The Devoured Earth (59 page)

Sal was rinsing a bowl in the communal sink when Skender came to wash his dishes. For a moment. they didn’t say anything. Then Sal shook his bowl free of drops, laid it on a towel to dry, and took Skender in a tight bear hug. Skender was so startled he almost dropped his own dishes, but he held onto them, and Sal too after a moment’s embarrassment.

‘We made it,’ said Sal, pulling away. His long dark hair smelt of woodsmoke and salt. The injuries he had sustained during the fight didn’t seem to bother him. ‘I can’t quite believe it. Can you?’

Skender shook his head and turned to wash his dishes. The hug had made him feel surprisingly better. ‘It’s not over yet. We’ve got a new world to build, haven’t we?’

‘No. We’re keeping things as they are. That seemed simplest — even though it’s turned out to be anything but. The charm needs to be permanently etched into the world or else it’ll eventually wear out. Or it’ll just stop when Shilly dies, since she’s the one with it in her head. So we’re working on a way to get her off the hook. She doesn’t want to grow old staring at that thing. Not again.’

‘So no Cataclysm after all?’

No, thank the Goddess.’ Sal glanced up at the Flame, where Ellis Quick slept, watched over by her two ghostly attendants. ‘Nothing’s going to change, for a change.’

‘Well, that’s something.’ Skender didn’t hide his relief. He hadn’t been looking forward to a world without Stone Mages or Sky Wardens. His talent might not have been great, but at least he knew where he fitted in. He had read enough of
The Book of Towers
to know what happened when that order was disturbed.

‘Come on.’ Sal took him by the shoulder when he had finished cleaning up. ‘We’re going to put the charm into effect at sunrise, physical form or not. I’d like to clear my head before then. Let’s go check the wreckage of the balloon to see if there’s anything left behind.’

Skender agreed readily enough. Chu was in safe hands; Rosevear or Highson would call him through the Change if she woke and wanted him. As he and Sal headed off in search of the ravine, he explained how things had ended up with her, and Sal seemed impressed.

‘Highson, a golem hunter? That’s not a bad idea at all’

‘You could start a father-and-son business. Golems Our Speciality. No Mind Too Evil.’

Sal smiled. ‘I don’t think so. Fundelry is looking pretty good right now.’

‘Doesn’t it seem weird to you that you and Shilly, who could change the world in an instant, might end up forgotten in some dusty old town?’

‘Actually, to me it seems perfectly appropriate. As long as the lesson is learned by everyone else.’

They found the ravine entrance — a vertical slice through the crater wall with an irregular, snow-strewn floor — and made their way to where the expedition’s blimp had crashed. By dim starlight, it looked like the bleached-white skeleton of some strange ancient beast half-emerging from the rock. It was cold and dead, with all residual potential absorbed by the surrounding stone. They picked through the wreckage, but there was nothing of importance left behind. Either the Ice Eaters or the devels had stripped it in the previous day and a half.

Under a sheet of stiff cloth they found Mawson’s headless torso.

‘What do we do with this?’ Skender asked Sal. ‘Bury it?’

‘I don’t think Mawson would care much either way, wherever his head is.’

‘Didn’t he go with the glast?’

‘Well, he’s nowhere around here, so I guess so. They make a weird pair, those two, but Mawson’s always enjoyed distinctive companions.’

Skender leaned against a sturdy-looking strut that bent slightly under his weight, provoking a shower of snow from the rest of the wreck. Sal found a rock and sat on it.

‘Speaking of being forgotten,’ Sal said, ‘and making sure people learn their lessons, I reckon someone should write all this down.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, half the problems we had stemmed from not knowing what happened in the old days.
The Book of Towers
is mostly wrong, and even when it’s right it doesn’t tell us anything terribly useful. It’ll be no different in a hundred years if we don’t create a permanent record of what
really
happened here. It’s not as if any of us know the full story, after all, and if we drift apart and start to forget, we’ll end up in the same position as before the next time something like this happens.’

‘You think it will happen again?’

‘Well, sure. It’s not nature’s way to stay still for long.’ Sal sighed. ‘No. What we need is a comprehensive account, so no one will ever forget.’

‘That sounds like a long and tedious job,’ he said. ‘Who’d be mad enough to take that on?’

