by Tim Lebbon
‘So, Leki,’ Sol spoke softly. ‘Have you and he …?’
‘No!’ Leki stood, tense and ready. She looked shocked, confused. ‘Sol, why are you doing this?’
‘I thought you were …’ He stood away from his wife, and Bon noticed something strange. It was no trick of the light, and no imagination on his part. Leki’s blood-spattered husband was shaking. ‘I thought you were dead.’
‘Things have changed,’ Leki said. ‘Everything’s changed.’
Bon wondered what she meant.
We don’t have very long, he thought, not quite sure where that idea had come from. He glanced across the battlefield, at the blazing fires and the people who had until recently been trying to kill each other. And he was struck by a terrible sense of hopelessness. In his right hand he carried something beyond human comprehension, and humans continued to fight and kill in the name of one god or another.
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ he said.
‘You. Quiet, or Deenia will—’ Sol began.
‘Will what? Kill me?’ Bon glared at Sol, holding the bloodied soldier’s gaze, and slowly shook his head. He carefully showed him the bone-like object, not wanting it to look at all like a threatening gesture. ‘This is incredible, yet you want to destroy it. We live in a time of wonders, and you want to fight, and to kill.’ He looked across at the bridge, and the slew of bodies across its span. He felt beyond sad. He felt empty.
‘We have orders,’ Sol said. He nodded towards Leki. ‘Both of us.’ He and Leki stood apart, and their stances said that the distance between them had never been greater.
‘Founded on wrong information,’ Bon said.
‘So wrong,’ Leki said. ‘Aeon is not the enemy here. It’s just a thing, a wanderer. Magic is the enemy, Sol, because it will raise something terrible. You have to know what I’ve found out, and if you’ll only let me tell you—’
Sol drew his sword and pointed it at his wife’s face. Bon tensed, and felt the tip of the heavy spear pressing against his jacket and the roll of fat around his stomach. The eyes of the woman holding the weapon had barely changed, and he knew that she would gut him without blinking.
‘You believe all this?’ Sol shouted. ‘You’re blaspheming. Why? Because you’re Arcanum? Because you’re a witch?’
‘Magic came from another god,’ Bon said. He tried not to look at Leki, knowing that anger would not serve him well against these killers. ‘A being as much a god as Aeon, at least. It was called Crex Wry; it fell long ago, and must never rise again.’
‘What?’ Sol said, angry. ‘So now you’d tell me a story?’
‘A story is fiction,’ Bon said. ‘This is the truth. If the Engines work and magic is raised, it might be the end for us all. It will destroy Aeon, magic’s Kolts will rise, and this time they won’t be so easy to put back down.’
‘And if we let that Aeon thing wander the world, what then?’ Sol said.
‘Then nothing,’ Bon said. ‘Aeon and its kind wandered the world for ever, and witnessed the creation of the world we know today.’ Bon felt the warmth in his hand. ‘But one of them went mad.’ The warmth seemed to pulse, a living part of Aeon. ‘They put it down, because it was set to destroy everything they had made. And they worked hard to keep it down, for so long that the mountains forgot magic, and the valleys and seas had never known its corrupt touch.’
He held the bone tighter.
‘I’m not interested in stories,’ Sol said. ‘Not even if they’re the truth. I’m a soldier, and I’m only interested in orders.’ He turned away from Leki and raised his sword at Bon. ‘Now if you don’t hand that thing over—’
‘No,’ Bon said. ‘Not to someone like you.’
‘Then I’ll take it.’ Sol came for him.
Bon glanced at Leki. He saw a slight shake of her head, a widening of her eyes. Sol saw it also, tensed—
Bon thrust his hand forward and struck the woman across the nose with the part of Aeon. She grunted and fell back, and Bon winced away from the spear’s point as it slipped from his leg and fell with her.
He waited for the bone-thing to grow, or surge, or flow with the power of Aeon, spewing its message across the landscape so that these fools would know the truth. I have Aeon in my hand! he thought, feeling the heat, the pulse.
But nothing happened.
