The Bitter Twins

by Jen Williams

  They were flying lower, the trees coming up to meet them again, bringing with them their thick jungle scent. Tor sank his hands deeper into Kirune’s fur, trying to make sense of what the big cat was saying.

  ‘You respect Noon? I can’t get you to talk to me civilly, and you respect Noon? Besides which . . .’ He shook his head lightly. ‘Never mind all that. What did you find?’

  ‘Fell Noon might be bonded with the snake, but she is a warrior. Her green fire is strange, but she has the heart of someone who fights.’ And then, ‘I cannot tell you what it is. I must show you. I will not waste words on you, when you will see with your own eyes.’

  Ahead of them now, Tor could see the fall of uncertain lights hanging over the forest, which they had first glimpsed flying towards the island. Uneasily, he realised he had put that particular mystery from his head too. Now that they were closer it was possible to see that they covered the centre of the island like a dome. Before they reached the strange wall of lights, Kirune dropped down, his wings beating slower and slower until they were descending through the trees. There was a crack of small branches being broken and the scuffling noise of smaller animals fleeing the scene, and then they were down on the ground again. This far into the island the forest was dense, and the air so close that Tor could taste that jungle scent on the back of his tongue. Sweat broke out across his back and over his forehead. It wasn’t the Wild, he reminded himself, although the virulent growth of the plants and foliage all around made him uneasy.

  ‘You say you saw nothing out here bigger than you? Does that mean there were things not much smaller than you too?’

  Kirune ignored him. ‘Get off me.’

  Tor got down. Despite his pleasure in Kirune’s new closeness, he was glad to get his feet onto solid ground. All around them the air echoed with bird calls.

  ‘Here. It is here.’

  At first Tor couldn’t see what Kirune was indicating with his big, blocky head, and he opened his mouth to question whether the cat was seeing things, but then he remembered that Kirune had, for the first time, come to him for help. He forced himself to look closer at the confusion of plants and trees.

  ‘Do you see it?’

  Tor frowned, about to own up, and then he did see it: something that looked like a broken glass panel in the shape of a diamond, hanging in mid-air. Now that he could see it, he could also see the faint outlines of surrounding panels – it was like looking at an elaborate pattern on a length of fabric that suddenly resolved itself into a series of interlocking figures. Faint traceries of light, like veins in a leaf, were visible all around the area where the panel was broken. There was a hole there, he realised, large enough for either of them to pass through.

  ‘Yes, I see it. This is like the wall we passed through to get here, the one that concealed the island.’

  Kirune had grown agitated while Tor examined the panels, pacing back and forth through the undergrowth.

  ‘This also hides something. It is solid, unlike the sky-wall. It is a dome, but broken here.’

  Tor looked at him. ‘You have been through?’ He could sense something like reluctance from the cat.

  ‘For a little while. I went quickly, came back.’ Kirune shook out his fur, sending droplets of moisture flying. ‘You should look.’

  Tor reached for his scabbard only to realise that he had left his sword belt, and the Ninth Rain, back at the house. Of course he had. He hadn’t wanted to get water and mud on his fine sword. Cursing himself silently, he approached the hole in the strange wall and ducked through.

  ‘If there’s anything hungry through here, Kirune, I will expect you to protect me.’

  The space beyond the transparent wall had shown only more forest – thick and vibrant and cloying – yet when Tor stepped over to the other side, he stood in a space where the trees were thinning significantly. There was no birdsong either. After a moment, Kirune followed him through.

  ‘All right, this is certainly strange, I will give you that.’ He sighed. ‘As if we don’t have enough mysteries to deal with.’

