The Poison Song

by Jen Williams

  Tchai tipped his head to one side, not quite agreeing with her.

  ‘We’ll have to keep an eye on the sky too, we don’t –’

  Her words were cut off by a strange, wailing cacophony, followed by a rumble so loud and deep that she felt it through her boots.

  ‘What –?’

  Tchai grabbed her arm and pointed. The distant smudge of trees that marked the edge of the Dead Woods was moving, growing bigger somehow. It was bleeding shadows. From all across the migration swarm, ant herders began to blow warning notes on their pipes.

  ‘Sarn’s bloody bones, what is it?’ Tchai held his spear at the ready, as if he could fight such a thing. ‘How do we even –?’

  ‘Tchai, your eyes are better than mine. Are we in its path? Can you tell?’

  The young herder shook his head, his eyes very wide. ‘I don’t know.’

  Now that it was moving, it came on very fast. A huge black shadow, taller than the treetops, crashed out of the treeline, unfurling tendrils of darkness as it came. The ground below it was torn up and cast aside. Treen saw trees she knew had stood for hundreds of years picked up and tossed away like toothpicks. Quickly it was clear of the Dead Wood, and it was coming on across the sand flats, oozing and changing shape all the time – it was hard to look at, hard to comprehend. Treen turned back to the herd, to her people with their sturdy but largely slow-moving sleds. If it was coming this way – if it spotted them – she doubted they would be able to get everyone out of the way in time. Nevertheless, they would have to throw caution to the wind.

  ‘Go!’ she cried, waving her arms over her head. ‘All of you, move!’

  Tchai blew more notes on his pipes, and as one the denizens of Deeptown surged forward. Treen turned back to look again at the approaching monstrosity; now that it was closer, she could make out more details. Floating in the air behind it, like fat pigs’ bladders hanging in the sky, were three of the worm people’s hideous ships, their skins oily and greenish in the harsh summer light, and another shape came on behind, one that made her think of the extraordinary dragon that had visited them briefly.

  ‘I think it’s going to miss us,’ said Tchai. He pointed with his spear again. ‘Look, it’s bending to the west, but that means . . .’

  ‘That means it’s going to go straight over Deeptown.’

  In the end, they stayed together on top of the small hill, and watched. The huge monstrous shape that, unbeknownst to them, was the Jure’lia queen, seethed forth over the flats, long tendrils of black ooze seeking and crawling like inquisitive fingers. Eventually, they were able to see that the back portion of the monster had a number of strange, pale protuberances, and from these thick varnish poured, ensuring that every part of the landscape the thing covered was sealed behind it in a solid green prison. When it came to the place they both knew to be Deeptown, Treen reached out her hand, and Tchai took it.

  Treen found that she could imagine it all too well – being down in the under-streets as a huge, monstrous weight passed over, the dust in the air as the foundations shuddered and burst. Thick rivers of varnish pouring down every entrance, catching and holding people and ants alike, and then slowly, slowly blocking out all light and air.

  ‘Thank all the gods for the pathfinder,’ muttered Tchai. ‘We would still be down there now.’

  ‘It’s heading north,’ said Treen, not really listening. ‘It has a destination in mind, I think.’ Around them, she could hear the cries of the men and women and children who had just watched their home destroyed. ‘Deeptown is gone,’ she said. ‘Come on. We’re going to have to think and move fast if we’re going to live through this.’

  ‘Can you hear that?’

  Pamoz unwound the rags from her head, and pulled the lever on the contraption. After giving a few last strangled gurgles, the thing stopped, wisps of steam curling up towards the ceiling.

  ‘Hear what? I can’t hear anything.’

  Fell-Erin rolled her eyes at her. ‘I’m surprised you can hear me, that noise clanging around in your ears all day. Come outside.’

