by Greg James
Something was watching, waiting and coming closer.
It will be here soon, she thought, the moment where I have to choose. To save them or betray them. To save my sister, or to save Seythe.
~ ~ ~
Sounds from outside Sarah’s alcove, soft like the rhythm of a dance, woke her, and she rose to look outside. The Kay’lo were dancing in the underground dust, each swaying in the brightening light cast by the limbs of the Great Tree. Their arms swung, lashed, and twisted at their sides. Their knees bent as if they were kept on their feet by a strength outside themselves. Sarah felt shivers overtake her as she watched. Shoulders slumped then became tense with writhing. Mouths hung open, slack. She could see something wriggling in their mouths and trailing out over their lips, then hanging there, pale and fibrous; fabric soft yet glistening wet. Sarah watched the strange fungal tongues grow until they hung all the way down to the ground. Where they touched it, the cold ground steamed and the tongues coiled into small, quivering piles before the shifting feet of the Kay’lo. The only sounds were her own breathing, the beating of bare feet on earth, and the sound of the seemingly endless wet material falling from their mouths. With a sudden heaving, each Kay’lo spat out the last of the things. They stopped their dancing.
Silence filled the space.
Sarah watched, waiting. Her fingers, holding tight onto the sill, ached.
The worms were moving now. Uncoiling. They became long, lashing headless lengths that whipped about in the dust. Sarah watched them weave and coil, mesmerised by the sloppy rhythm of the strange, whitish matter. She could smell them slowly baking in the subterranean heat—a stale odour that made her cough and gag. Slowly, the worms crumpled in on themselves, dropping to the earth, twitching, stirring, rotting quickly. Their husks, drying out, became one with the dust and the dirt.
One by one, the Kay’lo dropped down into the dust and were still.
They are coming, she thought, the Dionin are on their way to Lo’a’pan.
Can I still do it? Can I betray the Kay’lo?
In the back of her mind, she was sure that she could hear the cruel sound of E’blis laughing.
Chapter Twenty
Morning came and Sarah arose, washed and dressed. Outside of her alcove, Orraea was waiting for her. The Wayfarer’s face was as unreadable as ever.
“Do you know what will happen to me today, Orraea?”
The Wayfarer shook her head, “The customs of the Kay’lo are well-guarded and none of our order have ever been to Lo’a’pan before. Today’s events will be as new to me as they will be to you.”
But is that true, Sarah wanted to say, can I trust you not to lie to me?
“Come. They await you.”
Orraea led Sarah to the bowl-shaped hollow beneath the Great Tree. Kay’lo, young and old, paused to watch them pass, making the hairs on Sarah’s neck stand on end. Their staring eyes were so dark and sombre.
They know what’s going to happen, Sarah thought, why won’t someone tell me?
The Kay’lo Elders bowed their heads to Sarah as she descended into the space beneath the Great Tree. She could smell the richness of its sap and feel the fertile warmth emanating from its bark. As she came towards the small group of old men and women, she saw the source of the light wind that blew through Lo’a’pan and kept the underground air from becoming stale and musty. A deep hole bored directly underneath the Great Tree allowed fresh air through. The edges were too clean and neat to be Nature’s work. She wondered where the hole led to, and what was down there. A number of roots hanging from the Great Tree disappeared down into the hole.
Perhaps it leads to the Wood Beneath the Worlds?
It had been a long time since she had last thought of Gorra, Yagga, and the White Rider. Her time in Seythe had buried the memories until they felt like something from a dream. Sarah stood before the Elders, and one of them came forward, resting his weight on a staff woven from a number of dark roots.
“Sarah Bean, Flame-bearer, if we are to fight for you we must know that you are true and will serve the Great Tree and the land it is rooted in. You come from another world. We must know your love for this world is as strong. You must be tested for us to believe in who you are.”
“What must I do?”
“You must undertake the trial of the Great Tree.”
Sarah looked him in the eye and said, “I will take the trial. What do I have to do?”