  ‘It gets stranger,’ said Kirune drily. Tor followed the direction of the war-beast’s baleful yellow eyes. Behind them, rising out of the black dirt, was a strange smooth structure, breaking through the earth like the back of a sea monster. It was green, and came up to his waist. There were no markings on it, no blemishes of any sort, and its shape was irregular. His first thought was of a huge fungus – he’d certainly seen such things in the Wild, and particularly in the Shroom Flats – but then there was the way it rose out of the ground like much of it was still underneath. He moved forward, thinking to touch it, and then saw that there were similar, larger structures behind – looming green shapes, stretching back into the forest. The further back they went, the more they seemed to take on an understandable shape. That one was almost a wall, with a corner. Behind it, something like a tower.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘It was hidden,’ said Kirune. Tor nodded. For once, the cat had bitten straight down to the bones; perhaps what it was didn’t matter as much as the fact that someone had put up a wall to hide it.

  ‘How far in have you been?’

  ‘Not far,’ said Kirune, something unspoken in the rumble of his voice. And then, very reluctantly. ‘I touched it.’

  ‘So? Did something happen? Did it harm . . .’ He stopped. The roots in the tunnel. These strange mounds were the same colour, and he was sure that if they were glowing slightly, he would not be able to see it in this sunshine. Steeling himself, he stepped forward and pressed his hand to the nearest mound. Immediately, revulsion closed his throat; again, it was too smooth, and unpleasant in a way that he could not name. He swallowed hard as his heart thudded in his chest. ‘It’s all connected. The roots in that tunnel are a part of this, whatever this is.’

  ‘Could it be a new tree-father?’

  Kirune spoke so softly, and with such a painful note of hope in his voice.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Tor, truthfully enough. ‘I don’t think so, though. It doesn’t . . . Ygseril never felt like this, but it does not feel like the Jure’lia either. It’s not quite ugly enough, for a start.’ Tor stared off at the rising green monuments. ‘We’ll walk a little further in, and then go back. For my sword.’

  The deeper they went into this new part of the forest, the more the trees fell away and the more green shapes they saw rising from the black dirt. Soon, several of the green shapes seemed to be joining together, forming something like a series of walls, before sloping back into the ground again. Some of the pieces rose up higher and higher, until Tor saw a few that were higher than the trees. There was still no birdsong, and Tor found that he was grinding his teeth together, his hands pressed into fists so tight that his fingernails threatened to pierce his palms.

  ‘Do you feel that too?’

  Kirune was stalking next to him, his tail low. ‘I do. I do not like it.’ He snorted. ‘I am fearless. But this place . . .’

  ‘It’s all wrong, but I couldn’t tell you what it is. When Vintage and I explored the Behemoth sites, there was a sense of misery about those places, but that just made sense. Those were the bodies of alien creatures, decaying, seeping their poisons into the earth. And there were the parasite spirits, of course.’ He glanced at Kirune. ‘Now that we know what they were, it seems reasonable that they seemed to carry with them a sense of melancholy.’

  ‘My fallen brothers and sisters.’

  ‘But this . . .’ It made him think of his family’s suite on the day he’d found his mother, her skin oozing the puss of the crimson flux and her slashed wrists dark with blood – here, he felt not decay or disgust, but a sense that everything he had believed in or held dear had been a lie, and not an especially kind one. The strong were not strong. He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, grimacing at the sweat there. ‘This place feels wrong in a deeper way. Come on, not much further and we’ll head back.’

  He half expected the big cat to
protest but Kirune simply lowered his head. They moved on. The trees became sparser, until the green shapes were all they could see ahead of them.

  ‘We shall have to climb over it,’ said Tor, as they came to a long flat stretch, almost like a smooth pavement. The thought of walking on it made his toes curl up in his boots.

  ‘Or we could stop,’ said Kirune.

  ‘Just a little further. Past that wall there.’ The shapes had grown increasingly taller, until they sprouted like towers and walls all around. It was strange to see such things without windows or doors, without any kind of markings at all – like walking through a half-formed, blind city.

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘Wait. Look!’ Tor dropped his voice to a whisper and rested his hand on Kirune’s shoulder to pause him. They had rounded one of the corner pieces, and beyond it, just visible in a gap between a pair of the green blocks, something was moving. Several things.