  Frowning, Pamoz wiped her hands on a cloth and followed the fell-witch to the door of the dilapidated barn. Outside, the little town was quiet, with no people in sight – but that wasn’t anything unusual. Pamoz had chosen the place specifically because it was deserted, and because it had once been the location of a thriving metal-ore mine. This far south, Sarn was too hot and too arid, but it was also wilder, with greater stretches between settlements. This meant that when things went bad – as they often did – people were quicker to leave and find somewhere else to make their homes. No one wanted to be stranded.

  ‘Perhaps there is something . . .’ Pamoz scratched the back of her head, resolving that in the evening she would find some water and have a proper bath. There were lots of things about working with the Winnowry that she didn’t miss, like their outrageous demands, the close watch they kept on their women, and the general sense that anyone outside of their strange church was inferior in some way . . . but they had always been good about providing her with what she needed, whether that was supplies, workers, or clean bath water. Out here in the arse-end of nowhere, all of those things were harder to find.

  ‘Of course there is something,’ snapped Fell-Erin. ‘You’re half deaf, I keep telling you. I think sometimes that ridiculous contraption will blow up in your face and you’ll only notice when your legs fell off.’

  ‘It’s close to working,’ Pamoz said mildly. ‘The wheels are turning, I just need to get them turning steadily. And in the same direction. And then it won’t be so ridiculous, will it? A cart that moves without horses.’

  ‘It’ll be your triumph, I’m sure,’ said Fell-Erin. They were all very careful not to mention the Winnowline, the huge project Pamoz had been constructing for the Winnowry that was now, thanks to an incident the previous year and the absence of the Winnowry itself, permanently on hold.

  ‘What is that?’ A younger woman ran across the square towards them, her hair held back from her face in a bright red handkerchief. The bat-wing tattoo on her forehead had been added to since the Winnowry had fallen – now the stark shape was surrounded by delicate blue flowers that trailed down the sides of her face. Fell-Aethe was the other fell-witch who had agreed to come and work directly with Pamoz, and she had been on lookout duty for the afternoon.

  Fell-Erin took the woman’s hand and squeezed it. ‘You saw nothing from the wall?’

  ‘No, but it’s coming from the south, I think? I was on the north wall.’

  Together they went to the lookout tower, a tall old building built from cool yellow brick, and, climbing the rickety stairs inside, emerged onto the southern wall. Like most settlements in Sarn, the builders of this small town had devoted a lot of time and energy to the defensive walls, and they were in better condition than the tired collection of buildings they protected. The little town was called Goldlodge, according to Pamoz’s map, and it was nestled in the midst of a series of steep, rolling green hills. It sat halfway up one, clinging to the side of it like a particularly determined barnacle, and from the walls they looked out across a soft, pleasing landscape, only broken here and there by the thin, winding track of an optimistic road.

  ‘It’s coming from over there.’ Fell-Aethe pointed to the place where one hill rose out of the shadow of another. ‘Can’t you hear it? A rolling, hissing sort of noise.’

  ‘Don’t ask Pamoz,’ said Fell-Erin. ‘Her head’s full of steam.’

  ‘Now that you say it . . .’ Despite the humid warmth of the day, Pamoz felt goosebumps rise on the backs of her arms. She had felt this before, every now and then, when they had been building the Winnowline tracks – the sense that they were being watched by something large, something Wild-touched. ‘Can you—’

  A shadow fell over them. The three of them looked up to see an enormous bulbous shape passing overhead. Fell-Erin gave a little cry, falling back against the wall and crouching. Pamoz grabbed her arm and shook it.
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br />   ‘Get up,’ she hissed. ‘We have to get under cover.’

  ‘Look!’ Fell-Aethe was still looking out across the far hills. A great dark shape had appeared, creeping out from behind the slope of the land. ‘Tomas save us, what the fuck is that?’

  Pamoz shook her head. Nothing she was looking at made sense to her. The thing came more than halfway up the hill, and it appeared to be made of a black and greenish oozing material that shifted and changed as it moved. She saw things that could be arms and legs, ten or twenty of them, each fringed with multiple, moving tendrils, and she saw things that were almost bone-like in structure – the jutting shape of ribs here, the suggestion of a curved spine. There were fat protrusions along the back of it that were paler in colour, and oddly segmented; these were pulsing and flexing, squeezing out dribbles of green fluid. The head of the thing was long and narrow, almost like a pickaxe, and although it was too far to see it clearly, Pamoz thought she could see speckles of lighter material, as though certain objects had been caught there, stuck to its face.

