by Jen Williams
The dragon lowered his head until his snout was hanging over Bern’s outstretched hand. Bern could feel the creature’s hot breath moving across his skin. Then, the walls drew back in one muscular movement and the queen appeared again. Taking no notice of Celaphon, she snatched up Bern in her net and dragged him back to the crystal chamber.
‘There will be more,’ she said as the ropes of fluid bound him back in place. ‘I feel that we are close now to understanding.’
Bern shook his head, conjuring a rueful look for her even as his heart began hammering in his chest. ‘You’ll understand nothing. It’s not in your nature, worm-queen.’
She didn’t bother replying. Instead, a rippling wave of pain moved down through Bern’s body – that’s new, he thought dimly, can’t be a good sign – and then he was with his father under a fat yellow moon. In this memory they were together on a hillside, Bern the Elder riding his bear mount, and Bern – in his early teens – riding a small horse. They were both watching the movements around a hearth-house, a low building nestled at the bottom of the hill. Lamps burned softly in the windows, and dark figures were by the stables, mounting their own horses. In the deep quiet of the night, Bern could almost hear their voices, and the clatter of horseshoes on cobbles.
‘I still don’t know why we have to do this at night-time,’ said Bern. He shifted in his saddle, too aware that his father would see straight through this complaint. He tried to put more sulky indifference into his voice. ‘It just makes us look more suspicious.’
His father, Bern the Elder, minor king of Finneral, chuckled warmly. ‘Alliances between war-bands are made at night, under the sky-stone.’ He nodded to the moon. ‘As well you bloody know, lad.’
Bern rolled his eyes. ‘It’s just the moon. If it’s so important, what does it mean that we make an alliance under that?’ He pointed to the corpse moon, hanging silvery and ominous to the east. ‘That doesn’t seem like a particularly good omen to me.’
‘Blast the stones, aren’t children a joy?’ His father seemed to be addressing the world in general, or perhaps imagined hordes hiding in the shadows. ‘Been around for less time than a bear’s fart and they’re full of their own cleverness. Why listen to your father, bear’s-fart? I’ve only led my people for decades, only fought with my back against the stones, only raised you from a tiny mewling cub –’
‘I’m fairly sure Ma did that.’
‘But let us all pause and listen to the staggering wisdom of Bern the Younger, who thinks himself a Stone Talker, I reckon. Don’t think I don’t know this is because you’re nervous.’
‘What?’ Bern blinked, taken aback by this sudden change of attack. ‘Nervous? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Bern’s father snorted laughter. ‘Here, look, they’re coming. Sit up straight, Bern Stone-Talker.’
There were people at the base of the hill now, coming towards them. Bern saw another large figure, like his father, riding on a bear-mount, and two on foot. At the sight of one of them, his heart did a little stumble in his chest, and he forced himself not to glance at his father. He had the terrible suspicion that Bern the Elder knew very well what his heart was up to.
‘Ho!’ The call came from the central figure on the bear. ‘Well met, Bern the Elder.’ As they drew closer, Bern could see that she was a broad-shouldered woman with wild brown hair that seemed a part of her own horse-hair cloak. She had a war hammer at her waist, but she was grinning widely as they came on. Walking next to her was a girl of around twenty summers, her thickly boned face and freckles marking her out as the daughter of the bear-rider, and next to her came a slim young man around Bern’s age. He had dark hair shaved at the sides, curls of ink tattooed under the fine fuzz of stubble there, and although Bern could not have seen them so clearly in the moonlight, he knew he had eyes like pale, fine granite.
‘Rig, my friend, it’s good to see you,’ said his father. ‘All these years, and finally a peace between us.’
The big woman shrugged one shoulder. ‘Those last pockets of the Sown resistance have been nothing but a pain in my arse, Bern, and my people want to get back to their farming and hunting. Anything we can do to make that happen faster –’ She paused to gesture to the two who stood with her. ‘You’ve met my daughter, Jorg, and my brother’s lad, Rold. They come as my witnesses.’
‘Fine young people,’ said Bern’s father. ‘My boy Bern is here as witness also – he was so excited to come, like a young pup out sniffing for hares. Can’t imagine why.’
