The god laughed. “You imagine yourself to be unsettling me,” she said, “when in fact you do little more than supply me with a moment’s amusement. A moment that is now over.”
Cylene smiled then, and Noetos backed away in fright, the hair on his head prickling in awe. For in her smile was power from beyond the Wall of Time.
Umu saw it too. Her—his—mouth snapped shut. Lenares raised her head. The cosmographer’s mouth described an “O.”
“You watched Keppia as he was driven out of the world and sealed beyond the Worldwall,” Cylene said. “You were surprised I lived afterwards, but you thought no more of it, suiting your plans to those you considered dangerous. Kannwar, Lord of Bhrudwo. Noetos and his huanu stone. Stella, who bears the fire of the Most High. Lenares the cosmographer, who had snared you once before. But you forgot me.”
“Who are you?” asked the god, fear in her voice.
“You ate me once,” Cylene said.
As she spoke, she reached down and touched Lenares on her shoulder. The girl burst into tears.
Noetos shook his head. He had not the faintest idea what Cylene meant. At this point, however, he no longer cared: anything that put fear into the Daughter was fine in his opinion. Even if it was pure bluff.
“Want to talk again about my children?” he asked Umu.
The Lord of Bhrudwo made Stella dump the sticks he’d forced her to scavenge from around the room, then coaxed fire from them with a flint from his belt.
“You know this fire, I think,” he said to her.
She knew this fire. She had travelled in it twice, borne from Faltha to Bhrudwo both times. Once at the beginning of the Falthan War, as an unintended side effect of the Destroyer’s wrath. And a second time as a means to escape from Dhauria. Both times the journey had been painful and disorienting.
He drew a pouch from his belt, took from it some blue powder and cast it on the flames, muttering an incantation as he did so.
Stella readied herself for the pain. What else could she do?
“You seek to bargain with me?”
“Is that so strange?” Noetos said. “Wasn’t that how you ended up a god in the first place, Umu? A bargain with the Father?”
“Don’t speak his name in this place,” the god hissed.
“As you wish,” Noetos replied blandly. “A bargain. You return our companions to us, we leave you here to live in the House of the Gods. Better than being cast back into the void, surely?”
Cylene shook her head. Noetos ignored her.
“I have enlarged the hole in the world sufficiently to live exactly where I choose,” Umu said.
“Right,” Noetos said, nodding. “Mmm. Which is why you’re here, wrapped in some poor man’s putrid skin, fear in your voice, trying to find a way out of the snare you’ve made for yourself. See, I think you need a body to live in, an anchor to this world. Or a succession of them probably. You’ve engineered things here so you have not one but two bodies to choose from. Twins, no less. Once the first one wears out, you’ll have another one to be going on with. After that, who knows?”
He took two paces towards Umu’s throne. “Live where you choose? You don’t fool me. Now return our companions to us and we’ll talk about bodies.”
Cylene glanced at Noetos, fear on her face. “What do you mean?”
“Sorry, Miss Sai,” he said to her. “But this was always my plan. From the moment I realised you were Lenares’ twin, I have worked tirelessly to bring you before Umu and make my bargain. Take these two, Daughter, and give me my own son and daughter back.”
“But you didn’t know—”
Cylene intercepted a pleading look from him. Trust me, beloved. She’d known him mere weeks: would she understand? Everything depended on her now.
“You bastard,” she breathed, putting everything she had into the word. “You’d sell me out? You don’t know what it is like, being dead and possessed by a god. Please, Noetos, please. Don’t condemn me to a prison of pain in my own body.”
He turned away from her.
“Do what you like with these two,” he said to Umu. “After we’ve gone I can’t stop you leaving the House of the Gods anyway. Do we have a bargain?”
Umu dipped dead hands into pockets in Conal’s tunic, pulled out a variety of personal effects and blew on them. Either side of Torve’s phantasm others appeared: Arathé and Anomer, and the other travellers, all wearing the frozen expressions they had worn when they had been captured.
