A War in Crimson Embers

by Alex Marshall

  Just as she was about to turn back, however, she caught sight of a shred of blue banner on the distant field. She blinked through the rain running down her living helm, and though her angel didn’t understand her excitement and hatred it impulsively obliged her, looking farther than any mortal eyes to confirm her suspicions.

  The Cobalt Company was here, on this very field, attempting to draw the first Tothan regiment away from Othean’s breached walls. Y’Homa had never felt such warring passions in her breast, primal wrath at their rebellion wrestling with enlightened gratitude at the role they had played in summoning Jex Toth back from the First Dark. Her angel reveled in her internal conflict, just as it reveled in all the raw sensations billowing up from the busy battlefield, and finding guidance in its rapture, Y’Homa smiled in thanks at yet another of the Fallen Mother’s bountiful gifts.

  Spurring her steed to carry her down over the vastly outnumbered mortal ranks, Y’Homa and her angel prepared to bestow their own reward upon the Cobalt Company. The only pity was it would be over so soon.

  CHAPTER

  22

  She flew! Best flew! She flew!

  Neither the wind in her eyes nor the darkness of the night could obscure the wonders before her, above her, beneath her. Best skirted the hem of Silvereye’s cloak, the stars bright as wolf eyes catching firelight, and no sooner had she wondered if she might touch the very clouds than her sky-devil carried her higher and higher. This winged creature that obeyed her unspoken wishes was a prize more magical than anything in Sullen’s songs, and she wished her son were here to share this reward for her bravery.

  The boy’s lover was clearly less appreciative of the miracle than Sullen would have been. When Purna brought her own sky-devil soaring up beside Best’s, the Immaculate threw up onto the beast they shared, clinging to Purna’s waist with his one arm as his spew skated off into the aether. The devil dog’s head poked out of the scaly saddlebags affixed to the sky-devil’s flanks and Best thought he might have barked, but any noise was lost to the whoosh of the wind. All the same she barked back, then focused on the awesome sight of the starlit jungle stretched out beneath them.

  Yet more incredible than flying through the night was witnessing daybreak whilst scudding through the heavens themselves. A storm brewed far behind them in the south, but all around them the morning arrived bright and clear. Blue bled into pink in the east, where the Bright Watcher rose from Flintland to cast her baleful glare upon the world—the sun might be an aspect of the Deceiver, but watching it rise from such heights was the most beautiful thing Best had ever seen.

  When they had first claimed the sky-devils and taken to the air it had been too dark for even her sharp eyes to take in the landscape far beneath them. Now, after flying inland for so long that her legs became cramped on the monster’s soft-boned saddle, the panorama below commanded her full attention. There could be no denying it: just ahead the dawn-brushed mountains and the shadowed valleys formed the outline of a sleeping giant. No, a giantess—it was clearer than any picture stone, clearer even than the idol of Old Black emerging from the thorn tree back home. Were all lands built upon the barrowmounds of such titans, a secret known only to the birds and the owlbats? Or was this but further proof that Jex Toth was a realm above and beyond the world of mortals? She tried to draw the attention of the others to the awesome image but when she turned to signal them she saw they were already descending, and quickly.

  Then her own sky-devil arched its wings and they began to fall as well. Dropping at such speed was even more exhilarating than climbing into the clouds, but she concentrated on going slower, reluctant to surrender her view of the anthropomorphic mountains. For the first time the creature ignored her desires, but before she lost her lofty perspective they crossed over the mighty mountains that formed the colossal bosom and she saw where they were bound. Vast white stones emerged from the jungle to form a necklace of bones around the throat of the buried giant, and flying over this sprawling wonder, they dipped ever lower even as the final mountain climbed upward into their path. At its pinnacle towered the biggest tree Best had ever glimpsed, of the same type as the one Sullen had chained her to back in the Haunted Forest but grown to divine proportion, and something about its countless white blossoms fluttering in the chill wind filled the Horned Wolf with an ecstasy so profound it was terrifying.