Bern felt the slow crawl of his blush moving up over his neck and across his cheeks. At least, he thought, in this light they can’t see it, yet he couldn’t help noticing a very knowing look pass between his father and the war-queen Rig. He kept his back very straight, trying not to look too obviously at Rold, but then the boy spoke.
‘Perhaps we can hunt while the elders talk,’ he said, looking directly at Bern. ‘Night hunting in these woods serves up more prey than you would think.’
He grinned, and Bern felt his heart turn over in his chest, and that was when Rold’s throat burst open, spilling a gout of black blood down his front and onto the grass. For a terrible long second, Bern could not understand what he had just seen; one moment Rold had been smiling at him, impossibly handsome, and the next he was a boy on his knees, already close to death. The arrow that had torn his throat out was embedded in the leg of Rig’s bear-mount, and more arrows were flying, stuttering over the small hill like lethal hail.
‘It’s the fucking Sown!’ shouted Bern the Elder, and, too late, Bern spotted other shadowy figures on the brow of the hill. Rig was already riding towards them, bellowing, her war hammer held above her head, and his father was turning his own mount. The girl Jorg had left her cousin in the grass and was following her mother.
‘Rold?’
‘He’s gone, son.’ His father took a moment to lean across from his bear, grasping Bern by the forearm. Arrows zipped over their heads, too close, too close. ‘Now we make them pay. Do you understand? We kill them all, quickly. None of them will see sunrise.’
He let go and was off, a huge, terrifying shape barrelling towards the scattering figures at the top of the hill. There were more people on the edges of Bern’s vision, not just archers but warriors, their faces grim and streaked with Sown ink. From above him, a horn was being blown; Jorg was summoning the house guard.
Abruptly, his horror and sorrow were blown away like the last remnants of tattered pennants, and Bern felt himself fill up with something else instead, something hot and hard-edged, red-eyed and frantic. He would kill them all, he would taste their blood, and the future they had denied Rold would be denied them too. That was all that mattered . . .
‘What is this, then?’ asked the queen. Bern took a huge, watery breath. The surging rage had felt so real, so present. ‘What is this new feeling?’
‘We did kill them,’ he said, not really listening. He was remembering Rold, who had been so good at hunting. ‘Took apart every one of them, and before the sun came up. I was covered in blood after, and it felt – right.’
‘And you condemn us.’
‘This was different.’ Bern shook his head. ‘This was revenge. What they had done was an enormous insult to our clans – an attempt on the life of a king and queen? They were lucky we just killed them.’
‘It was more than that to you,’ said the queen. Bern looked at her for the first time, surprised by this accurate observation.
‘Aye. I liked Rold, I liked him a lot. An early crush, I suppose. And they killed him without even thinking about it.’ He licked his lower lip with a dry tongue. ‘Stones curse them, the arrow was meant for Rig’s bear, not him, but that mattered nothing to them. All that promise, snuffed out. I wanted to kill them all. It was important, and right, that I did.’
‘Such attachments, again,’ said the queen. ‘To that which is not blood kin.’
Bern laid his head back against the soft, slightly yielding surface he was
tied to. ‘You’ll never understand us. Just let me die, worm-queen.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ said the queen. The relentless buzz of her voice, always, to Bern’s ear, humming with the discordant harmonies of a thousand other voices, had taken on an odd, dreamy quality. ‘But recently we have learned the value of change, and of trying new things. And when we need to understand something, we have learned that you just take it apart first.’
She brushed a long, curved finger across Bern’s forehead, and a bolt of pain moved from the space between his eyes down to the crystal embedded in his hand. He screamed.
Chapter Thirty-six
‘I can hardly believe it.’
Vintage stared intently at the enormous crevasse that broke the jungle floor into two jagged pieces, half sure it would vanish if she looked away. Tor, on the back of Kirune, was descending slowly into the darkness, while Aldasair was already gone, Sharrik leading him and Jessen down into the Jure’lia lair. The forest surrounding them was lush and strange almost beyond imagining, and the tiny glimpse she had got of it had made Vintage eager to come back with her notebooks and glass jars, but there was no time. Even her muffled and broken connection to Helcate was telling her that Bern was in a lot of pain, and as strong as he was, she couldn’t see how he could survive it much longer.