  Tor felt his throat close up with a strange mixture of fear and disgust, and next to him Kirune made a peculiar noise in the back of his throat, almost like a kettle coming to boil. The things moving beyond the green architecture were unlike anything he had seen before, and his mind seemed to veer away from them, as though they offended his sense of reality. They were very large, four-legged things, with long limbs that bent oddly at the knee, like a chicken’s leg. Their necks also were long, tapering to neat arrow-shaped heads that looked largely featureless, although it was difficult to see from that distance. Their skins were all as white as chalk, and looked as smooth as the green shapes around them.

  ‘We should go,’ said Kirune.

  Tor nodded. He could see nothing threatening about them, no teeth or claws or obvious weapons, but, nonetheless, he was frightened. It was partly to do with the way they moved, slow and fluid, almost as though they were underwater.

  They began to back away, keeping their eyes on the strange beasts in the distance. Too late, Tor became aware of movement to the right of them; the tall green tower, which had been empty and featureless before, now sported one of the strange white creatures, and it was scampering down the tower, spider-like, towards them. Its head was lifted up and staring straight at them, and Tor caught a glimpse of bulbous crimson eyes, and a mouth lined with sharp teeth.

  ‘Run!’

  Kirune leapt away, then belatedly seemed to remember his wings. He shook them out hurriedly, turning to meet Tor, but the scuttling white creature was unnaturally fast and it caught Tor before he had even closed half the distance. The head whipped out like a snake’s and teeth like daggers sank into Tor’s shoulder and then yanked him back. The pain was terrible, and for a moment everything seemed to dim at the edges as Tor struggled not to pass out. Another tug, and the pain travelled through him like a lightning bolt, snapping his consciousness back to him in a blink. Kirune was bellowing his rage and pounding towards him, but Tor could see what the cat could not; the white beasts running down the green walls from all around, as if they had simply melted up through the green surface – all of them seemed to defy gravity with their scampering. Kirune, for all his fierceness, would be overwhelmed in moments.

  ‘Go!’ The thing’s bite was like a vice, impossible to escape from. If Tor struggled at all, he sensed it could tear his arm off. ‘Fly, Kirune! To Noon, go!’

  The war-beast blinked, clearly confused and even a little hurt by the command, but then he saw the creatures flanking him. With three enormous beats of his wings he was in the air and out of their reach, although Tor saw several of the things stretching their narrow heads towards him as if they meant to tear at his flesh.

  ‘Fly!’

  Another of the things had reached Tor, and it stood looking him over, red eyes wet and glistening in its head. They looked like big bubbles of human blood, and he could see nothing comprehensible in them. Beyond the thing’s shoulder, he could see that Kirune had got away; he was a fleck above the trees, flying faster than Tor had ever seen. He hoped the big cat would remember where to find the way out.

  ‘What are you?’ he spat at the white creatures. Many had circled him, their heads bobbing and weaving like snakes. ‘What do you want?’

  The one that stood over him lowered its head slowly, seeming to examine Tor. It opened its mouth, and Tor wondered if it was going to talk. Instead, it darted forward and sank its teeth into the soft flesh of his thigh – slowly, almost as though it were testing the solidity of it.

  Tor screamed, a high-pitched wail that he was immediately ashamed of, but the pain was too great to bear stoically. As he shrieked, the being that had his shoulder began to move its head back and forth; a dog worrying at a piece of meat.

  This is where I die, then. The thought shot across his mind like a comet, burning everything in its wake. There was no chance that Kirune could reach Noon or Vostok in time. These things would have pulled the flesh from his bones in minutes. All those years of avoiding the flux, of running from his home, and then rebirthing the war-beasts, and he would die on this roots-forsaken island in the middle of nowhere, eaten by abominations. Abruptly, he was filled with rage, and he kicked out wildly with his one free leg. His boot connected with the head of one of the creatures, and it drew its long neck back.

