Teazle paused and Hellblade recognised who was speaking at the same moment. It was surprised. It thought it had killed him, and then it was afraid and awed and this almost blew Teazle’s mind because he hadn’t thought it capable of anything approaching fear. Awe was more like it. He was more shocked when with his voice Hellblade said, ‘You’re still alive.’
‘I am neither alive nor dead,’ the elf said. ‘I am just a dream. I thought you had finished me too. But it seems you cannot, Render. You cut me apart and the lash of Judgement laid me bare, it’s true. That was agony. But Wrath did not consume me. I thought it was to be my final torment, to be left in pieces forever in the dark. I might have deserved it. But it was a favour in the end. Now I am clean and everything is equal with me.’
Teazle absorbed some understanding of this through Hellblade’s comprehension though usually he was the last person to buy stories of cathartic enlightenment. Lords of Death probably had a lot of baggage though, and so it wasn’t impossible. He was further astonished when he heard Hellblade say, ‘I will find her before you do. She shall not escape us and you will not spare her.’
‘It is your business,’ Tath said. ‘But there are some you will not take. Teazle, dig faster, it’s right underneath, at the corner.’
‘Since you know so much,’ Teazle said between breaths as he threw rubble aside and hauled at slippery boulder-sized chunks of ex-demon, ‘what are you doing hiding in there?’
‘Waiting for someone to come looking for the phylactery and the other mirror,’ Tath said as if this were patently obvious to any numb-skull. ‘Hurry up. It is a plastic food container, about the size of your fist, inside a bundle of rags.’
‘What is?’
‘What you are looking for. The mage’s soul bottle. Faster!’
‘What’s the rush?’ he asked, wondering why Xaviendra would have chosen to store her soul in something as crassly ubiquitous and modern as a plastic box and then thinking it wasn’t such a stupid idea if you were going to hide it under rubble in a labyrinth under a lagoon, and then he felt Lila die.
There was a moment in which he disbelieved it, because it was Hellblade’s senses not his own, but he heard the elf’s sharp intake of breath and the same time he felt a drag on his heart as though it suddenly weighed a ton. ‘What the hell?!’
‘Keep digging,’ the elf said hoarsely. ‘The rockfall is considerable. Keep going.’
‘If I don’t see her again you will all die,’ Teazle promised, feeling it hollow in his mouth. He flung a man-sized chunk of rock aside. It broke on impact with the floor and splinters tinkled on the surface of the crystal pane behind him. For a second he felt the most unfamiliar feeling in the world; impotence. ‘Mirrors as well.’
‘Just dig,’ Tath insisted. ‘That’s your business. The rest is mine.’
He dug and Hellblade wove through him, crimson thread on a razor sharp needle, piercing and binding, sewing itself into him for life or death. That didn’t matter. He knew that if Lila wasn’t there any more then everything could come to an end, himself most of all.
He dug and suddenly the box was in his hands. There was nothing else with it, just a cheap takeout carton sealed with duct tape and wrapped in an oilcloth.
Now all he had to do was find the others, and Xaviendra. That probably boiled down to finding Zal, he thought, and teleported to Alfheim.
Lila, Malachi and Sandra Lane stood in the absolute darkness and heard the dog bark again.
‘This way,’ said a boy’s voice from the same direction. ‘About thirty steps. Careful.’
There was no floor, no up, no down, nothing to walk on but they did walk, thirty steps that way.
‘At your feet, Lila, just feel and you’ll find it,’ said the voice and suddenly Malachi knew it.
‘Ilya?’ he said, hearing the word although there was no sound here, he realised. But it wouldn’t do to realise too much of the truth, or he would fall to bits. He felt it clearly so he decided he’d heard it, like usual.
‘Mal,’ Ilya’s voice was fond, he thought. ‘Don’t worry. You aren’t staying.’
‘Good because I thought . . .’
‘This is the end,’ Sandra Lane said and there was a tinge of wonder in her.
‘Got it,’ Lila said at the same time, sounding sure.
