by Alec Hutson
The white-stone spires and the hills swelling behind them grow larger as we continue our march. I’m trying to make sense of what has happened, but the image that keeps intruding on my thoughts is when the first handful of dust hit my brother’s pale, waxy face as he lay at the bottom of the hole I’d dug in the wastes. I know I should feel something about his death – we once shared a deep bond, that is obvious – but outside of a vague melancholy that I would never repair what bridges had been sundered, I didn’t feel much at all. If it had been Bell or Deliah lying in that pit my world would have been shattered. If I ever do regain my memories, will Talin’s death overwhelm me with grief? Or – and this thought chills me – will I be pleased?
The rock formation where the Prophet claims the Gate is located does truly look like fingers emerging from the wastes, as if a giant has been buried under the dust and is now reaching up, straining for the surface. In the back of my mind has been burrowing the suspicion that Ezekal is lying, leading us to nowhere while a legion of Shriven rush to liberate him and seize Valyra again, but that is proven wrong as I catch a glimpse of the doorway. Between two of the pillars of opalescent rock a veil of golden light shimmers, wide enough that our caravan could have easily trundled through. Before when I’d found Gates they had been closed until a key was used, but as the Prophet said, this one has somehow been propped open.
We approach the glowing portal tentatively. The other Gates were archways carved from the same iridescent stone, but this one looks like a natural rock formation, and the rippling golden energy does not extend beyond the freestanding pillars. I’m worried that there will be no place to insert the key, but to my relief it does appear that an indentation has been hollowed out of the stone. I withdraw the dark, silver-threaded key the Contessa gave me and glance at the weaver. Valyra is swaying slightly as she stares up at the soaring doorway, her face pale and drawn. Well, we did find her another tribe – they just happened to be degenerate, subterranean cannibals. Now that the Prophet is our prisoner, I believe that we can keep her safe in the other world. The Shriven will have lost their greatest ally, and they’ll have to find another way to heal the rift between the realms.
I step forward holding the key. Ezekal sees it and his face goes slack with surprise.
“That is mine,” he says, an edge to his voice. “I gave that key to you.”
The coldness pulsing from the dark stone is making my hand tingle. “The Contessa changed it,” I say, holding it up to make sure it will fit in the indentation.
The Prophet sniffs, looking annoyed. “How rude. Avelia knew that would insult me, if I ever realized what she did.”
“I don’t think that was her main concern,” I murmur, turning the key to find the best angle to insert it into the pillar.
Ezekal snorts. “Oh, you have no idea how petty she can be.”
Some force seems to be pulling the key forward, as if it is yearning to be placed within the indentation. I hesitate, with some effort pulling it back, and turn to the Prophet.
“Are you sure this key will bring us to the other world?”
Ezekal nods. “It is still a Gate. If Avelia did not lie to you – and I can give you no assurances there – we will be drawn along the pathways she imprinted on the key.”
I squint up at the rippling door. “Even though it’s already open.”
“Yes. I helped build this doorway – it will eventually revert to its current state, but the key will change the destination while it is in the lock.”
I glance back at my companions. Bell and Valyra look exhausted, barely able to stand. Deliah is holding up a bit better, though even she looks like she could sleep for days. None of them say anything, but I know they are desperate to return to their home.
“Very well, let’s –”
My words die in my throat. Far behind my companions something is moving. The dust in the distance is swelling larger, as if I’m standing on a beach watching a great wave slowly build on the horizon.
That’s when we feel the first vibration. Bell and Deliah glance around in shock as the dust around their feet shivers. Valyra has gone even paler, the blood draining from her face. Her copper eyes find mine, and I can see that we’re thinking the same thing. This is something we’ve felt before, long ago when we fled her tribe’s hidden fortress.
“Earthquake?” Bell asks, looking up in fear at the rocky pillars looming over us.
“No,” the Prophet says fearfully. “A Leviathan comes.” He points at where the tsunami of dust is building on the horizon.
