by Alec Hutson
Deliah shoulders her bag and faces me. “We’re almost ready. Zev claims that the skull is three more days march through the forest. He’s given us enough supplies that we likely won’t have to forage for anything but water, and he says there are plenty of clean streams to drink on the way.”
I nod and go to gather my own things. As I turn a jolt of surprise goes through me – the three strange children who claim to be the poelthari have snuck up silently and are watching me with their luminous golden eyes.
“Have”
“You”
“Decided?”
My companions have stopped what they are doing and are staring at us. The old man also looks interested, coming around the table with a bemused expression as he wipes his hands on a rag.
“I have,” I reply, struggling to meet the poelthari’s intense gaze.
“And?”
“I don’t want you to restore my memories,” I say. One of my companions gasps; I’m not sure who, but I think it was Bell. “The man I was doesn’t matter, only who I am now.”
The children incline their heads in unison and begin to turn away, but I stop them with a word.
“Wait! You say you have a debt to me, yes? I would still collect it now.”
They swivel to face me again, and although their faces remain expressionless, I sense that I’ve intrigued them. My sword chimes as it flickers from its sheath. With three quick strides I’m across the room, and before he has a chance to react I lay the blade against the Prophet’s neck.
“What are you doing?” he hisses.
I ignore his question. “You saw into my mind,” I say, directing this at the children. “Could you see into his?”
One of them answers without hesitation. “Yes. Your minds are as open books to us.”
Another gasp – this time it was definitely Bell. I glance at her to find that she has stumbled back, her hands covering her mouth. Her skin is even paler than usual, and her eyes are wide with shock.
No,” she murmurs, clutching at the edge of the table to steady herself. She looks like she’s about to flee this place. She has realized what these creatures are.
I force my attention back to the Prophet. There is fear in Ezekal’s expression, as if he can guess what I will request of the poelthari.
“This man is hiding secrets from me. I want you to lay them bare.”
Ezekal swallows hard. “I have not betrayed you, Alesk. I could have cut your throat in your sleep or bashed your head in with a rock when your back was turned. I want the Mother gone as much as you do. More, even. She destroyed everything I loved.” Bitterness twists his face. “I saw our world and people die, something you can’t even remember.”
“And yet you allied yourself with her,” I say softly.
A shudder of movement and one of the children now stands behind the Prophet.
The poelthari lightly touches his leg and Ezekal gives a pained cry, dropping to his knees. I try to keep the blade lightly touching his neck as he falls, but the movement is too sudden and a thin line of red appears as my sword breaks the skin.
“We will do as you ask,” the child says, and then places its hands on either side of Ezekal’s head. Small fingers curl against the Prophet’s skull, and threads of black spread beneath his skin like spider silk unspooling.
Ezekal screams.
My heart is pounding as the Prophet’s cries continue unabated. The old man approaches, staring at what’s happening with curiosity. My other companions look as unnerved as I feel, their faces ashen.
The screaming ends abruptly. Ezekal’s eyes stare sightlessly ahead, blood trickling from his nose.
“Many secrets this one tries to hide,” the poelthari whispers.
“Tell me,” I command, wondering if the Prophet’s mind will survive this intrusion.
“He plans to betray you,” the poelthari says, its voice flat.
“I knew that already,” I reply. “What else?”
The poelthari nods. “In the deepest chasms there is something he tries to hide even from himself. Something for which he feels immense shame.” The Prophet’s face twitches as the child says this. “This one . . . he is the reason the Shriven first came to your world. One of the demons navigated the broken paths. A Voice from the darkness. It whispered that if he agreed to heal the paths into your world, eternal life would be granted to his people. Your people. So he had a weaver repair what had been broken, then gave her to the demons that passed through that Gate.”
Coldness steals over me. Ezekal did not discover during the war against the Shriven that their blood imparted immortality – he had known it all along. He had sacrificed our world willingly to cheat death. He is even more monstrous than I thought.
“Anything else?” I say hollowly, struggling to comprehend the extent of Ezekal’s crimes.
The poelthari’s serpentine tongue flickers out again, brushing the back of the Prophet’s skull. “There is much more. Betrayals and crimes uncountable. But we sense that these are not your concern right now.”
Ezekal’s face is gray, webbed by the black filaments. His life seems to be leaching away. I’m tempted to let the poelthari finish whatever it is they’re doing, but instead I hold up my hand.
“Stop, please.”
The poelthari’s face is now flushed a deep bronze. It looks sated. “Are you sure, mortal? If I understand your morals correctly, this one does not deserve to live. A small slurp and I will consume his consciousness.”
“No, let him go,” I say, and the poelthari releases him as it draws back a step. Ezekal tumbles forward, crashing face-first into the ground. Only the spasming of his fingers suggests he still lives.
“So he was the first betrayer.”
Valyra has stepped forward. She holds the emerald dagger I had placed in my pack earlier, and hate contorts her face.