  ‘Worm people,’ she said through numb lips. ‘Hide. We have to hide.’

  The three of them ran, descending the tower steps in stumbling jumps before sprinting across the dusty market square back into Pamoz’s work barn. Once inside they crouched against the steam-driven contraption she had been building for months, their hands pressed to its slightly warm sides as though it were a bigger animal, something that might protect them when their enemies kicked down the door. They waited there for hours, listening to the rumbled, keening hiss of the Jure’lia procession moving past them, then waited a few hours more to be sure. When they finally emerged, cautiously stepping out under the dangerous sky again, they discovered that whatever the terrible thing was that had passed so close by, it had paid no attention to the tiny settlement of Goldlodge. However, the beautiful green hills, with their lush grasses and small patches of fruit trees, were scarred and broken, trailed and daubed with varnish that was already shining solid under the newly risen moon.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  In the dream, Tor stood in the foyer of a rambling Eboran mansion. The shadows were deep, and the tapestries on the walls were rotting, the blackened threads revealing here and there little snatches of a lost history. There was dust on the floor and old, dead leaves, and on a long table by the door, the skeleton of some small animal, its bones yellowed and chewed.

  ‘Do I know this place?’

  Here, all the pain of the crimson flux had vanished, and he no longer wore the bandages that in waking hours covered him from wrist to shoulder. Instead, he felt young, full of energy, and as he walked down the corridor he plucked at the fine silk jacket he was wearing. It was yellow, not his colour at all, but it was very finely made, and there were black silk birds embroidered at the cuffs. The walls were hung with long, narrow paintings, each depicting a tall, solemn Eboran hero – there was Floriaan the Unlucky, with his lute, and Brochfael the Unending with her shining sword and gauntlets. For a time there had been a fashion in Ebora for these portraits of ancient heroes, each one depicted unsmiling, watching the viewer from eyes of ink and paint, and the owner of this particular home had been an avid collector. Tor touched the canvas of one, placing his fingers against the hilt of Brochfael, and that was when he remembered the place – once, he had made certain to always touch the sword of Brochfael, because he believed it was lucky.

  ‘We used to come here to play.’ He looked away up the corridor. Now that he had recognised it, the familiarity settled over him like a shroud. ‘Is there a word for the feeling of visiting a place from your childhood that you had completely forgotten? You would think it would be a good feeling, but it’s not. It’s not at all.’

  He turned away from the portraits and kept walking. Slowly, the dust vanished from the floor, as did the old leaves, and the tattered tapestries regrew themselves. The windows became clean, crystal panels that sparkled, and each room he passed became grander and grander. The silk covering the walls was painted with silver and gold; elaborate mirrors with heavy jewelled frames met him at every turn; huge marble fireplaces polished to a gaudy shine promised roaring fires. Eventually, he emerged into a larger chamber, and he laughed, both confused and delighted.

  ‘But this was never here,’ he said aloud.

  He stood in a vast throne room of creamy yellow marble, with tall windows that stretched from the floor to the balcony that edged its way around the entire room, and from the ceiling hung huge banners of black and yellow silk, each with the symbol of a green bird in the centre. When they had imagined it as children, the throne room had been thronged with lords and ladies, their clothes and hair glittering with fabulous jewels, their faces bright with droll amusement, but in this dream, the court was empty and silent. At the far end of the chamber was a throne, a tall, elegant thing carved of white wood, and in front of it, a long velvet cushion, where supplicants could kneel in relative comfort.

  Tor walked over to one of the windows. Instead of an Eboran garden, with its lush manicured grass and carefully placed rocks, he saw an exotic tableau of fountains and fruit trees, complete with strange, sleek animals – a well-fed bird strutted back and forth across gravel of all colours, presenting a huge fan of a tail that was speckled with iridescent greens and reds, and a small spotted cat sat on top of a glazed clay urn, a jewelled collar around its neck. Tor found that he was laughing.