‘All these years,’ she said softly, ‘and they were just hiding underground. In the arse-end of nowhere, of course, but that hardly matters.’
‘Lady Vintage.’ Chenlo looked tense. Behind her, their handful of willing fell-witches were tending to their bats. Those who had been agents in their previous lives wore expressions of grim patience, while the few who had, until recently, been imprisoned in the Winnowry, looked largely terrified. Vintage forced herself to turn away from the crevasse and meet Chenlo’s gaze. ‘You will tell us as soon as the signal comes?’
‘As soon as I hear it, you will know.’ She addressed the women now, still keeping her voice low. They were some distance from the opening of the crevasse, and all of Tor’s reports suggested that the worm people were nestled deep in the dark earth, yet something about the place asked for quiet. There was danger in the line of every warped tree and swollen leaf. ‘Remember, my darlings, we are sneaking in, so you must be absolutely quiet. Listen for me. When I tell you to drink the heartbright, do it, but not until then – we have a limited supply, and I will not waste it if the opportunity to destroy their eggs is not there. Likewise, do not summon your winnowfire until I tell you so. Tormalin tells us it’s dark down there, and we don’t want you all lit up like a whore’s bedroom.’
Sweaty faces looked back at her, saying nothing.
‘We can make such a difference here. We can hurt the worm people in a way they’ve never been hurt, but I won’t lie to you. This is dangerous, very dangerous. Most of you won’t have seen the worm people up close before, and they are not something you generally wish to see on an empty stomach. The consequences of being caught down there will be very dire indeed.’
‘Yet we’re going down there and chucking fire about,’ said one of the ex-agents, a woman with a face like a brick and a Mushenskan accent. ‘Lucky us.’
‘Some of us have barely even flown with a bat before.’ This was one of the younger girls, her eyes wide with uncertainty. ‘What should we do if something goes wrong?’
Vintage caught a glance from Chenlo, and cleared her throat.
‘Listen. If things should go tits up, keep your eyes on that strip of sky and get out as fast as you can. Don’t wait around the crevasse either – get away, head north, and we’ll do our best to meet up again elsewhere. I –’
Helcate lifted his head, his snout quivering, and at the same time Vintage felt it: not quite words, just a sense of urgency. Come on, it was saying. Follow us. It’s time.
‘Helcate,’ said Helcate.
‘That’s it,’ said Vintage, scrambling back into the harness. ‘That’s the signal. Follow me, and remember everything I said. We’ll be quiet now, as much as we can. Chenlo?’
The agent nodded and went to her bat. In moments they were all in the air. To Vintage, the leathery wing beats of the bats sounded much too loud – surely the Jure’lia would hear them coming and tear them to bits – but they sank down past the craggy stone walls of the crevasse without incident. For a time they were caught in a suffocating dark, then, as her eyes adjusted, Vintage saw the strange glowing plant-like fronds that were growing directly out of the walls. They afforded only a ghostly, yellowish glow, but it was enough to hint at the huge scale of the space they were in. The walls fell away abruptly, revealing an area that seemed to stretch in all directions, and nestled in its rocky bosom was an army of horrors. Behemoths clustered together like fat, milk-fed puppies, while cavernous passageways, each easily as big as the Eboran palace, led on to other enormous chambers. The place was silent, filled only with the faint dripping of water somewhere nearby, and a discordant low-level hum that Vintage assumed must be the sound of the Jure’lia at rest. Remembering Tor’s instructions, she led them down towards the north-western chamber, already noting the faint green glow that came from that direction.
‘Tomas save us,’ murmured someone. ‘We’re flying into our own tombs.’
Vintage felt rather than heard Agent Chenlo admonish the speaker, although Vintage could hardly blame the woman. Now that they were here, sinking into the abyss, it felt rather like they’d found a snake’s nest and were preparing to lay down naked in it. Vintage glanced up at the retreating slither of sky far above them; already it looked like nothing more than a discarded blue ribbon.
