The Devoured Earth

by Sean Williams

  Should we stop it? asked Hadrian.

  Why?

  I don't know. It must know something about what's going on.

  But how will we talk to it? You heard that sound it made. It used to be part-watersnake. Maybe it still is. I think we should let it leave and worry about it later.

  Hadrian agreed with only mild reservations. Both of them were relieved not to have to confront that strange creature. And there were, arguably, more important mysteries to solve.

  The Angel began to move, accelerating with a disjointed but rapid gait on its three legs towards the opposite end of the ravine. Seth relaxed slightly when it disappeared from sight, and the Homunculus began descending again once the sound of heavy footfalls had faded. Within minutes, they had reached the bottom of the ravine and were able to inspect the wreckage more closely.

  The first thing they did was call an all-clear up to Highson. There was no blood on the frozen ground and no obvious bodies. The wreckage had been thoroughly combed over by someone, possibly the same someones who had left so many footprints around the site. It seemed obvious that the crew and passengers of the balloon—alive or dead—had been taken elsewhere. Tracks led in two directions from the site. Even though they weren't accomplished trackers, as Kail had been, the twins were confident of being able to follow them.

  The second thing they did was inspect the patch of wreckage that the Angel had led the glast to. There they made a strange discovery: a block of solid granite resembling a human torso with no arms or head or body below the waist. Its top was chipped and scarred by repeated blows.

  It's Mawson, said Hadrian with a disgusted tang to his internal voice.

  What?

  The glast killed Mawson. That's what it was doing here. It killed Mawson then stole his head!

  Why on Earth—? An even more bizarre possibility occurred to Seth then. Wait. Maybe it wasn't Mawson's head it wanted, but Mawson's mouth. The Angel doesn't have one either, remember. It talks through other man'kin.

  Jesus. So Mawson isn't dead?

  Well, he's not human. He might easily survive a beheading.

  Hadrian shuddered, and Seth echoed the sentiment. Not quite as bad, but still galling, was the thought that they had missed their chance to talk to the glast, if it had stolen Mawson's head to try and communicate through him. And now it was long gone, off on some other mysterious mission.

  Damn it. Seth kicked at a piece of wreckage. We're doing just brilliantly, aren't we? Shilly's gone. The glast is gone. The Angel is gone. What else could go wrong?

  As though the universe was punishing him for asking, a cry came at that moment from above.

  ‘Seth, Hadrian—quickly!’

  The twins looked up through the darkness to the top of the ravine. They could see nothing, but the alarm in Highson's voice was naked. They hurried from the wreckage and climbed as quickly as they could. Voices became audible the closer to the top they came, threatening and angry. The words were difficult to make out with so many people talking at once. Highson appeared to be arguing with someone—but whom?

  They were within arm's reach of the top when the confrontation reached a climax. Men grunted. Someone screamed. A series of bright, staccato flashes lit up the night. By the time the twins arrived, it was all over.

  Highson was sitting up in the snow, rubbing his ribs and looking pained as a flurry of footsteps receded into the night. Pukje loomed out of the darkness in the same direction, a sinuous, curved shape dragging something in his clawed right foot that left a dark trail in the snow behind it. Two knives stuck out of his muscular flank, but they didn't seem to bother him in the slightest. His expression was fierce.

  The twins scanned the area around them. Puddles of water pooled in the ice, as though a powerful blast of heat had recently swept across the ground. Seeing nothing else out of the ordinary, they helped Highson to his feet. The warden held up a glowing mirror and cast its silver light across the disturbed ground.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Seth.

  The light came up to shine in their eyes. Highson was staring at the twins with an odd expression on his face. ‘I think we took them by surprise. They were coming to wait for a rescue party and didn't expect to see anyone here so soon. They weren't interested in talking. That much was obvious. They tried to take me prisoner and kill Pukje, and I'm sure they would've tried to kill you when you came back. Obviously, we weren't going to let that happen.’