  But this was not their destination, the lurching of her mount distracting Best from the gargantuan rowan tree. A cave yawned open in the mountainside straight ahead, and without slowing at all the two sky-devils shot straight into it … into the mouth of the Fallen Mother.

  It was then that Best felt certain her glories were coming to an end, and that she must now pay the price all mortals owed after witnessing sights intended only for the gods. She had trespassed in the heavens, and for this she must now descend to hell. As the blurry stone of the surrounding cavern gave way to pulsing wet meat that shimmered with its own radiance, she reckoned she was fast on her way. Badly as Best had wanted to believe Old Black’s Meadhall awaited her on Jex Toth, it was obvious this place was no paradise of the underworld but somewhere far, far worse …

  Which was good. A false god was naught but a demon, and where else would a demon live but in the bowels of hell? That was how Father Turisa had always described the deepest recesses of the Deceiver’s lair, and while that description had never made much sense before she now saw that it was true. That hell was found in the stinking viscera of the Fallen Mother was an unexpected development, to be sure, but then Best was neither a theologian nor a shaman. Perhaps everyone else had known all along and she had just missed this particular sermon.

  The sky-devils were slowing as they zipped around spinal outcroppings and through winking apertures, and Purna’s flew ahead of Best’s as the cavern narrowed. A deep purple glow radiated from the heaving walls of the cave system, illuminating that which Best would have preferred never to have seen. The passage opened back up and they skimmed the surface of a lake teeming with gelatinous life. A crowd of the black-armored soldiers waited on the far shore, gleaming bone weapons raised to greet them. Best bid her beast to fly straight into them, drawing one of the bamboo javelins she carried with her proper spear in the makeshift quiver on her back, but Purna’s sky-devil banked to the side to avoid them and Best’s followed it.

  Tempting though it was to hurl her missile into the pack, she only had a few and held on to the weapon as they soared into another tunnel. This one was almost too tight, and Best braced herself to leap backward off her beast if it crashed into one of the shiny walls. Purna shouted something back at Best but it echoed past before her ears could catch it, and then Purna and Keun-ju’s sky-devil disappeared as the phantasmal flickering of the tunnel went black …

  Despite her resolve to stay silent Best whooped as they burst out into the widest, brightest cavern yet and went spiraling into free-fall. The vast hall was a blur of spectral green light as they careened downward, her heart trying to leap free of her chest and almost making it. It was hard but she went to her sharp place, focused instead of fearful. The hot winds buffeting them stank of bile and carrion beetles, the enormous sky-devil whining like a puppy as the bone saddle between Best’s thighs spiderwebbed with cracks, oozed burning slime. They were almost to the source of the light; Best felt it more than saw it through the dizzying drop, her sky-devil screaming now, its hide blistering off its body as though it were roasting in a clay oven. Her feet scrambled for purchase on its disintegrating back, and she kicked off, instinctually trying to leap away from it before—

  It splattered into the glowing earth and Best went skipping across the sharp ground. With each bounce a piece of her battle-dress or weather-beaten skin came away, but then the brilliant earth softened, splashed, caught her instead of repelling her, and she went under the surface. They hadn’t hit the ground, but a viscous, luminous lake.

  The radiant ichors stung her fresh wounds, the heaviness of the liquid dragging her down … but she h
eaved herself up, breaching the slime and gasping the putrid air. Later she would offer prayers of thanks to her fallen father for marching her and Craven to the coast and shoving them into the icy waters, telling them Horned Wolves had been Sea Wolves once upon a time and don’t they forget it, but prayers were for the living and right now Best wasn’t sure she still numbered among those ignoble ranks. First she had to reach a shore, and with the light of the lake too intense keep her eyes open, she paddled blind, trying not to think about what might be underneath her …

  Until it grabbed her.

  By the arms, yanking her onto her feet. The bank was so soft she hadn’t even realized she’d made it, had been pinwheeling her arms through foul, treacly mud. Now she struggled to stay upright, willing her porridge-soft knees to firm back up, willing her stinging, ooze-filmed eyes to focus on Purna and Keun-ju. Who else could it be, this pair of shimmering figures who had helped her up?

