The Devoured Earth (2 page)

Yet, despite the hostile conditions, there were signs of life: streamers of smoke rose from small communities huddling in sheltered niches; paths crisscrossed several more accessible regions, linking caves that were almost invisible until the balloon came directly alongside them. Once, when surmounting a broad spur and coming into view of the valley beyond, the travellers had been confronted by a vast, flat roof large enough to cover two Milangs. Canted at a steep angle to prevent snow from piling too deeply, it sheltered nearly a third of the valley below. Exactly what it protected was unknown to either Panic or forester, and was likely to remain that way, for nothing and no one came to stare at the intruder in the skies. Very few people had emerged from any of the places they had seen, made cautious by the events of recent weeks.

Everywhere they went Skender saw evidence of the flood. Deep channels that diverged and joined traced complex paths down the side of the mountains. It soon became clear that the torrent that had filled the Divide had taken many routes from its source. Several of these channels had played havoc with the region’s struggling communities, sweeping away animals, crops and homes. Some of the channels were still carrying water that roiled and foamed as it fell. One waterfall dropped so far that from its middle Skender could see neither top nor bottom. For an enchanting but unnerving hour he could pretend that the flow was endless.

By the fourth day, he had begun to wonder if their journey, too, might have no end. Upwards and upwards they strove, snatching every metre of altitude from a reluctant sky. The cloud level dropped away and the vista of jagged, twisted stone below and beside them had become even more terrifying, yet the summit, visible only as a dark line against the sky far above, seemed to come no closer. The strain on the balloon’s mingled crew increased the higher they went. Altitude sickness took a severe toll on minds and bodies that were already fatigued.

Nowhere was that more obvious than in the rivalry of Kelloman and Marmion. The air had always been tense between the two men, both of them ambitious and masters of their very different disciplines. That tension was now manifesting in the form of fierce battles of pointed politeness. Skender — caught up in the ongoing campaign because he was nearly a mage himself and therefore the only ally Kelloman had — found himself becoming impatient with both men. What was the point of expending so much energy on pointless one-upmanship? It only made the rest of the crew more uncomfortable than they would otherwise have been.

A long, sustained shudder rippled through the gondola, bringing him back to the present and sending the Panic crew scurrying about, checking instruments and adjusting control surfaces. One opened a hatch in the ceiling and slipped quickly outside. A wave of bitter cold swept through the interior to where Skender knelt at the back, doing his best to concentrate. He shuddered, despite the thick layers of thermal underwear under his black robe. The caulking around the gondola’s joins and seams was far from perfect, allowing hair-thin, knife-sharp breezes to slash past his ears, so he knew going outside would be colder still.

He stole another peek forward. Marmion had joined Chu and Griel. All three peered up and out the pilot’s window.

‘That looks promising,’ Skender heard Chu say, ‘and about time too.’

‘Fifty metres to the summit,’ the warden announced to the crew in general. ‘There’s a pass near the top. We’re aiming for that. Once through and out of this wind, the going should be steadier.’

So close!
Skender thought, but it still seemed another world away. He remembered something the twins had said about the Second Realm being next to the First in the sense that one second was next to another; they occupied the same space, and yet were quite separate, and crossing from one to the other could be incredibly difficult. That was how he felt about the top of the mountains. It was there, and always had been, but getting to it was proving far from easy.

‘Would you like to rest before the final push?’ asked Mage Kelloman without either opening his eyes or moving from his meditative posture. ‘If the wind is problematic —’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Marmion with a faint smile. ‘In fact, I thought we might increase the pace. There’s no point holding back now. The sooner we get to the top, the sooner we can rest.’

‘Why not?’ Behind Kelloman’s nonchalant reply, Skender sensed exhaustion and determination in equal measure. ‘I’ll give you all the potential you need.’

‘Right, then. Let’s get on with it.’

Someone groaned. Skender couldn’t tell who, but he echoed the sentiment. Not for the first time, Skender wished Sal were there to help them. With his wild talent behind the push upwards, the journey would be over in moments. But Sal had his own quest to pursue.