  ‘That’s it, you bastards! I’ll have your fucking eyes out, I’ll—’

  The creature that had a hold of his shoulder – he was aware that his shirt was soaked with blood, both the clear and the black of a deadly wound – was dragging him back, further and further. The tall tower of green stone was still behind them, as far as he could tell, so he could not understand where they were going, until he glanced over his free shoulder and saw that the creature was sinking back into the green surface of the thing. He knew a moment of pure terror: he would not bleed to death after all, but suffocate slowly within that terrible, smooth substance. He kicked out again and used every bit of strength left to him to pull away, no longer caring if he did lose his arm, but the creature was implacable. He felt the stuff at his back, somehow cold and hot at the same time, and felt himself sinking into it. It pushed across his shoulders and up his neck, slipped around his waist and over his legs. Everything it touched turned numb, and very swiftly there was little he could do save for gasp air into his lungs, thinking that perhaps if Noon got here soon, within the next handful of moments, perhaps then . . .

  The green substance slipped up around his neck, turning his ears deaf, pressing against his cheeks. Where it touched the scars on his face it seemed to sting. He thought of Noon, wondered if she would look for him, if she would care. And then everything was green.

  40

  ‘Something is wrong.’

  Vintage jumped, guilty for several reasons all at once. For a start, she was reading through Micanal the Clearsighted’s journal, the one she had liberated from Eri’s parents’ home, and the boy stood in front of her, looking as solemn and as innocent as ever, Helcate waiting patiently at his back. And more to the point, she was sitting quite comfortably on one of the gently rolling hills in the palace gardens, one that just happened to overlook the suite she had given to Tyranny Munk and Okaar – it was entirely possible, with her seeing-lens, to watch the strange pair through the enormous windows that looked onto their central living space. She had been doing so, every now and then, for the last few days, just on the off-chance she might catch them doing something interesting. So far she had seen very little that could be construed as suspicious. She had also been keeping half an eye on the contingent from Yuron-Kai – since their initial meeting, they had been a brooding presence in one of the larger suites. The situation had been explained to them, at length, and they had reluctantly agreed to wait for the return of the war-beasts and their warriors. Vintage suspected that their patience would not last much longer, however.

  She slipped the glass back into the big pocket on her jacket and moved a sheet of parchment to cover the writings in the book.

  ‘What is it, my dear?’

  The boy stood up a little straighte
r. For all his solemnness, he looked much better than when she and Nanthema had found him on the road. The hollow pits had vanished from his cheeks, and he had put on a little weight, covering up his stick-like ribs. He also, to Vintage’s eye, appeared to have grown a little taller, although he still carried the creases at the corners of his eyes that would look so odd on a human child. Helcate, likewise, looked healthier; he wasn’t as big as his war-beast brothers and sisters, and he was scrawny around the flanks, but she could see muscle under his short, curly fur, and his blue eyes were bright and alert.

  ‘The other war-beasts. There is something terribly wrong.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Vintage grabbed her stick and levered herself to her feet rapidly. ‘Have they come back?’

  ‘No.’ Abruptly Eri’s face was a picture of misery. She watched as he screwed his eyes closed and opened them again in an effort not to cry. ‘I don’t know if they can! Helcate can feel them, and he is very upset.’

  ‘Helcate,’ said Helcate.

  Vintage transferred her attention to the war-beast. ‘Can you tell me what you mean, Helcate?’

  The war-beast dipped his head, his nose pointed to the floor, and shook the fur out on his neck. It shouldn’t have been a recognisable gesture, but Vintage found she could read it well enough: sorrow and shame that he was not capable of what she asked.

  ‘There, darling, don’t take on so. Eri, tell me everything that you suspect. Quickly now, as we walk back to the palace.’

  The boy put his hand on Helcate’s flank as they moved down across the grass.

  ‘He can’t tell what’s happening to them exactly. It’s not like they can talk in their heads among each other or anything. But he feels them, very distantly.’ Eri sighed suddenly. ‘And they are afraid.’

  Vintage thought of Noon and Tor, of waving them off on some stupid quest to find something that probably didn’t exist anymore, or never had done. Foolish woman.

  ‘Can you tell me anything else? Any more detail than that?’