by Ben Peek
It was at the southern edge of the city and, as Ayae made her way to it along a road that was awash in heavy rain, she had her first glimpse of the wreckage around Nale.
Fiys, the city that lay between Ghaam and Nale, had begun to slide into Leviathan’s Blood. The bridge that had lain between it and Nale was gone, as was half of Nale itself. It had fallen into the churning sea, which was littered with the debris of buildings as well as the bodies of men and women, and of children and animals. Most lay surrounded by clothes and small pieces of furniture, such as chairs and tables and splintered doors. There were, however, still some people alive in the poisoned water, and they were swimming and pushing towards Fiys as if they would find safety there. They would not, because Ayae could see that the city was damaged. The four stone pillars that had held it reached up like broken fingers from the water, the damaged platform clear to her even through the driving rain.
Then she saw Jae’le at the end of Ghaam’s stone dock.
He stood on the far edge, his hair and beard flattened by water against his skin, giving him the appearance of being so emaciated that he could only be a victim of a terrible starvation. Yet, he stood without flinching before his enemy, his sword drawn to protect Eidan, who lay in the shallow water beneath his feet. He was so still that Ayae could not tell if the large man was alive or not, but on her shoulder, she felt Anguish tense.
At first glance, the creature that paced around Jae’le appeared to be an animal, for it moved on its feet and hands much like an ape would. But what she took to be a body of brown-and-white fur, she realized, was no more than pelts that it wore. Yet, no matter that it might be human by birth, it made feints and lunges like a predator, skittering out of Jae’le’s sword, never in range, but always a danger. Its behaviour was like a hunting pack animal’s, for its attacks were intended to divert its prey from another attacker. In this case, a large, lean figure with bones emerging from its shoulders that had begun to emerge from Leviathan’s Blood behind Jae’le. Ayae did not know if she could reach him before the creature was upon him. Her right foot fell on the stone platform, followed by her left.
‘You cannot kill the two Jae’le stands before.’ Anguish was forced to shout into her ear to be heard over the wind and rain. ‘Leave him to fight them and take Eidan away from there!’
She had lost most of the heaviness she had felt since Faise’s death and her feet finally felt as if they were moving at a natural speed.
‘Few can kill these creatures!’ He screamed desperately into her ear. ‘You are not one of them!’
‘Are you?’ Ayae shouted back.
‘No!’
She drew her sword as she left the ramp; her feet splashed through the shallow water of the dock; and before the creature could turn from Jae’le, she used its hunched back to vault into the air. If she could have, Ayae would have called out to Jae’le, would have warned him, but as the roar of the wind increased, and the rain became harder, she let flames run down the blade of her sword instead. Her body grew warmer with the action, and her hand felt as if it was on fire, as if the flames were igniting from her blood, but the pain did not linger. Clearing Jae’le’s head, she brought her burning blade sweeping down on the lean creature . . . only for the sword to be caught in metal-wrapped hands. From her shoulder, Anguish leapt free of her soaked shirt and launched his ink-black body at the creature’s face, causing it to flinch, releasing one hand to grab at the dark shape, and in that moment, Ayae’s sword slid free and she slashed deeply across its chest.
Forgetting Anguish, the tall creature turned to her, its hands lashing out. With Jae’le at her back, she could not retreat from them, so she met the blows, turning each aside, feeling her opponent’s strength in each strike, but relying on her own speed to keep her ahead. After a series of sweeping slashes, Ayae realized that although the flames on her sword began to wear out, washed away by the storm, the world had begun to slow around her. She could see the grimace in the creature’s face contort into snarls and shouts, and she could see the torn skin around its left eye flap, just as she could see Anguish scamper through the water to Eidan. The control she had gathered to herself in Sin’s Hand remained, and the frantic, burning rush that had been in her body weeks ago, the gnaw of anxiety that had been building in her ever since Samuel Orlan’s shop had caught fire in Mireea, was absent.