  Seth could figure out the rest. Highson was no slouch when it came to the Change. And Pukje…

  A second glance at the object in Pukje's claw revealed it to be a human body. With swift, savage bites, Pukje began to eat it.

  ‘Was that really necessary?’ asked Highson, looking disgusted at the crunching of bones and tearing of flesh. ‘They were scared of you already.’

  Pukje gulped and looked up. His mouth was heavily bloodstained. ‘I told you I was hungry. Be glad it wasn't one of you two.’

  Highson stiffened. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘When it comes to dying of starvation, always.’

  The twins took Highson by the shoulder and led him away from the grisly spectacle. ‘An Ice Eater, by the look of his leathers,’ they told the warden.

  ‘I thought you said they were friendly.’

  ‘Well, they were. Maybe things have changed.’ Again came the odd expression, as though Highson had never seen the Homunculus before. ‘Are you sure you're all right?’ they asked him. ‘Perhaps you should sit down. You might be concussed.’

  ‘It's you I'm more worried about.’ Sal's father stepped closer and reached out to touch the Homunculus's face. Seth went to pull away, but Highson grabbed one of the Homunculus's many arms and held it tight. The mirrorlight shone brightly into their eyes. ‘I can see your face! Your faces.’

  Seth felt an unaccountable fear at the revelation of their secret. In Highson's pupils he saw the dark shape of the Homunculus reflected—and two pale specks, pressed together at the heart of that black shadow.

  Hadrian felt his brother try to pull away, but he resisted. This was important. Running away from the truth wasn't going to solve anything.

  ‘We've seen them too,’ he told Highson, not hiding the worry in his voice. ‘What does it mean? Is the Homunculus breaking down?’

  ‘Maybe.’ The warden leaned closer. All thoughts of their attackers were temporarily forgotten. ‘But it shouldn't be so soon. I made this body to last a lifetime, and it should endure much longer. I may not remember why I made it, but I do remember that.’

  Hadrian felt a tingle of the Change run through the Homunculus under Highson's probing touch. It felt faintly like intestines working, but in places where no human intestines had ever existed. He had little memory of how he and his brother had come to occupy the artificial body. One minute they had been in Bardo, the next they were staggering to their ill-coordinated feet and trying to make sense of a world with which they were only loosely connected. Half-insane with sensory deprivation, they had felt only one thing with any certainty: that their destination lay to the north-east, where the shadow of Yod was growing. An uncomfortable thought occurred to Hadrian now: perhaps it wasn't Yod's shadow that had called them, but the Tomb of the Goddess, the ghost of Ellis Quick.

  He didn't say anything, however, not even to his brother. It didn't make much difference who called them, as long as they had arrived. Of greater importance was what to do next.

  Highson stepped back, looking puzzled. ‘The Homunculus seems to be functioning perfectly well. I can't explain what this change means.’

  ‘You built it for Seirian to inhabit,’ said Seth, ‘when you pulled her from the Void. Could it just be that it's not able to hold two minds at once for long?’

  A flicker of confusion crossed Highson's features at the mention of his dead wife. ‘That shouldn't make a difference,’ he said, concentrating on the problem at hand. ‘The Homunculus adopts the shape of the mind contained within it, whatever it is—whether that's a single hu
man, or a crabbler group-mind. Had I succeeded in bringing Sal's mother out of the Void, she would have looked exactly like her old self—as she remembered herself, anyway, for that's what matters to a mind, not the actual physical shape.’

  Hadrian held out one of his midnight-black hands, and turned it palm up. ‘So why do we look like this, then? Why don't we look like our old selves?’

  Highson sighed. ‘Because, I guess, this is the way you see yourself now. Not separate, not individuals, but joined—and black to reflect the Void Beneath, which was your home for so long.’

  The revelation exploded in Hadrian like a depth charge.

  It got into us, Seth said, sounding as stunned as he felt. It stained us.