“You must hang from the roots of the Great Tree for one day and one night.”
“What?”
“The stone of sorrow is one that we all bear.” He bared his breast and pressed the palm of his hand over his heart. “If you are the Living Flame, your heart will be strong and you will be returned to us. If you are not, you will go on into Erebus, the land beyond death, and never return.”
“This is crazy.”
“If you wish the Kay’lo to fight alongside the traitors and thieves who travelled with you, you must take this trial. You must do this, and then you may lead us. You will hang from the Great Tree until you are dead. If you do not come back to us, you are not the one you claim to be.”
I’m not asking you to trust them, I’m asking you to trust me.
But not this much.
“Orraea!”
They were asking her to die.
She’d seen television shows where people were resuscitated at the last minute from a near-death experience, but that was back in the real world. There were no heart monitors here. No adrenaline injections. No paddles and paramedics ready to shout ‘Clear!’
Sarah didn’t know what to do.
“Orraea! Help me!”
A semi-circle of Kay’lo warriors had gathered silently around the rim of the hollow. She had not even heard them approach. She took a step towards them, and they flowed down into the hollow, barely raising the dust with their swift footsteps. Two stepped forward and took her by the arms.
“Orraea ... ”
The Wayfarer stood away from the crowd, doing nothing. Her clear blue eyes were disturbed, calmly observing the ritual. Sarah struggled and tried to kick and reach out for the Flame, but the divine, supernatural fire refused to come this time. It hung out of her grasp—a mote of imaginary light dancing away from her senses. The eldest of the Kay’lo came towards her, holding what looked like a length of rope. Sarah saw that it was a root from the Great Tree. She writhed in their grasp and called out for Orraea again.
Did she know about this, after all?
Was this why Orraea had travelled with Sarah, after all, because she knew the Kay’lo would sacrifice her? Was this her revenge for Ossen’s death?
The root was tied into a noose and fastened around Sarah’s throat as the Kay’lo bore her towards the whistling hole beneath the Great Tree. They were chanting now and stamping their feet in the pat-pat-pat rhythm Sarah remembered from that morning. She understood what that had been about now, at least. They were preparing for this from the moment I entered the city. The Kay’lo warriors held her aloft over the hole. Sarah looked down and saw how deep and dark it was. She tried one last time to break free, failed, and let out a sob.
“Kiley ... I’m sorry.”
The hands holding her were gone.
Sarah was falling.
A sudden, horrible tightness tugged at her neck.
Sarah blinked.
A girl was hanging in the air before her. She could see her. She was closer than Sarah had been and her hand was outstretched. Sarah could see what was yawning below her. An abyss. An emptiness she would fall into if she did not take that waiting hand, but could the hand be trusted more than the abyss?
Sarah reached out and took the proffered hand, feeling oblivion draw away from her as she did. She was no longer falling. She was gently drifting. With her free hand, she rubbed at her throat. There was memory, vague and unsure, of something tight around her neck, strangling her.
A bitter breath filled her lungs. Her eyes stung with tears she could not shed. She could
feel ground beneath her feet though she could not see it. It was then that Sarah recognised the girl, the face before her.
Kiley ...
“No. You can’t be dead. He promised.”
Kiley shook her head and smiled awkwardly.
It wasn’t Kiley, Sarah thought. It’s something wearing her face. But why?
Sarah reached out and pinched the girl’s skin. She was solid, not a ghost.
“Am I dead?” Sarah asked.
“Almost. Not quite. You’re getting there.”
“Don’t play games with me. I’m tired of them. I want answers.”
“Then you should not have come to Erebus. Here, you are outside the Thirteen Worlds, the Spaces Between, even the Realms where your friends Ossen and Adraxis rest.”
“So is this like a dream?””
“In a way it is, and in a way it is not. It has to be like this, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
“Why’re you here? You’re not Kiley.”
“No. But I am here because I have to be. Because you need me. I was told to come.”
“By who?”
“That would be telling.”
“I don’t understand this shit.”