Yet Anguish’s words were proving to be correct. No wound that her burning blade caused on the creature saw it slow. Indeed, the long wound across its chest – a mortal wound on another – had not bled. She could see bone, and beneath it a darkness that hinted at still organs. She could even see now that it had been wounded from behind, its leather vest torn as if an animal had attacked it, but there was no blood, just as no gore spilled over the hands that had been wrapped in spiked chains. Dropping beneath a series of wild punches, Ayae knew that sooner or later she would mistime her reactions and the creature would catch her skin and draw blood from her. And, as she thought that, she felt Jae’le’s right shoulder lean against her left, and she turned on instinct, her sword came around in an arc without fire to find the second creature barrelling past in a vicious charge that, even though it tried to stop, saw it skid in the water, only halting beside the taller creature before it turned to face both of them.
7.
In the heart of the storm, Zaifyr could hear Aelyn.
‘I cannot blame you for this, brother. Not entirely.’ He could not see her: the wind was filled with debris, with stone and wood, as well as hard, pelting rain. Her voice offered him no help. He could hear it over the wind around him, but that was only because what he heard was not one voice, but a hundred whispers. The wind that held him, the element that she had crafted hands from, and that grew in size and shape as it lifted him, was covered in faces. None of them was fully formed, but each had blind eyes and mouths, from which she spoke. ‘We were to become gods. We were the Keepers of the Divine. The world was our responsibility.’
He could not move. He tried, but the hands on him tightened, and he felt himself lifted higher into the storming sky. He was rising with such a speed that he found it difficult to breathe: it felt as if he was beneath the water again, but this time he had to push himself downwards rather than up to find safety. Around him the splintered parts of houses and stone from Nale moved like swords and lances, some massive, but all lifted by the storming giant that Aelyn had formed over the remains of the city.
‘But you are not free of blame, either.’
A shattered beam lanced suddenly towards him. A haunt wrapped itself around it, just briefly. The wind tore at its body harshly, ripping through Zaifyr’s power, but not before the wood was diverted above him.
‘When we agreed to support Se’Saera, I thought, This will be my Asila,’ Aelyn said through the mouths of her storm giant, giving no hint that she saw what he did. ‘This will be the horror that will follow me into divinity. This will be what I will spend thousands of years atoning for.’
Zaifyr could feel most of his power, now. When he opened all his senses, he could see in the night sky the souls of birds, both large and small ones, of those who hunted over Leviathan’s Blood and those who did not. He could see, too, men and women, but they were fewer now. They had a limit that the storm giant was lifting him past. He would need to make both stronger, give both a new density if he wanted them to help him.
He focused on the human haunt that had deflected the beam, a young man who had died on the top floor of a hotel, a rich young man who had overdosed, and he had him slam into the wind-made fist.
A section of blind faces broke apart, but the storm giant, now clearly formed, did not release him.
‘But there will be some things I will not be able to forgive myself for,’ Aelyn said in hundreds of voices.
A storm petrel followed the ghost, and another followed it. Zaifyr grasped them both so they appeared in the sky like sharp knives that drove them into the hand of the storm giant, destroying more faces. After the petrels
his power flowed into a dozen cormorants, then came gannets and, as the grip began to weaken, a flock of pelicans sliced downwards like swords, severing the winds from each other and dropping Zaifyr.
In free fall, he reached for the haunt of the albatross that Jae’le had summoned earlier. It was familiar to him, not as alien as the birds he had infused, and so it was easier for him to grab the big bird and force his power into it, giving it shape and form. A second later, he hit its spectral body hard, so hard that he felt a rib snap. The speed of his fall almost punched him through the body and onto the stones and churning water below.
The wind rushed at him angrily. Aelyn’s storm giant had another hand and it swept down for him, forcing the albatross to bank away. In doing so, he saw a more definite shape in the monster that his sister had made. It had no legs, but was instead a torso that sat in the sky, its face defined by the angry storm clouds and lightning that crowned it. It was not the first time that he had seen such a creation from her, but he had not seen one marked by so many mouths, or heard her use it to speak as she did now.