Mage Kelloman resumed his concentration on the suncatching charms. The gondola’s engines throbbed at a deeper pitch, casting a golden light on the cliff face as the blimp continued its upward journey. Fifty metres didn’t sound far; Skender could have walked it with no effort at all. But flying was a different matter to walking, especially as they were now very close to the theoretical limits of powered-balloon travel. Every metre was a challenge.

‘That’s the way,’ Marmion said. ‘That’s the way.’ He ran a hand across his bald scalp. The last of his hair had fallen out on the long journey, leaving his head as smooth and round as an egg. ‘One last push and it’ll be over.’

‘You’re in entirely the wrong field, you know,’ said Chu. ‘Have you ever considered midwifery?’

Marmion didn’t rise to the bait. The blimp seemed to be hanging dead in the air, its upward drift was so subtle.

‘Mage Kelloman, a skerrick more oomph if you wouldn’t mind. The charms are at their breaking point.’

‘A skerrick? Why, certainly.’ The mage’s voice was frostily formal, and he did find extra potential from somewhere within himself.

‘That’s the way.’ Marmion breathed again.

The words became a mantra Skender clung to as the metres slid slowly by. He lacked the perspective of those at the front of the gondola, but he could make out the cliff face through the nearest window. It
was
moving, slowly but surely.

The blimp swayed above them, rattling the gondola’s occupants like nails in a tin.

‘Hold fast,’ Marmion encouraged them all as he moved down the gondola’s central aisle, brushing shoulders reassuringly with his one hand. The other arm hung close to his gut, wrapped in the folds of his blue-clad sleeve. ‘We’re almost there. Almost…’

Skender closed his eyes tightly and put everything he had into the final stretch. He saw nothing but the complex curves and axes of the suncatching charm; he felt nothing but the sun’s potential as it swept through him and into the interstices of the blimp. Kelloman’s mind blazed feverishly beside his, a shining example to follow. Yet there was something dangerous about that blaze, as though it could swiftly turn on itself and consume the mind that stoked it. If Kelloman’s concentration faltered for a second, if the sun’s output changed even minutely…

Wind struck the blimp from an unexpected direction, prompting a new series of rattles and creaks and a rising mutter of voices. His eyes flickered open. He blinked to focus them. The gondola hung near the cliff face. Through the window nearest him on the starboard side he saw the bottom of a massive cleft in the dark stone. As though a giant sword had hacked a notch in the uppermost ramparts of the mountain, the sides of the cleft were steep and jagged. Its V-shaped base was clogged with dirty snow. Wind rushed down it with a sustained roaring sound, making the blimp sway as it came closer to the opening. The vessel shook as individual concentration failed and charms flickered. It held its course, just.

Wisps of cloud wreathed the sides of the cleft. Skender strained to see through them. All he could see was the cleft itself, snaking off into the distance like a high-altitude version of the Divide.

‘Well,’ said Marmion, ‘it appears we still have some way to go.’

‘Forward will be a welcome change to up,’ Chu said, prompting a chorus of agreement from human and Panic alike.

‘Indeed it will. Mage Kelloman, I thank you for your hard work and suggest you conserve your strength through this section of our journey. We have enough potential in reserve to fly some distance. Let us take the burden from here.’

The mage looked for a moment as though he might argue, but exhaustion won out over pride, for once. ‘I — yes, thank you. I will rest for a moment.’

Skender helped the mage’s borrowed body to its feet and eased him into a chair. He was surprised as always by Kelloman’s slightness.

‘The way looks clear of obstructions,’ Marmion told the others, ‘but the winds are going to be tricky. Keep it steady as we go. We haven’t come this far to crash.’

And get stuck
, Skender added silently to himself,
at the top of a mountain so far from home
.

The propellers whirred at a deeper pitch than before, turning the blimp around to face nose-first into the cleft. The deck rose and fell beneath him with a steady rhythm as they slid gracefully into the cleft, rocked by air currents. Skender peered out either side of the gondola, energised despite his altitude sickness by their finding the summit. Lidia Delfine and her bodyguard-cum-fiance, Heuve, did the same. Muddy snowdrifts as thick as houses lay below, hugging folds and wrinkles the pallid sun couldn’t breach. Nothing but granite was visible between them, black and forbidding like ancient stained bones.