“No, it’s not shit, Sarah Bean. It’s the truth of your heart.”
“My heart?”
“Yes, you’ll be dead soon, unless you do what you need to do here. Your blood will water the Great Tree and your soul will become one with its roots.”
“You look like Kiley. You don’t sound like her, though.”
“You should not change the subject, Sarah. You should listen to me.”
“I’ve had to listen to too many people in the last four years, and I still don’t understand half of the crap they say.”
“Then listen more closely, O Living Flame,” the girl whispered. “See truly. Then you will be free.”
“Oh, just ... fuck off.” Sarah’s words were deafening in the silent abyss.
The girl did, burning with colours that Sarah could not name.
“See truly, Sarah Bean. See truly, or you will fall into darkness too.”
It appeared out of the gathering grey. At first it was unclear, a haunted hand. Pressing on, Sarah saw it growing. It dwarfed not only her but all things around it. It was an inverted fossilized colossus. The dried-out, dead hulk of a tree. Its bows were arm-thick gnarls and each branch was a broken spearhead. It hung over emptiness, a cavernous burrow that had been bored through to the darkness beneath the world of Seythe. It was the dark brother to the Great Tree, and the only way to climb it seemed to be downwards.
Sarah climbed down, hand over hand, feeling for knots and whorls in the root tangles to secure himself, crouching, extending first one foot and then the other, tasting the air as it grew more stagnant. The roots were thorny and rough. They sliced at her skin as she made her way down through them. She felt like she had been climbing through them for hours. Her bones cracked. Her fingers bled. Her muscles were raw, begging for a rest, but every time she stopped, the roots would creak and moan, threatening to give way under her. The only resort was for her to keep on moving. She could no longer see the trunk of the tree, the bows, the branches, or the cliff face it grew down. But she could see another place below. It was high and mighty, made up of concentric cliffs and descending depths. It was cold and silent. Dead and empty. Fog swam in, obscuring her view. Its greyness swarmed around her. Its touch made her hands and face numb. Sarah felt sick. Her lowered foot was suddenly dangling in thin air. Sarah grabbed onto the roots, twining them around her wrists, forearms, and fingers.
Oh no!
This was it. She could go no further, but she couldn’t see any ground below. She swung in the tree’s roots. She did not know what to do next. Her shoulder itched, so she rubbed at it. She felt her skin begin to itch elsewhere. She scratched at her cheek.
Spiders poured out of the tree.
Where had they come from?
They came towards her. They were thick with dense hair and patches of light colour were visible on their creeping legs. Their multiple eyes flashed every so often.
One of them tensed its strong limbs, thrust, and sprang. Sarah struck the thing away with her hand. Another followed the crushed one, then another. Her hair was stirring, and she felt a coarse tickling at the base of her neck. Countless little bodies entangled themselves in the roots of her hair. Sarah slapped and pulled at them, beating bruises into her skin and tearing at her clothes. The plague went on, not abating for a minute. Wiping tears from her eyes, she winced as dozens of petite incisors pierced her skin as one. Her eyes rolled in her skull.
The world was spinning away from her. She was falling. She felt the tree tying her neck in a noose of roots and vine. It drew tight. Her breathing grew thin. Her head flooded with pressure. She could feel her face flushing, burning, turning purple. Dirty great spiders ran across her failing vision. Her tongue hung from her mouth, lapping desperately at the air.
Something spoke to her.
The living may not enter here, only the dead.
And then, her fall stopped.
The noose snapped taut.
She breathed her last.
She was dead.
Chapter Twenty-One
The mountainside trembled and shook, and then heaved like a mother’s womb bracing itself to give birth. A great shattering. Fire and darkness. Screams of ancient metal grinding against rocks and stone. For a moment, the sun was in shadow, and then it shone again upon the devastation below. One after another, the Iron Gods strode out from the cavernous hole they had carved through the Mountains of Mourning. They were led by the one known as Daogoth, now that Kaomos had fallen. The ruins of E’phah showered down around them. The earth shook beneath their feet, and black fire belched from their smelted nostrils and gaping maws.