“Wait!” I cry as she lunges forward; I’m too far away to stop her, but Deliah is closer and she wraps her arms around the weaver. Valyra struggles against the lamias’s hold, tears running down her face. “He did it!” she shrieks, tossing her head back and forth. “He deserves to die!”
“He does deserve to die,” I say evenly, trying to calm her down. “But he knows something of what awaits us. We need him.”
“He will betray us,” Bell says, and I see to my alarm that she has picked up her crossbow. I’m not sure if she means to shoot Ezekal or the poelthari. She would truly be justified in doing either, I have to admit.
“We can’t simply kill him,” I say hurriedly. “Justice will come for him, I promise you. But not yet.”
The child wanders back to where its brethren are waiting. Golden eyes all focus on me.
“This”
“Gift”
“Repays”
“The”
“Debt.”
Bell shifts her crossbow so that it is pointing at the poelthari. “What about what I am owed?” she snarls, and fear stabs at me. I can only assume that this creature that wanders between the worlds could destroy us with ease if it so chose.
“Gift?” Zev suddenly pipes up cheerfully, breaking the sudden tension. “We are giving gifts?” Without an apparent care, ignoring the taut string holding back a death-delivering quarrel, he ambles between Bell and the solemn-faced children. The old man looks around with a vacant expression on his face. He thrusts his hands in his pockets, sticking out his tongue and scrunching up his face as he rummages around. Then he pulls something forth and takes a step towards Valyra. Deliah releases the weaver as the old man approaches.
Her brow furrowed, Valyra holds out her hand to receive whatever it is Zev is offering. Something small and brown and squirming drops into her palm. She screams, throwing whatever it is away. A mouse bounces on the ground, sits there dazed for a few moments, and then scurries into a chink in the wall. The weaver rubs her hand frantically on her robes, staring at the old man in disgust. Zev smiles back in return, apparently oblivious, and moves past the weaver. Deliah snaps her
glaive into a guard position as he comes close, and reaches into his pocket again.
“Give me a mouse, old man, and you lose an arm.”
The hand which had been about to emerge hesitates, then goes back down as if searching for something else. This time he withdraws something small and gnarled and mercifully not moving.
“What is that?” says the lamias, not yet lowering her weapon.
“A gift!” the old man exclaims. It looks to me like a large nut.
Valyra’s expression has changed from disgust to confusion. She steps closer to Zev, her gaze locked on the object he holds.
“What is that?” she breathes. “The air around it . . . trembles.” She slowly holds out her hand.
“The seed of things to come,” the old man says, passing it over to her. She gasps as it falls into her hand, staring at the nut in wonderment.
A hissing has arisen, coming from the poelthari. I glance at them in startlement as they edge farther away.
“This”
“Elsewhere”
“Becomes”
“Too”
“Dangerous.”
The light in their eyes shifts from gold to amber.
“What do you mean?” I ask, but they do not respond. Instead, the air around them seems to fold and twist unnaturally. In the next eyeblink they are simply gone.
“Keep that,” the old man says, closing Valyra’s fingers around the nut. “Plant it where it will grow.” Then, without glancing at where the poelthari have suddenly vanished, he resumes his whistling and saunters over to Bell. She watches him approach warily, but instead of offering her some other useless clutter from his pockets he reaches up and taps her lightly on the forehead.
“And for you, some advice. Remember, clarity comes from the mind. And sometimes all one needs is a fresh perspective for changes to take root.” She flinches as he pats her on the cheek affectionately, and then stares after him as he wanders away humming.
We all stand in stunned silence until Ezekal groans and pushes himself up on shuddering arms. He turns a haggard face to me.
“What happened?” he rasps.
I reach down, grabbing him by his robes, and haul him to his feet. “We are leaving now.”
15
I crouch at the edge of the forest, looking out on a shattered landscape.
“A copper for your thoughts?” Deliah murmurs into my ear, and I can’t help but jump. The lamias left to go scouting some time ago, and I hadn’t heard her return. Whatever forester skills she learned on the island where she grew up have translated well to this wilderness.
“Well, I – ack!” I give a little cry as her tongue flicks out to touch my ear.
“I couldn’t resist,” she says softly, settling in beside me.
I glance at her reproachfully, and then back at what lies before us. The thick vegetation we’ve been traipsing through for the past three days has been dwindling all morning, and we’ve halted our journey among the few remaining trees. The last of any sort of cover, in fact. The terrain in front of us, stretching all the way to the base of the skull, is a cracked and broken plain of hard black earth. Some of the crevices look small enough to step across, while others yawn so wide they could easily swallow a careless elephant. There are no shrubs, no structures, just a few jagged fingers of black rock thrusting up occasionally from the badlands.
“Nothing has moved out there while you’ve been gone,” I tell her, wiping my ear clean. “What did you see?”
She shrugs. “There is nothing of interest. The forest skirts this place for a thousand paces in each direction.”
