The Devoured Earth

by Sean Williams

  He pushed, but the mind on the other side was cleverer than him. With a ground-shaking roar, the door burst open, sending giant slabs of stone tumbling like dice. One rolled over an Ice Eater, leaving nothing but a bloody mess behind. The air filled with dust.

  Sal's head rang like a bell. He stood upright and squared his shoulders, ready to face whatever might come through the hole in the wall, be it a writhing mass of deadly black tentacles, a surge of water with all the weight of a lake behind it, or something he couldn't begin to imagine.

  What he wasn't ready for was the slight figure that stepped over the rubble and out of the settling dust to stand in the centre of the cavern, looking balefully at the scattered Ice Eaters and the one wild talent among them.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Chu to him. ‘I thought I recognised your hand in that futile little scuffle. I can't imagine what you think you're doing here. Haven't you caused enough trouble already?’

  Sal swallowed. Chu was looking at Sal when she spoke, but it wasn't Chu behind her eyes.

  ‘Upuaut.’ He kept his attention as much on the golem as the Ice Eaters collecting themselves around him—and the flickering glow coming from the far side of the door. The crazy mix of green, orange and white was already beginning to hurt his eyes.

  ‘Oh, yes. Do you like my new home?’

  Sal tried hard not to think of her as Chu, not while the golem was in charge. ‘Let her go.’

  ‘Why? She's quite a catch. It was very convenient of her to drop in when she did. I don't know what she was thinking. One little girl against the whole might of Yod? Insane.’

  Sal desperately wanted to ask about Skender, but didn't want to alert the golem to the presence of another potential victim—especially if Skender was lurking nearby, waiting his chance. Best to keep the thing talking.

  ‘I thought you weren't on Yod's side.’

  ‘I'm not on anyone's side. I'm on my side.’ Chu's thumb jerked at her chest, drawing attention to blood dripping down her right side. ‘Yod's going to win this battle, so I know where my allegiance lies. And it knows what it wants. It wants the wretched Tomb open. I'm here to make sure it gets that much.’

  ‘No one touches the Tomb,’ said Treya, rising from the rubble like a ghost, painted grey with rock dust and mud. ‘I will not allow it.’

  Upuaut turned to face her with a sneer twisting Chu's fine features. ‘You will not allow it, eh? You'll do as you're told, mortal, or you'll pay the price.’

  ‘You can't kill her,’ said Sal, ‘or the Tomb will never open.’

  ‘No, but I can kill everyone around her, one by one, until she changes her mind.’

  ‘How, exactly, are you going to do that?’ Sal walked closer to the golem-infested girl, hating the way the thing robbed her of the vitality she had always possessed. He could tell that the fit wasn't perfect. She wasn't a Change-worker. He sensed a struggle going on behind the twisted features, but it would take more than wishing to free her. ‘You're just one against all of us.’

  ‘Actually, I'm two, and the one behind me eclipses all of you combined.’

  The flickering light dimmed as tentacles of oily blackness crept through the doorway. They coiled sinuously around the room, passing between people like smoke but never touching. Sal froze as one came within an arm's length of him. He could faintly see Treya through it, her fearful expression distorted as though by curved glass.

  ‘Don't move!’ she ordered her followers. ‘It can't make us do anything we don't want to!’

  One of the Ice Eaters, a terrified man with long white hair, bolted for the tunnel. A single black limb unfurled and swept the life out of him in a heartbeat. His body dropped like a sack of wheat to the slimy ground.

  ‘Who next?’ asked Upuaut. ‘Whose life will you allow it to take?’

  ‘It can take all of them,’ Treya said. ‘I will not open the Tomb for you.’

  ‘That's right. Don't,’ said Sal. ‘Yod can't be allowed inside, whatever happens. If it does, it'll infect every possible world and kill everyone everywhere. There'll be no hope at all.’

  Treya seemed startled that he agreed with her. Her face was pale as she stood up to Upuaut. ‘The Goddess charged us to protect her Tomb,’ she repeated like a mantra. ‘We will fulfil that duty to our deaths.’