‘I will not be able to forgive myself for killing my family,’ her thousand voices said. ‘I will not be able to forgive the failure of my love. I had dreamed of making universes with Eidan. Our love was to define who we would be in divinity. The loss of that will be the greatest regret that I keep with me.’
You do not have to, Zaifyr wanted to tell her, as the albatross rose before the storm giant, as it moved around its grasps, as it slid between the debris that it hurled. You can end this. You can save the people of Yeflam. You can stand with us.
But he knew that she would have to break Kaqua’s control first.
That would not happen, not here, not above the ruins of Nale. The Pauper had had thousands of years to set his words in her, doing so without her knowledge. Even now, he could remember how he had felt after he killed the two priests, how easily he had agreed with Kaqua. Zaifyr had thought that they were his own thoughts at the time, that he knew exactly what Kaqua did with his power when he made that clumsy thrust of suggestion in their first meeting. But now, he was not sure. He could not be. He remembered how quickly he had agreed, how it had been something that he wanted to do, but now he could see how the Pauper worked, how he had made Zaifyr’s own thoughts stronger, how he had taken his doubts, his hopes, and strengthened them.
Aelyn floated in the centre of the storm giant’s head, its form an extension of her. Her eyes were closed when he came upon her, but they opened now.
He said her name, once.
From the giant’s mouth, a roar burst. The wind that came from it was like a volley of arrows. Zaifyr could not avoid them, could not see them clearly, and they tore at his clothes, sliced open the skin of his arms and back, and forced him to press hard against the ghostly body of the albatross. He reached frantically out for the haunt of another bird, for anything that he could hurl against her, to stop her attack, to force her to talk to him, but even as he reconnected with the flock of pelicans that had broken the giant’s grip, he knew it would not be enough.
He had but one option if he did not wish to be destroyed.
8.
The steel edge of Ayae’s blade caught the spiked punch of the lean creature, right before her hand thrust out, slamming heel-first into its chest.
She hit hard, intent on pushing it out into Leviathan’s Blood. She knew that any fire she could ignite on the leather vest of the creature would not last, and so she focused on the force she struck with, on her strength. For all that she was sure that she heard ribs break in response, the creature took but half a step backwards beneath her strike. Shocked, she lingered in the aftermath of the blow longer than she should have, and would have been hit hard had Jae’le’s sword not come up to block the creature’s other hand. With both its hands held at bay, Ayae stepped back, intending to strike again with her hand, but as her foot moved backwards, she let her sword fall from its position and turned, stepping around Jae’le and bringing her sword down in a sweeping slash at the bestial creature. It jerked from the path of her blow and, instead of tearing through flesh, her blade hit chain and she realized that beneath the heavy furs the creature wore, its body had been wrapped protectively. But it left the creature heavy and slow and she pressed forward as she felt Jae’le move in the opposite direction, his blade catching a blow from the lean creature that followed her movement, while in front of Ayae, the bestial creature reared back and revealed a white face heavily tattooed into a snarling bear beneath its heavy fur hood.
Swiftly, her sword darted out and tore through its left eye.
It roared, but before she could press forward, she felt Jae’le hit her back, and heard a grunt from him. She moved out of his way as he fell backwards, long scratches from the spikes on the lean creature’s hands leaving their marks across his chest. Ignoring the bestial creature, Ayae brought her sword around in a circle and hammered into the second slash of the creature, the one that aimed to tear further into Jae’le’s chest. Her blow came down heavily across its wrist. It dug deep into the chains, parting them, parting the skin beneath until it hit and lodged in the bone there.