“Thaw them, or do whatever it is you need to do,” demanded Noetos.
“Please, Noetos. Don’t do this. I’d die if it would rescue your family. But I can’t face this living death.”
“Shut up, slattern!”
Something about his voice gave him away, or perhaps Umu simply thought things through. Her hand closed around the travellers’ possessions.
“Mahudia!” Lenares shouted.
Cylene rippled. For a moment it was as though Noetos saw her through a sheet of flame. Then her body resumed its normal aspect—on the outside, at least.
Mahudia? Oh—the woman Lenares claims fostered her, who died and was instrumental in keeping the Son from returning through the hole in the world. Comprehension grew within Noetos like the rising of the sun. Wasn’t this risky? If Mahudia lent Cylene her strength, wouldn’t Keppia get loose?
No chance to ask, as several things happened at once.
Cylene extended a hand and Umu screamed. Lenares began to climb up the throne. And Noetos heard a whisper in his mind: his daughter’s voice. We’re very well, Father. Place the huanu stone on the ground and be ready.
Lenares clambered up onto the seat of the giant chair. Conal’s body lunged at her, fetching her a blow across the chest. She staggered sideways, barely keeping herself from falling.
Cylene’s face screwed up with effort. Noetos could see nothing of what she was doing: he had no magical vision. As soon as the thought entered his mind, his vision seemed to fade out, to be replaced by another’s eyes. His daughter’s.
Golden wires ran from place to place in a huge chaotic web. A thick golden cable ran from Cylene’s back up into the pale blue sky above the Throne Room. Other wires radiated out from the young woman, up towards the throne, pulsating with energy and light.
Oddly—disconcertingly—he could see himself standing near Cylene, surrounded by golden wires of his own, none as thick as those touching Cylene. The largest, he realised, connected him to his children; another linked his body with Cylene’s.
He took a few steps back, but his vision didn’t change. Well, of course not. Arathé took the hint and stepped backwards, her body distressingly pale and see-through at the edges. Still not returned to this world from wherever Umu had put it.
Better. Noetos could now see atop the throne. Lenares and Conal struggled, each hammering the other with blows that would be unlikely to do any permanent damage.
* * *
Conal could remember being human. The memories were faint and growing fainter with every passing moment, though time itself had faded also, until a minute and an hour seemed indistinguishable. All that he could now distinguish were shades of pain. Umu transferred every unpleasant feeling to him. Or what was left of him. He barely noticed them, so faded had he become.
He was dead. Deserved to be dead, if what he remembered was true. He’d done some bad things, had let his friends down, and it had ended up like this. He didn’t feel guilt exactly; the churning ache in the centre of what he supposed was his soul would better be described as sorrow. Deep, deep sorrow. Not for himself; he was over that now. Dead was dead. He’d pass into the void when this was all over and face whatever judgment his deeds had earned him. But he felt sorrow for the living, his friends for whom the never-ending sequence of events meant something.
He didn’t even feel angry at Umu. How could he? She’d appropriated his body, but it wasn’t as though he’d been using it. The only uncomfortable result of her actions had been this delay in going
where he was supposed to go. That would be over soon. After a few minutes or hours or somethings. Whatever. They were all the same.
His fading soul hid in the back of his non-functioning brain, a helpless observer of the events unfolding around him. Or perhaps not so helpless.
Noetos saw the first signs that something had gone wrong with Umu. Her lunges at Lenares were clumsier, and she began to totter a few steps after every swing. As if she was drunk. He supposed Cylene’s—Mahudia’s—magic was having an effect, but Arathé’s eyes told him different: the golden outpouring from his beloved still stopped short of the god, countered by a reciprocal ray of magic from Conal’s body. For a moment Noetos could not discern what was happening.
Umu cried out in anger, then fell on her bottom with a slap. Lenares kicked at her once, twice… and on the third kick, Conal’s body fell from the chair, thumping into the sand.