Hands grabbed him and pulled him down from the shire. Bon gasped in a breath to shout. Something struck his face, the fires visible between the startled shire’s legs faded and true darkness fell.
The priest watches the battle, but is no part of it. Hers is a higher purpose. She keeps close to the Engine, one hand against its warm, shivering surface, the other nestled between her legs. The Engine seems to speak to her of its intentions. She listens, and loves.
They moved twenty miles along the coast before the enemy came. The going was easy, and the three Blades escorting her and the Engine – a hundred and fifty Spike soldiers, armed and ready for a fight – made sure the ground ahead was scouted, and any dangers eliminated or avoided. The priest watched some of their creatures of war move ahead, and sometimes she caught rumour of their implementation. A smell, a smear of blood on the sand, the ruined remains of some unknown enemy.
They said the Skythians were little threat.
And then the attack.
But the battle is almost over now, and the Spike soldiers are close to victory. The glade close to the sea where the ambush took place is covered with dead. Several large fires have been started, and in their deceiving light she can see piles of corpses, all of them Skythian. They are being heaped high and burned, and the Spike dead will be taken to the beach and given proper cremations, their ashes and the heat of their demise given to the gods.
‘May the gods of the Fade smile as they accept the sacrifice made today,’ the priest says. The Engine throbs in response, the sensations travelling across her shoulders and down her other arm. She closes her eyes and sighs.
‘It’ll be ready soon,’ the engineer says. He is a weedy, rodent-like man, and she has never liked him. She once saw a tattoo on his shoulder that might have been Outer, and when she confronted him and forced him to strip before a jury of Fader priests, it was revealed as a birthmark. He has never trusted her since then. He says she does not believe how devout he is.
But, in truth, she is a little bit afraid of him. In the Engine, the engineer has something that is just beyond her understanding. A gateway to magic, when magic is a forbidden thing. A route aside from the Fade, not alongside it. Yet she calms this fear with the knowledge that this is the Fade’s work they are doing – the destruction of a false god, daring to accept the term deity.
‘The fight is almost over,’ the priest says. ‘I have sent word back to the generals that we will establish the Engine here.’
‘Good a place as any,’ the engineer says. He licks his finger and holds it to the air, looks through spread fingers inland and then back out to sea. He grins. She knows he is toying with her.
‘You’ll not grin when this is over,’ the priest says. ‘When your Engine is planted, perhaps you will stay with it.’
The man’s face grows grim. ‘You think any of us will be allowed to stay?’ he asks.
‘What do you mean?’
He chuckles. He is twisting wires together, connecting thin, membranous tubes to the Engine’s side. He is a few steps away from her, but she can smell his sweat over the scent of roasting flesh. The battle made them closer together than ever; them, and the Engine.
‘What it will release,’ he says. He pauses, looking at the machine as if it is something he loves, and hates. Then he nods at her hand beneath her robes, buried in the wet warmth between her legs. ‘It’s already been talking to you.’
‘I …’ the priest says, preparing outrage. But the engineer is right.
‘A few moments,’ he says. ‘The Engine where we made land is already awake.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Don’t you know?’ All humo
ur has left his voice. He sounds like a man resigned.
‘What will happen?’ the priest asks softly. It is her first, and last, expression of doubt and concern.
‘The Engine comes alive.’ The engineer works on in silence, and the priest’s fingers dance to the Engine’s silent song.
The third Engine moves north. Its journey has been an easier one – no Skythians have yet found it, and the three Blades accompanying it have nothing worse than rough terrain to contend with. The wagon bearing the Engine has already lost two wheels, and repairs take time. But the priest is happy because the gods of the Fade are with him, and the Engine is his friend.
He prays to each god in turn, as he does every day, and has done every day since he can remember. He whispers exhortations, but he also tells them about himself, grasping reality by making himself real to the gods. His thoughts and fears, excitements and yearnings, all are whispered up amongst and behind his prayers. People have long since stopped listening to this priest because they think him mad, but he barely notices that lack of attention. The gods attend him. They welcome his voice. Soon, they will answer.
