The Devoured Earth (10 page)

That would make sense in terms of keeping out the cold. None of the shutters was open. The single door faced the lake and was also soundly shut.

Skender raised a hand to knock, but Marmion shook his head. They moved on to the next hut, and the next. They were the same. No voices disturbed the silence. Only the wind moaned through the narrow, cobbled streets.

The twins spotted a window without shutters and moved off to inspect it. Leaning close to the thick black glass, they brushed away a rime of ice that frosted over it and peered inside. The view was as black as coal, and for a moment all they could see was their own reflection: the empty silhouette of the Homunculus and, around that, a glimpse of the crater and sky. Hadrian leaned closer, and something loomed at him out of the darkness — a face so thin as to be skull-like, with wide eyes, pale skin and mouth in an open O. He flinched away, knocking him and his brother off-balance. They sprawled backwards onto the hard ground, limbs waving.

He or Seth cried out in alarm; it was hard to tell who. The others came running.

‘What is it?’ barked Marmion. ‘What have you found?’

The twins rose shakily to their feet. ‘There’s someone in there,’ Hadrian said. ‘I saw them.’

The door was shut but not locked. Rosevear took off his gloves and knocked. On receiving no response, he cautiously nudged the door open and peered inside. For a breath he didn’t move. Then he went down a step and through the door, out of sight. Marmion, Skender and the twins waited nervously.

‘You say you saw someone?’ came the healer’s voice from inside the house.

‘Yes,’ said Hadrian. ‘Someone looking back out at us. An old man, I think. It was hard to tell.’

‘Well, you must have been mistaken. The people in here aren’t old at all, and they’ve been dead for some time.’

Marmion, Skender and the twins exchanged glances. ‘How many?’ asked the bald warden.

‘Three. A man, a woman and a young child. A girl. By the looks of them they died in their sleep.’ Rosevear’s curly head appeared from the doorway, making Skender jump. ‘You can come in. It appears to be quite safe now.’

The bald warden followed Rosevear through the door, and Skender did the same, albeit more warily. The twins came last, hesitating on the threshold for a moment, almost defiantly.

I know what I saw
, said Hadrian.
I didn’t imagine it
.

I don’t think you did
, his brother replied.
I saw it too
.

Then what do you think it was? A ghost?

No. But let’s take a look inside.

They stepped into the low-ceilinged house. It was sparse and simple, with a central hearth under a flared chimney surrounded by cooking utensils and pots. The ashes were grey and cold. One corner of the single room was curtained off for privacy. A surprising array of digging tools — picks, shovels, spikes, and more — leaned against one wall, below an impressive selection of patched coats hanging from wooden hooks. In an alcove on the far wall was a narrow bed, inside which were curled the three people Rosevear had described.

It did look like they were sleeping, except their faces were withered and shrunken, perfectly preserved by the dry, cold air. Only the child looked at all disconcerted by the death that had befallen them. Her eyebrows were frozen in a perpetual frown over eyes tightly closed, and her mouth was turned down. She might have been suffering a nightmare. Her parents had died beside her, protecting her from the cold with their body heat. Their expressions were peaceful and calm, even though everything in the house was now equally frigid.

‘What happened to them?’ asked Marmion. ‘A disease? Poison?’

‘Neither, I think.’ With a tug of a thick curtain, Rosevear brought a shaft of grey light into the room and bent to examine the bodies more closely. ‘They died without great suffering.’

‘The cold, then?’ Skender put his arms around himself and shivered. ‘Or water? Perhaps the lake rose before it fell, and drowned them.’

‘Unlikely. Something killed them in their sleep, and killed them quickly.’ He lifted back their bedclothes. ‘There’s no blood, no disturbance, no nothing. Unless someone killed them elsewhere then put them to bed afterwards…’ He screwed up his nose as though at a bad smell and lowered the bedclothes. ‘No, I don’t think so. What killed them wasn’t physical in nature.’

‘The Change?’ asked Hadrian.

Rosevear nodded. ‘The Change can kill like this, although the deadly arts aren’t often taught any more. Mages and wardens haven’t been at war for centuries.’