* * * *

The twins felt they had spent far too much time staring out the windows at the endless grey cliff sliding by, interrupted by ledges, ramparts, shelves of snow and mighty fissures. Rock was rock. In their original, earthly life they had been used to landscapes where time and nature had flattened the land like teeth worn down by grinding. They hadn’t seen snow or mountains until their disastrous trip to Europe. There, Seth had been murdered by the agents of Yod in order to bring the First and Second Realms together. There, the old world had died, taking all its time-worn vistas with it.

The eyes of the Homunculus, the artificial body in which they were now confined, glazed over as the walls of the cleft slid by. The twins’ earlier disconnection from the world had faded at last; there was no hiding now from its complexities and perils. The same was true of themselves; their memories had cleared as though a curtain had parted. Where unwillingness or uncertainty had shielded them from the worst of their pasts, now nothing protected them from both sets of memories. The feel of Locyta’s knife stabbing into Seth’s chest; the draci straddling Hadrian; the confrontation with the Sisters of the Flame…

In Sheol, under the guidance of the Sisters, they had each explored their life-trees, the many-branched tangle of possibilities that revealed every conceivable event in their lives from the perspective of the Third Realm. Only in one world-line — one long, tapering branch — had they seen a chance of escape from their fated deaths at the hands of Yod. Hadrian had followed that world-line to the point where it suddenly diverged into possibility again, and there he had stopped. There he had seen a chance that Yod would fail. That had been enough to give him hope.

Both of them now wished that he had gone further, to see what
actual
chance awaited them. How would Yod be beaten? What did the twins need to do to ensure their survival? Of those who had helped and hindered them since their arrival in the new world, who would live and who would die? Skender, Marmion and the others had been strangers once but were no longer. They mattered too.

Either way, Yod was back, rattling at the bars if not yet fully free. It had devoured the Lost Minds in the Void Beneath, gaining strength for… something. With every day’s ascent, they felt its presence growing darker and stronger, looming deeper and more ominously. Now, with the end of their journey so close, Yod sucked at them like a black hole, tugging them onward and inward to their destiny.

Reflected in the window facing the dark cliff, they saw the silhouette of the Homunculus staring back at them. A shadow with hard edges, it had no recognisable features: no eyes, no nostrils, no wrinkles, no personality at all.

Who’s an ugly boy, then?
whispered Seth into Hadrian’s mind.

Hadrian felt absurdly like laughing — but the impulse had gloom at its heart as dark as the Homunculus’s aspect.
I reckon we’ve lost weight
.

Something glowed with a faint silver light deep in the reflection. They leaned closer to the pane of glass in order to see more clearly. The Homunculus’s face seemed to swallow the entire view.

What’s that
? Hadrian asked. Low in his view was a shining cross where his chest might have been.

Not a cross, little brother. An ankh.

Hadrian understood, then. In the Second Realm, Seth had confronted eight godlike beings known as the Ogdoad. The ancient sign they had marked him with had enabled them to survive in the Void Beneath when so many other minds had not. Seth had taken the mark for granted all that time, and Hadrian had had no reason to think of it. Only at that moment did they realise what a great boon it had been.

It stopped us from dissolving into the hum
, Seth said.

So we thought. But we know now that the hum was Yod itself, which means
—

The ankh protects us from Yod
, Hadrian finished.
Does that mean Yod can’t kill us
?

Don’t get too excited. Maybe it just stops Yod from noticing us.

Hadrian leaned away from the reflection, and his brother came with him.
Still, it’s something
.

It is indeed.

The twins pondered their new understanding as the blimp traversed the cleft. The Homunculus was immune to altitude sickness, but they slept more and more the higher the balloon took them, sometimes as long as three hours a night, and their dreams were spectacular. In one of them, Yod had taken the form of a giant clown whose mouth was the entrance to a glittering fairground. Rows upon rows of people queued patiently and filed inside. The clown’s eyes grew redder and darker, filling up with blood, until finally a flood of crimson tears flowed down grimacing cheeks and swept the twins away.