Highson agreed. ‘Bent and tied in knots even by people who think they're doing the right thing. I know all about that.’
Sal nodded. ‘You'll let us talk to them, or we'll never do what you want.’
Tatenen bowed in submission. ‘Very well, wild one.’
‘My name is Sal.’
‘Your name is irrelevant. Who you are is all that matters.’ Tatenen straightened and waved Sal forward. ‘Step closer.’
Kail, with no small amount of admiration, watched Sal approach the tall man. The young man walked with his long hair hanging freely. Nervous though he must surely have been, it didn't show, not even when Tatenen gestured for Sal to stop and raised his free hand to cup Sal's forehead. Sal froze but didn't flinch as the hand—which surely must have been as cold as ice—brushed his hair out of the way and touched his skin palm-first. All he did was close his eyes.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
Then Tatenen removed his hand and Sal stepped back, blinking rapidly. ‘What?’ He raised a hand to the place where Tatenen had touched him and looked around at the faces surrounding them. ‘Oh, that was weird.’
‘Are you all right?’ asked Highson, gripping his shoulder.
‘I'm perfectly fine,’ he said. ‘I'm certain of that much.’
‘Now you,’ Tatenen told Kail.
The tracker swallowed his concern and did as Sal had done, stepping forward until Tatenen raised a hand. The tall man's bright green eyes seemed to consume the world. Kail almost pulled away from the hand at his temple, disturbed by the intimacy of Tatenen's touch. He knew he shouldn't, but the reflex was there.
Then it was too late.
‘We are the Old Ones,’ whispered a voice, ‘the architects of the devachan.’
‘Born in darkness, invisible, vital,’ came another, as subtle and insidious as poison gas, ‘we ruled the voids surrounding the realms and the immortal depths of space.’
‘We are ancient beyond measure, beyond time itself.’
‘We are the Eight, and so we will remain until Ymir returns to set us free.’
Kail's eyes rolled. He was frozen solid where he stood, alone on the broken stone ground, which now appeared to be hanging unsupported in space, surrounded by nothingness. Everyone else had vanished. The faces of the Old Ones were the only things moving in the universe: they sagged and jerked as though on the verge of collapse. Their eyes dripped thick, slow-motion tears and their teeth turned black with decay. A stench so dense and liquid it could have been a living thing coiled around Kail and made his throat constrict.
He could say nothing as the Eight conversed among themselves.
‘A lonely man.’
‘Loveless.’
‘No loyalty in him.’
‘And yet loyal to the idea of loyalty.’
‘He is conflicted.’
‘Who does he long for?’
‘What does he want?’
‘If he doesn't choose a side soon, it will be chosen for him.’
Kail struggled against the paralysis gripping him. Loveless? No loyalty? He wanted to defend himself, to argue against such arbitrary summations of his character, but all he could do was listen.
‘His heart would side with the girl.’
‘His head will see reason.’
‘It always does.’
‘But his own brand of reason.’
‘Convenience.’
‘Cynicism.’
‘Isolation.’
‘Out of the emptiness such things come, and to emptiness they inevitably return.’
The faces slumped towards him as though melting from a heat he couldn't feel. Their mouths gaped; their ears ran like thick mud. The stench grew stronger and stronger until Kail couldn't breathe.
‘He has learned some lessons.’
‘He is proud—perhaps too proud.’
‘As are we, with good reason.’
‘The road he follows is long.’
‘He walks with his companions but his feet do not touch the ground.’
‘He has a long way yet to go.’
‘The price is not his to pay.’
‘We are decided,.’
The world returned, first with a shock of cold where Tatenen's hand still pressed against his forehead, then with a rush of fresh air. He took in details: Sal and Highson were staring anxiously at him; Pukje watched with a guarded expression from the sidelines; Tatenen's green eyes still threatened to drown out the wonder of the mountainous backdrop; and the Old Ones had returned to their former frozen state. Tatenen's hand fell away.
