The Inner Circle: The Knowing (40 page)

The slope levelled out into a great
valley. Seeol landed heavily, cracking the ice beneath him. People
drew their swords, but he battered them away as though they were
nothing. Blood . . . but not El-i-miir.

Seeol’s great wings thudded
through the air. He raked his talons forward and smashed a great
hole in the side of a dome before landing, flaring his wings and
shrieking in the face of a woman who answered his call with a
scream of her own. It was a delicious sound. The woman huddled
against the building in fear for her life. She was right to be
fearful. Seeol opened his mandibles excitedly. If he could just
burst her head and see the blood flow from her arteries. The woman
made several strange gestures before she began to shake
uncontrollably.

‘
A seeol,’ she
whispered.

Everything was blinding white.
The ground exploded underfoot and Seeol found himself being blasted
sideways through hot air. Giant shards of ice erupted as he hit the
ground and slid along its cold surface. He regained his balance and
scrabbled over the broken ice. Utter confusion raced through
Seeol’s mutilated intelligence.

Thunder clapped loudly, causing Seeol’s
ears to ring. The deepest recesses of his mind noticed that the sky
was dense with clouds and lightning struck angrily through the air.
The lightning hit the ice repeatedly, causing a string of
explosions throughout the cleff. Another flashed across Seeol’s
vision and struck the ground just six strides away. He beat his
wings to avoid the worst of the explosion and landed on his feet
snarling.

People raced about in every
conceivable direction. Children screamed. He would devour them. He
forgot the storm and charged. He would break them, tear them into
little pieces. Seeol snapped at the nearest human’s heels.
Lightning struck as people screamed and died while great
thunderclaps drowned out their pitiful cries. Seeol revelled in the
slaughter that ensued and danced at the sound of human suffering as
they howled their sweet melody of death.

A man ran with a child clutched
tight in his arms. Thunder exploded and shards of ice as large as
horses flew in every direction. One crushed the man and sent his
child sprawling across the ground. It was ecstasy. Seeol snatched
at a woman as she ran toward the child and thrust her into the air.
She screamed as she continued to ascend, only to be cut off when a
blast of lightning burnt her to a cinder. It was death so beautiful
. . . but not El-i-miir.

Seeol hunted. He wanted to find
someone. There was a woman he wanted kill. No . . . not kill. He’d
never kill El-i-miir. Yes . . . yes
,
that was it. He had to find and
kill El-i-miir.

*

A substance that seemed unable to
decide whether it was ice or snow crunched underfoot as El-i-miir
made her way north. She stopped abruptly, wrapping herself tight in
Gez-reil’s thick mammoth-skin coat. She turned back to face the
Sixth Cleff. The wind picked up, ripping through her clothing and
causing the blood-red robes of the condemned to flutter at her
boots.

The wind howled.
El-i-miir’s long black hair to whipped about her
face. The sky bore more fearsome black clouds than any weather
El-i-miir had ever witnessed. It seemed appropriate for her
mood.

‘
What am I supposed
to do?’ she cried out in frustration.

A flash of lightning momentarily
revealed a large shadowy figure in the distance, but El-i-miir
shrugged it off as a part of the landscape. By the time the thunder
clapped in her ears, El-i-miir’s thoughts had turned to Ilgrin.
They’d have him in a chamber. They’d torture him and eventually
kill him. El-i-miir put a hand to her heart and winced at the ache
therein. If she stayed out there
,
she’d die
,
and everyone already considered her a Sa’Tanist
anyway. Her name was a disgrace. El-i-miir peered at her hands
through the darkness. The cold had made them white and she found
herself trying to imagine what it’d feel like to be a silt. It was
then that she realised, she’d have felt exactly the way she did in
that exact moment as a human.

‘
We’re all the same.’
She clapped a hand over her mouth, the smile causing pain in such
cold. ‘We’re all the same,’ she cried out in gleeful
revelation.

El-i-miir set off at a run,
determined to do everything she could to save Ilgrin. She would not
let him die, not like that. She only hoped her decision hadn’t come
too late. El-i-miir raced blindly through what’d quickly become a
blizzard, energised by renewed determination. Lightning struck
again and El-i-miir slid to a stop, toppled
forward
,
and
landed heavily on her knees. Then it was black again. Had it been
an illusion?

The blizzard whipped up long sheets of
snow that danced and twisted on the wind, so the immense black
shape she’d seen could’ve simply been a wall of snow. What else
could it have been? El-i-miir had come this way not long ago with
the escorting gils. She knew there was nothing between herself and
the Sixth Cleff. And yet there she’d seen it, what appeared to be a
long black wall right in front of her face. A loud thumping sound
caught El-i-miir’s attention, but still she was oblivious to
whatever it could be. She stretched out her hands and moved
forward, gasping when they contacted something unexpected--wool.
She stifled a scream under the sudden knowledge of what she’d come
across and of course the creature screamed back.

Another flash of lightening confirmed
El-i-miir’s fears, revealing a giant mammoth lost in the blizzard.
She stumbled backward and fell into the snow. The animal had to be
at least seven strides in height, which meant it was a bull and
although the animals were normally peaceful at a distance, they
would certainly defend themselves if startled.

The mammoth stomped its feet and
trumpeted repeatedly through its woolly trunk. Curved tusks swooped
through the air dangerously close to El-i-miir’s head as she stayed
low, dragging herself along the ground. The mammoth glimpsed her
and thrashed its tusks down with such force that the ice to either
side of El-i-miir was shattered. She squealed and rolled out of the
way, but was forced to stop, her robe having gotten caught on a
rock.

