by Jen Williams
‘Look out,’ called Vintage, somewhat unnecessarily. ‘She’s up to something!’
The seething oily surface of the queen’s body split open in multiple places, holes of all sizes gaping into existence. Bern had a moment to think that perhaps they had got outrageously lucky, wounding the queen in some devastating way that was even now causing her body to fall to pieces – when a thousand voices shouted from a thousand newly formed throats.
‘You destroyed our future – for this insult you will all die.’
There were cries of horror from the fell-witches. The queen’s body flexed and split apart, becoming something not remotely humanoid. Sharrik leapt up and away instinctively, and Bern caught a series of increasingly fraught curse words from Vintage as Helcate scrambled to get clear. Below them now was a thing more like a Wild-touched plant, or a giant mouth made from three huge jaws, and inside long green tongues were emerging, reaching up to pull them inside. One of these huge tentacles snapped up into the air and closed around a bat that failed to get away in time. There was a shriek from the fell-witch, cut short, and then she was gone, sucked back down inside the queen’s shifting body.
‘No!’ Chenlo looked stricken even as she ordered the other fell-witches to keep back. The thing changed again, the mouth falling in on itself – the woman and bat completely lost to view – and then a head appeared once more, a huge elongated thing that twisted round to face them.
‘This war is over,’ hissed the queen. ‘We all end here, today. This was your choice.’
Bern remembered being held down and his mind being torn apart. He remembered the invasive touch of the queen’s fingers on his memories, taking them to pieces and fouling them with her presence. He thought of the searing pain in the palm of his hand as she had forced the shard of blue crystal into it, and a phantom shiver of agony moved through his foreshortened arm. He raised his axe above his head and let Sharrik’s battle fury move through him.
‘Hag, there will only be one ending here today,’ he shouted, ‘and I will dance on your bloody grave when it’s done!’
Chapter Fifty-one
‘Here, quickly, now!’
Noon leaned out and added her winnowfire to Vostok’s, enlarging the hole in the Behemoth’s side created by the vicious fires of the fell-witches. They had blasted their way partially into one of the open corridors inside the ship, and now there was just a layer of blistered grey material between them and it. Tor and Kirune were still busy dealing with the creatures spawned by the ship, and every now and then Noon would hear a shout or a growl from them as they worked together. The connection that ran between them all was taut and alive, and so sensitive it was almost distracting; she could feel, like a persistent breeze against her skin, Bern’s anger, Tor’s fierce amusement, Vintage’s worry, the tension thrumming through Aldasair. It was an incredible thing.
‘There, it’s done.’ They drew away, and Noon saw that Vostok was right. There was a sizeable hole tunnelled into the side of the Behemoth, and it was possible to see its inner spaces, lit with sickly yellow light. ‘You will have to go as swiftly as you can, bright weapon, because it won’t be long before she tries to seal this breach.’
‘I know.’
Vostok perched on the edge of the hole, and Noon untied herself from the harness, carefully climbing down onto the smoking moon-metal. The heat through her boots was tremendous. She turned and placed her hands on Vostok’s long snout, marvelling again at the beauty of every pearly scale.
‘Vostok . . .’
‘I will not argue with you,’ said the dragon brusquely. ‘My place is on the battlefield, as it has always been. Just go quickly, and do not take unnecessary risks.’
‘Thank you. You’ll help the others? Get them through the rest of this?’
‘I will. And I will be here to catch you, bright weapon.’
There was a clatter from above them, and Kirune skidded to a halt at the edge of the hole. Noon looked up, a mixture of annoyance and fondness briefly closing her throat. Tor was grinning down at her, his face bright and his armour smeared with worm-gore.
‘Don’t think you’re going anywhere without us.’
‘I told you –’
‘The place is going to be crawling with these crawling bastards. You need us, Noon, if you want to get anywhere close to the memory crystal.’
‘Fine. I . . .’