Immediately the ethereal figures of their companions resolved into their normal forms and were set free from whatever stasis they had been held in.
“Draw from the room itself!” Anomer cried.
Instantly half a dozen shafts of magic pierced Conal’s prone body and the Daughter cried in pain.
Where was the Undying Man? At this moment of crisis, the fulfilment of his god-appointed quest, where had he gone? Noetos suspected something underhand. But without both his and Stella’s magical power, it seemed unlikely they could drive Umu out. Nevertheless, they were hurting her: her magical flame began to retreat.
“Something’s happening,” Anomer said, then he doubled over. His hands went to his head, as did Arathé’s. Duon screamed and fell to the ground. Noetos found his own vision returned to him, all golden threads gone. He snatched up the huanu stone and ran to his son’s side. Something in Noetos’s head seemed to have caught fire.
“Umu… she… she is forcing her way… she has found the connection between we three spikes and Husk,” Duon panted. “She has Conal’s mind wide open. We… I… aaah!… can feel her widening the… the channel… ah, she’s going to burn out our minds!”
“Stop trying to drive her out!” Noetos cried to Cylene, who was again rippling with the effort of channelling the power of a dead cosmographer.
Another voice erupted from three throats. “No!” it cried, a deep male voice, the words audible from the mouths of Duon and Conal, a wordless cry from his daughter’s tongueless mouth. “No! Stay away! Do not… I will… AAAAAAH!”
The three bodies convulsed and lay still.
“She’s gone,” Anomer said in a small voice as he bent over his sister.
“Gone where?” Noetos whispered.
He’d felt it too, through the connection he shared with his children. Something had forced its way into and through Arathé’s mind, some evil beast scouring a path along a previously formed channel.
Anomer breathed out heavily. “Gone to possess the voice that drove the spike into her brain, and into that of Duon and Conal. Gone to claim Husk’s body for her own.”
“We’ve driven her out then?”
“Oh yes. But it appears that we may have made things much worse.”
INTERLUDE
HUSK IS TORN. ON the one hand, he wishes his foes overthrown, given that he is still weakened and not yet sure of victory against them. On the other, he does not want either the Undying Man or his consort damaged in any way. They must be unharmed when finally he encounters them. So it is with profound relief, countered by a sudden apprehension, that he notices their disappearance.
He can still see through the eyes of his two remaining spikes: even though they have broken his control over them, the connection remains open. They are fools, of course. Were it him in their situation, he’d ensure he found some way to close it. But of course he cannot see what his spikes cannot see, and once Stella and Kannwar are swallowed by the shuffling rooms of the House of the Gods, he has no further knowledge of them.
He hopes they are safe.
Husk breathes heavily, having arrived at the top of the final staircase. Such a long time he has been creeping through this fortress, along corridors, up and down stairs, hiding in long-forgotten rooms, avoiding contact with the hundreds of denizens required to keep such a place functioning. He has travelled—oozed, he supposes the correct term would be as applied to his early journey—from the deepest dungeon in Andratan to the highest tower, by what may be the most circuitous route possible. And, of course, despite his caution, he has been discovered many times; each time he has dealt ruthlessly with his discoverer and anyone else necessary to cover his presence. And, ah, now he is here. The Tower of Farsight.
The tower is empty, as it has been since the Undying Man last left his fortress. Empty and gathering dust, and now gathering a deadly enemy. He eases himself onto his knees, then his feet, pushes with his handless arms—the buds that will eventually become hands are still formless—and the door swings open.
He breathes in the stale air as though it is the sweetest scent he has ever inhaled. And it is, oh yes. He drops back to all fours and crawls across the flagstones to the seat by the window, the place from which the Undying Man rules Bhrudwo.
