by Jen Williams
‘To your right!’
Frith hit the ground rolling, the scent of grass and scorched earth strong in his nostrils, as a long tentacle lashed the air where he had been a second ago. He glanced up to nod his thanks to Sebastian, and then he thrust the staff forward again, summoning the words for Fire and Ever. Of all the limited spells he now had at his disposal, this appeared to be the most effective against the creature they fought – slithering roots turned black and crispy under his flames, or drew away before he could reach them. Even so, Y’Gria’s ability to expand her body and produce new appendages was apparently limitless, and the fight was wearing him down.
Not so Sebastian. The big knight was still full of energy, his eyes bright and his face split into a grin as he fought back against the god. He had always been an impressive fighter, skilled and disciplined as well as strong, but Frith had never seen him fight as he did now – there almost seemed to be a silver aura around him as his sword moved in its restless dance. Bezcavar had once named him his ‘god of war’ and Frith could see why. No sane person would want to face him on the battlefield – he was a man born to be a warrior – but then Y’Gria was neither sane nor, strictly speaking, a person.
To Frith’s surprise, Feveroot had returned, and was helping them. He wanted to ask what had happened to Wydrin and Estenn, but there was no time or space to ask – the demon did not fight as such, but used his liquid glass form to shield them and to confound Y’Gria’s searching appendages. It was clear that the demon had been injured in some way – spots of smoking blood like lava dotted the grass – but it was here, and it was helping. Frith parcelled away the uneasy questions that arose for later contemplation.
There was a crash, and he narrowly avoided the grasping, teeth-lined beak as it struck the lawn next to him. He sent a ball of fire at its throat, but it twisted away like a child refusing a spoonful of dinner and instead the flames grazed the thick midriff of the god’s main body, raising up a welt of deep green blisters. Shrieking, the plant-creature that was Y’Gria scrambled backwards to perch on top of the broken ruins that circled the garden, pale tentacles looping around broken stones and turrets. It would not take long for her to recover, and they were being worn down. Bracing himself for the debilitating exhaustion that would follow, he summoned the new magic, thinking perhaps to turn her to dust as he had Y’Ruen’s spawn, but the god slipped through his grasp, refusing to be pinned in one place – it was as if she stood outside time, ageless. He supposed that was entirely possible. But it didn’t mean the magic was useless.
‘Sebastian, cover me! I have an idea!’ In an instant the big knight was with him, his bulk shielding him as Y’Gria’s feelers grubbed blindly in the grass.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Sebastian. He didn’t sound concerned, merely curious.
‘I’m not sure,’ he answered truthfully. ‘Perhaps I’ll tell you, if it works.’
Frith took a breath, and ignoring Y’Gria, felt everything around him grow still. For a few moments, he stood outside time, and the strange incomprehensible magic filled every inch of him and suffused his skin. He looked down and saw his hand as a glowing shape made of light. He would have one chance only.
He transferred his attention to the ruined wall Y’Gria perched upon. It was possible to feel how it had been when it had been whole – an ornate structure of elaborate towering spires – and he knew instinctively that this was something that Y’Gria had stolen, an ancient ruin that was older even than she. Holding his breath, Frith fixed the ruin within his mind and pushed it back through time as fast as he could, summoning its original structure.
Colour and noise crashed back into the world and Y’Gria’s huge writhing body was pierced with towering structures of stone. She screamed, a deafening noise from multiple throats, and Frith staggered backwards and fell onto the grass. Her body was speared, stretched and twisted out of shape, but he barely had the strength left to stand. His vision turned dark at the edges; Sebastian’s strong grip on his shoulder stopped him from passing out.
‘By all the gods, Frith, how did you do that?’
He opened his mouth, but had no breath left to push the words out. Instead Feveroot spoke. ‘It’s not over yet. But at least you have made her very angry.’
Trapped by the spires of the reconstructed ruins, Y’Gria was screaming with rage, her body melting into more and more questing roots, coming straight for them. As they watched, the thickest tentacles pushed at the spires holding her in place, trying to crush them into dust. It was clear that she wouldn’t be held for long.