‘Back you go now,’ the elf said and his tone was so forceful that Malachi felt himself obeying without trying to, retracing the unseen steps. At his back and all around him he felt eyes watching from the darkness, closing in, heard their stare screaming like gulls, closing in, closer and closer, beaks open.
‘Impossible,’ Lane said.
‘But I . . .’ he began as Ilya’s power forced them back across the threshold.
‘Now,’ Lila said.
There was light, there was rain, there was ground and mud and sky and more trees than Malachi had ever known existed. It was blinding.
There was a high-pitched sound like a bee and something hit him in the shoulder, spun him around and knocked him down.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Zal found his father at twilight. He and Unloyal had searched the region for hours, sweeping back and forth across endless hills of billowing green foliage like clouds of life. They didn’t fill Zal’s senses as they once had, not now that he was attuned to the darkness and searching there, in the permanent penumbral gloom of the forest floor amid the swirling clouds of wild magic. Still, they filled it enough to make looking hard work, particularly when you were strap-hanging off the side of a grumpy drake who kept insisting that he could see perfectly well and there were people down there all right, why couldn’t Zal identify them?
Zal could identify them, he replied, equally grumpily, they just weren’t the right people. Mercifully they were at least people and he was infinitely grateful for that. His nightmare that the atrocity of Delatra had been visited on the entire world was proven to be just a daydream.
Just as he could see them however, they could also see him and Unloyal swooping around above them. They were frequently mistaken at first for a demon hunter and Unloyal’s wing was holed by one of the many potshots that had been directed their way until those on the ground tuned in a little more sharply and found the oddness of Zal in their neighbourhood; weird, tainted and heavily influenced by a soul dub that made him pulse like a throbbing wound in their consciousness, but still, for all that, elf and not one bent on destruction.
Small parties tracked him, trying to keep pace, but even their leaping speed in the canopy was no match for Unloyal’s aerial glissandos. Zal at least finally had the notion of trying to communicate more than his peacenik attitude and reveal who he was searching for. He wasn’t helped by the fact that Unloyal had decided he liked to sing along. Like a mournful klaxon, he incompetently blared occasional phrases across the birdsong skies. It took a lot of swearing from Zal to shut him up long enough for them to lose their little audience and finish the hunt in silence once they’d received a tip-off. They were also pelted with fruit, which Unloyal said was helpful, but Zal insisted was for the crime of Unloyal’s vocal murder of fine songs.
‘I don’t hear you singing,’ the drake muttered as they soared far and high in a turn that would take them out of reach of the interested ground pursuit.
Zal gave him another mix to listen to to shut him up. He didn’t say that he didn’t feel like singing. He wasn’t sure when he would again. They crossed a river, came to the fork they had been told of, followed the line of water down a valley into isolated canyons that grew narrower until it was hard for the drake to fly in them without clipping his wings on the sides. Here Zal got out of the harness and hung down underneath the drake as it started to get dark and the river became a stream of golden fire in the sunset. He picked up the trace he was looking for and asked Unloyal to stoop lower. He didn’t fancy another smash through the canopy so he aimed for the water this time and prayed it was deep enough. When they came to a falls with a small pool he took his chance and let go.
&nb
sp; For a second or two he was free in the air. He felt the Lila armour pulse around him and seal at his wrists, waist and neck to protect the books that he hadn’t even considered, and he thought that he slowed down but it was hard to tell. Then he hit the water feet first and its cool enveloped him.
Unloyal was a receding mote in the distance by the time he surfaced and swam to the side where he pulled himself out onto the flat rocks and waited for most of the water to drain out of his clothes. The armour squeezed hard and pushed it out. It gave, he thought, a whole new meaning to the notion of being wrung out and that made him almost laugh. Then he felt the presence of his father grow stronger and turned to face the tall, dark gaps beneath the nearest trees, tossing his head back to fling his wet hair out of his eyes.