Before them was Mikka Wormtooth, surrounded by a spherical nimbus of shimmering energy. He was much changed. The ancient spirits of evil that animated the Iron Gods had blessed him with power and strength greater than he had ever received in the service of his creator, the Fallen One. His rags fluttered around his body like the wings of a black crow. His flesh rippled and coursed with the power it contained. Green flame curled in tongues from his open mouth and eye sockets.
His mind was one with the Iron Gods and he understood what they were and the nature of the beings that inhabited their shells. Every aspect of creation must have balance. Where there is Good, there is also Evil and the latter is often buried, somewhere out of sight. The spirits of the mountains were born in the stone roots of Seythe. They would have been the world’s natural shadow but the Fallen One threw things out of balance. His alien power infected E’blis and led to A’aron’s fall. The spirits of the mountains were frustrated as their purpose was usurped by the being who had entered the world from Outside.
They waited and their dark dreams slept until the Fallen One and E’blis were driven back into the East of the world. It was then that the West began to rise. The Molloi had their cities in the mountains were easy prey. They built the Iron Gods and unwittingly gave to the spirits the bodies they craved. The Iron Gods conquered and destroyed as they had been born to do. But their fury became so much that the First Wayfarer intervened, seeing that the spirits were going beyond their purpose. To be the balance in the world is one thing, to be the herald of its end is another. The First Wayfarer smote them, damped their fires and sealed them in the Deep Forges. And the spirits raged all the more because they saw how the Fallen One had usurped their rightful place. They were without purpose and it was not until Sarah Bean’s presence re-ignited the fire in the belly of Kaomos that they knew how black their hatred for all things had become.
It was a bitterness that Mikka Wyrlsorn well understood. He was a made thing, bred for one purpose and, without it, he was an empty shell.
No more.
The Iron Gods were as kin to him, and whosoever had given him the ring that awoke them must have seen this. Now, Mikka possessed the strength
to smite those who had wronged him and the Iron Gods were free to lay waste to Seythe and crush the Fallen One. Together, they were a force that none could hope to stand against.
Together, they would have their revenge.
“My brothers,” Mikka shouted, “we march upon Highmount, and then to the Shadowhorn. All shall fall before us. All. Shall. Fall!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sarah Bean found herself in a dark place, unable to see, hear, or feel anything. Suspended in darkness, she didn’t know whether she was up or down or what.
Is this what death is like? The thought sent a shiver through her from head to toe.
Am I just imagining I have a head and toes now? Or are they really there?
There was nothing and no one around to answer her question.
Now what do I do? Just wait here? Just ... hang around?
It was cold, like the heart of winter.
Then, for a time, it was like summer, sweltering heat beating down upon her from no source she could find or see.
It was then that a figure came out of the dark towards her.
His face was lined with numerous chasms and gorges in the flesh that spoke of much living and much pain. His eyes were small, secretive pearls nestling in his face. The man smiled at her unkindly, revealing teeth that were rancid and ulcerated gums. His eyes, those weird white eyes, would bear no refusal.
"You want something from here, from this dark place, yes?"
Sarah nodded.
"I can take you to a place and show you something, but you must be true to your wish. You must want to see something more, or it will come to nothing and it will be most awful for you.”
Sarah followed the man into the freezing shadows.
~ ~ ~
Unseen winter depths raged and stormed around them. Sarah’s boots crunched in time with those of the man. He was so thin, a scarecrow’s shadow that could become easily lost to her if he wandered too far ahead. His pace was assured. He knew where he was going. Sarah’s steps were the unsteady scuttling gait of a beetle, a creature unsure what terrible crushing blow might next befall it. The shapes forming in the dark around her seemed to struggle with one another. Their limbs were lithe, sinuous, and boneless. Their faces were distinctly sculpted from shadows of bone, and housed glinting winter pearls for eyes. The melancholy revenants faded away soon enough, but the sight of them stayed with Sarah nonetheless, haunting her heart.