‘Movement on the ground,’ said Chenlo, her voice barely more than a whisper. Vintage looked down and saw what she meant; an alarming sea of Jure’lia creatures shuffled and clicked below, like a carpet made of shining beetles. She saw spider-mothers in there, giant burrowers, and other less identifiable things. When she spoke, her throat was tight.
‘I think it’s all right,’ she murmured. ‘They’re just going about their business. They’re not going to take any notice of us just yet.’
The north-west chamber loomed into sight, and Vintage swallowed hard, her heart thudding in her chest. Here, stretching as far back as they could see, were the rounded forms of the Jure’lia eggs, just as Tor had promised. Each one looked easily as big as Vostok, and they were surrounded by a teeming mass of the black Jure’lia fluid. A strange chemical stink rose up off them, and quite distinctly she heard one of the young women gag on the stench of it. In her mind, Vintage tried to picture the life cycle of the Jure’lia, and how these eggs fitted into it: an endlessly hungry army that travels through the skies to a new world, lays its eggs within its warm flesh, then sets about eating away anything on the surface that might do it harm. Then what? Then, the great circle of life, thought Vintage, smiling grimly. The eggs hatch, and a new army sets out on its quest to find a world to consume.
One new army? Several thousand, more like. The shadows in the vast cavern were deep and thick, but already it was evident that they had an enormous job ahead of them.
There was a shout from across the cavern, loud and mocking – it was Tormalin, making a racket as usual, but one that was for once a part of the plan. From behind them Vintage heard the Jure’lia surge into life. The background hum became a shriek, and there was the unholy sound of thousands of insectile legs coming to life – clicking, skittering, buzzing life.
‘Sarn’s bloody roots, it’s time. Ladies, drink your heartbright and follow me.’
Kirune alighted on top of the Behemoth just behind Sharrik and Jessen. The place was as gloomy and as unpleasant as Tor remembered, yet there was a tight knot of excitement in his chest. For the time being at least, the weakness of the crimson flux had retreated, and he felt feverish with the need to fight.
‘How will I find him?’ Aldasair was frowning around at the enormous cavern, as if Bern might be standing in plain sight somewhere. ‘She could have him anywhere.’
‘He is close.
’ Sharrik shook his head, fluffing up the feathers on his neck. ‘I feel him, nearby. Within this fat thing, I think.’ He stamped his heavy paws on the surface of the Behemoth.
‘It’s a place to start,’ agreed Aldasair. ‘But how do we even get inside?’
‘We crawl up its arsehole,’ said Sharrik, in a very serious tone. ‘Before, over the mountains, the scholar Vintage took Bern up the arsehole of this monster. That is how she described it.’
‘Oh.’
For a very dangerous moment, Tor was seized with the urge to laugh. He swallowed it down with some difficulty, and clapped his cousin on the back.
‘It seems your path is clear,’ he said. ‘I’ll get down there and cause some trouble, and bring all the little beasties running. You, Sharrik and Jessen find Bern.’
‘Sharrik should stay here with you.’ Aldasair’s face was pale, two hectic splashes of colour across the tops of his cheeks. ‘You cannot possibly deal with that horde alone.’
‘I must find Bern!’ Sharrik raised his voice, then just as rapidly lowered it. ‘I can feel him, clearer than any other. You must take me.’
‘I will be fine.’ Tor smiled at them. ‘Don’t worry about me, just get him out and as far away from here as you can.’
With that, he touched his hand to Kirune’s fur and they trotted over to the sloping edge of the Behemoth. Below them, the teeming minions of the Jure’lia squirmed and skittered. Tor saw bulbous white and yellow eyes, mandibles like iron traps, many-jointed legs tipped with blade-like claws.
‘No one asks if I will be fine,’ said Kirune.
Tor smiled again, and buried his hands in the thick fur across the big cat’s shoulders.
‘Brother,’ he said. ‘This will be fun, won’t it? All we need to do is fight. We were made to fight, you and I.’
‘You mean to die here,’ rumbled Kirune. ‘I can feel it.’