‘Who says anything human was behind it?’

Seth’s question hung in the frigid air, unanswered, as Marmion prowled the room looking for evidence. His injured right arm moved oddly, as though touching furniture and walls with invisible fingers. He muttered under his breath.

‘This doesn’t explain what you saw,’ said Skender, watching uncomfortably. He glanced at the twins. ‘You said you saw someone looking out at you, through the window.’

‘I did.’

It was you
, said Seth to Hadrian.
That was your face I saw. An older you, poking through the Homunculus somehow. It wasn’t a ghost at all
.

Hadrian couldn’t have been more surprised if Seth had told him it was Albert Einstein. Me?

Yes, you. I understand why you didn’t recognise yourself. It’s been a long time since we had a face, either of us.

Skender was watching them, now, his expression even more concerned. ‘Are you two all right?’

‘Yes,’ said Hadrian, fighting a stammer. ‘I — that is, we’ve had something of a shock. I don’t know what we saw. Maybe we imagined it, whatever it was.’

Skender didn’t look convinced.

Why didn’t you tell him
? Seth asked.

Why didn’t you? And why didn’t you tell me when you guessed?

Because it sounds crazy. And because
…
Well, because it suggests that the Homunculus is coming apart at the seams. Is that something you want to boast about?

Of course not.

‘There’s no sign of forced entry,’ Marmion concluded. ‘No residue of any kind. I think we should check some of the other houses and see if they’re the same. Let’s not come to any conclusions until we’ve done that. Agreed?’

They all nodded. Hadrian could tell that Seth had already made up his mind about who had killed the family. As they followed the others back out into the street, Hadrian whispered,
I can think of only one explanation: Yod murdered them
.

I agree. It’s close. I bet it’s in the towers right now, building up its strength before breaking out across the world. First it ate the Lost Minds in Bardo, and now the minds of the people in this village.

Should we tell the others?

Marmion already knows, little brother.

Yes. I think you’re right.

They watched Marmion lead the way to another low building, where they found another family, this time three generations of women in two beds, as restful as the others and as cold in death. The warden’s face was taut and worried, and it was clear he didn’t like being inside for too long.

The third hut was the same, and the fourth. On the way to the fifth, they found a body sprawled in the street — a man in thick protective hides who lay splayed as though felled in mid-step.

‘How long?’ Marmion asked Rosevear.

‘Death is hard to read in this weather,’ said the healer. ‘There are signs of insect infestation and decay in all the bodies, but the species aren’t the same as the ones back home and the cold slows everything down.’ The healer rocked back on his heels. Two bright red patches glowed on his brown cheeks. ‘Over a week, but not as many as two. That’s my best guess.’

Marmion nodded. He looked about to say something, but at that moment the ground kicked beneath them and the sound of water splashing caught their ears. Rosevear stood and together they ran cautiously through the streets in order to get a view of the shore.

Thick ripples were lapping against the frozen soil. As they watched, a tall wave rolled in and made a splashing noise similar to the one they had heard a moment earlier.

Hadrian’s gaze drifted from the shore to the centre of the lake, where the three squat towers poked their heads out of the dark water. He knew instinctively that they were the source of this new disturbance.

Someone’s getting restless
, he said.’

Do you think
—

‘Run, you idiots!’ called a voice from behind them. ‘It’ll be here any moment!’

The twins spun around. The only evidence that anyone had been on the street behind them was a clatter of footsteps receding into the distance.

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ said Skender.

‘Neither do I. Get after him,’ Marmion said, waving urgently at the twins. ‘You’re the fastest. We’ll follow.’

Neither Seth nor Hadrian resisted the bark of command in Marmion’s voice. With arms and legs moving in perfect synchrony, they ran in pursuit of the stranger. They didn’t have time to think. It was all they could do, even with the refined senses of the Homunculus, to follow the sound to its source. Echoes of their own footsteps and the increased agitation of the lake behind them made the task doubly difficult.