I remember the great tendrils emerging from the wastes to wrap around the Coppers’ stronghold. We can’t fight such a creature.
“How did such a monster come through this Gate?” I ask numbly.
The Prophet is staring wide-eyed at the bulge of dust. “Eggs,” he says softly. “They were brought here and hatched. And when they were grown, that was when we knew our world was lost.”
“That’s a creature?” Deliah murmurs. Her glaive is in her hand, but she seems to realize how useless her weapon will be and slides it again across her back.
The ground is nearly heaving now, and the nearby hills have begun to shed great boulders from high up their rocky slopes.
“We have to go,” I say, and shove the key I’m holding into the Gate’s lock. The golden veil seems to convulse briefly, and then it grows still again.
“Deliah!” I cry, and the lamias tears her eyes from the rapidly approaching monster and looks at me. “You first, in case there’s something dangerous on the other side.”
She nods, and without hesitation plunges through the portal.
“Now you!” I yell over the rumbling, gesturing at Ezekal.
The Prophet gives one more fearful glance at what’s out there and clumsily dashes forward into the shimmering light. Bell and Valyra follow right behind him.
A terrific crack splits the air, and I glimpse a massive gray tendril breaching the wastes in a towering plume of dust. The force of its arrival nearly sends me sprawling, and I just barely catch myself by grabbing on to the pillar. The Gate itself is swaying now, as if it could collapse at any time. My fingers scrabble for the key, and I manage to pull it loose just before I throw myself into the doorway.
12
I fall to my hands and knees, my arms plunging up to my elbows in thick green grass. Beneath my fingers is soft earth, and the air is heavy with the smell of living things. The panic in me as the great Shriven swelled closer begins to ebb away. I open my mouth and breathe deeply, for the first time in days not tasting the swirling grit of the wastes. Then I slowly let it out, hanging my head in relief.
We’ve returned.
I push myself back onto my haunches. The sky is a brilliant blue threaded with tattered shreds of cloud. The sun is warm, and a faint breeze ripples the grass around me. Ysala was much cooler when we left – either months have passed, or we’ve appeared in a distant realm with very different seasons. I’m sitting on top of a small knoll empty of trees or rocks. Before me, grass speckled with red flowers gently slopes down to the edge of a great forest. The trees there grow close together, lush and verdant with branches heavy with leaves. Vines spotted with yellow blossoms wrap the gnarled trunks, and even from this distance I can see bright birds flickering between perches. The forest is endless, a great dark sea that undulates into the distance, unbroken except for a glassy lake that flashes mirror-bright.
“Talin,” Bell says from behind me, and I turn. There’s something strange in the tone of her voice.
The huge arch of opalescent stone looms over me, and unlike when I’ve passed through other Gates the shimmering light has persisted here. If I wanted to, I could return to the dead world . . . or something else could come through.
I push myself to my feet and come around the edge of the portal to see what has drawn the attention of my companions.
Then stagger back.
“What is that?” I whisper, bracing myself with a hand on the cool stone of
the arch.
This side of the small hill is the same as the other: a field spattered with red flowers like drops of blood sweeps down to a vast, brooding forest of tangled limbs and vine-knotted boles. But no lake flashes in the distance – instead, a skull of shining white bone as large as a mountain fills the horizon. The size of the thing is impossible, beyond comprehension. It is canted slightly with its jaw missing, green growth creeping up its side. The yawning eye sockets are caverns clotted with darkness, each large enough to contain a city within their depths. Wisps of clouds shroud its pate like a gossamer crown.
Deliah, Bell and Valyra are all gawking at the skull.
“It’s impossible,” mumbles the scientist’s daughter. “Nothing . . . could be so huge.”
“Perhaps it is stone carved to resemble a skull,” the lamias offers weakly.
“It is bone,” says the Prophet from behind us. I turn to find him staring at me expectantly. “I’ve been there before. As have you, Alesk.” He nods in my direction.
“I don’t remember,” I say softly.
“Even seeing this does not return your memories?” He looks almost despairing.