‘Someone with lots of time on their hands. And mad, yes.’

‘
Completely
mad, I reckon.’

Then it hit him. The moment in the Tomb when the Goddess had forbidden him from taking part in baiting Yod.
I
have a purpose for you
, she had said, but had refused to elaborate.
Just keep an eye on things
, she had told him.
Someone needs to do that
.

Someone with a perfect memory and plenty of time on his hands, until his father retired…

‘Did she send you here?’ he asked Sal.

‘Who?’

‘The Goddess. Is that why we’re having this conversation?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Skender. It just occurred to me then. Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’

It is a bloody good idea
, Skender wanted to say, but admitting it aloud was halfway to volunteering for the job.

Two can play at that game
, he thought.

‘I guess we don’t really need her now,’ he said. ‘The Goddess, I mean. She helped after the Cataclysm, and she came back to help us now, but with Yod gone there’s not much left for her to do. Once Shilly finishes that charm, everything will be settled. In fact, if you look at it one way, Shilly is the Goddess now. Isn’t that a strange thought?’

Sal didn’t say anything for several breaths, just stared at Skender with a speculative look on his face. Skender felt his cheeks begin to grow warm, despite the bitter chill in the mountain air. Then Sal laughed, and the tension was broken.

‘You’re right,’ Sal said. ‘It’s not going to be the same world. The twins won’t be holding it together; Yod won’t be waiting in the Void Beneath to eat the Lost Minds; there won’t be any more wild talents. There’ll be new problems, new challenges, and we’ll have to find new ways of dealing with them. And that goes for us, just like everyone. If Shilly and I can get that pardon Marmion promised us, we’ll finally be able to live and work in the open. We can travel; people can visit. No more hiding for us. That changes
everything
.’ He stood and came around to face Skender and put a hand on each of his shoulders. ‘I have a good feeling about the future. Don’t you?’

‘A good feeling?’ Skender didn’t have to look far to find the answer to that question, not now that Chu was awake. Everything else, including the Goddess’s plans for him, was secondary. ‘I guess I do. It’s not a bad feeling, anyway. And at least we
have
a future now.’

Sal smiled. ‘Indeed.’ He patted Skender once on the left shoulder and stood back, letting his gloved hands fall to his sides. ‘Shall we go see to it, then? It doesn’t look like there’s anything for us here.’

Skender stood, sending a second, much smaller shower of snow to the ground. ‘Sure. But just let me make this clear before we go back: I may think Shilly is a goddess, but that doesn’t make you a god. Not even close.’

‘Oh, really?’ Sal bent down and scooped up a handful of snow. ‘And what if I were to say that you being the new scribe would be a fitting job for the biggest nerd I know.’

‘I knew it!’ The snowball whizzed by Skender’s ear and exploded amidst the wreckage. ‘I knew she’d got to you!’

He threw a snowball in return that Sal easily dodged. That prompted a flurry of insults and snowballs back and forth. Their laughter echoed from the hard stone walls of the ravine, making it sound like the mountains were laughing with them. Skender chased Sal back to where the others waited, wearing a grin on his face as though it was a medal.

* * * *

THE GODDESS

‘What of the future?

It will come whether we want it to or not.

That you can be sure of, if nothing else.’

A SCRIBE’S BOOK OF QUESTIONS

ONE MONTH LATER

hilly squatted to inspect Vehofnehu’s work and found it perfect. The ancient empyricist was much slower than Bartholomew had been in her other self’s life, but he was painstakingly methodical. She never had to correct any of his angles or proportions, almost as though he knew before she told him what had to be done.

Maybe he does
, she thought, but forgot that question as someone clumsily skidded to a halt behind her and almost knocked her over. Her right hand thrust her stick down into the ice to anchor her while her left went around her waist.

‘Shilly, I’m sorry. I slipped. Are you all right?’ She steadied herself, and turned. ‘Fine, Tom. Is everything okay?’

The gangly Engineer shook his head. His hair was slowly growing back, spotted with premature grey. ‘I have a message from the Eminent Delfine. Workers in the south-east sector spotted Pukje an hour ago.’

‘Not devels?’

‘Not this time.’