Noon turned to meet Vostok’s eye, and then without another word the dragon was gone in a flurry of white feathers, heading back towards the dark, pulsing smudge that was the queen. For a long breath Noon was too filled with wonder to move – the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen – and then she was stomping her way down into the ragged tunnel, her eyes on the distant light.
‘Fine. But you do what I tell you to do, when it’s time.’
An aimless rustling sound moved through the streets of Ebora, like a great tide of dead leaves, or an army of ghosts. On Jessen’s back, standing with the human troops, Aldasair sat up straighter in the harness and set his mind firmly against the idea of ghosts. I’ve wasted too much time with spirits, lost too many years listening for the footfalls of the dead.
You are not alone anymore, brother.
Jessen’s voice in his head was reassuring, and he had to admit, she was certainly factually correct. Looking down the rows and rows of soldiers, Aldasair thought it likely he had never been in the company of so many people at once, and certainly not so many humans. On the advice of Commander Morota they had split the troops into two rings; one running through the streets of Ebora, and another closer circle just outside the palace. He and Commander Morota were with the outer ring now, standing on the broken paving slabs of a long abandoned street. On either side stood some of the more extravagant houses, buildings of marble and green slate that were riddled with creeping plants and coloured with rot and moss. Grass still grew up through the cracks in the road, but it was possible to see signs that Ebora was no longer dead. Someone had come and swept away the old leaves and broken branches from the street; a fallen tree was in the process of being chopped up for firewood; a child’s toy, something made of soft rags and wool, was lying abandoned in the road. Aldasair found his eyes returning to it again and again.
We are so fortunate they came here, he said to Jessen. The humans. I spent much of my life in fear of them. In fear of their hatred for us, and fear that they were the disease that had ended us – but what they brought back was life.
He thought of Bern. Of him introducing himself, of him offering to help. Of him looking at the Hill of Souls and so easily understanding what it would mean to fix it.
‘Lord Aldasair, has there been any further word from your comrades?’
Commander Morota looked uneasy. She had turned down the opportunity to wear Eboran armour, preferring to stay in her own Reidn steel and leather, but she had made sure that her soldiers were as fully kitted out as possible. They stood together, spears and short swords at the ready.
‘I’m aware of them, commander, but I sense that they’re all rather busy with their own battles.’ He narrowed his eyes at the far end of the street. ‘And it looks like we will be also. The burrowers are coming, I can see movement.’
Morota began shouting orders to the human men and women, and a tremor of noise moved through them as they readied themselves. Jessen moved to the front of the force, and Aldasair slipped his axe from his belt.
‘Stand ready!’
Huge barrels were being rolled some distance in front of the lines, and Aldasair caught a whiff of a strange chemical scent as the tops were pried off.
‘Give the word, Lord Aldasair,’ said Morota in a low voice.
We could fly, suggested Jessen. We’d have a better view.
No. These people need to see us on the ground next to them, fighting elbow to elbow. Otherwise they will think we are leaving them to deal with the worst of it alone.
A swarm was moving down across the road towards them, thousands of skittering Jure’lia
creatures. Most of them that Aldasair could see were burrowers, but there were other shapes in there, bulkier, stranger things with oversized mandibles and fat, red eyes like Wild-touched berries hanging on a bush. Some of them were coming over the buildings, crawling across broken roofs and swarming over broken windows. The sound of their approach – thousands of knife-sharp legs tapping across stone – was growing louder.
‘Now!’ called Aldasair. ‘Do it now.’
Morota shouted more orders, and the barrels fell, spilling a thin brackish-smelling liquid across the stones in front of the army. People moved back, anxious not to be too close to it, and a number of shouts went up in adjoining streets; barrels were falling there too as the enemy drew closer. Some of the men and women were muttering, and Aldasair could feel their fear like a cushion at his back.
‘Now!’
A young fell-witch stepped up to the fluid just as the first burrowers crossed into it, and quickly she bent and touched her fingers to the ground, sparking with green light. There was a soft wumph noise and Jessen took a few instinctive steps backwards as a sheet of flame rose up in front of them. The Jure’lia creatures caught in it immediately burst into flame themselves, and the air was filled with a high-pitched squealing. A number of them staggered out, took a few steps towards the crowd of soldiers, then collapsed, their insides turned to super-hot liquid.