With a sharp tug the material
tore free and El-i-miir leapt to her feet. A tusk clipped her
shoulder, sending her sprawling back to the ice. The animal
trumpeted and stomped its foot on El-i-miir’s coat, pinning her to
the spot. A flash of lightning revealed the mammoth’s fear-filled
eyes staring directly at her. It must’ve realised that its enemy
was trapped because a moment later its tusks came bearing down. The
lightning passed. All was darkness and waiting for the inevitable,
El-i-miir squeezed her eyes shut.

Something course slapped against the
side of El-i-miir’s face, but it wasn’t a tusk. An all-too-familiar
piercing scream tore through the night just strides away,
accompanied by the sound of beating wings. The mammoth’s cries
became ones of terrible distress, but still its tusks swooped
dangerously close to El-i-miir’s head. The mighty animal removed
its foot, allowing her to escape. Again the sky lit up, this time
revealing exactly what El-i-miir had expected to see.

Seeol stood atop the mammoth
gnashing at its neck and pecking at its eyes. The giant animal
moaned its misery, trying in vain to shake off its dexterous
attacker. Seeol was far too good at killing. Darkness followed
through which El-i-miir crept ever farther away from the scene as
howls of agony and anguish permeated the night. She had to wait a
long time before another flash of lightning came, but when it did
it was more powerful than anything that’d proceeded it.

The area was lit up to the light of day
as thick bolts of lightning struck one after the other at the very
centre of the Sixth Cleff. Loud screams drifted up from the cleff
and the deep groaning of ice structures crumbling told El-i-miir of
the destruction within. But that was a problem for another
time.

Seeol had torn off chunks of flesh from
the mammoth’s neck and was coating his feathers in blood. The
mammoth was tiring, but seemed to have noticed Seeol’s distraction.
With one desperate wave of its head, its tusk slammed into Seeol
and sent him flailing to the ice. The mammoth did not wait a
second, knowing that only one would survive the confrontation.

A bolt hit the cleff. Seeol
snarled from his place on the ground, but failed to move in time as
the mammoth stomped on him. Seeol screeched, enjoying even his own
pain. The mammoth swung its tusks and crushed Seeol’s wings against
the ice, breaking them instantly. Finally
,
the animal thrust its head
toward the mutant owl, stabbing its tusks straight through Seeol’s
body. Blood spurted from his beak and his head crashed back against
the snow. He squirmed a little, but could no longer fight as the
mammoth struck him again and again.

Darkness filled the night once more and
El-i-miir listened as the mammoth thudded away into the night.
‘Seeol?’ El-i-miir peered through the dark as she crept closer.
Another bolt of lightning struck the cleff.

El-i-miir felt only dread as she
witnessed the creature shrink, his warped features transforming to
become the soft expression of his true self. Seeol’s wounds melted
away, his skin writhing and rippling as it healed. His shattered
wings twisted and reformed, fresh feathers sprouting from the ends
before once again he became an elf owl standing in the snow. The
cleff plunged back into darkness and a moment later tiny claws
first dug into El-i-miir’s should and then burrowed down into her
pocket.

‘
It’s awfully
coldness,’ Seeol complained. ‘Could I pleases ride in your most
comfortable pocket?’

‘
You’re alive.’
El-i-miir frowned, acknowledging the fact that they’d all be better
off if he weren’t.

‘
I is,’ Seeol
replied, before burrowing ever deeper into the pocket. ‘Oh, that’s
very nice, paper for a nest.’

Ignoring the bird, El-i-miir raced
across the ice. There was so little time. Ilgrin was supposed to be
interrogated in the underground chambers of the Dome of the Sixth,
but with the repeated lightning strikes there was little hope the
structure would remain standing for long.

‘
Okay.’ She
exhaled slowly, reaching the gentle slope that served as the entry
to the northern side of the basin. ‘Focus
,
El-i-miir.’ She felt along the
Ways.

She reached out, seeking the thread
that confirmed Ilgrin’s continued existence. He was there. He was
scared but he was alive. Seteal was with him. Whether that was a
good thing or not was yet to be discovered. El-i-miir hurried her
pace to a run.

Revelation 21

2. And I saw a new
Hae'Evun and a new Earth: for the first Hae'Evun and the first
Earth have passed away. And look, She descends with the
clouds.

3. And She will wipe out every tear
from their eyes, and whisps will be no more, neither will mourning,
not outcry, nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed
away.

Scriptures of the Holy Tome

CHAPTER
Twenty-Seven

Underground

‘
This way.’ Ilgrin
took Seteal’s hand and dragged her along at a run.

‘
Wait,’ she said
weakly, but continued along with him. ‘How do you know this is the
right way?’

‘
I came from the
other direction.’ Ilgrin faced Seteal. ‘I took a risk stopping for
you. Don’t make me regret it.’

‘
I don’t understand.’
The young woman looked back down the icy corridor. A haunting
rumbling sound told Ilgrin the reason why she’d ceased speaking.
She’d finally noticed what he was running from to begin
with.

Lightning had struck some deep
foundation and set off a chain reaction throughout the building.
The seemingly endless corridor was progressively collapsing behind
them.

‘
Maker!’ Seteal
exclaimed, snatching her hand from Ilgrin’s grasp to run with
renewed vigour.

Chunks of ice fell free from the
ceiling and Ilgrin found himself having to duck and weave to avoid
being struck. Green-flamed lanterns flickered and died. Up
ahead
,
the
corridor collapsed, a solid wall of ice filling their only means of
escape. Ilgrin refused to stop running and hit it forcefully with
his shoulder, but failed to make an impact.

‘
Over there!’ Seteal
shouted, pointing at a doorway to a small room. There was little
hope the room would remain unscathed, but Ilgrin could see no other
option. He hurried for the doorway, but the room collapsed in on
itself before they could enter. With a deafening crack that shocked
through the ice, the wall that’d previously blocked their route of
escape crumbled.