Because he can sense them waiting within the Engine. This, the construct of their victory over false gods, will soon gush forth the magic that they forbid because it is so close to them. The priest is certain of this, just as he is certain that they do not disapprove of him thinking so. They whisper to him, and he is their familiar.
The engineer works around the Engine as they travel. Triangulation, resonance, prashdial wavelength … the priest cares nothing for these, and he and the engineer have never spoken. Sometimes he prays for the engineer, but it is a lonely prayer. Their worlds are far apart.
The Engine sings inside, and the priest hears its song as echoes of the Fade.
It was only Leki’s presence that prevented Sol from ordering the slaughter of their prisoners. While the remaining Spike soldiers – there were less than thirty out of the forty-nine who had marched this way with him – gathered the Skythians together and disarmed them, Sol sat with his wife. Tamma remained close by, keeping watch on the man Sol had punched unconscious. He was tied up. The thing with which he had killed Deenia was on the ground between Sol and Leki.
Everything was changing, and so much going wrong.
‘I don’t know who you are any more,’ Sol said.
‘You can say that? You’re the one who attacked me!’
‘I only pulled you from the horse.’ Leki did not reply. ‘I thought you were dead, Leki. Then I saw you, with him, and you started saying things that made no sense—’
‘I’m the person I always was,’ she said. ‘But I’m aware of so much more.’
‘The person you were served the Ald, and the gods of the Fade.’
‘No,’ Leki said softly. ‘I was always Arcanum first. And …’ She glanced away from him, eyes dancing with fire.
‘Maybe Cove was right about you.’
‘The General?’ Leki asked.
‘He called you an amphy witch.’ Leki did not reply. Sol went on, ‘So maybe it is your arcane arts you place before everyone, and everything else.’
‘Can’t you speak to me as your wife?’
‘I feel like I’m married to lies.’
‘No,’ Leki said sadly. ‘No lies, Sol, I promise. The truth has power and weight.’
Sol stood and kicked the bone-thing before him. It did not roll as far as it should have, as if it were much heavier than it actually felt.
‘You have to believe me,’ Leki said.
‘Why? A threat, Leki?’
‘You forget. I’ve seen it.’
‘And you forget we’re here to kill it.’ Sol was conflicted, confused, and both emotions fed his anger. He had killed so many so recently, yet he wanted now to kill more. His blood was up. That unconscious bastard would be first, as revenge for Deenia, her face smashed back into her brain by the bone-thing. And then some of the prisoners.
And then Leki? His wife, for her betrayal of their cause? If he took her back with him, she would doubtless face banishment from Alderia anyway. Banishment back here. Perhaps he should leave her here, killed by his loving hand. If he acted quickly, maybe the memory of the woman he had loved might still survive.
‘You still love me too much to kill me,’ Leki said. She was smiling, one hand splayed in the blood-slushed snow, finger pressed into the muddy ground.
‘You’d dare read me, floater?’ As he spoke the word, a pang of shame made him turn away. There was silence for a precious heartbeat, and then Leki spoke.
‘You’re such a fine soldier,’ she said to his back. The words were so loaded they hurt.
‘I’m a loyal soldier!’ Sol snapped. The distance between them was growing. He wished she had never found them, even if that meant the battle would still be raging. He held up that thing and the Skythians fell to their knees. Sol glanced back at Leki and the fist-sized object, pale in the reflected firelight. I should kick it into the fire.
His wife was lost to him. He loved her so much, and yet a stranger sat before him now, loaded with lies and corrupted by the land she had come here only to visit, not to be absorbed by. Its false god had made a disease of her mind. She shunned the Fade, and the mere idea of that sent a shiver down his spine – Sol was never an obsessive, but he was a devout Fader because that was how he had been brought up, the life he had lived.
His skin was stiff with dried blood, his hip burned and raged where he had taken an injury, his fingers were open to the bone where a sword had slipped across them. Yet the greatest pain nestled deep within his chest.
‘There are no gods but the Fade,’ Sol said. He drew his pistol and walked past Tamma, kneeling beside the bound man and pressing the barrel against his chest.
