by Jen Williams
Tor blinked. It had always been an impossible hope, that they might defeat the worm people, as depleted and broken as they were, but with Hestillion’s words the true magnitude of the task sent ice water through his veins.
‘Are you listening? Go, you must go now. She is coming.’
The light had changed. Above them, the ceiling with its black and yellow banners had gone, and instead they were looking up into a troubled, cloudy sky. A fine snow was falling, yet when it landed on Tor’s robe, he saw that it was not snow after all, but ash.
‘Why are you warning me, Hest? You’ve spent the last year trying to kill us. You did kill one of us. Not to mention leading their worm-eaten ships into battle, destroying Jarlsbad. Or did you think I had forgotten that? You have no love for Ebora. You only want to see us all dead.’
She stared at him. Her face, with its shadowed eyes and dark veins, was mask-like.
‘Idiot,’ she hissed. ‘I don’t care about them. None of them, I never cared about anything but . . .’
There was a roaring noise from outside, loud enough to shake the glass in the windows. A moment later, the sky was alive with fleeing birds – thousands of them, in all shapes and sizes, all of them various shades of green. Tor looked up, briefly lost in the wonder of it.
‘You really were the greatest dream-walker Ebora ever saw,’ he said softly. ‘In another, better world, that would have been your calling, sister.’
She grabbed his arm and hissed in his ear. ‘And you, brother, were ever its greatest fool!’
Tor woke up with a start, his chest too tight to gasp down a breath. Vintage, who had been slumped in a chair near his bed, gave a sharp cry.
‘What is it, darling?’
For a handful of seconds that felt agonisingly like hours, Tor struggled to breathe. When finally the iron rings around his chest eased, he grabbed her hand and squeezed it.
‘We have to get ready, Vin. The queen is coming. She’s coming for Ebora.’
Chapter Forty-eight
They flew out at the first hint of sunrise, heading south across the city towards the Bloodless Mountains. It had been a cold night and a chilly morning, and Noon noted that they did not speak to each other; each war-beast and each rider were taken up with their own thoughts, intent on their destination. When they reached the southernmost foothills, Vintage called to them all to land, and they came to rest near one of the roads that led into Ebora, close to one of the old broken-down watchtowers. The pigeons that were roosting in it rose in a sudden cloud as they landed. From this spot it was possible to see across the plains for a good distance, and if the light was good, you could even see the faint glimmer, far to the west, of Greenslick, and to the east, the beginnings of the Yuron-Kai territories. They climbed down from their harnesses, and they stood and looked. For a long time, no one said anything.
‘They are not here just yet, then,’ said Aldasair quietly. ‘That’s something.’
‘I’ll take any time we can get,’ said Bern. He scratched at the foreshortened end of his right arm. ‘When they come, it will be quick.’
Noon noticed that none of them questioned whether Tor’s dream had been real or not. Tor himself, who had insisted that his ‘rest period’ was over, stood next to Kirune, dressed in a heavy black cloak, his face set and serious. Noon was sure she had seen new lines in it since he had dreamed of his sister.
‘This is the queen’s final assault,’ said Vintage. She was standing with her hands on her hips, glaring out across the plains as though they had insulted her personally. ‘She will bring everything she has in the effort to destroy us, I think we can rely on that. So. What’s our plan? Vostok?’
The dragon lifted her head. Caught in the gaudy rays of the sun, she looked unreal, ethereal almost, her violet eyes full of soft fire.
‘If she brings all she has, then so must we.’ She looked around at them all. ‘I feel it, brothers and sisters. This may be our final battle.’
‘We will destroy them!’ boomed Sharrik. He pawed at the ground, tearing up clods of grass and earth. ‘This is what we were made for.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Vostok, with feeling. ‘We were made to be weapons in this great war, the Ninth Rain. But also, we must use everything that is available to us. We must learn to fight with new allies. This is something I have come to realise.’
‘Helcate,’ said Helcate.