  ‘Then die,’ Upuaut growled. ‘Die with your stupid Goddess, wherever she is. Yod will devour this world all the same. Only we who serve will remain—and I will dance on your bones for an eternity.’

  The golem took Chu's body and retreated through the door. Sal took a step forward, but was pressed back by constricting coils of blackness. The space around him was rapidly narrowing. A dozen Ice Eaters dropped singly and in pairs as Yod took them, not caring which life went first. A roaring filled Sal's ears at the imminence of his own death. There was nothing he could do to avoid this fate. The Change had no effect at all on the encroaching blackness.

  Then the true source of the roaring galloped out of the tunnel mouth, sending Mannah flying with a cry. The sound of the Angel's pounding feet filled the cavern, and Yod's black tentacles recoiled from it like water breaking on a headland. Astride the giant man'kin rode the glast, its transformation complete. The black glassiness of its skin was a perfect match for Yod's dire limbs. In one hand it held a familiar stone head up like a prize.

  The bizarre trio almost rode straight over Sal. He threw himself between two retreating tentacles barely in time and found himself on the ground near one of the Ice Eaters, who was staring at the new arrival with an expression of utter shock on her face.

  The Angel galloped without pause from one side of the cavern to the other, driving Yod before it, out of the chamber.

  ‘Sal!’ Mannah's voice broke the taut silence left in the Angel's wake.

  Sal forced himself to move. He looked up and saw Treya clambering over the rubble and disappearing into the open doorway, followed by the surviving Ice Eaters. He cursed. With Mannah close behind, he pursued them through the door.

  ‘Why didn't you tell me about the Angel?’ he asked Marmion as he went.

  ‘I tried, but you didn't respond,’ came the faint reply.

  ‘Things are a little hairy down here. The door is open. Upuaut is loose. You might want to think about turning back.’

  ‘Never. We'll be there as soon as we can.’

  Sal didn't argue with him. He himself was hurrying into the maw of the monster rather than sensibly heading for safety. If a chance existed to make a difference, he would try it.

  The doorway led to the base of a giant vertical cylinder that Sal guessed was the interior of one of the three towers. Steam boiled from its walls and swept upwards in a thickening stream, hiding any possible view of the sky above. Black tentacles writhed in agitation among the clouds, occasionally licking out to menace the Ice Eaters below. The black-robed figures crossed a rubble-strewn floor to a fiercely glowing, flower-like structure that could only be the Tomb. Sal was taken aback by its size and its strange, angular beauty, and the contrast it made to the ugly dais on which it sat.

  Standing before it on three stone legs, beautiful in its own weird way, was the Angel. Sal recognised fragments of limbs in the rubble at its feet: the remains of man'kin destroyed in the seers’ attempt to open the Tomb. The glast hopped down from its back and paced around the Tomb, emitting a nerve-tingling hiss every time a tentacle came too close.

  Sal caught up with Treya just as she reached the stone dais. She seemed oblivious to everything around her—everything except the Tomb itself. It captivated her. Its flickering multicoloured glow painted her face with expressions that were impossible to read.

  ‘It's beautiful,’ she breathed, reaching up to touch one of the Tomb's curved, glassy planes. ‘I never thought it would be so beautiful.’

  ‘We should head back,’ Sal told her. ‘I don't know how the glast is holding Yod back, but I bet it won't last forever.’

  Treya nodded but didn't move. ‘Eternal life. That's what she promised my a
ncestors, a thousand years ago.’

  ‘The Goddess?’

  She nodded again. ‘None of them saw the day when the Tomb was opened. Why should I be different?’

  Then she froze. Where her hand touched the Tomb, a face had appeared through the translucent shell. Even through the flickering of the Tomb, Sal recognised the gentle green glow of one of the Holy Immortals. The figure leaned closer, as though trying to see out.

  Treya's mouth opened in shock.

  The figure looking back at her, glowing green and trapped on the inside of the Tomb, was none other than Treya herself.