Kail stepped back, understanding why Sal had seemed so shaken by the experience. He felt drained, rattled, and simultaneously nervous, as though something had reached into his mind and stirred up all the things he preferred to keep buried in its depths.
A lonely man.
Loveless.
No loyalty in him.
Tatenen turned to Highson. ‘And finally you, sire of the wild one.’
Highson squared his solid shoulders and came forward.
Sal watched helplessly as his father submitted to Tatenen's frigid touch. The memory of his own experience was still piercingly vivid: the eight decaying faces; the slithering, insinuating whispers; the complete inability to move or respond to anything the Old Ones said.
Such anger.
Such impatience.
Who does he long for?
He doesn't know himself as well as he thinks he does.
And ultimately the strange and definitely threatening feeling of having passed under the gaze of something large and unknowable, something against which he must have seemed less than an insect.
He hugged himself, feeling the cold right down into his bones. The sun was fading to red in the west, casting a bloody veil across the mountains. Soon it would be night and they would have to think about taking shelter. A nagging sickness roiled in his guts—either the lingering aftereffects of their flight, or a new symptom of their increased altitude—and he dreaded travelling anywhere. Yet the thought of staying any longer than they had to on this fractured, unnatural fragment of an ancient world made him uneasier still.
Highson blinked and stepped free of Tatenen's touch after barely a dozen breaths. His own encounter with the Old Ones had seemed to drag forever.
‘It's done,’ said Tatenen. He gripped his staff with white-knuckled hands, as though worried about how the three of them would react. ‘You have been tested by the Eight and found worthy.’
‘Did you get what you wanted?’ asked Pukje, surprising Sal by running around him and leaping onto his back. The strange creature, lighter than a cat and smelling faintly of mildew, crawled up onto his shoulders, where he crouched and peered over into Sal's right eye.
‘Uh…’ Sal didn't know what to say or do in response to the strange assault. ‘I couldn't really ask any questions.’ Highson and Kail shook their heads in agreement. ‘But they did tell me to believe you, I think.’
The imp-dragon speaks truly, they had whispered at the conclusion of their examination of him, but he hears not.
There is only one path.
Pukje's face broke into a wide smile that was no less ugly for being at such close quarters. ‘Excellent. We can get moving, then.’
‘I want to try calling Marmion first,’ said Kail.
‘You can do that from the air,’ said Pukje.
‘What's the big hurry?’ asked Sal as the imp dropped from his shoulders and ran behind him.
‘Time is passing. Events don't stand still at your convenience. Keep looking forward, now. I'll be ready in a moment.’
‘What about the price?’ asked Highson, a worried look on his face. ‘They told me that I'd be the one to pay.’
‘If they said so, it is already so,’ Tatenen stated.
‘I've already paid?’ A deep frown creased Sal's father's features. ‘How?’
‘You might not notice, at first.’ The tall man bowed his head. ‘Accept this offering, lords of
the ancient world. Take what is yours in accordance with the rights once bestowed upon you by all of creation, and allow these humble travellers to do your bidding.’
With those words, the eight hideous faces faded away like mist under bright sunlight. Sal hadn't realised how silent the day had become until the whistling of the wind returned, and he shivered, feeling suddenly exposed.
Highson crossed to where their packs lay in a bundle. A frown settled on his face as he hastily rummaged through his belongings, seeking the thing that the Eight had taken. Sal knew everything in his father's pack, since there had been little privacy during the long climb and each had helped the others pack and unpack many times. It contained nothing of any great value, he assumed, to creatures that had once been gods.
‘I have one last question for you,’ asked Kail of Tatenen. ‘You say you tamed the Old Ones, that you bind them here.’ The tall man's crown caught the weak sunlight as he nodded. ‘If you're their jailer, why are you so keen to set them free?’
‘Because while they are chained, I am chained. My existence is tied to theirs. I could be free too, one day.’
Kail nodded his understanding.
The sound of Pukje's transformation came from behind them, followed by a single sweep of massive wings.
‘Ready when you are,’ said the strange creature.