‘I agree,’ said Vintage firmly. ‘And we do have some. The fell-witches will be a formidable force against the Jure’lia. And the Yuron-Kai, the Finneral, the Reidn troops. The peoples who live in Ebora now, who have kept its lifeblood flowing, despite everything. It’s not going to be easy . . .’ Vintage pushed at her hair, forcing it out of her eyes and pinning it back. ‘It’s not going to be easy because we must fight the worm people and defend Ygseril, because if the tree-god is destroyed, the war-beasts will fall. We are weaker if we split ourselves, yet I can’t see how we can avoid it.’
‘Unless we let the worm people come to Ebora,’ said Bern quietly. ‘Let them walk right in the front gates, and defeat them at our own hearth.’
‘My darling, that is a big risk.’ Vintage patted her hair some more, shaking her head.
‘It’s all or nothing,’ he admitted. ‘But that’s what we’re facing here, isn’t it?’
‘I sent messages to the Yuron-Kai and the Finneral before we left the palace,’ said Aldasair, ‘and I briefly spoke to the Reidn commander. She is waiting on more details, of course, but she has said she will bring every warm body she can.’
Noon sat down on the grass and brought her knees up to her chin. She could feel the joint tension of all of them, thrumming under her skin – the connection they shared was alight with the need to figure this out, to find a way to survive. It was frightening. Tor had told them the details of his dream, had repeated word for word what his sister had told him, and it was clear from the attack on Jarlsbad alone that they were all in enormous danger. Yes, it was frightening. But the sense that they were all striving after the same thing, the feeling that they were pointed in the same direction . . . that was a comfort. It was a sense of rightness. She wondered if that was how it was always supposed to feel, this connection between war-beasts and companions. Idly, she rested her hand on the grass. It was damp with dew, and the bright green life of it pressed eagerly against her fingers.
She looked at the grass, and she remembered.
For a little while she let them talk, listening to the warm sounds of their voices – beloved voices – because she knew that when she did speak, she wouldn’t be able to take the words back again. Vintage was suggesting that in order to protect both the tree-god and the people who had taken shelter there, they should keep their ground troops, such as they were, stationed throughout the streets of the Eboran city. All of those people could die, Noon thought. We could all die. But I could stop them.
What is it, bright weapon?
I’ve got an idea.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ Noon said aloud. When they all turned to look at her, she smiled. ‘But I need to show you something first. You, uh, you might want to stand back. Just in case.’
She leaned forward and buried both her hands in the short, wet grass. Carefully, very carefully, she recalled the sensation of connectivity that had fallen over her when she was a child – the realisation that so many things were joined in ways that were invisible. First of all, she took the life energy of the grass under her fingers – easy enough – and then she let herself move to the blades of grass that were next to it, and then through the earth itself. She heard a slight gasp from Vintage as the grass turned brown not in a close circle around her hands, but in a jagged series of lines that branched out from her like forks of lightning.
‘Darling, what are you –?’
Noon shook her head tersely. The idea that she might lose control, that she might kill this new family as she had killed her own, was too close. Instead, she concentrated on the connections that were opening up to her as she
travelled along the tiny green lives under their feet. A thick bush of wild roses crumpled and turned black, the petals falling from its blooms in a sudden miniature snow flurry, and inside the tower, unseen, a number of spiders and rats fainted away. She followed them up and up, each portion of life energy neatly siphoned away inside her, until she found the pigeons’ nests in the roof. One, two fell, the rest leaping up into the air in surprise, and she couldn’t help following them, until they too dropped from the sky, landing on the grass with soft thuds.
Stop it, she told herself. Stop it. That’s enough.
She threw her arms up, and winnowfire leapt up from her hands, a wild gulf of flame which briefly gave the hill its own little corona of mid-afternoon daylight. And then it was gone.
‘Sarn’s bloody arse,’ said Vintage faintly. ‘What was that?’
Noon took a deep breath and stood up, trying to ignore how shaky her legs were. Over by the tower, a couple of the unconscious pigeons were starting to flutter their wings.
