The Heretic Land (39 page)

‘If we believe you—’ Leki began, but Aeon spoke over her again.

‘Aeon has no need of lies.’ Venden’s hand holding Bon’s changed, skin and bone melding and deforming into something else, leaving an object resting in Bon’s palm. It had no weight, and was faultless. ‘A gift from Aeon’s heart. This is all I can give, for now.’ And suddenly Venden cried out and tugged Bon close to him, cheeks touching, his voice his own.

‘Father, Crex Wry seeded the Fade to aid its own resurrection. It—’ His voice was
cut off, snatched back with a deep groan, and replaced once again by that almost-Venden voice which was all Aeon. ‘Now close your eyes.’

Bon’s heart leaped. Confusion reigned, and he obeyed as Venden began to disintegrate. He heard the sound of something splashing, and then Leki’s gasp.

‘Bon,’ Leki said, nudging him. ‘Look.’ Bon looked, and when Leki squeezed his hand he squeezed back.

Venden was gone, subsumed once again. Only ten steps away from them, Aeon was moving. Its incredible bulk shifted with endless grace, flowing like smoke made solid, making no sound as it lifted from the floor of the frozen cavern and moved away from them. Bon was certain there was no tunnel before it, yet it disappeared into the ice wall, pulling itself through with slow, gentle movements from its strange limbs.

In its wake, it left a perfect tunnel leading upwards.

‘Our way out,’ Bon said.

‘So we can deliver its message quicker?’ Leki asked, doubt still staining her voice.

Bon held his hand out to show her what he had been given. The object was a smooth, round bone, imperfect in shape, yet not apparently removed from any other body part. There were no joints or knuckles, no broken connections, no way in. It was the size of his fist, and still warm.

‘What is that?’ Leki whispered.

‘Perhaps something to help,’ Bon said. ‘Leki, you heard it. You
saw
. Didn’t you feel how dreadful that was? Didn’t it … make your skin crawl?’

Leki was pale, eyes flitting left and right as if trying to find reality.

‘If your people raise magic—’

‘Then why doesn’t it stop them itself?’

‘It’s trying,’ Bon said. ‘Maybe it’s weak, or unable, or knows that Crex Wry
will defeat it. So it’s trying, by asking us to help.’

They stood silently for a while, and for the first time Bon heard water dripping somewhere in the darkness. A sign of change.

‘What did your son whisper to you?’

‘That Crex Wry seeded the Fade to aid its own resurrection.’

Leki was contemplative, silent.

‘I’m taking the message,’ Bon said, slipping the object into his pocket. ‘South, to your Ald.’ He knew how useless such a gesture would be. If they didn’t kill him on sight, what chance did he have of making them believe him? A madman, a criminal who had escaped a death sentence, rushing from the wilds to plead with them to keep their Engines down.

Unless …

‘And you’ll come with me,’ he said.

‘Me.’ Leki was looking into the darkness after Aeon, frowning, yet her eyes were wide with wonder.

‘You’ll come and tell them what Aeon showed you and told you. Tell your
husband
.’

Leki blinked a few times, bringing herself back to the present. She knelt and touched the ground, ice shards sparkling like rare gems, splaying her hand so that Bon could see faint light reflected through her webbing. She breathed deeply for a moment, then seemed to slump down to the ground.

‘Leki?’

‘I can’t read it,’ she said. ‘It’s … unattainable. But, yes, Bon. I’ll tell Sol what happened here.’

‘Then we should go now,’ Bon said.

‘They’ll have landed, formed a bridgehead, started advancing inland. And they’ll have the Engines. When they don’t hear back from me they’ll ground them anyway. Two along the coast,
one far inland to give a triangle. Then they’ll fire them up, and direct magic against Aeon.’

‘Then there’s no time to waste.’ Bon turned and started away from her, glad for her fear. It would help them both.

They moved quickly, following the route Aeon had forged. When they emerged from the fresh wound in the land, there were three Skythians waiting. Between them, two large shires stomped their hooves against the icy ground. It was still snowing.

The Skythians watched them in awe. All three stared at Bon’s jacket pocket.

‘Aeon wants us to hurry,’ Bon said. They walked forward together, kicking through fresh snow.