  We stained each other. Hadrian remembered the moment in which he had arrived in Sheol after killing Lascowicz: he had landed inside Seth's Second Realm body, so that they shared the one body, but their faces had been looking in opposite directions like the Roman god Janus. The horror he had felt then was very different to what he felt now. This wasn't horrific because he was stuck in a body with his brother. This was horrific because until that moment he had thought it perfectly normal.

  The one thing they had never argued about since returning to the world was their close proximity to each other. After a thousand years in the Void, what had once been anathema had come to feel normal.

  What happened to us? Hadrian asked.

  I don't know, little brother. We got old without realising. Does it really matter?

  Maybe it does. Maybe it makes all the difference in the world.

  Why?

  The world is the way it is because of us. You're the Second Realm and I'm the First. We're joined, but not fused. What if we're changing? Could everything fall apart if we change too much?

  I think you're getting a little ahead of yourself, Hadrian. We can't be that important any more.

  How can you even think that? If we're not important, why did Marmion come hunting halfway across his world to find us? Why did all the seers keep pointing at us? Hadrian felt the weight of a world's expectations even more heavily than he normally did. Why are we here at all?

  Highson was nodding as though following their internal exchange. ‘Perhaps this explains why your faces are beginning to appear now. Your sense of self—of your individual selves—is reasserting itself, which raises a very interesting possibility. Back in Milang there was some discussion about how to separate you two, should you want to be separated. I couldn't think of a way then, since that would require building another Homunculus and moving one of you across into it, and the ingredients don't exist for another such body. But it turns out we might not need one. The Homunculus could simply split in two, allowing you to go your separate ways. I wouldn't need to do anything at all.’

  Highson looked pleased with this discovery—more pleased than he had by anything since the twins had met him. Hadrian didn't have the heart to tell him that separation might not be such a good thing for the world, whether they wanted it or not.

  The ground shook underfoot. Pebbles of ice rattled around them. The twins tensed, knowing that in a world without tectonic movement there would be no natural earthquakes or volcanoes. When the earth moved, it was for a reason.

  ‘Trouble's a-brewing,’ said Pukje through a gory mouthful.

  Hadrian looked out over the lake. He could see the vast column of steam they had noted on their previous short hop around the lake shore. It was faintly lit from within by orange and green flashes, like sheet lightning. The stars were now completely obscured.

  Hadrian tensed, ready for an avalanche. The shaking continued for a full minute before trailing off. The rattling of debris continued.

  Highson looked uphill. The landmark they had followed loomed ominously over them, now, at close quarters, less resembling an old man than it had at a distance. The nose was a tilted slab of solid stone that had dropped from the top of the crater wall and become wedged halfway down. ‘I don't think we should stay here much longer,’ he said.

  The twins agreed. ‘How are you feeling now, Pukje?’ Hadrian asked the bloody-jowled beast. ‘Up to flying again?’

  ‘If I have to.’ Pukje tossed his head. ‘Where to?’

  ‘I've been thinking about that,’ said Sal's father. ‘There's not much else we can do here if Shilly's been taken. We might be of better use on another front.’

  His gaze tracked out across the lake, and Hadrian's reluctantly followed. ‘You want to check out the towers?’

  ‘I think we need to. The only people who've been out there were in the balloon when it crashed, and Tatenen said that the Tomb was in the lake somewhere. There might be a connection.’

  ‘That's the second time someone's mentioned Tatenen,’ said Seth. ‘How does he fit into this?’

  ‘And whose tomb, exactly, are you talking about?’ added Hadrian, not afraid to ask the question his brother was willing to avoid.

  Highson watched them with his head cocked on one side. Hadrian wondered if their faces were showing again.

  ‘Pukje brought us here via Tatenen and the Old Ones,’ Highson said. ‘They told us that we have to find the Goddess's Tomb in order to save the world.’

  ‘How will that make a difference?’

  ‘One thing at a time,’ said the imp-dragon, letting out a blood-drenched bellow of air. ‘If we're going to go anywhere, it should be soon.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Highson. ‘We should definitely get airborne while I can still feel my hands.’