  Sal stepped back, stunned by the growing realisation. ‘No,’ he said to her as she opened her arms and gathered the Ice Eaters to her. They shoved Sal aside, responding to her natural authority. ‘No,’ he repeated. ‘You can't do this.’

  ‘She can,’ said Mannah. ‘And I think she will.’

  Mannah indicated the glowing walls of the Tomb. More green figures had appeared, including one who looked just like him. They spread out around the base of the Tomb, facing the Ice Eaters, one by one. Each confronted a reflection of themselves, even Mannah, drawn closer by his own visage coalescing out of the glowing blue crystal. Treya took the hands of those on either side of her, and the circle spread to surround the Tomb.

  Sal retreated, wanting to intervene but not knowing how to—or if it was even possible. The chain of logic which led him to full understanding had a terrible momentum—beginning with recognising Mannah on first meeting him, but not knowing where from, and ending with the realisation that he had been in the Panic city all along. Mannah was a member of the Quorum that had served the Panic as seers. The Ice Eaters and the band of Holy Immortals, whose lives stretched backwards in time, were one and the same.

  The mirror that is not a mirror.

  Whatever trick the Goddess had taught Treya and her predecessors to open the Tomb, it required no fanfare, no chants or drawing of signs. With a powerful crack and flash of lightning, the Tomb simply opened, releasing the Holy Immortals from within. The two groups stepped towards each other in perfect synchrony. Time and space flexed. The world lurched as, soundlessly but jarringly, both groups met—and vanished.

  Sal staggered backwards and tripped over Chu's wing. It cracked as he fell onto it, but it had obviously been severely damaged already. There was no sign of Chu and the golem anywhere. Next to the wing lay the backpack that she had been wearing when the golem had taken her over. He opened the flap and found it full of spiky green crystals that throbbed with potential.

  Orange light played across the inside of the tower as a giant armoured figure stepped out of the ruins of the Tomb.

  ‘Angel says run.’ The voice came from near Sal's shoulder. Sal turned to see Mawson's head at eye level, held by the glast mounted again on the three-legged man'kin.

  ‘That sounds like an excellent idea.’ Scooping up the backpack, he hurried after the strange trio for the door.

  ‘Stop.’ The voice of the armoured giant boomed loudly over the hissing of steam. ‘Stop—your master commands!’

  Sal put on a burst of speed as the giant's heavy footsteps followed him across the stone floor. At the same time, he reached into the backpack and pulled out the crystals he had found—the distraction Marmion had planned for Chu and Skender to deliver. That the distraction had never arrived might be the saving of him now.

  He lobbed one of the crystals over his shoulder. It exploded with a loud concussion at the giant's feet. It roared and kept coming, so Sal threw another. That left two in the pack.

  The Angel had reached the door. Through it, Sal could see Marmion and others coming out of the tunnel. Kelloman was among them.

  ‘Close the door!’ Sal yelled at them. ‘Close it fast!’

  A massive orange hand snatched at the air over his head. He ducked, realising only belatedly that the giant wasn't reaching for him but for the glast.

  The Angel bounded through the door with one leap. Sal scrambled after it, swinging the pack over his head and letting go as the stones began shifting beneath his feet. The pack hit the giant figure squarely in the chest.

  The explosion threw Sal backwards through the door. With a grinding slam, it shut behind him.

  ‘Bring the roof down!’ Sal said over ringing ears. Odd-shaped Panic hands pulled at him, forced him to his feet. ‘The door won't hold that thing long, whatever it was.’

  Kelloman stood at the entrance to the chamber with his hands spread palm-up at the ceiling. One by one, the wardens and the Panic and the three surviving Ice Eaters hurried past him. When they were safe, Kelloman flexed his will and the cavern disappeared with a roar under shattered rock and dust.

  Sal coughed and spluttered with the rest of them as, unsure whether to count the episode as a victory or a defeat, they turned back the way they had come and began the long retreat to daylight.