‘It’s what She Who Laughs made me remember,’ she said. ‘A new, deeper way of using what I am. When I was a child, I killed everyone I knew.’ She looked around at them briefly, still expecting to see disgust in their eyes. ‘You all know that by now. But I didn’t tell you how, because I didn’t know. It was this.’ She gestured to the brown grass and the pigeons. ‘I realised that all living things are connected, in lots of different ways, and that through the winnowfire touch I can take their life energy.’
‘You can take life energy without actually touching the living thing?’ asked Aldasair.
She nodded. ‘Essentially, yeah. The grass lives through the earth, so through that I can get to any blade of grass, do you see? Beetles that burrow in the earth make their nests in the tower, share the same air as spiders, who get eaten by pigeons, pigeons who hatched from eggs in the same nest . . . Do you see?’
‘I’m not sure that I do,’ said Bern.
‘I do, a little.’ Vintage rubbed her finger across her chin. ‘At least I think I do. You can drain the life energy from multiple subjects very quickly. That must lead to an enormous build-up of winnowfire.’
‘It does.’ Noon shrugged. ‘I lost control of it, when I was a child. Those I didn’t kill when I took their life energy, I burned to death.’
‘Noon,’ Tor had been quiet so far, his face troubled, ‘you mean to use this, don’t you? Against the Jure’lia?’
‘It is too much,’ said Vostok immediately. ‘Too much to ask of her. You,’ she swung her head around to address the rest of the group, ‘you do not understand.’
‘But it’s the only way, don’t you see?’ Two of the pigeons had flown off, somewhat erratically. Three of them still lay on the ground, unmoving. Noon thought it very likely that they were dead. ‘Hestillion told us that as long as any part of the worm people still lives, then they all still live. What else do we know about them? That they are deeply connected.’ She looked to Bern, who nodded reluctantly.
‘I’ve felt it,’ he said. ‘Stones save me, it nearly drove me mad. It’s a great web, with that hag at the centre of it.’
‘And the memory crystals,’ said Vintage. ‘Don’t forget those.’
‘Yes.’ Noon nodded hurriedly. ‘And I think they are the key. I need to get to a crystal and rip into their connection from there. The queen told Bern and Aldasair that the crystal held them all together, and when I touched Bern’s crystal I could feel that it was a living part of them, in a way. We’ve got to be sure to get all of them, and I think that’s how we do it. Every last scuttling bastard one of them.’
‘And what?’ demanded Tor. ‘Drain the life energy of an entire alien army? Enough that you kill them all? What happens to you then?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘When I did this on the plains, I was completely unharmed. What will happen is an enormous explosion, so I need to be far away from Ebora, or anyone else who wants to live through it.’
A silence grew between them as they took it all in. Noon could feel Vostok’s objections bubbling under the surface, and could see the scepticism in Tor’s face, but she stood and waited for them to think about it. While they had been talking the sun had risen, filling the plains beyond with acres of golden light. It’s funny, she thought. It looks so much more beautiful from a distance.
‘I can almost see it,’ said Vintage eventually. ‘But the logistics . . . Noon, we know that fell-witches are not harmed by their own fire, but an explosion that big . . . And if you’re going after a crystal, you’ll have to be inside a Behemoth when you do this trick of yours. Even if you live through the explosion, what about the fall?’
‘I will catch her,’ said Vostok softly. Noon caught the dragon’s eye. ‘I am faster than anything else in the sky, and I’ve done it before, when she reappeared after she vanished.’
‘I’m not saying it won’t be dangerous. It’s going to be dangerous for all of us,’ said Noon. ‘But think about it. I can take their lives from them, I know I can. And if I do, if we can wipe the worm people from Sarn forever, then maybe all the misery and pain my winnowfire has caused will mean something after all.’
Vintage sighed noisily and shook her head. ‘Fuck my old boots, it’s a terrible plan, but what else do we have?’
‘Wait.’ Tor held up his hand, still frowning. ‘I will only agree to this if we’re certain that Noon will be unharmed. We do not send one of our own off to die – that’s not how this works. It’s not who we are.’