“We’re not back in our world,” Deliah says slowly, as if just realizing this truth. She unlimbers her glaive and steps towards Ezekal. Butterflies rise from the flowers as she strides through the grass, a swarm of glittering shards. The Prophet’s eyes widen in alarm as the curved edge of the lamias’s weapon flickers out, coming to rest against his throat. “And you knew we would not be brought there.”
Ezekal eyes the glaive with desperate fear. “No. But we had no choice. The Shriven would have caught us if we’d made for any other Gate. It had to be this one . . . as I told you, the path here never closes.”
“And it leads to where the demons come from,” Bell says. She crouches down and runs her hand through the grass. “This place?” Her tone is disbelieving.
“They are not what you think,” the Prophet says. His silver eyes flick to me. “You understood, once. You came here with me. You met the Mother and witnessed her vision for the worlds. You became its greatest champion.” He grimaces, reaching up to push away the glaive.
Instead, Deliah presses harder, cutting him deep enough that a rivulet of blood runs down his neck. The Prophet gasps in pain, stumbling away and holding the wound. The lamias follows, kicking him hard in the belly and sending him sprawling. The air shimmers as butterflies erupt from around where he has fallen. Deliah puts her foot on his chest and stares down at him in contempt.
She glances over at me. “Is it time to kill this one?” she says, bringing the pointed end of her glaive to hover over his face. There’s no emotion to this statement, no anger or hate. She might as well be asking me if I think we should set up camp here.
The Prophet goggles up at her, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly. He tries to move, but with her foot she shoves him back down, holding him pinned to the grass.
“Wait,” I say, coming to stand beside her. “He has answers. And he knows this place.”
“He is a liar,” she says, her violet eyes holding mine. “We cannot trust him to tell us the truth.”
I nod, and when Ezekal sees this he lets out a strangled cry. Deliah raises her glaive, ready to drive it through his skull, but I hold up my hand to stop her and crouch beside the Prophet.
“What is this place?” I ask him levelly, keeping my arm raised to remind him that I literally hold his life in my hand.
His terrified gaze flicks between me and the gleaming blade suspended above him. “Have you not been listening?” he hisses. “This is the realm from which the Shriven emerged.”
Bell snorts. “You’re telling us that those nightmarish monsters came from here?” She shoos away the butterflies bumbling around her face.
“They are the tip of the Mother’s spear,” the Prophet says. “The soldiers who go out and conquer in Her name.”
“The Mother,” I say slowly. “What is she?”
The Prophet shakes his head slightly. “A goddess? A demon? A sorceress? Who knows? We stood in her presence, Alesk, and felt her power.”
“Where is she?”
Ezekal lifts his arm where he lies and points towards the massive skull. “She dwells within.”
Bell comes closer to loom over the Prophet. “And what did this ‘Mother’ offer you that you would betray my world?”
“The Shriven are inevitable. When the Voice found me in our new home, I knew it was only a matter of time before they repaired the paths. The creature brought me here.” Ezekal jerks his chin in my direction. “Him as well, and the Mother promised that if we were the ones to restore the path into your world that our tribe would be welcomed into this one. Into paradise.”
“And you believed the Shriven?” Bell asks incredulously.
The Prophet sneers. “If you descend into the forest below us you will believe as well.” He returns his intense stare to me. “The old Alesk understood. We had a choice: everyone in our new world could die, or our tribe, at least, could be saved. Do you think I wanted to be responsible for the death of millions?” Bitterness coats his words. “Of course I did not. But above all else I had to preserve my people.” His breathing is coming fast and ragged, his eyes wild.
Deliah removes her boot from his belly. I glance at her questioningly, and she indicates with her head that we should withdraw a ways.
“Stay here,” I say to Ezekal, then follow the lamias as she moves towards where Valyra is still staring out at the vast sweep of forest.
Her eyes are hard when they turn to me. “Do you think he is telling the truth?”
“I’m . . . inclined to believe him,” I say slowly. “It makes sense that he cut some deal with this Mother to save his people.”