  The balance between life and death was ever precarious. So the observer reflected as the violators of the Tomb fled up the tunnel. It killed to survive, but in their own ways so did they. Morality was flexible; predation was the only true constant.

  There were, however, differences in scale to be considered. While a predatory insect ate so little it could never threaten the balance of its environment, many of the path's larger inhabitants had severely endangered the very existence of their world. Not just humans, but the beings they had once called gods as well. There had been many Cataclysms as realms collided and rebounded; each one held the potential to render the world unliveable. This was just the latest of many such large-scale disasters caused by beings too big for their boots.

  The real difference, though, was that this crisis had been triggered by something that wasn't naturally of the world. Not just one world revolted at that certainty, but many across all three realms. The sheer amount of energy that had gone into saving this particular world-line out of the many available was formidable and impressive.

  The alien didn't entirely understand individual humans—but understanding on that level was overrated. Of greater importance was the awareness of one's place in the universal perspective. Was one an ant or a god? That knowledge affected every decision. An ant could spare a life with impunity, safe in the knowledge that its decisions mattered little, except to itself and to the other ants. When a god hunted, whole civilisations died.

  And when two gods fought over the same territory…?

  Time, the alien supposed, would tell.

  ‘The bud cannot know the tree as a whole.

  But it can dream.’

  SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

  Shilly heard the Angel's heavy footfalls long before it appeared in the doorway. She didn't know how long she had been standing over Kail, dreading what might appear in that dark hole. Her whole body trembled with exhaustion. She couldn't have slept if the safety of the world had demanded it, but her eyelids were so heavy she could barely keep them open. Sometimes she wanted to scream, just to surprise herself back to full alertness.

  A low moan came from her throat at the sound of voices. Both the words and the identity of the people speaking were obscured by the man'kin's thunderous footsteps, but at least she knew now that someone had survived.

  When the Angel stepped from the tunnel, still bearing the glast proudly on its back, and Sal followed close behind, she thought her good leg might fail. Marmion came next, shouting orders to get the door closed, but she had neither ears nor eyes for him. Sal had seen her, and his face lit up.

  She couldn't move. He had to run to her. She felt like one of the ice Eater's explosive crystals, trembling on the brink of detonation. When Sal put his arms around her and pressed his face into her hair, it was all she could do just to hold him without hurting him.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  Trembling had become shuddering. She wanted to bury herself in the smell of him, detectable even under mud and other foulness. ‘I thought you weren't going to come back.’

  ‘Why did you think that? Couldn't you
feel me?’ He reached between them and touched her gently above her heart, which beat so hard he must surely have felt it even through the layers of clothes keeping her warm.

  ‘I did, but—’ The words tangled inside her. ‘I was confused. I died in another world, another version of me—and she remembered you dying a long time ago. She knew what it felt like to lose that connection, so I did too. At the end I wasn't sure which me was me any more.’

  He didn't ask her any more questions for a while after that. She could almost have laughed at herself. It sounded ludicrous even to her ears and she knew what she was talking about. He probably thought she was crazy, especially after running away from him in Milang and not once telling him what she was doing. But he didn't let go, and for that she could have fallen in love with him all over again.

  Eventually, her legs did give way, and she had to ease herself down onto the end of Kail's stretcher. He squatted in front of her, cupping her face with one hand.

  ‘Is he okay?’ he asked her, indicating the sleeping tracker.

  ‘I think so. Rosevear should examine him again, though, to be sure.’

  ‘And Tom?’

  ‘Much the same.’ She couldn't look at him. Part of her was afraid that he might dissolve if she so much as glanced into his blue-flecked eyes. ‘What about Skender and Chu?’

  ‘That's difficult to say,’ he said hopelessly, quickly outlining what had happened to Chu. Of Skender there had been no sign at all. ‘Are you sure you're all right?’

  ‘There's just so much we need to talk about. I don't even want to start.’ She did look at him, then, and was saddened to see him as dirty, tired and dishevelled as she felt. ‘Let's run away. Get as far from here as we can before Yod decides to follow. There's still time. The others can do what needs to be done without us.’