‘Well, that’s good, but — so?’

‘So —’ He was momentarily at a loss for words. ‘So the Eminent Delfine thought you ought to know.’

Shilly bit her lip on an irritated
Why on Earth would she think that?
Lidia Delfine was in charge of the south-east sector; if Pukje was bothering them, she could handle him herself. It wasn’t as if a single imp could do much damage to anyone or anything now.

But that wasn’t the point, and Shilly knew it. Lidia Delfine was telling Shilly because people felt better for knowing that Shilly knew. They looked up to her, Sal said. And that mattered.

She sighed. Representatives of every known culture were contributing to the project, far more than just those who had been involved in the final battle against Yod. As word had spread about what they were attempting at the top of the world, more and more people came to be part of it, travelling by Way, balloon or other means to the lake. She wasn’t ungrateful. As the ice thickened, allowing the carvers more and more safe surface to work on, and as the moss-farmers from the forest grew spores by the vat-load, hands were desperately needed. But the ever-increasing number of volunteers created its own problems. She was glad she had Sal to lean on when the going got tough. All she wanted to do was get the charm finished and go home. And sleep for a week.

‘Give the Eminent Delfine my thanks,’ she told Tom. ‘I’ll alert the other sectors.’

Tom nodded and went to leave.

She grabbed his right arm and pulled him back, mindful not to topple both of them. ‘Any dreams?’ she asked him.

He shook his head, then nodded. ‘Yes. Not as many as before, but they’re becoming more frequent.’

‘Good,’ she said, even though that wasn’t the answer she wanted. It was in fact the answer to a very different question, one she couldn’t bring herself to ask. ‘Anything I should know?’

He shook his head, sending long black curls dancing, and hurried off.

Maybe I’m imagining it
, she thought.
Maybe it’s all in my head
.

She put both hands on the top of her stick as a faint wave of disorientation swept through her.

No. There it is again. That feeling.

Someone was trying to reach her from the future. From
a
future. She didn’t know whether to fight or to welcome it. What if the communication brought bad news? What if the Old Ones and their jailer, glimpsed briefly heading for rugged mountainous territories in the north, were coming back in force to undo her decision? What if she learned that all her hard work had been for nothing?

Her gaze drifted upwards to where a stronghold was nearing completion on the site of the stubby remnant of Tower Gimel, less than a hundred

metres away. Griel had accepted the position of First Maintainer, and Oriel had allowed it, more, she suspected, to get his old rival out of the Panic city than out of respect. Like the Alcaide and Skender’s father, Oriel had returned his efforts to governance of his realm once the crisis had passed. Attention was officially drifting elsewhere, even as everyday people responded to the greater challenge at the top of the world.

Although the possibility existed, she couldn’t imagine Griel letting anyone damage the charm without a considerable fight. However, if there was anything she could do to minimise that possibility, she had to do it now rather than later.

Okay, talk to me
, she said to the origin of that distant feeling. But whoever or whatever it was had gone for the moment. She had no doubt the feeling would return, like Tom’s dreams and Vehofnehu’s wandering stars. The future was as relentless as an avalanche, and as frustrating as watching water freeze.

Cold sunlight reflected off something on the shore, something that hadn’t been there before. Reaching for a spyglass — no sleds were allowed on the lake now the charm was so near completion, and there was no way she was going to walk all that way to satisfy idle curiosity — she peered through the polished lenses to see what was going on. The Flame was burning on the hillside where Marmion had died, not far from the monument erected in the honour of those who had fallen. She scanned the area around the monument, but detected no sign of the Goddess or the twins. They hadn’t been seen since Shilly had put the charm into effect. Only the Flame, popping up every now and again.

Shilly had noticed that the Flame’s reappearances roughly corresponded with her nagging feelings from the future. She suspected the two were connected. If she could only work out how or why that might be, then either or both might stop bothering her. Perhaps the feeling was a side effect of the Flame’s presence; or perhaps the Flame was stopping the feeling becoming more than that, performing some sort of protective function on the new world’s causal pathway. Part of what had rendered the seers blind, she had realised, was the presence of her future selves where they weren’t supposed to be. The knot had been too hard for even the very talented to untangle. So the Flame could simply be stopping another knot from forming.