The old Saaqaa companion of his came first, a saurian shape, still bigger than grown-up Zal as it paced over the marshy grass and stopped on three-toed feet a few metres from him. Its head, blind as Unloyal’s, wove from side to side constantly, an axe shape with a mute savage mouth underneath. Feathers and beads covered its arms and it rested the ends of its spears on the bank as it came to a halt, leaning on them a little bit. It smelled of the citrus zing of wild magic and greeted Zal with a cautious extension of its andalune body. This was articulate, though very quiet – serene in fact – it verified Zal and withdrew. Afterwards his father came out of the darkness and stood where the shade dappled the grass. Zal realised that he was avoiding the sun, and went forward. They met cautiously and he felt uncertainty as well as warmth in his father’s contact. He was astonished at the fact his father looked older. His face was deeply lined now, the skin loose, his hair dark grey instead of the true black of the shadowkin.
‘Something changed you a great deal,’ his father said. He still had a hunting bow and an arrow in his hand although they weren’t joined. This was as close to effusive warmth as his father got, Zal knew. His spirit touch was much more affectionate than his stance or his expression. It felt no more fragile than it ever had and Zal was grateful. ‘I barely recognised you.’
Zal moved forward, dripping, into the deepening shadows under the branches and stopped a metre away. ‘I got the shit kicked out of me a few times.’
His father’s eyes narrowed. ‘But not the manners.’ The merest flicker of a smile on his flint-edged mouth came and went.
‘No fear,’ Zal said, ducking his head. ‘That’s what you always told me.’
‘I hope one day you forgive me,’ came the reply, quietly. ‘What is on your mind?’
Zal grinned. His father always said that, no matter how obvious or awful the situation. ‘Well, I found your name in this book here . . .’ He pulled out the object from inside his dry jacket as his father looked at his armour very closely but without saying anything. The Saaqaa coughed slightly and cocked its head.
‘He says your friend has gone.’
Zal guessed that they meant Unloyal. ‘Yeah well, he’s not much use on the ground.’
‘So I see.’ He took the papers in his hand without looking at them and beckoned. ‘Come this way.’
Within a moment Zal was alone on the bank. The night birds, the frogs and the insects filled the darkening air with sound. He followed the two into the purple, blue and inky tones of the underforest and felt himself slide from view, not only from the huge open eye of the sky, but from other kinds of eyes. His trace in the rich energy currents of the forest ocean was all but lost to the most experienced senses. He could only follow his father because they had not let go of each other yet. Through the contact Zal felt the years of isolation and withdrawal that had been his father’s life, a hermithood of sorts, straying further and further from civilisation. He tasted how difficult it was for the old man to form sentences though his spirit touch was effortlessly sure.
Presently they stopped and sat down. There was nothing to mark the place as special except their presence. Zal realised that his father had no home at all and felt a wry correction pressed upon him – his father was at home everywhere. He thought he saw the man smile but it could have been a moving leaf shadow.
‘Your name is in the list,’ Zal said. He didn’t know if he would have to explain the book but apparently not.
‘It is your great grandfather’s name, not mine, though we share it,’ came the reply. The book was handed back to him. ‘I am scarcely so old, nor will be, and he is long dead.’
Zal was relieved, so much so that he just sat for a moment, holding the papers. ‘Do you know where my mother is?’
‘No.’
He had expected as much. They both thought she was dead but had never said so. That was a relief too, in a way. There were fewer people to concern himself with now. ‘Do you know what’s happening in the rest of Alfheim?’
‘You mean Wrath’s coming,’ his father said. ‘Yes I know about it. I guessed that is why you are here. Again you manage to be at the centre of our greatest scandals.’
Zal frowned. ‘What happened to the ones at Delatra?’
‘She took them for power and as punishment for her exile,’ came the reply. ‘No doubt she came for the book. The other book, I should say.’
‘What book?’
‘The book of binding. Do you have that one also?’ There was an edge in the voice now that was unmistakable, even though Zal felt no shift in his father’s touch. Against his chest the second book pressed itself, uncomfortable under the armour.
‘No.’
‘Good. She will not stop until she has it.’
‘What for?’
