by Matt Langley
Barl closed his eyes.
The suit crashed to the ground in the midst of the battle.
But not the battle for Pantonyle.
The forces on the plain fell upon it, hacking with their swords and axes, ferocious, desperate, brutal. The Techtomesh resisted as long as it could, but the onslaught was relentless. Cracks began to appear in the material. Fissures opened and at last, bones were exposed.
Summer in her armour, twenty feet tall, brandishing her black double-headed battle-axe cut a path through the ravening hoards. Bodies were battered aside. Severed limbs flew in every direction, heads spun in the mud, ribcages torn asunder, guts exposed and trailing, spines ripped from torsos.
Summer cleared a circle of baying combatants, holding them at bay with nothing more a look from behind her shining mask.
She reached into the broken armour.
With one giant hand, she pulled Barl from it and left a pile of bones behind.
She hoisted the terrified boy up and took him through the widening path of warriors back to her mound of spines.
Barl’s eyes snapped open.
He was looking up at Summer.
But a new Summer. A different Summer. Not his dead friend. This was the Summer of the Plain. His Familiar.
“What happened?”
“I repaid my debt.”
He sat up, struggling to understand. But then he knew. “I’m still in the suit, aren’t I? With that thing.”
Summer nodded, “Yes. And you only have one route to escape.”
Summer told him what to do, and then she killed him.
Galdar fell back from the cadaver climbing out of Carlow’s mouth.
Lucillian struggled desperately to shake Shryke awake, but he was still insensate. The last three Townsguard had scattered, running for their lives. Klane pulled the navigator, Crove, to him and held her like a shield.
“Help!” he screamed frantically to the walls.
The cadaver, robes wet with Carlow’s spit and blood, stepped away from the dead boy’s ruined body and shook itself, drawing life into its dead limbs.
Galdar stood transfixed, unable to run or speak.
Flesh began to run over its bones, up over the thing’s face and hands, filling the carcass in with corrupt life.
Muscles formed and built up. Veins curled and twisted. Skin shivered like a shroud, swelling behind, rolling down the limbs and up over the skull.
A woman.
Her face was deeply lined and furrowed with years.
Her eyes settling on Shryke.
Shryke, vulnerable. Barely conscious.
Shryke, his face a mask of agony.
The thing in the robes stalked towards him.
Then…
Barl burst from the shoulder of the cowled woman.
The boy ripped out through her robes with a black steel sword he’d woven as he emerged. Blood and torn muscle covered his thin frame. He rammed the blade up, into her, digging his way out through the meat of her newly created body, his other hand gripping the mailed fist of the creature who followed him.
The robed cadaver shredded, disintegrating into wisps of grey smoke as the twenty-foot-high armoured behemoth, clanked an immense steel foot down on the surface of the Sun-Machine.
The robe lay on the floor empty.
Summer bent, lifted it to her mouth, and sniffed at the cloth.
“It’s not over,” she said, and turned to regard Shryke.
Barl was breathing heavily, covered in blood and flesh from the demolished cadaver. As well as blood and gore, he wore tattered bits of wrecked Techtomesh. He looked up at the whirring suns on their dazzling stalks—at the golden city of the Sun-Machine and the Shadewalls spinning through near-space. Beyond the Shadewalls, loops of the Chainworld hung serenely, twisting their blue, green and brown surfaces up at the magical suns which warmed them. And for a brief second Barl could see beyond the loops of the chain. Out many millions of miles.
Before a Shadewalls obscured his vision, he saw enough to know that he was home.
The Sun-Machine, the Chainworld and everything else was hung at the centre of God’s Heart, just as Summer had promised it would.
Chapter 35
“They are the Dreaming Armies of the Plain.”
Row upon row of warriors, of every race, every hue.
Weapons at the ready.
Frozen in time as well as place.
Rank after rank after rank.
Shryke held onto Galdar for support.
Lucillian had given him some herbs from a pouch inside her jerkin, but it was a long way from healing what was wrong with him. Still, he took the herbs for her.
Summer, the Familiar of both Shryke and the strange boy, whose name Shryke couldn’t recall, had led them through the city at pace. The giantess’s enormous strides were impossible to match even when Shryke was at full strength. Depleted as he was, it nearly killed him.
They arrived at a set of huge black iron gates. Summer placed her shoulder against the huge constructions and with a clanking of armour and supreme effort, opened the gates on screeching, millennia-stilled hinges.
Beyond, stretching as far as Shryke could see, were ranks of warriors.
They disappeared into the hazy distance, over the horizon of the Sun-Machine. Crazy shadows danced among them as the suns whirled overhead. A speeded-up shadow-day around their feet. The engines of the universe twisting around their feet.
Shryke took his arm from around Galdar’s shoulders. He needed to stand on his own two feet. The boy hadn’t muttered two words in all the time since he had climbed out of the body of the robed skull. “I’m home.” That was it. The boy troubled Shryke in a way that he couldn’t fully articulate.
There was something about him Shryke recognised; but at the same time felt unknowable.
There were more pressing matters to deal with now than ponder the child’s strange nature.