‘Let her come,’ said Sebastian, standing up so that his body covered Frith’s prone form. ‘I could do this all day!’
There was a thundering roar, the spires fell, and Y’Gria’s multiple heads flexed and shot towards them like vipers. With the last of his strength, Frith reached out for the power again, this time capturing the entirety of the floating palace in its aura. In less than a second, the ruins and the gardens expanded like a flower in bloom – broken walls rebuilt themselves, towers shot towards the blue sky, roofs and battlements and courtyards, once shoved together with no thought, suddenly found themselves complete and competing for space where there was none. On the plants in the gardens, Frith worked his magic in the opposite direction – rather than back through time, he pushed them forward. Trees exploded into towering giants, grass grew metres high in seconds, and all around bushes and plants became an impenetrable thicket of briars and thorns. Even as he struggled to stay conscious, Frith felt the floating palace shift beneath him – the sudden change in its weight and shape had broken it somehow, and the smooth magic that had kept it moving so gracefully through the air was now leaking away. There was a jolt, and they all cried out as it dropped some distance before righting itself again.
‘What have you done?’ screamed Y’Gria through her many throats. ‘What have you DONE?’
‘This whole thing is going to crash into the ground, and take you with it,’ said Frith weakly. ‘That’s what I’ve done.’
‘In that case, we should leave, I think,’ said Feveroot. He was a shifting dark shape around them, orange-red spots bright with anxiety. ‘I can probably get you to the ground, or at least halfway there.’
‘I’m not going anywhere until I’ve cut the heart from her,’ said Sebastian.
Frith opened his mouth to tell him he was being ridiculous, when one of the newly rebuilt walls to their left collapsed into rubble and the dragon form of Oster burst forth, snarling. There were silver chains on his scaled legs, now twisted into pieces. The dragon opened its mouth wide and hissed, revealing rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth.
‘She chained you up?’ cried Sebastian.
‘Go.’ It was Oster’s voice, they all heard it, and his great amber eye was fixed on Sebastian. ‘There are things I wish to discuss with my sister.’
‘Come with us!’ Sebastian made to go towards the dragon, but Oster flicked his tail menacingly. ‘This place is doomed!’
‘Go, while you still have a chance. I won’t tell you again.’ With that Oster turned and leapt, scrabbling up the newly restored ruins. He struck out at Y’Gria’s roots, severing them with quick snaps of his powerful jaws. At once, the old god’s attention turned to him, her teeth-lined heads converging on him like a dog scenting fresh meat.
‘We have to leave,’ said Feveroot again.
With some difficulty, Frith struggled to his feet and touched Sebastian’s arm. The big knight was watching the fight between the two gods with an expression of horror on his face.
‘Sebastian, my friend, he has given us a chance. Let us take it.’ He paused. ‘He is a god, after all. He may survive.’
Feveroot became a great bat, and on his back they left the floating palace, flying awkwardly down towards the city. The demon was still leaking glowing blood, and he moved his wings stiffly.
‘What is that?’ Sebastian pointed. The city lay below them, a carpet of red and glittering blue, but where the city
met the sea proper there was a tall tower, and from that was spreading a great dark shadow. It flowed through the air until it covered half the buildings in a sooty film. And then as they watched, a second shadow spread over it, this one the colour of blood.
‘The Red Echo. It can be nothing else,’ said Frith. It was hard to speak. If the Red Echo had been activated, what had happened to Wydrin?
‘Is there nothing we can do?’
The shadow continued to spread like ink through water, and Frith realised he could hear screaming from below. The people of Raistinia, their doom come upon them.
‘Perhaps if we—’
There was a flash of dark light, like being struck on the head, and two things happened almost at the very same moment – the shadow suddenly contracted, vastly reducing the portion of the city underneath its influence, while those parts still touched by the red-and-black shadow were filled with pillars of fire. Flames leapt up from the street, twenty, thirty feet high; a tower of fire for every mage soul caught under the Red Echo’s influence. The screaming increased in pitch so abruptly that Frith had to squeeze his eyes shut against it. Such human suffering, and so many lives snuffed out in an instant.