“No,” Deliah says sharply. “I mean about you. That you were willing to sacrifice our world to save yourself.”
I shift my gaze to Bell, but she’s looking at me with the same intensity as the lamias. “I . . . don’t know. Maybe. Perhaps in my heart I was trying to fool Ezekal. But even if that’s not true, I am not the same man anymore.”
A tremor goes across Deliah’s face. She swallows and looks away, and I can see the emotions warring within her. “You must know, Talin,” she says softly, “that if something happens and your memory returns . . . and you become again the man that bastard says you are, that I will kill you.” Her jaw is clenched. “Even though you are my mate. For Vel, for my sisters . . . I have to protect them.”
My chest aches at seeing her like this. I reach out to gently touch her arm; she flinches away, but I keep hold of her. “Deliah,” I say firmly. “If I change . . . if I revert to what the Prophet claims I was . . . I want you to kill me. Please.”
Deliah nods tersely, still not looking at me. I feel Bell’s light touch on my shoulder. “If it comes to that, the man I know will already be dead,” she says. “I know you, Talin.”
Deliah crooks a smile. “Alesk, isn’t it?”
Bell shakes her head firmly. “No. That man is gone. This is Talin, a hero just like his brother.”
I bow my head. I will never betray these women. Never. “So what do we do now?” I ask, trying to keep the emotion from my voice.
Bell blows out her cheeks, shielding her eyes from the sun as she gazes out over the forested expanse. “Look for another Gate? There must be others if the Shriven have devastated many worlds.”
“No.” We all turn and stare in surprise at Valyra. Her tone is as hard and sharp as a fresh-forged sword, something I have never heard before.
The weaver is still staring intently at the distant, leering skull. “The Shriven murdered my world. They are poised to do the same to yours. We are here, at the heart of their empire.” She raises her hand and points at the skull. “I heard what the Prophet said. The Mother of the Shriven is there. That’s where we have to go so we can kill her.”
From the hill where we emerged into this world, the immense forest unfurling in every direction had lo
oked like it would be a dark, vegetation-choked tangle. To my surprise, though, plenty of sunlight filters down through the canopy, splashing upon the mossy ground and the flowers emerging from the rich loam. The going is quite easy, though we do have to be aware of where we step, as treacherous roots ripple the earth.
The air is cool and pleasant, and despite seeing some insects flitting between the blossoms, none appear to be of the biting variety. Brilliantly-plumed birds cock their heads to watch us as we pass beneath them, sometimes calling down trilling greetings. They don’t seem to fear us, and I can’t see anything that resembles a predator lurking in the shadows, not even a snake or spider.
When I tell this to Deliah she shakes her head emphatically. “All the more reason to be wary,” she says. She hasn’t slid her glaive through the straps on her back since we passed into the forest, keeping the weapon in her hands. “If we can’t see them, it just means they’re good at hiding. Atop every hierarchy in the wild there are the killers – otherwise, the ones below would get too numerous. It is the way of things.” She gingerly pokes the end of her glaive into a mossy pile, as if expecting to find some carnivorous creature hiding within. When nothing leaps out she sighs, her brow furrowing in confusion. “Although I admit this place is very different from Vel. On my island, the air here in the deep forest would press against the skin and rob the breath from your chest. Snarelings would try and hook your feet so you would fall near a robber plant, which would then creep over you and dissolve your flesh. The trunks would be scarred with the claw marks of the tigers that claim that forest, and in the high branches shogeth would be glimpsed, crouching on their many stick-like legs and waiting for a chance to drop down upon the unwary.” She shakes her head, her frustration clear. “This is less a jungle than it is a –”
“Garden.” It is the Prophet who has spoken. He alone seems completely at ease here in this forest. Ezekal reaches up to pluck a bulbous yellow fruit from a low-hanging branch, then brazenly takes a bite, completely unconcerned that it might be poisonous. Thick juice runs down through the remnants of his beard. “For that’s what it is,” he says when he finally swallows.