  ‘Will you tell Sal we're giving up on Shilly?’ asked Seth.

  ‘Yes. He'll understand.’

  ‘Don't forget the Angel and the glast,’ Seth said. ‘It's hard to tell from the footprints, but I think they went in the same direction as the others.’

  ‘I will.’

  The twins helped Highson aboard Pukje's wrinkled back then secured themselves behind him. The imp-dragon took one last mouthful of cooling flesh, then strutted like a strange-looking bird to the edge of the snow shelf.

  ‘Do you think going to the towers is safe?’ Hadrian asked him, remembering Kail, whose death he had yet to fully absorb.

  ‘Oh, I doubt that very much.’ With one powerful thrust, Pukje launched himself into the frigid air.

  Sal had barely finished bringing Marmion up to date when a subtle sense tingled, warning that someone was trying to contact him. At first he thought it might be Highson, but the flavour of this communication was different.

  ‘Sal, are you there? Drop whatever you're doing and listen to me.’

  Sal held up his hand to call for silence. A discussion stopped in mid-sentence between Lidia Delfine, Heuve and Chu on who would take the first shift if they decided to spend the night in the abandoned Ice Eaters’ headquarters. ‘Is that you, Mage Kelloman?’

  ‘It is, and I don't have time for pleasantries. Skender and I are in rather a serious predicament and we need your help.’

  ‘You sound like you're calling from a long way away. How did that happen?’

  ‘Don't be obtuse, boy. I'm calling from my real body, of course, and you're the only one who could pick me up. Those confounded Ice Eaters have Change-workers. They might detect me if I try calling from my host body's location.’

  The mage's manner rankled as it always did, but Sal forced himself not to react. ‘Where are you and Skender?’

  ‘We've been kidnapped by Treya. The Ice Eaters have taken us to an underground chamber some distance from you. Skender thinks they're using machines to pump something, but I'm not certain of that. It's hard to see from where I'm lying and the sound is difficult to make out. I think there's a charm at work.’

  ‘Can you tell us how to find you?’

  ‘I can't give you directions, but Skender probably could.’

  ‘Why can't we talk to him?’

  ‘Because they've put a Change-sink collar on him, that's why. Now don't distract me, boy. This is the important thing. The Ice Eaters are dedicated to protecting the Tomb. Whoever was
in the balloon broke the local laws, and they're going to pay for it. You'll need to warn them.’

  ‘It may be a little late for that.’ Sal outlined everything he knew: that the balloon had crashed after visiting the towers in the lake. ‘But I guess that means the Tomb is under the biggest tower.’

  ‘Worry about that later,’ said the mage. ‘Concentrate on getting us out of here. Treya is too busy to think about us right now, but that won't last forever. All she has to do is raise a hand and that could be it.’

  ‘She'd kill you?’

  ‘She might very well do just that. Who can say what such ignorant savages are capable of?’

  Sal let that coarseness slide. He did note, though, that Kelloman—who was under no real threat of losing his life thanks to his ability to retreat to the Interior at any moment—was including Skender in his concerns.

  Sal took a moment to outline their own situation, then asked, ‘What do you suggest we do if we don't know where you are?’

  ‘Find some more Ice Eaters. They're not all behind Treya in this. They're divided. See if you can use one faction against the other in order to find out where we might be. Remember, we can hear machinery. It's not the sort of thing that would be lying around anywhere. This is a special place and it would require maintenance.’

  That made sense. ‘Is there anything else we should know?’

  ‘The Ice Eaters believe that they have a connection to the Goddess. If we can get out of our current predicament, you might want to think about how to turn this to our advantage. The twins knew her too, apparently, in their previous life. I wouldn't take such a claim at first glance, but it may be worth exploring. With such a being on our side, we would be formidable.’

  Sal thought of Tatenen and all his talk of binding the realms together. They needed the Goddess to do that. If she truly was still alive and could be summoned, then that potentially made things much easier. Once they had a plan, everything else was just logistics.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Thank you. We'll do what we can.’