And then the shadow winked out, leaving the city half on fire and covered in a pall of smoke. The damage was done.
80
Devinia had never seen a storm like it.
The sun had been bright in the afternoon sky, and then clouds had swept in like a curtain being pulled, and now the day was as black as the darkest hour of the night. They had been caught out on the side of a steep hill, and now rain was falling in sheets so solid that Devinia could barely see further than her own boots, and the thunder rolled around them constantly, deafening them to all sense of where they were.
‘We have to get out of this!’ Augusta was clinging to her arm, her grey hair plastered to her head, shouting at the top of her voice to be heard. ‘The whole bloody hill is going to be washed away!’
Devinia looked down at her feet and was alarmed to see a rushing current of water washing over her boots, taking debris and mud with it.
‘Where?’ She ran a hand over her face, trying to clear some of the rainwater from her eyes. ‘Can’t see anything in this mess!’
There was a flash of lightning and in the brief burst of light she caught sight of Terin, just slightly ahead of them. He was waving, his mouth opening as he shouted something lost in the fury of the storm. Without speaking, Devinia and Augusta hurried to follow him, half blind as they were. After a few moments, Devinia caught sight of what he had been gesturing at: a shallow cave in the side of the hill, little more than a deeper patch of darkness against a confusion of black and grey. They stumbled into it, gasping like beached fish and pressing themselves against the rocky walls. Ephemeral, one strong arm flung around the Banshee’s shoulders, followed, her dragon-kin creatures shaking out their wings and squeezing into the tight space.
‘By the Graces.’ Augusta shook her head, sending droplets of water flying. ‘I’ve seen some storms at sea, some real ship killers, but this.’ She folded her wrinkled face into a grimace. Ristanov the Banshee leaned against the wall, and then slowly slid down it, her face slack and her eyes unseeing. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole bleedin’ island weren’t washed away.’
They all paused as a peal of thunder rolled over. Devinia felt the pressure of it on her eardrums. She moved to the very edge of the cave and looked out. The ground beyond the cave was wet and black and shifting; there was no question that they would be stuck in the cave until the storm passed, and even then it was impossible to say what the violence of the weather would do to the landscape outside.
‘This place is known for its storms,’ she said. ‘Sailing Y’Gria’s Loss has always been dangerous. At least in a ship, you can try to outrun a storm.’ She gritted her teeth. ‘We’re stuck here.’
‘That we are,’ agreed Augusta. She squeezed some of the water from her shirt and sat cross-legged on the ground, surrounded by the dragon-kin. Absently, she patted one on the nose. ‘Since we aren’t going anywhere, I’d like to hear more about this home of yours, young Terin. I got some bits and pieces from Wydrin, of course, but that girl is a born fabricator and I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth. You live in houses made of ice, is that right?’
Terin smiled. Soaked from the storm and with the temperature cooler than it had been in days, he looked as bright as Devinia had ever seen him.
‘Mistress Grint, we do indeed build our homes from ice, at least in part. We also use stone and coral and other materials available to us.’
‘And if heat makes you ill, how do you cook your food?’
‘Well, the answer to that is we largely don’t. The Narhl diet involves a lot of raw fish.’
Augusta made a face. ‘Ye gods.’
Devinia sighed and turned back to the mouth of the cave. Behind her, Augusta kept up a steady stream of increasingly incredulous queries while Terin cheerfully answered. After a moment, Ephemeral joined her by the entrance.
‘The dragon-kin are alarmed by the storm,’ she said, gesturing at where they crouched. All of them were staring out into the night, their eyes like wet stones. There was something very unsettling about the sight. ‘It must be the first one they have seen.’
‘Do you think Wydrin is at the centre of the island? Truly?’
Ephemeral turned to look at her. In the dark, her eyes were very like those of the dragon-kin. ‘I trust Terin’s visions. If he saw them there, then that is where they are.’