In the east, sunrise set the snow-covered horizon aflame.

Juda was aware of being
watched even before he opened his eyes.

It took a while to place himself. As he rose from the deepest sleep he had ever known, crawling up out of the solid darkness, a shocking memory from childhood presented itself – he is a child, holding a knife to his wrist, ready to vent the Regerran blood that marks him as different in the eyes of other children.

I’m more different than that
, Juda thought, and he opened his eyes at last.

The darkness was heavy and slick. The sort of darkness he might imagine inside a decapus’s stomach, or the innards of one of the bigger spinebacks that patrolled the sea beyond the Duntang Archipelago. He took in a deep, shuddering breath and gasped it back out, and his hand went to his left armpit. As memory of the wound returned, so he found that he could see more.

Inside the Engine
, he thought. His heart stuttered, his eyes fluttered as if sprinkled with dust, and he pressed his hand to the wound. It ached, but there
was no harsh pang of agony as he’d been expecting. His bloodied shirt was torn around his shoulder, and he worked his hand inside the tear to feel the knotted flesh beneath. The injury was obvious. Scar tissue marred an area from beneath his armpit halfway across his chest, a swathe of hardened skin where the poison-tipped arrow had sliced and bruised.

It should hurt more.
He examined his senses from an objective distance. He could taste staleness, hear his own pulse throbbing at his ears, and when he lifted his hand and scratched at his cheek, pinched his skin, he could feel it.

He remembered those weird limbs that had attended him. They were nowhere in sight now, retreated back to the shadows whence they had come. Perhaps they had been the shadows themselves. Inside an Engine that sang with memories of magic, anything might be possible.

‘I have more dregs,’ he whispered. He sat up slowly and reached for his shoulder bag. Dragging it closer, he disturbed the broken arrow that lay across it. Juda paused and leaned across, closing his eyes as a faint threatened. He bit the inside of his lip hard enough to taste blood, then picked up the arrow.

It had been inside him. It was the front part, the head a viciously barbed triangle of shaped iron, rough holes punched through its two wings to help it grip inside a flesh wound, or bite into bone. There were also depressions in the metal where poison paste would be applied before combat. The wood of the shaft was much heavier than it appeared, darkened with his blood, and where it had been snapped off the splayed splinters promised more pain.

Juda slipped the arrowhead and short length of shaft into his pocket. He had never been one for totems or charms, but he felt that he should keep this. One day he would show it to someone and tell his story.

He started hauling himself
upright, holding onto a network of smooth pipes that lined the wall by his side. The wall was metal, warm, and uneven like a living thing’s body. The pipes flexed.

‘You’re what I’ve wanted for ever, and I have to start you,’ he said. The Engine did not reply. Nothing moved. It had saved him when he had submitted himself to the safety of its womb, fixing his wound and supplementing the dreg he had pressed to his open flesh, the poison negated, pain lessened. Now he felt its awareness around him. It carried weight.

He moved through the Engine. There was no sign of those old priests’ bodies, floating as they had been before like hesitant bats. He thought perhaps they had gone down into the guts of the Engine. Swallowed. The idea was unsettling. But the confusion he had felt on arrival seemed to have flittered away with the pain, and now he knew where to go, and what to do. He was being guided, and observed from the shadows. It was a sense of calm contemplation, not something insidious, but he could not see what it was.

The insides of the Engine were mysterious to him, its workings unknown. He could not shift the idea that it had been built to be entered, and that the route he was following was designed for someone to maintain the Engine, or to initiate it from the inside. But how to do so was a mystery, and he wondered why he had ever believed he could figure that mystery out.

Juda was being urged up, and out.

He climbed over metallic structures, felt the flexible give in other parts that seemed like soft, stretchable wood, and he could not shake the idea that the Engine smelled of … something once alive.
But not dead
, he thought.
Just sleeping.
He turned a smooth corner and came across the first areas of frozen snow. It had been snowing when he entered the Engine, and it must have blown
in behind him, flitting down through the entrance and settling on the innards. Freezing, layer upon layer of new snow falling on top, freezing again, it formed a solid mass across the Engine’s insides that provided a slippery, dangerous climb towards the top.