He had a mission to complete, one that had been unlocked in his mind from behind the codespell.
He remembered fully why he had come to God’s Heart and the Chainworld circling the Sun-Machine at its heart.
He had come to protect the Failsafe: The Dreaming Armies of the Plain.
Barl was unhappy that the whirling suns and Shadewalls kept him from seeing beyond the Chainworld out across the endless surface of God’s Heart.
He had been only given a glimpse of the true nature of the world in which he had been born, raised, ripped from and then returned.
He had no idea if he would be able to escape the Sun-Machine and travel back to the surface of the enclosing God’s Heart, his town, his friends and his family. It didn’t matter that they were millions upon millions of miles away, he felt as though he could just reach out and touch them.
There was even the faint aroma of yellowberries in his nostrils.
When Summer had killed him on The Plain, he had returned to the suit hanging above Pantonyle with the energy of a thousand suns burning within him. He didn’t know how she had done it. He was on fire. The robed woman’s fingers melted from his back as he reached into her chest. He had torn a thousand agonies from her corrupt lips and spoken the Spell of Travelling that Summer had taught him on the mound.
Barl had been dragged into her body by the spell.
Inside the warm, wet darkness he felt the icy chill of her black, calcified heart beating slowly against his face.
And it was there that Summer met him.
Then the screaming blue of the Quantum Aether had bloomed around them.
Summer yelled at him to make a sword. He needed a weapon where they were going.
The journey had taken both an instant and thirty-five thousand years to complete followed in between two blinks of his eyes.
Barl’s body coursed with new energies.
Energies drained from the years, sucked from all that time into his burgeoning body… then with a detonation of flesh and brittle bone, he was bursting out of the woman’s flesh, cutting
her apart with the black steel sword in his hand even as he reached back to pull Summer out behind him.
Once he realised where he was, the rush of vertigo threatened to drown him in joy.
Summer revived the fallen warrior, calling him Shryke, and told the others that they were still not safe from the forces ranged against them. The God-Queen was abroad and would do everything in her power to unleash the forces of the Dreaming Armies on an unsuspecting creation.
It was imperative they made time now to travel across the city to defend the Failsafe where they would fight the final battle.
It must be protected at all costs.
Shryke’s eyes met Barl’s a single time on their flight across the city, but the force of that meeting had sent the boy reeling, it was so much more brutal than any physical blow. Who was this warrior? He looked maybe a decade older than Barl, but his eyes held a sad wisdom that was much, much older.
Barl also truly felt as if he’d known this Shryke his entire life, but also that he didn’t know him at all.
It was a strange and unwelcome feeling.
“The Dreaming Armies of the Plain.” Summer repeated, leading the party down the gap between two ranks of frozen, but still living, warriors.
Barl recognised the armour and even the faces of some of them. He was sure he’d knew them from their endless battle and had killed his fair share in search for energy on the Plain.
These warriors, though, weren’t covered in the gore and mud of battle, like those toiling eternally in that hellish place. They were pristine. Their armour new, their weapons sharp, the feathers in their helms fresh-plucked from a menagerie of exotic birds, and their faces, unmoving, frozen and yet so very alive.
“When the Gods created this place, the Chainworld, and the Heart around it to serve as the anvil of creation, they built into that system a Failsafe. Should life in this universe displease them or become unworthy, this army was fashioned to break out of God’s Heart, to sally forth among the endless tracts of the galaxies and bring an end to all life.”
Barl looked up at the nearest, fearsome warrior.
She stood poised, ready to kill.
Another beside her was ready to leap from his awful sleep and do battle.
As Barl looked around him it became clear that the warriors were all ready.
A second from battle.
It chilled him to the very core.
“The Gods left this universe and went off to create others. It’s the way of the Gods. As we make children, they make universes. They never thought to return here to us. Save one.”
Shryke nodded. “The God-Queen.”
Summer took off her helm, and looked down on the tiny travellers below her, “Yes. The God-Queen. Cast out and jealous of the God-King’s creation here, she vowed to take revenge. She would come here in disguise so as not to arouse his suspicions and manipulate those susceptible to her power. She would create the conditions which would trigger the Failsafe.
“In the Guild she found the perfect weapon to bring chaos to the universe. To unbalance everything. And when she had achieved her aim—a trillion worlds at war, bringing untold misery to the peoples of the universe, she needed to come here and release the army.”
“And you brought her here!” Klane mewled. The fat man hid behind Crove. He pointed a trembling finger at Shryke, Barl and Summer, “You’ve destroyed us all.”
Shryke bowed his head.
Summer replaced her helm and looked up to the whirling suns.
Barl felt the full force of Klane’s accusation.
It was true.
They had brought catastrophe to the heart of creation.
They moved on, down the rows, crossing ranks, the stream of warriors never ending, each so incredibly different from the last.
It was painfully obvious that Shryke was suffering, both physically, and from the sting of Klane’s bitter taunting. She wanted to go to him, to offer some form of comfort, but more than anything she wanted to shut the fat bastard up once and for good. But she knew Shryke would not countenance it. He was still a good man. Better than many she had met. He lived by a code that was stricter in nature than many a holy man. Galdar comforted herself by staring daggers at the corpulent governor and wishing fervently that looks could just this once kill.