Sal went to Highson who had finished going through his belongings and now sat staring at his pack with a confused expression.
‘There's nothing missing,’ he said. ‘What could they have taken?’
‘I don't know,’ Sal said, more bluntly than he intended. ‘But we have to get moving. I want to get out of here before they change their minds.’
Highson nodded and stood, slipping his pack over his shoulders and tightening the straps. ‘Yes, you're right. Maybe they're just playing with us. Maybe they didn't take anything at all.’
Sal didn't believe that for a second, but he kept his opinion to himself.
When they went to mount Pukje's wrinkled, muscular back, Sal noted that Tatenen had disappeared; no point in sticking around, he thought, once the job was done. Still, Sal felt vaguely offended that Tatenen, who wanted him to do so much in the name of those he represented, couldn't be bothered to at least wish Sal good luck. He figured he would need it.
Once they were all aboard, Pukje ran to the edge of the ancient plateau and leapt off into space. As his mighty wings caught the wind and swept them out across the icy peaks, Sal looked behind him and realised for the first time that the plateau wasn't part of the mountains at all. It hung unsupported in the air above a steep valley, a single chunk of jagged rock literally ripped out of its own time. The underside of the strange island tapered to a ragged point, like a giant top. Sal imagined it wobbling and tipping as the energy sustaining it began to run out.
Then Pukje was rising, gaining altitude slowly but inexorably with each flap. Their flight wasn't as vigorous and bone-jarring as the first had been, but Sal still found it hard to concentrate on anything more than making sure he didn't fall off, clinging desperately despite his rapidly cramping fingers.
A ripple through the Change told him that Kail was trying to contact Marmion. It came several times, striving to get the attention of someone far away and possibly hidden through many hundreds of metres of mountain.
‘I can't reach him,’ the tracker eventually admitted to Sal, speaking through the same medium he was using to reach out for his superior. ‘Do you want to have a go, Sal?’
‘Okay.’ Sal agreed readily enough, even though he wasn't certain he could maintain the focus required. Neither did he have any intention of doing exactly as Kail had done. Marmion could be incapacitated or worse. That would explain his silence as readily as the stone separating them.
‘Skender?’ he called instead, focussing on the mnemonics with all the will he could spare. “Skender, if you can hear me, just say so.’
From immeasurably far away came a faint affirmative.
‘We're on our way to you. Me, and Kail and Highson. We might have found a way to deal with Yod. Expect us in, um, hang on…’ He broke off his mental communication to shout a question at Pukje. ‘How long?’ The wind snatched at his words but he hoped the strange creature could hear them. ‘How long until we get there?’
The steady flapping rhythm paused and the broad head twisted back at him. ‘An hour,’ Pukje bellowed.
‘Expect us in an hour,’ he relayed to Skender. ‘Is everything okay there?’
For a moment nothing came. Then a confused signal that might have been an attempt at words rose up out of the background potential.
‘I can't quite make you out,’ Sal told him, straining as best he could to hear more clearly.
‘…attack…man'kin…towers…’
‘The man'kin are attacking towers?’
‘…balloon…’ With one last garbled squawk, Skender reached the limit of his strength.
‘Don't worry,’ Sal sent, trying his best to sound reassuring. ‘We'll be there soon and can help you out then, if you need it.’
A faint echo of farewell came out of the ether, then there was nothing but silence.
Sal relayed the fragmentary information to Kail and Highson, who responded with worries that echoed his own. The suggestion that man'kin were connected to whatever was going on at the top of the mountain only made Sal more worried, not less. Shilly might be with them, voluntarily or against her will. Sal didn't want her caught up in any action that he might be forced to take.
He tried to keep his worries contained as Pukje flew on. There was no point in talking to the others, even though he would have loved to compare their experiences of the Ogdoad with his own. He simply wasn't able to maintain his attention. Instead he watched the landscape change the higher they flew. Dusk turned to dark in eerie slow motion around him. Crystalline stars came out in sprays across half the sky, untainted by the moon, and with almost imperceptible slowness the vast bulk of the mountains to the east began to fall away, so the stellar vistas could be viewed in that direction too. Sal hadn't realised just how used he had become to being able to see only half the sky. The immensity of the heavenly dome made him dizzy.