By the time they caught sight of their quarry, he was well outside the village and making good progress up the crater’s sloping edge, to where a series of dark cave mouths gaped at the base of the curving cliff wall.

‘Wait!’ Seth shouted. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To hide, of course!’ the boy bellowed over his shoulder. Despite his many layers, he was making impressive time. ‘Warn the others. They don’t have long to get out of sight!’ He waved vaguely at the downed balloon and the cluster of figures surrounding it, then he put his head down and sprinted for the caves.

The twins vacillated for a moment over whether to follow or turn back. They chose the latter. Marmion and the others were just leaving the village behind them. The surface of the lake was becoming choppier by the second, as though a storm was blowing in.

The twins passed on the message from their unknown benefactor, and added their own interpretation.

‘It’s Yod,’ said Hadrian, feeling a rising panic of his own. ‘I don’t know how, but I can guess why. It spotted us and it’s coming for lunch. We have to get the others under cover. This isn’t the time to stand and fight.’

‘We can watch, though,’ Seth added. ‘We need all the intelligence we can get.’

Marmion nodded. ‘I’ll call Banner. She’ll get everyone moving. Now, keep going. It won’t do anyone any good if we all die.’

Hadrian agreed wholeheartedly. As one, the four of them began toiling up the slope. Marmion’s eyes half-closed in concentration. Rosevear stayed at his side, one hand ready to catch the older warden should he stumble. Skender pumped his skinny arms in an uncoordinated sprint. His expression was pale and frightened.

As he ran, he cast one desperate glance over his shoulder, and Hadrian understood.

Chu was down there with the others, and they hadn’t even started running yet.

Skender mouthed something under his breath and found an unexpected turn of speed. As the caves came nearer, he first drew level with the twins then took the lead. Hadrian was willing to hang back in case Marmion and Rosevear got into trouble. He had seen enough death for one day.

* * * *

Come on, come on
, Skender urged himself in time with his ragged breathing.
One foot in front of the other. Don’t think about what’s coming up behind, just run like the crabbier queen herself is on your tail. Run like you’ve never run before, and then some
!

He didn’t hear the keening noise he was making until the nearest of the caves finally came within range. As he ran into its stony embrace, the echo of his wail came back to him, startlingly loud. He choked it off and let himself pant. The shadow of the cave was dark and cold. The light coming from entrance revealed a narrow but long empty chamber that stretched deep into the bedrock.  The others weren’t far behind. Letting his lungs suck down air like every breath could be his last, he knelt on one knee, took off his right glove and pressed his hand flat against the stone. The Change rippled through it and across his naked palm, distracting him from the cold. Through the stone he felt the distant footsteps of the rest of the expedition. They had started moving at last, warned by Marmion’s call. Skender could also feel the shadow of something dark and unfathomable rising from the depths of the lake. It slithered along the bottom like a tangle of snakes, writhing and squirming, and making furious time. It would reach the shore long before Chu and her companions reached shelter.

Some souvenir
, he thought.

Marmion and the others arrived and gathered around him.

‘Tell Kelloman —’ Skender could barely get the words past the gasping of his lungs. He was sweating under all his layers. ‘Tell Kelloman to find stone and touch it. Quickly.’

Marmion relayed the message. An answer came immediately, direct from the mage.

What are you thinking, boy? There’s a fine spur of rhyolite near here, hut it’s out of our way.

Just get there and do it
—
quickly
!

Of all the impertinence! Whatever’s going on, it had better be important.

Skender bit back a flash of irritation. What could be more important than saving everyone’s lives?
I need to Take from you. You’re too far away to touch, but I can reach you this way. Please
—
we-don’t have long
.

He hadn’t fully recovered from the exertions of the flight up the mountains. That small effort wore him out. Fortunately, Kelloman didn’t waste time continuing the conversation. Skender waited impatiently, gripping the cold stone with his fingers until finally he felt an echo of the mage in the bedrock of the world. It was like hearing a sound underwater: muffled and hard to pin down but definitely there. He reached for it, felt Kelloman reach out to him in return, and connected.