‘Hmm.’ Devinia frowned out at the storm. The thunder sounded almost rhythmic now, as though it were a hammer striking an anvil. ‘This great magical power he felt. If we can use it, whatever it is, to destroy Kellan, then at least we can make our way back to Two-Birds without being hunted.’
A flash of lightning lit up the trees like the middle of the day, and suddenly it was there – the huge, hulking shape of the Dawning Man, eyes glowing red like faded stars. Devinia felt her stomach drop and she had a brief moment to hope that she was seeing things, that the light and the shadows and her own fears had created the monster, but then it moved, lurching towards them and crashing its huge golden foot into the watery mud. The footsteps of a giant, hidden in thunder.
‘We’re under attack!’ She drew her sword, already noting the shapes running towards them out of the rain, shambling, rain-soaked figures, storm light silver on their blades. ‘Be ready!’
It was a bloody, confused fight. Devinia ran from the cave with her sword ready, meeting the first pirate with such violence that the blow near severed his arm at the shoulder, while the storm crashed around them. For the first time, she realised exactly how much she relied on all her senses when fighting; the dark shrouded everything, the roar of the wind and thunder encased them, the stinging rain numbed her skin. She might as well have been fighting underwater.
Ephemeral seemed unaffected, moving with the inhuman grace that Devinia was gradually getting used to; men and women fell before the green woman’s blade as though they presented themselves to be killed. Devinia felt a brief stab of hope; they had been ambushed, but Kellan’s men were down to their last reserves, and there couldn’t be that many of them. They could take them here; even with their backs to the hill, it was possible—
The ground beneath their feet shook violently and Devinia was suddenly fighting to stay upright. The Dawning Man was right on them, golden fists swinging. A cadaverous figure, arms held aloft as if to welcome the storm, was bellowing against the cacophony.
‘I am the Red King!’
Another flash of lightning seared the sky and Devinia saw him clearly; Kellan was a flayed skeleton, a crimson corpse with eyes rolled up to the whites in his ecstasy, and the thin band of gold still sat on his head.
‘You mad bastard.’
The dragon-kin were streaming from the cave, some of them unfurling their wings and leaping into the dark, their jaws open to reveal rows of newly sharp teeth, but the Da
wning Man reached out with its enormous fist and plucked one of the lizards from the sky. There was a brittle crunch, which Devinia heard clearly over the storm, and next to her Ephemeral wailed with pain and horror.
‘No!’
More of the dragon-kin flew at the Dawning Man, perhaps moved to save their sibling, and the giant batted them down, their broken bodies landing in the increasingly flooded dirt. Ephemeral stumbled, her sword loose in her hand, a stricken expression on her face.
‘I can feel them dying!’
‘Stay with me!’ Devinia took her arm, and then was forced to drop it as a pirate barrelled into her. She killed him easily, grimacing as her fingers slid over his bristling arm, but then the Dawning Man was charging towards them. She spun, trying to shout a warning back to the cave, but it was too late. The Dawning Man stepped over them and crashed directly into the stony ridge, the whole thing exploding in a landslide of rocks and water.
‘Augusta!’
More pirates, more blood for her sword. Devinia fought through them, trying to get back to the wreckage of the cave, thinking of nothing else now save for that. The Dawning Man was punching at the rocks, smashing them into powder, while on the hill above them the earth was shifting wetly.
‘Augusta! Terin!’
She caught a single glimpse of them in a blistering burst of light. Terin, slim and splattered with mud, supporting a bedraggled-looking Augusta, stumbling away from the pile of rocks. The old woman was clinging to him, her arm held awkwardly to her side, and one side of her face was covered in blood.
‘Nan?’
The earth shifted under her feet. From above them, a great wall of mud and water crashed down over the broken rocks and Augusta and Terin were lost to view. Devinia had time only to reach one desperate hand towards where they had been, and the mud and water hit her legs like a solid wave, striking her feet out from under her and carrying her away with it.
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