Husk has paid a great price to come this far. In savouring this moment, he takes the time to consider all he has suffered. He thinks particularly of how his spikes damaged him; how, after all his cleverness and hard work, he almost lost everything when Conal sacrificed himself, his death tearing the spikes loose from Husk’s grasp. He had been tempted by despair then, coming closer to giving up than at any other time. In the end he had gone on. Easier to go forward, he’d thought, than to retrace his path back to that dungeon.
Slowly his strength has returned. By no means is he back to the almost godlike position he occupied before Conal’s trick, but he is strong enough, he judges. His body is not the superhuman thing he had planned for, but he has husbanded his strength. He is ready.
He levers himself to his feet and sits on the seat.
He is the new Lord of Bhrudwo. Deorc, Lord of Bhrudwo.
He’ll wait until they come into the room before he binds them. He sees where they will stand, unable to move. Stella there, the Undying Man there, shock on their faces. Not fear, not until they realise they cannot defeat his binding. He will drag Stella forward, screaming, until she lies before him, her eyes filled with terror. Then he will ease himself down from his seat and take her, savagely and without ceremony, with the member he has sculpted specially with her in mind. The screams will continue for a long time.
There is a flash outside the window, down amidst the gnarled bushes just above the high-water mark. He strains his eyes, but cannot see clearly. But, but… he can feel.
Someone has arrived.
So soon!
Yet not soon at all. Seventy years of suffering is about to culminate in an orgy of glory. Husk exults as the Undying Man emerges from the bushes with his consort in train. The man will know exactly where Husk sits. The knowledge will do him no good.
This is Husk’s time.
There is a buzzing at the back of his head. He takes it for part of the excitement: his body is still relatively new and he does not know exactly how it will react to the stress it is about to be subjected to.
The buzzing grows and his scalp becomes warm. Some sort of attack from the Undying Man perhaps. Still he does not panic. He draws from his conduit to the void and prepares his defences. Chief among them is a strong shield to keep out any magical assault; so much power is at his disposal that he cannot conceive of anyone penetrating it.
The shield snaps closed around him, yet the buzzing does not cease. Instead, it grows; and now he can hear voices.
No.
Something’s happening, says a voice.
No, oh no. He has no defence against this.
Another voice whispers in his mind. She has found the connection between we three spikes and Husk. She has Conal’s mind wide open. I… can feel her widening the channel—ah, she’s going to burn out our minds!
The
artery he made to link himself to his spikes, the connection he’d strengthened until it was impossible to break, begins to burn, to blister. Something begins to move along it, towards him.
Frantic with terror, Husk tries to cut the link.
His magical power has no effect.
He tries to assemble a barrier between the channel and his own body.
The intruder bursts through it with ease.
It is coming, it is coming—it is here.
“No!” he cries, the word ripping out his throat. “No! Stay away!”
It reaches for him, fastens onto him.
“Do not… I will… AAAAAAH!”
It slides into his mind and fills it, evicting him with no effort.
It is the Daughter, Umu, and she is unimaginably strong. She tears his mind open, laughing as she does so, leafing through his thoughts of revenge, whispering mocking things at what she finds. She throws carefully nurtured concepts away as though they were so much rubbish. Husk sits at the back of his own head, a tiny ball of misery, beyond terror.
“Ah,” says Umu, settling into his mind as though it was a rented room. No, a room repossessed by a moneylender. “I will be comfortable here.”
Husk screams, but no one can hear him.
THE BROKEN MAN
CHAPTER 18
THE BRONZE MAP
THE FLAMES WRAPPED THEMSELVES around Stella like a former lover renewing an unwanted embrace, licking, caressing, burning. She could not move, whether because of Kannwar’s power or the strength of the blue fire, she could not tell. She remembered panicking the first time she had travelled this way, and how it had so nearly destroyed her. Would that it had. But she could not struggle, could not fight, and so the flames overwhelmed her, burned her to ashes, and bore them away.
The first thing she felt as she came to herself was a cool wind whipping at her hair. Alive then, she sighed. A moment later, the second realisation: Still under Kannwar’s spell.
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