‘I promise,’ Noon said, looking him in the eyes. ‘I can do this. I won’t die. You have to trust me.’
Tor glanced at Vintage, who shrugged. Nearby, a few of the surviving pigeons called to each other softly.
‘Very well. Let’s get this shit show on the road.’
Later, Chenlo and Vintage put the word around for the fell-witches who were still in Ebora to attend a meeting in the Hall of Roots. Vintage’s reasoning had been that the sight of the tree-god might inspire them, or that at least they might feel they were receiving special treatment – generally the doors to the Hall of Roots had remained locked and off-limits. As Noon stood against the wall and watched them come in, she thought the fell-witches looked more unnerved than impressed; their eyes danced often to the huge twisted roots, or up to the glass ceiling where the branches presented their remaining leaves to the sun. And when Vintage, in her loud, confident way, began explaining the situation and their tenuous plan to deal with it, Noon saw many of the women look at each other with obvious fright.
‘We can end this now, my darlings, I promise you that.’ Vintage looked around at them all, her usually cheery face pinched with worry. ‘For the first time, fell-witches will fight alongside Ebora as a truly integrated part of our forces, and this is how we will end the worm people. By working together.’ They had, under Noon’s advice, not told the fell-witches about her plan to destroy the Jure’lia via her own strange understanding of the winnowfire. She was worried one of them might try it for themselves, and that could be disastrous. ‘We need you.’
‘Those of you who know me, know that I will not lie to you,’ added Agent Chenlo. She stood next to Vintage with her arms behind her back. ‘This is dangerous. But our lives are dangerous. They always have been. I tell you it is possible we could do this, and destroy the worm people.’
The women were murmuring amongst themselves. As Noon watched, a few of them moved towards the doors and left. Vintage frowned. Chenlo did not move.
‘We already helped you.’ A woman moved forward out of the small crowd. Noon recognised her as one of the fell-witches who had been at the Jure’lia cavern. She had not been an agent of the Winnowry – just one of the many women kept prisoner there for much of her life. ‘And we nearly bloody died. I like you, Chenlo, you know I always have, but –’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve not had a good night’s sleep since we went to that cursed place. Every night, nightmares about fire and smoke and things, reaching for me . . . I see poor Fell-O’val falling into t
hat boiling mess every time I close my eyes, and that would have been the end for all of us if the Lady Noon hadn’t saved us.’
Noon flinched and looked carefully at her boots. She could feel many in the crowd turning to her, expecting her to speak. She kept quiet. Why did I come here?
‘My heart broke for Fell O’val,’ said Vintage. ‘She did an incredibly brave thing, and with her help, we have hurt the worm people in a way I didn’t even believe was possible. But that was only part of the job. Sarn’s bloody bones, I wish that weren’t the case, I really do, but if we don’t stand up to the worm people here, this is the end for all of us.’
‘It’s the Eborans’ job.’ This was another woman, still wearing the greens and greys of the agent colours. ‘Let them do it. Let them risk their lives. Haven’t we suffered enough?’ She gestured around to the crowd, and Noon saw several women nodding their heads. ‘We’ve been abused, and hurt, and we deserve a rest. We’re not immortal, we don’t fly mythical beasts or have the protection of a magical tree-god. We’re not strong enough for this. Leave us be.’
‘As ever, you refuse to see the bigger picture, Fell-Dana,’ said Chenlo, tersely. ‘It is all very well saying, it is not our responsibility, but if the Jure’lia destroy the tree-god,’ she pointed at the huge presence behind her, ‘then you will all die anyway.’
There were more angry mutters at this. Another woman, who looked close to tears, spoke up from the back.
‘We’re free now,’ she said. ‘Can’t you let us be? Free to have our own lives, to find homes, have children . . .’
‘And how will your children live?’ said Vintage. ‘Terrified, forever hiding, forever running, until they’re caught by the varnish, or hollowed out by burrowers?’ She paused and touched her fingers to her forehead, and when she spoke again, the sadness in her voice made Noon’s heart ache. ‘I wish that I did not have to ask this of you, I truly do.’