‘It’s working!’ called Commander Morota. Aldasair nodded tersely, hoping the burrowers would keep marching mindlessly into the flames. Okaar had come up with the plan and had even mixed the chemicals for them, given precise instructions about when and how to use it, but thanks to a lack of supplies they had precious few barrels of the stuff. They had to be careful.
As Aldasair had hoped, line after line of the burrowers were streaming straight into the hissing flames, sacrificing themselves, but as their bodies heaped up and up, the flames themselves were beginning to die down. And of course the Jure’lia creatures that were coming over the ruins and not the roads were still lively enough. As he watched, a dark wave of scuttling nightmares began to drip down from the houses on either side of the wide street. Aldasair lifted his axe, and turned to address the soldiers.
‘The time to fight is now! Remember what we told you about the drones, and keep as many as you can away from the palace. Help will come eventually – we just have to hold on!’
‘We are home.’
Hestillion scowled at Celaphon’s sentimental tone. They were following on behind the main attack force, having both grown oddly weary of the endless roar of the queen’s consumption. She had put on her suit of Jure’lia armour and sat in Celaphon’s harness ready to attack herself, but she remained oddly reluctant. Here was Ebora after all, here was the place she had been avoiding since the battle where the boy had died, and it looked different, although she couldn’t have said how exactly. There in the distance were the familiar streets, the silvery spread of the tree-father’s branches, all the same as it had ever been, yet she felt distinctly as though Ebora had forgotten her – as though she could walk through the palace corridors and find no trace of her, no sign that she had ever lived there. It was unsettling.
‘This is not our home,’ she snapped. Without waiting to see Celaphon’s reaction, she reached out to her circle and assessed their impressions of the battle so far. Yellow Leaf and Red Moth were on one Behemoth, Grey Root on the other. The First and Green Bird were on the corpse moon, and they were under attack. Hestillion took a sharp breath, shocked that the queen had apparently turned a blind eye to such damage. ‘Come on, we’re needed.’
As they rounded the front of the corpse moon, Hestillion leaned forward, ready to strike whatever might be waiting there, but whatever had done the damage was gone. Yellowish smoke, tugged away by the wind, floated out of a blackened hole leading directly into the ship itself, and as Hestillion looked at the damage, she swallowed hard. Dragon-fire, winnowfire, and distinctive claw marks in the moon-metal. Already knowing what the answer would be, she reached out along the Jure’lia network for the First, and through his deeper connection to the corpse moon, scanned its corridors for the invaders she knew must be there.
‘My brother,’ she said. ‘And his pet witch. I told him to leave, the fool.’
‘What will you do?’ asked Celaphon. He sounded crafty again, as if he knew that her answer would amuse him. ‘Will you kill them?’
Hissing with impatience, Hestillion unstrapped herself from his harness and dropped neatly into the hole. The twisted moon-metal panels were still warm under her boots, and the stench of burning worm-flesh was overwhelming. She wrinkled her nose and turned back to Celaphon.
‘Go and fight, sweet one,’ she told him. ‘Whatever they are up to, I will stop them, and then I will join you.’
Celaphon lingered by the hole, his white eyes as difficult to read as ever. Hestillion found herself looking over the vast landscape of his face; the discoloured patch where the smaller war-beast had spat over him; the bristling horns and plates that had sprouted from him after the queen had given him the growth fluid. It was hard to picture the tiny creature he had been, when she had torn him from the pod with her own hands and held him to her chest. Had he ever been that small, truly?
‘What is it, Celaphon?’
‘It’s not your fault, what happened to me,’ he said.
Hestillion stood very still. She felt caught between anger and bewilderment.
‘I . . .’
‘I was born into a cursed time. So were you. Try and remember that.’