He thought of Vehofnehu, the Panic empyricist who had disappeared with the glast-infected Kemp shortly before the Swarm's attack on Milang. What would he have made of the view above him? Would he have seen the events unfolding on top of the mountains? Would he have seen Pukje and the Old Ones intercepting Shilly's would-be rescuers as they lagged behind the man'kin? And what would he have seen coming next, in the whorls and curlicues that defied Sal's vaguest interpretation?
The east gained a horizon—an impossibly jagged, perfectly black line that looked like nothing earthly or natural to Sal's eyes. Pukje spiralled in a broad, rising arc, following invisible updraughts or using sheer strength to gain altitude until they were roughly level with that line. Then he changed pace and began to fly horizontally. Sal could feel Pukje's massive lungs labouring to suck in enough of the cold, thin air. Even Sal was gasping at such an extreme altitude. The stars felt so close that he imagined Pukje could rise just a little higher and they would fly amongst them. Part of him wished they could, rather than face the uncertainty ahead.
Pukje said something he didn't quite catch, beyond the words ‘prove’, ‘betray you’ and ‘easier way’.
‘What?’ Sal shouted, feeling a renewal of his earlier fear that Pukje's motives were far from pure.
‘I said, this should prove something to you. If I was going to betray you, there must have been an easier way.’
Sal managed a laugh. Weak starlight and growing proximity turned the jagged line into a wall of fearsome mountaintops marching across their path. Pukje would just miss them, judging by their current trajectory, although it was hard to measure distances at that hour and in such unfamiliar surroundings.
At times it seemed as though Sal could reach out and touch the approaching wall, while at other times it seemed to be at the very e
dge of the universe.
Then, suddenly, Pukje was flapping amongst the peaks themselves, following angular valleys across the top of the wall that lay in their path. Sal couldn't guess what lay on its far side and tried to prepare himself for anything. He didn't know if the balloon had come this way or followed a different route entirely.
And he couldn't assume their ride would be a safe one, not after Skender's mysterious message.
Pukje surmounted a ridge of ice and snow that looked big enough to bury Milang. The mountains became higher behind than those ahead. Only slightly at first, but the transformation was fundamental; they had made it. They were on the far side.
Pukje's flight began to angle downwards. He flapped less often and began to breathe more easily.
‘Where are Shilly and the others?’ Sal asked, taking advantage of the opportunity to talk.
‘Not far from here,’ Pukje replied. ‘I'll take you over the area, and then—’
A blast of bright orange light cut him off. The flash of light was so bright that Sal could see everything at the summit of the mountains as though lit by full daylight. Only the colour was wrong, casting the sides of the massive crater he saw in colours of fire and molten metal, while the lake at the centre shone a burnished bronze. Just for an instant, everything was gold and red, even Pukje's moss-green hide.
Then the orange light went out, and Sal was effectively blind: the after-image was much brighter than the starlight. All he could see were the imprinted images of the crater and its contents. He could clearly see in the oval of the crater the bright speck that had been the source of the light. It seemed to be hanging directly over the lake's centre.
Pukje twisted in midair and began to flap vigorously in the opposite direction. Sal clung tight in alarm, wondering what the sudden urgency was. Then a wall of air hit them, rushing outwards from the centre of the lake and striking Pukje from behind with all the force of an avalanche. They tumbled as helplessly as a hawk in a hurricane. A roaring sound filled the night. Sal could barely hear himself shouting to Highson and Kail—and himself—to hang on.
The shockwave passed them by and they fell into its turbulent wake. Pukje regained control and pulled out of a dive that moments later would have seen them smack headfirst into the crater wall. A hand gripped Sal's leg with powerful force, and when he reached down to see who it belonged to he found Highson, his father, clinging on with eyes tightly shut.
The Devoured Earth Page 11