The creature ripped its arm away, and in doing so, tore Ayae’s sword out of her grasp. She let it go, dropping flat in the shallow water as Jae’le’s sword swung heavily through where she had stood. The blade tore deeply through the midsection of the creature. Jae’le followed the attack, moving with a sudden speed that Ayae, for all her swiftness, for all her accelerated perception, had difficulty following. Briefly, she wondered why it had taken until now for Zaifyr’s brother to show it, but as the thought passed through her, Ayae saw Anguish, who had crawled on to the back of Eidan, turn his closed eyes to Jae’le.
‘No!’ Anguish shouted as the large man’s body shuddered, and Ayae realized that whatever power Jae’le had tapped into to attack the creature had been taken from the threads that he had bound around Eidan to keep him alive. But as he attacked the lean creature, as his sword struck out in a series of fast and hard blows, as she saw the damaged arm come clean off and land on the ground, black water came from Eidan’s mouth in a shuddering cough.
A second followed as the bestial creature loomed over the large man.
Ayae darted forward without thinking, her body ploughing into the creature, the force of her lunge folding it onto its back, while her hands dug angrily into its chest.
The chain yielded beneath her hot hands and the creature tried to rip itself away. It slammed its heavy arms into her in desperation. She dug deeper into its mail, reaching for its skin, but she was rocked by a blow to her head by the tattooed face of the creature slamming down, and she fell backwards. Even as she did, she saw the hilt of her sword slide along the ground to her and, as the creature raised its mail-heavy arms, Ayae scooped the blade up and brought it powerfully into the right arm of the creature.
There was no finesse to her blow, no elegance. She drew the blade back and swung it again as if it were an axe. She felt flesh and bone give way, and as she drew the blade back again, as she hurried to her feet, she swung the blade through the creature’s breaking arm and into its head.
The steel edge caved the tattooed face in as if it were hollow and when she ripped her sword out, half the skull tore apart like old, gristly meat, before the creature’s body slumped to the ground.
‘Throw it into Leviathan’s Blood.’ She heard Jae’le shout from her right, from where he had pushed the lean creature into the ocean. ‘We cannot kill it, but there is something down there to make it wish it was dead.’
Behind him, a long, dark tentacle pawed at the stone dock.
The bestial creature was still alive as she dragged it to the edge. It struggled weakly against her when she first grabbed its furs, but by the time she reached the edge, it had become stronger, as if the damage to its head, to its brain, had merely been a shock to it, and whatever lurked inside it needed only time to rework the controls of the body it inhabited. But she pushed it into the tenta
cle’s grasp, and from beneath the black water, she saw a dozen – thicker, the size of her legs, and coloured a dark, ugly red – rise to take it and drag it down into its depths.
When she turned, Ayae discovered that an ox and cart had come down to the dock. It stood there patiently as Jae’le, now holding Eidan, carried his brother to the back of it.
Closer, she saw that the ox had wounds over its back and neck. In the cart, pushed to the side from where Eidan was laid, the bedding and clothes were soaking wet. But it was the voices she could hear once again that caught her attention.
‘Can you hear that?’ she asked.
‘It is Aelyn,’ Jae’le said. He pointed to the storm and, with a shock, she saw the fully formed storm giant. It towered over Nale, its body rippling with lightning, as if the energy was its veins and blood. Yet, its face did not look like anyone she knew, and remained curiously featureless, without eyes or a mouth. ‘The words are her own.’
She tried to focus on what was being said, but it sounded too much like the wind.
‘Without you, I would not have been able to keep both of us alive,’ Jae’le said. His hand fell to her shoulder. ‘I thank you.’
‘What is she saying?’ Ayae asked.
‘She is asking for forgiveness.’ He turned back to the cart. ‘She is asking it of the people of Yeflam, though many will not know that. But she is asking it of us too.’
‘Why would she ask it of us?’
Lightning lit up the storm, and Ayae thought that she saw flocks of birds illuminated, but only briefly.
‘Because Zaifyr is going to kill her,’ Jae’le said, a terrible sadness in his voice. ‘Once she is dead, he will be our responsibility.’