‘Sol!’ Leki cried out, and in that one word Sol heard so many admissions that it made the pain in his own chest heavier, and deeper than he thought he could carry.
‘Oh by all the fucking gods of the Fade …’ Tamma said. Her voice dripped awe and terror, and when Sol looked up past the fire he dropped his pistol, fell onto his rump, pushing himself back across the wet, cold ground.
Beyond the fires, where snow still lay relatively untouched outside the battlefield, something emerged from the shadows of the trees. Something huge, and pale, and impossible.
‘There, Sol,’ Leki whispered tenderly. ‘Aeon arrives.’
Chapter 20
witness
Aeon gave them a chance, Venden thought. Before Aeon lay evidence of humanity’s squandering of that chance – bloodied snow, bodies, flaming pyres, and at the battle’s centre another act of violence about to take place. The message it had sent with his father and the woman had been cast aside.
Now, Aeon was gathering itself, its aura of sadness pushed aside as something began to rise. Venden sensed a shadow deep within the ancient being’s mind, forming inside and ballooning outward, and at its heart was such violence, turmoil and hatred that he had never imagined.
What is that? Venden thought, but Aeon did not respond, and he quickly realised why. That’s … they’re … Recoiling in horror, Venden could not turn away.
Soon, they would soon be released.
Sol kicked his pistol aside and drew his bloodied sword, angry at himself for dropping his weapon, shocked, staggered by what he saw, but already he was struggling to gather his senses. Tamma was behind him, standing and shaking. Gallan was to his right, edging sideways closer to his Blader and showing no external signs of his shock. Sol knew that it must all be inside.
He had seen one of his Blade press a knife to his eye and fall on it. Suicide was a mortal sin amongst Alderians, and even more so for a soldier during the height of battle. Each Spike soldier bore the weight of the brothers and sisters within his or her Blade, and to remove one’s own life – in whatever circumstance – was to put the rest of the Blade in danger. Sol wanted to rush across and stab at the soldier’s corpse, slash and ruin his body as punishment for what he had done. But his so
ul had already filtered to the Fade, and any punishment was now in the hands of the gods.
‘Sol, what is that?’ Gallan said. Tamma answered from behind them.
‘Aeon,’ she said. ‘The Skythian god, Aeon.’
‘It’s what we all came here to kill,’ Sol said. Such a statement seemed so foolish in the presence of this thing.
‘You can never kill it,’ Leki said. She had regained her feet and stood almost within Sol’s reach. Almost. She was not afraid.
As the huge shape drifted closer to them, ambiguous, difficult to discern fully in the shifting shadows and dancing firelight, Sol was overcome with awe at the history it implied. It was a manifestation of the purest blasphemy a devout Fader could imagine – a player at being a god, in denial of the Fade. He could understand why the Skythians believed it a deity, but in the same thought he hated the very idea of such beliefs, and hated Aeon for attracting them.
Around him, captured Skythians had dropped to the ground and lay prone, faces averted.
‘This is why we brought the Engines,’ Gallan said.
‘We can’t run away,’ Sol said.
Gallan turned to him. ‘I wasn’t suggesting we should.’ His tone betrayed the lie in his statement. Fighting this was the last thing he wished to do, and Sol could not blame him.
But Spike never ran. There were countless stories about the Ald’s soldiers holding out against all hope, succeeding against all expectation, triumphing against overriding odds. Stories, too, about heroic defeats.
‘Blade, re-form!’ Sol shouted. Gallan blinked, afraid. But he pressed his lips tight together, and nodded once at Sol.
‘Alderia,’ Gallan said, the fighting call barely a whisper.
‘Sol!’ Leki said. She moved closer, holding his arm as she used to. But her touch had changed. ‘Sol, listen instead of fighting, and perhaps you can learn something.’
‘Don’t condescend to me!’ Sol hissed, shoving her away. She tripped over a discarded spear and fell close to the man Sol should have killed. But there was something larger to kill now. She was welcome to him.