  ‘You remember it?’

  The voice behind him was cool and soft, and he found he wasn’t at all surprised to hear it. Who else could have made such a dream?

  ‘I do, but obviously not as well as you do.’ He turned around. The throne room was still empty. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I was your queen, and you were my bravest champion,’ the voice continued. Tor found he couldn’t tell where it was coming from. ‘I would think of quests for you to do, and you would journey across all of Sarn to perform them. Bring me the head of the Wailing Wyrm of Triskenteth. Fetch the lost silver crown from the ice caves of Targ. I wished to bathe in the enchanted waters of Orlé, so you would bring me a cart, filled with caskets of the purest spring water.’

  ‘You certainly did enjoy telling me what to do, that’s true.’ Tor looked back to the throne. In their abandoned mansion she had used a chair, one carved with flowers all over. She had been small enough then for it to have looked like a throne when she sat in it. ‘And I would run off around this place with my wooden sword, looking for things to present to you. Each room became a new kingdom, a new country to battle my way through. The corridors were packed with ghosts and monsters, all of which I bravely fought, in your name. The silver crown of Targ I made from the kingswort growing all over the garden, and I got the water of Orlé from the bird bath.’

  ‘Yes. It had leaves in it.’

  Tor grinned despite himself. ‘What was the head of the Wailing Wyrm of Triskenteth? I forget.’

  ‘You brought me a frog. Alive. You hid it up your sleeve until you could throw it at my dress.’

  ‘That’s right.’ His smile faded, and the darkness of their present stole away the brightness of such memories. ‘Why have you brought me here? And why are you hiding from me?’

  Slowly, the shadows in the far corner of the throne room resolved themselves into the shape of a tall, slender woman. Her hair in the dull light looked silver.

  ‘I don’t have much time,’ said Hestillion. ‘You have to listen to me.’

  Cautiously, Tor walked across the throne room, his footfalls echoing up to the rafters. As he got closer, Hestillion seemed to grow dimmer. She was wearing a simple grey robe, unadorned with any jewellery or embroidery, and something about that caused his stomach to grow tight.

  ‘I will listen, if you show yourself, sister.’

  With obvious reluctance, Hestillion stepped into the light. She was thinner than when he had last seen her, her cheeks hollowed, yet her frame spoke of wiry muscle and strength. Her eyes were bright drops of crimson, and the shard of blue crystal
at her throat winked and shimmered, yet it was her skin that he could not look away from. Tendrils of greenish black were scratched across it, a fine web of corruption that covered her face, her hands, her neck.

  ‘I can’t change it,’ she said, peering down in wonder at her own hands. ‘Usually I can make myself look however I wish in a dream, but this – it’s inside me, through and through.’

  ‘Hestillion . . .’

  ‘Listen, the queen is coming for you. She is coming for Ebora, and she will not be stopped now. She intends to tear Ygseril up by the roots, and kill everything that lives.’ She took his hand; her fingers were dry and hot. ‘If you ever loved me, brother, leave now. Don’t wait. Leave Ebora and don’t look back.’

  ‘The queen is alive?’

  She shook her head, annoyed. She had always been frustrated by how slow he could be; how he focussed on details instead of the meat. ‘Of course she is. Do you think burning down our hiding place would kill her? All you have done is remove her every reason for being cautious! All you have done is make her feel anger for the first time.’

  He pulled his hand away. ‘Do you expect me to be sorry for that, Hest? The Jure’lia have been destroying Sarn for generations. They’ve murdered us in the tens of thousands, and I’m supposed to regret that we finally caused them real damage?’

  ‘As usual, you are missing the point. How can you damage them, truly? You have ended their future, yes, but what difference does that make if she kills you all anyway? While any part of the Jure’lia survives – even the smallest, crawling beetle – the queen lives still. I have seen it myself, with my own eyes. She is all of them, and they are all her.’