  Except it wasn’t. Best knew that even before she got the filth from her eyes and saw the wizened old witches grinning at their would-be quarry. She knew because she smelled the bad intentions coming off them like steam from a pot of jollof, felt the inquisitive push of their thoughts against her skull the way her sky-devil must have picked up on hers. Which was why she swung on the closest one before she could even see it clearly, but it bounded out of the way, chattering its teeth at her.

  “Hear me, demon princes!” she said, staggering away as one disrespectfully tugged on a braid and she wiped the reeking ordure from her face. “I am Best of the Horned Wolf Clan!”

  “We knoooow!” shrieked the first to come into focus, a grotesquely obese old man naked save for a crawling dashiki of ants. The second was a crone adorned in an ornate suit of snails, her bald head wreathed in slugs, and she hissed, “We are friendssssss of your brotherrrrrrr!”

  Not that she had a good impression of them to begin with, but this sealed the pact as far as Best was concerned. They must have sensed the danger she posed, for they flew upon her as she reached for her great-grandmother’s sun-knife. The one that never missed and always killed.

  Well. Mostly.

  Just before they crashed Purna scooped Prince out of his chitinous saddlebag and bailed from her sky-devil. It would have been a slick move, even if she hadn’t done a triple backflip before landing on her heels in the inexplicably flabby earth. Her boots punched right through the skin-like surface and she sank to her knees, stinking ooze bubbling out as she wobbled in place … and caught herself, sticking the fucking landing!

  “Woooo!” That was how you fucking did it, right there! Purna knew she was a badass, but she also knew that even for a badass like herself this was some next-level shit. Figuring she might have had a little help, she smooched Prince’s fuzzy head—he was in for more dog treats than he could handle, just as soon as Purna figured out the devil’s favorite brand. “Did you see that shit?”

  “Impressssssive!”

  Snapping her neck around, Purna saw that while she’d addressed Keun-ju he had clearly missed her display, seeing as how he was floating six feet off the ground and staring saucer-eyed at the ancient witch who seemed to be keeping him aloft. The wrinkled old woman held her claw-like hands up in front of her, Keun-ju bobbing in place as she waggled her spindly fingers. When Purna had watched Hoartrap make a keg float around a bar back in Myura she’d wondered if that trick could work on people, too, and here was her answer. Cool. Less cool was the army of earwigs swarming all over the witch; the bugs were so thick on this biddy they looked like one of Diggelby’s crocheted bodysuits.

  “Far as impressive goes, you’re not too shabby yourself, catching my friend like that,” said Purna as she clumsily extracted herself from the leaking wounds her feet had gouged in the fleshy turf. Seemed wisest to be diplomatic here, considering how powerful this buggy old Tothan must be. Now that the thrill of their flight and dramatic landing was fading she felt a deep and intense anxiety at whatever insane scene they had just blundered into, crashing into some nasty netherworld populated by insect-infested enchantresses. When she had pitched the whole heroic death angle to Keun-ju she hadn’t counted on turning yellow, but here she was, shaking in her shit-filled boots—Maroto would’ve been so disappointed in her. “What say you put him down, gently like, so we can—”

  The woman dropped her arms and Keun-ju fell from the sky like a sack of millet, splashing in the mucky shallows of the glowing lake that stretched out across the subterranean vault. A glowing lake was also cool, albeit weird … and hardly the weirdest thing about this place. Looking around, Purna saw that the floor of this cave seemed to be something like a drained tidepool, the spongy earth thick with enormous, coral-like formations … flesh coral, for lack of a better term, the giant fans ridged with veins and shining with luminescent gristle. The growths blocked her view of most of the cavern, but out in the center of the lake rose a terraced pyramid, and there, down the shore a piece, Best seemed to be dancing with two more ancient Tothans … except knowing Best that dance was anything but, and—

  The earwig witch stepped in front of her, blocking her view. Excellent work, Purna old girl, distract the obviously powerful enemy from Keun-ju and then totally ignore her to gawp at the local real estate. Smart.