I glance behind me, to where the others are sprawled against gnarled boles. They are all exhausted – Deliah has set a punishing pace through the forest ever since we left Zev and his ruined temple. Bell and Valyra look wan and drained, but still determined. What softness once filled their faces has been winnowed away, revealing a new hardness. Ezekal, on the other hand, seems to be on the verge of tumbling into the abyss. Faint black lines still web his face, darkening around his tarnished eyes. His breathing over the last day has been hoarse and ragged, as if there was something clotting his lungs. To be truthful, I’ve been expecting him to collapse, but he must have known that we would leave him behind if he did. We haven’t encountered any more Shriven, but Deliah has informed us with certainty that they are out there. She’s pointed out signs of their passage, gouges made by their scythes where they sharpened them on tree trunks, and a few times she has had us hide when she thought they were close. Ezekal – despite that we now know of the depths of his ancient betrayal – apparently fears being abandoned in these demon-haunted woods more than he is frightened of us.
Looming over the black plains is the skull. The thought that it was part of a living creature is beyond my comprehension, but up close it is clear that it is truly made of bone. Despite its age it hasn’t yellowed much, remaining a shade of white that gleams in the harsh daylight. Fingers of vegetation crawl up from where it rests upon the dark earth, but these do not extend even to its gaping nostrils, where large winged creatures are roosting. I’ve been watching these things with some trepidation while Deliah was gone, but they do not give the sense of being predators. Perhaps that is just wishful thinking.
From afar, it had looked like the dead thing’s jaw was missing, but now I think it is actually beneath the ground. There’s a large gap between its huge blunted teeth and the plains below, as if the god or creature was buried with its mouth open in an endless scream. A chilling thought. The inside of the skull is dim and hazy, but I can sense something large recessed within.
I turn back to the others. “We should get moving soon.”
Ezekal groans, pushing himself from among the roots of a tree. His complexion is sallow, and for a moment the black veins spread across his face seem to writhe. I shake my head and they settle again – I must be more tired than I thought.
Valyra and Bell are already on their feet shouldering their packs. I catch the weaver’s eye and she nods grimly, as if to show that she’s ready. A tremor of regret goes through me – she’s so young, barely a woman, and even after losing nearly everything she is ready to sacrifice the little she has left.
“There are things flying around higher up the skull. If they swoop down, get behind Deliah or me and we’ll try and make them understand we’re not helpless prey. Keep your eyes on them – but don’t forget to be careful where you step. The ground is riven with fissures, and there could be sinkholes as well.”
“What is the plan?” Bell asks.
My hand drifts to the hilt of my sword. “We enter the skull, find the Shriven called the Mother, and then kill her.”
A ragged snort from Ezekal. “Kill her,” he repeats, his words dripping with sarcasm. “With what? Your sword?”
I shrug. “I’ve yet to find something that can survive being reduced to pieces.” I jerk my head towards the massive mountain of bone. “Even gods.”
“What will we find in there?” Bell asks the Prophet, her voice hard. “Your life depends on this as much as ours. I can’t imagine you’ll be spared if we fail.”
Ezekal coughs wetly and spits something out among the leaves at his feet. Whatever it is squirms away into the mulch and quickly vanishes. I’m getting more and more unsettled by his condition.
“I can’t remember, girl. The memory is too . . . difficult to hold. Jagged. All I know for certain is that you are doomed. We all are.”
A heavy silence settles among us. I see a flicker of fear in Bell’s face as she weighs the Prophet’s words.
“Enough,” Deliah drawls from behind me. There’s no dread in her voice, at least. “We leave now.” A rustling comes as she moves from the trees.
Turning away from my companions, I follow her onto the cracked plain. The black earth crumbles beneath my boots, as if it is volcanic. Deliah moves quickly, skirting the largest fissures and leaping across the smaller. I glance down into one of these cracks and see only darkness, the w
alls smooth and glassy as obsidian. I wonder if somewhere beneath us is the rest of the great skeleton, entombed deep within the earth, or if the skull tumbled by itself from the heavens and came to rest here. I’m not sure which idea I find more disquieting.
The flying creatures flitting around the nose-holes of the skull do not seem to notice us, or if they do, they care little about our approach. A small mercy – from this distance they look like insects, but I suspect their wingspan is in fact longer than the wagons the Prophet brought into the wastes.
Halfway across the broken expanse Bell comes up beside me, breathing hard.
“How are you?” I ask, but she dismisses my concern with a shake of her head.
“I’m fine. I’ve been thinking about what the old man said to me. His gift.”
I try to remember what he said and fail. “And that was?”
“Clarity comes from the mind. And sometimes all we need is a fresh perspective for changes to take root.”
I frown. “I wouldn’t waste your time. He was clearly mad.”
“I have no doubt that he was mad,” Bell admits, squinting up at the skull that now blots out most of the sky. “But there is a saying I once heard from a philosopher, a friend of my papa: ‘Madness is a river flowing from the wellspring of Truth.’ I asked him what he meant, and he told me that minds are fractured when they glimpse the true shape of reality. Yet in the ramblings of those who have parted the veil for those blinding instants – the mystics, the oracles, the madmen – there is truth, if one dares to look.”