He unfurled his enormous horned wings and dropped away out of sight. For a long, vertiginous second she felt like she was falling with him, as though there were a rope strung between the two of them and shortly she would be torn into the air after him. Then, from somewhere out of sight, she heard the queen bellowing something with a thousand voices. It seemed to break whatever spell she was under, and, shaking her head briskly, she made her way down the tunnel into the corpse moon.
The corridor had been empty so far – almost eerily so – but as they crept their way deeper into the Behemoth Tor could hear a series of noises that suggested they wouldn’t be alone much longer. The deep crackling hum that was ever-present within any Jure’lia vessel had grown louder and more discordant, and there was a rustling, a tapping, growing closer with every step. He weighed his sword in his hand, feeling pleased with both its grace and the lack of pain in his arms. It seemed foolish that he had ever worried so much about losing the Ninth Rain, or even been so horrified by the prospect of dying from the crimson flux. It seemed he would live just long enough, after all. Kirune was walking by his side, his heavy head slowly tracking back and forth, waiting for the inevitable.
‘Are we going the right way, do you think?’ Noon was walking slightly in front, her hands held up in front of her.
‘We are,’ said Tor, with more confidence than he felt. ‘My guess is that the more trouble we see, the closer we will be to the memory-crystal chamber.’
‘Are you suggesting we actively head towards that horrible noise?’
Tor grinned. ‘You’re the one who suggested this ridiculous plan in the first place.’
‘That’s a fair point.’
‘They are coming,’ rumbled Kirune. ‘Up this corridor, now. Be ready.’
Noon took a few steps back and appeared to stroke Kirune’s ear, although Tor knew she was taking a little of his life energy to fuel her winnowfire.
‘Wait.’ Kirune turned around, looking back the way they had come. ‘We are being followed –’
They were very nearly overwhelmed immediately. A tide of worm-creatures surged from either end of the corridor, a clicking, rattling, whirring confusion of legs and mandibles and rolling yellow eyes. Tor saw giant burrowers, things like scorpions with multiple tails, and several of the grey men they had previously fought in the skies. Noon turned gracefully, her arms wheeling, and sent several discs of green flame into the heart of the horde, blasting into pieces much of wha
t was coming for them, while Kirune used his bulk to simply crush the larger Jure’lia creatures against the corridor wall.
‘Fuck.’ Noon waved her arms again, sending a rolling wall of fire up the corridor. Many of the scuttling things burst into flame, but it was clear there were more coming all the time. ‘There’re tons of the bastards.’
‘We must move forward.’ Kirune came up next to her, and pushed his head under her arm. ‘Use my life source, witch. Fill the space with fire. I will walk with you.’
Tor moved to cover Kirune’s back, his sword a restless blur. A burrower ran up his leg and he hopped briefly backwards, shaking it off. Noon meanwhile had done as Kirune suggested, and the space ahead of them was filled with a vortex of bright winnowflame. There were shapes in there, things curling in on themselves and shedding legs, although they were difficult to make out. Heat billowed back at them in an oppressive wave.
‘Noon, are you all right? Can you keep this up?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said without looking at him. ‘Just stay close.’
And, he noticed, she did look fine. Her face was serene despite the sheen of sweat across her forehead, and he thought of the dream he’d had of her once, when she had worn a violet cloak and a crown of green fire around her head. Her eyes had been emerald flames in that dream, but her face had looked the same; it had been the face of someone just realising the full potential of their own power. He shivered and turned away in time to split a giant burrower in two.
All was chaos.
Vintage drew back from the main fight, letting Helcate summon more of his acidic spit – he could not simply produce endless amounts of it, and he was already enormously tired. One team of fell-witches was continuing to help Sharrik and Bern attack the queen, while the other, led by Chenlo, was harrying the two Behemoths that continued to move slowly through the skies over Ebora. It had just occurred to her to wonder where Tyranny was when Windfall shot through the air space in front of her, the huge white bat flying much faster than any of its smaller cousins. The queens of Tygrish no longer wore any of their finery. Instead they bristled with armour and weapons, and they were heading straight for the enormous form of the queen.