  “So, uh, super nice lair you got here …” Purna said as the horrible woman took another step toward her. “I mean, I’ve been up in some guts in my day, but never anything this spacious.”

  “Wordssssss are worthlessssss,” squealed the woman, and Flintland ancestors take pity on an Ugrakari convert, there were earwigs in her mouth. “Let us innnn, interloper, let us seeeee who sennnnnnt you.”

  Maybe the long night-flight Purna had spent silently communing with her sky-devil had attuned her to this funky mental-transfer thing, because Purna could distinctly feel the witch’s mind wrap around her own, like an octopus squeezing a clam. When their Tothan prisoner had injected those sinister visions into Purna’s skull back on the bluff she had thought it was the nastiest violation possible, but this felt even worse—the old woman wasn’t just trying to jam thoughts into her head, she was trying to take stuff out. A septic stench emanated from the crone, making Purna’s eyes water as she tried to resist the invisible assault.

  “I, um, I’ve got a headache?” Purna backed away from the woman, clutching the growling Prince closer to her chest and putting her free hand on the pommel of her pistol. “You seem fluent in High Immaculate, so—”

  “Immmmmaculate?” Even if the witch hadn’t spat bug parts as she spoke, Purna would have guessed she’d committed some linguistic faux pas. “You are not Immmmmaculate! You are mongrel spaaaawn! You are basssstards! You are—”

  Purna really, really wished she hadn’t seen Keun-ju climb to his feet on the shore behind the witch and draw his broken sword, because as she did she felt the intruder break through her mental resistance, scanning Purna’s thoughts like a gourmand browsing an upscale menu—and as soon as she noticed her friend, the witch stopped talking and her eyes widened. It might’ve been a damn fine jack move, but instead the Tothan wheeled about and slapped the air just as the Immaculate lunged forward. She didn’t touch him but he flew backward into the lustrous shallows of the lake, and before Purna’s pistol could clear its holster the witch was right up in her face, snatching at her throat … but Purna leaped backward. And what a leap it was; she hadn’t known she could jump that far forward, let alone backward, but then you never knew what you were capable of until a dirty old bug lady tried to feel you up.

  It was all instinct, though, over before she even realized she’d moved, and the witch was striding toward her even as Purna landed. Prince squirmed out of her hand, dropping to the soft ground and advancing on the Tothan with an awfully big growl for such a little guy. The ancient witch paused, staring down at the dog in her path, and then her eyes sank all the way back into her face, the sockets flooding with black ooze.

  It was the opposite of what had happened with their prisoner, whose eyes had been
that spooky black from the day they captured her right up until the interrogation, when they had miraculously cleared. At the time Purna had told herself their Tothan prisoner’s eyes were black because they’d filled with blood as a result of the crash that had broken her body, that their suddenly becoming normal after she invaded Purna’s mind was some sorcerous regeneration. Apparently not. That this switch from evil black eyes to normal peepers and back again was a trick these crusty old wizards pulled as a matter of course didn’t put Purna much at ease, but other than making the witch look even freakier than before, nothing happened.

  Well, not quite nothing. The fell witch and the devil dog both went completely still, staring at each other … but nothing else happened. Yet when Purna took a cautious step forward the air around her fairly crackled with desperate whispers and infernal aromas. She couldn’t make out if they were actually saying anything she might understand, let alone what, but the intensity of the murmurs and the sulfurous scents stuck her short hairs up and kept them up. Disturbing associations were forming in Purna’s frantic mind, parallels between this withered thing and the hungry corpses that had attacked them back in the swamp … and far worse, between these dead-but-not Tothans and the Living Saint of Ugrakari legend.

  She took another wary step around Prince’s haunch. Whatever this Tothan witch truly was, it was long past time to take her ugly head off while she was distracted. Before Purna could put the plan into action, though, the devil and the crone broke their reverie, both turning to look at her with hungry smiles. Too late, Purna realized her mistake—Maroto always told her to think before she acted, but this was just another of his lessons proved astoundingly wrong. She hoped it wouldn’t be the last.