

‘No,’ Bon gasped. ‘No, only one of them.’

‘There stands Crex Wry,’ Venden breathed. ‘And magic is its lifeblood, its blackened soul. Take the message to leave magic where it belongs – down, in knots that must not be unpicked. Aeon will go its own way, in peace, as ever it did. It wanders the world, from the brightest day of creation to the darkest of end times. Quash rumours of Aeon. Speak the truth.’