The battle-mace thrummed with energy in her hand. It would have been so easy to end the governor’s wailing on the spot. Klane looked at her then as though he could read these darker thoughts and made sure Crove stood between them. “What I can’t understand is how you think a moron child, and a thick-headed barbarian can take on a Goddess, even with the help of a giant woman? What could possibly make you think you have a chance? You’re dead. All of you. Dead. And you’ve dragged us into your stupidity. What did we do to deserve that?”
“Without him you would be dead already,” Lucillian spat at the fat man. “The walls were breached. The Raiders were swarming the streets. You’d be hanging from a flag-pole, food for the carrion eaters by now without Shryke.”
“Which is beside the point,” Klane argued. “I didn’t die there. And now I don’t want to die here!”
“Just shut up!” Barl barked at Klane. The younger man raised his black steel sword, and in that moment, it looked like the boy would have happily gutted the fat man. That shut him up. Klane’s face blanched, and with a nimble sidestep for such a fat man put Crove between him and the boy’s blade.
“Do you mind?” The navigator shoved Klane back into Barl’s path. “I’m not your bloody bodyguard! You might remember them, they’re the ones smeared on the walls back there. You remember, the ones that fled, abandoning you.”
“You still work for me,” Klane said. “And don’t you forget it.”
“Well that’s easily fixed. I resign. Effective immediately.”
Crove jogged ahead to catch up with the fast striding Summer. “Hey, Junkyard. Wait up.” Summer stopped and looked down at Crove. “Tell me you’ve got a plan. Because you wouldn’t come all this way without a plan, right?”
Summer came down on her haunches.
She was still easily four feet taller that even Shryke.
“My plan is no longer possible. I had intended for Shryke to come here many years ago. I sent him, as his Familiar to wait here for the God-Queen. When she arrived, I was to cast the travel-spell, leave the Plain and come here to defeat her. But when she discovered Shryke’s purpose in the Shrine in the Thalladon climbs, she discovered my plans, and began her attacks on Barl and the Guild Nest to distract me. I was forced to divert my energies there.”
Barl raised his hand as if he were in school.
Galdar saw the boy was suddenly overcome with a sudden embarrassment, so dropped his hand. “I don’t understand,” he said. “You’ve only just become my Familiar. How could you have done this…to yourself…so many years ago?”
Summer looked down on Barl with genuine grief in her expression as she moved to comfort him. “I’m sorry, Barl. I have been economical with your truths. The travel-spell I shared with you on the Plain not only moved us in space, but also in time. We are thirty-five thousand years in your future. The Nest attack and the subverting of the Guild’s real mission to protect peace in the universe has born all the fruit the God-Queen desired. Beyond God’s Heart, the universe is at war with itself. It is tearing itself apart; the war to end all wars. And we must find a way to prevent the Failsafe from being triggered, or we usher in the end of everything. And to do that we must find the God-Queen.”
“So, where is she?” Galdar could no longer keep silent, the battle-mace bucked in her hand, fizzing with energy; felt almost too hot to hold.
Summer looked deep into Galdar’s eyes and said quietly, “You want to drop the mace, don’t you?”
Galdar looked down at the weapon. “Yes. It feels like it wants to escape my grasp. Like it is a living thing. It’s burning.”
“That’s because it’s trying to flee from the presence of the God-Queen,” Summer said.
>
Galdar felt sickness sweep through her guts. “Escape? But… how… where is the God-Queen now?”
“Inside you.” Summer told Galdar.
Chapter 36
Shryke gripped Galdar by the shoulders.
She couldn’t move.
Summer’s huge fingers plucked the battle-mace from her tiny hands and tossed it to Barl, who caught it clumsily.
Fear surged like cold fire through Galdar’s body.
Her eyes swam, and her ears sang.
It couldn’t be true.
That thing… a God… couldn’t be inside her.
No.
She saw Klane and Crove backing away, and behind them the soldiers of the Dreaming Army loomed large, like they were looking at her expectantly, duty in their bitter eyes.
“Put her down,” Summer boomed.
Galdar’s world upended. And then came agony. Her back smashed into the floor. Shryke knelt on her shoulders. Searing pain shot through her bones.
Summer bent over, blotting out the suns, her enormous eyes squinting with both enquiry and wariness.
“Stop!” Galdar screamed, begged, struggling against Shryke’s weight, but she couldn’t possibly fight him. He was too strong. She had nowhere near the strength she needed to shift him.
Summer placed one huge hand over Galdar’s ankles to still her kicking legs, and leaned in intently, examining her face.
The scrutiny was unbearable. Galdar felt the surge of panic rise to the very top of her mind, drowning all else. What did they mean? How could they even think that that thing, that vile monstrous skeletal thing that had killed Carlow was inside her? And then she knew she was going to die here, in this strange place, in the shadow of the dreaming army, because the only way to get it out of her was to rip her body to shreds.