How long was I unconscious?
Juda wondered. His limbs were stiff, his wound now a dull ache. He was thirsty, and hunger hollowed his stomach.

Another dizzy spell forced him to sit, one hand splayed across a surface of smooth ice. Ahead of him, up where he believed the entrance to the Engine lay, a solid wall of ice refracted moonlight from outside. So near, yet so far.

His shoulder bag banged against his hip as he shifted, and he smiled. He delved inside and brought out one of his last remaining dregs.

It was a cold, shrivelled thing. He muttered invocations and moulded the dreg to his desires, applying it to the icy barrier. As he leaned back and closed his eyes to rest, water began to flow.

Sol Merry woke in his tent and listened to a foreign wind blowing against the canvas.

He sat up on his sleeping roll and offered his customary prayer to the Fade. Then he dressed, and his thoughts went to Leki, his love, his wife. The lack of any more racks from her at this most crucial of times was troubling, but he was a professional soldier and he could only let the fact trouble him so far as it affected their mission. Personal feelings were not the province of the battlefield. He should have left his love at home.

Instead, he carried it deep inside where only he could see.

There was a tap at the tent post.

‘Enter,’ Sol said. Gallan slipped through the flap and offered a lazy salute. He looked tired,
his eyes heavy, but excited as well.

‘Snow’s stopped, it’s a bright morning,’ Gallan said. ‘But the scouts have returned, and it’s snowing even heavier to the north.’

‘How far to the north?’

‘Twenty miles.’

‘Huh.’ Sol continued strapping on his weapon belt and leather harnesses – primed pistol, knife, sword, throwing stars, a hand-sized folded crossbow and a rack of bolts – automatically checking his insignia as he went. ‘It doesn’t feel cold enough.’

‘It isn’t, here.’ Gallan picked up Sol’s boots and nodded at the upended equipment box. Sol sat, and his Side helped strap on his boots. It was purely an act of friendship. He had known Gallan for a long time, they had their tensions, but there was nothing of superiority in private. Outside in the sight of others, the barrier of rank would be between them again.

‘And nothing from Leki,’ Sol said.

‘No. Sol … it doesn’t mean anything’s happened.’

‘Any word from the generals?’

‘Not this morning.’

Sol nodded, then flexed his toes inside the boots. They were a perfect fit. He’d had them specially manufactured in New Kotrugam by a shoemaker, each boot cut very particularly around the knotted wounds he’d received as a young boy on his ankles. The spit snake had clung on hard, and it had taken his father and brother half a day to cut it away.

‘And no contact with any hostiles?’

‘Nothing. You’d have been woken, you know that.’

Sol nodded his thanks, smiled. But he was still far away.
Leki … what might have happened to you in this forsaken land?

‘Then let’s get things
moving,’ Sol said. Gallan exited the tent first, and Sol followed him out onto the Skythian beach, ready to give his Blade their orders for the day.

But the orders for that day would come from elsewhere.

Even this early, the beach was already quietly bustling. Many soldiers were still asleep in their tents, and other troops had ventured inland to form a protective front curving around the entire stretch of the landing zone. But those who had been assigned to dig in and protect the Engines were alert in their boarded trenches, weapons caches within easy reach, heavy rifles resting on wooden blocks. Others moved to and fro, unloading supplies from small boats that ferried them from the fleet, and there was a kitchen set up further along the beach, three huge cooking fires already ablaze to prepare breakfast. The activity had trodden most of the settled snow into the sand.

If everything went well today, two out of three Engines would be packed and moving by noon.

Sol received several salutes as he and Gallan walked along the beach. They passed the rackers’ tent to their left, glancing nervously that way but seeing no sign of the two women. The guards there had set themselves as far away from the tent as possible. They looked glum with their assignment, but did nothing to complain.

‘A long time since the troops had foreign sand between their toes,’ Gallan said, and Sol smiled. It had been years, the last time an assault on a troublesome Outer stronghold a thousand miles across the Western Sea. That had been a bloody success. As would this be.

He did his best to assure himself of that. A success! But Leki’s disappearance did not allow him to be completely convinced.

‘And long enough since
their blades were bloodied,’ Sol said. ‘So, fill me in on troop deployment while we walk.’