‘The names of the phantoms, perhaps some other knowledge she has forgotten.’
The venom in Zal’s blood pulsed suddenly, causing him to fall onto his knees as a wave of longing and sweet loyalty to Xaviendra filled him. It smothered all awareness. He started getting to his feet to rush to her and then the Saaqaa’s solid stave hit him and knocked him down again. The armour deferred only some of the impact and used the impetus to jolt him with a nerve shock of its own, across his entire skin. Lila was slapping him. The pain briefly cleared his head.
There was a pause, filled in by the world’s cacophony and Zal realised what an idiot he’d been. He’d assumed that Xaviendra was there on some foolish mission related to what had happened before, or because Malachi had sent her, or Sarasilien maybe, to save the library. He’d assumed that his father had been talking about Wrath when he said ‘she’. But now he saw it wasn’t so. To save the library. Sure. Of course. That’s exactly it. She wasn’t heroically trying to save elvish culture, she was here to destroy it. It was not Wrath who had consumed the living. It was Xavi.
On cue the wound in his neck pulsed and a wave of longing washed across him, undisguisable in all of its awful detail.
‘Poisoned,’ his father said after a moment as though he had just noticed a bee sting. ‘Come, let me get rid of it for you.’
As poultices were sourced and made and magical incantations muttered, Zal called Unloyal to ask for a pick up. His father bent over his neck, applying hot, vile-smelling mud. He slapped some leaves on the top of it and ordered Zal to lie still. ‘Is the offending demon dead?’
‘Yeah,’ Zal said, distracted by a sudden and horrible sensation of pulling at the wound site. He winced and put his hand up – it was firmly taken and moved away. ‘Lila axed it.’
‘Lila?’ said his father.
‘My . . . wife,’ Zal said. ‘We really are out of touch, aren’t we?’ He thought of introducing them but given Lila’s present condition he couldn’t actually imagine himself doing it. For once he was lost for words and gestures.
‘What beautiful armour,’ his father said, careful not to touch it in any way, and then Zal felt himself a double fool because he could feel the old man laughing at him.
‘Is that what you were doing all this time? Hiding in the woods to build up your psychic superpowers?’
He didn’t get an answer. He didn’t expect to. His father placed his hand on top of the leaves. ‘Hold this in place. If it st
ops hurting you need a new one.’
‘How long is this going to take?’
‘Not fifty years,’ came the reply.
It took about two hours of constant, nagging, inescapable pain which even Lila the armour could not undo. At the end of it Zal was sure he had ground half a millimetre off his own teeth. Then, to his disgust, he fell asleep.
When he woke up it was full night. His andalune body had spread out completely, as it used to when he was young. His father was nearby, the old Saaqaa with him, sitting. They had eaten some mushrooms to enhance their night sight but Zal didn’t need these. In Alfheim, in the dark, he was less substantial but much more alive.
He communicated with them by the soul energy alone, and they got up and moved with him in silent passage through the hooting, humming forest.
Wrath approaches, his father told him and the Saaqaa showed him the burst of grey that was the spirit plane in which the phantom moved. It was nothing more than a kind of cloud. He felt it looking but it passed over him when it came close, rising to the surface of Alfheim’s teeming fullness like a carp coming from the depths of a still pool. With a flick it checked them and was gone. It could not find Xaviendra, because she had the power to hide herself – after all, her soul wasn’t here. She had no presence in its plane.
They led him to the wall of the canyon to a place where he could climb up to meet the drake.
His father asked him where he was going to go, and what he was going to do.
Zal asked to be shown the spirit plane again, to call Wrath. Through the shadow bond they shared he was allowed to move through his father’s journey. He waited, saw shapes, moved forward and was stopped by his father’s strong presence.
No further. If you’re lost here you won’t return.
Zal had to wait. Meantime beneath them in the thin aether of the plane hungrier things gathered, flashed their shining scales, the blades of their fins. Then the cloud returned, shark-sleek this time on the scent of something that knew its name.
Down to the Bone: Quantum Gravity Book Five Page 40