Skinner then threw his head back and howled. The scales, Shimmer saw, were scales no longer. Each was a thin black spider the size of a coin. They were digging themselves into his flesh, perhaps gnawing their way in, disappearing into him. He fell, thrashing and shrieking in agony. Shimmer turned her face, yet could not look entirely away. An arm reached out, beckoning to Ardata, who merely watched, her face immobile.
Inhuman, Shimmer reminded herself, remembering K’azz’s warning. Not human.
Skinner was now no more than a writhing pile of wiggling black spiders. Here and there patches of wet white bone gleamed through the heap. More and more of the skeleton revealed itself. The heaving and twisting of the heap slowed, then halted. The swarm of spiders hissed and squirmed amid the pale bones. Then Ardata lowered her hand and the spiders – if they were indeed mere spiders – scuttled off the carcass in a flowing slurry of midnight that made its way across the dusty ground to slip beneath the lip of her robes and disappear.
Shimmer fought a shudder and a heave of revulsion that would have doubled her over. She saw Mara staring, her face sickly grey and frozen in shock and disbelief. Cole, Amatt and Turgal all stared, their faces hardening, though not in triumph or victory but in anger, and Shimmer thought she understood. He might have betrayed them, abandoned the Guard, but in the end they were not pleased to see him fall for he was one of them.
Oh, Skinner. I am so sorry. We all tried to warn you. Yet you would not be turned from your path. You betrayed everyone, didn’t you? And, in the end, so too were you.
In the long silence that followed, K’azz cleared his throat and murmured: ‘Perilous indeed are the gifts of Ardata.’
‘As are all the gifts of the Azathanai,’ said a new voice.
Ardata spun. ‘Who are you?’
It was a middle-aged woman in dirty torn robes. She bowed. Behind her stood a file of soldiers who appeared to Shimmer to be Quon Talian, yet were painted and dressed in native fashion in loose loincloths. They did, however, still have their weapons, which they carried in their hands or on belts about their shoulders. Two of the soldiers carried bodies over their shoulders – more unconscious mages perhaps.
‘Just a sorceress,’ the woman murmured.
‘Yet you are not overcome in the … disturbance?’
‘I managed to protect myself in time.’
‘How very fortunate for you.’ Ardata pressed her hand to her throat once more. She tilted her head and her voice fell to a low whisper: ‘Do I know you …?’
Shimmer felt the hairs of her neck stirring in the sudden crackling of energy in the air. What is this? A confrontation? Who is this woman?
‘It is … possible,’ the sorceress allowed.
‘And what is it you wish?’ Ardata asked, her attention full on the woman. Shimmer shivered upon seeing her robes stirring as if with a life of their own.
The newcomer was completely unruffled. ‘I wish a great deal,’ she answered offhandedly. ‘First, however, we really ought to speak of your daughter.’
Ardata laughed, yet her hand clutched at her throat. ‘You are mistaken. I have no daughter.’
The woman’s face stiffened. ‘That is a terrible thing to say, Ardata.’
The Queen of Witches threw her arms straight down, the fingers clawed. Dust swirled about her. Beneath Shimmer’s sandalled feet the ground shuddered as if drummed. Rocks tumbled down nearby ruined walls. The tall palms swayed.
K’azz gestured, his hand signing the imperative: retreat!
Shijel darted forward to snatch his sword then ducked away, hunched. K’azz waved Shimmer back.
The sorceress beckoned aside, close to Shimmer. Backing away Shimmer bumped into someone. She spun to find the girl, or young woman, wrapped in her white robes. Yet for an instant she did not appear young. Rather, it was as if she were an aged crone, her face disfigured, the flesh swollen, grey and pebbled, the eyes clouded to blind white staring orbs. Shimmer reached out to steady her. At that moment she returned to the appearance of the young woman, her face pretty once more, elfin and heart-shaped. She peered up at Shimmer, searchingly. ‘It is you,’ she murmured, full of wonder. ‘The one I have seen so often. Even when I was a child. Why is that?’
Shimmer stared, stricken. Unmerciful gods! It is her. One and the same. The child, woman, crone. Oh, the fate that awaits you … She rested her hands gently on the young woman’s slim shoulders.
The girl, whose frightened gaze now peered at Ardata, jumped at the touch. She peered up, shivering, wary. She shuddered as if she were desperate to escape. ‘Be brave,’ Shimmer told her, her voice thick with emotion. ‘Be brave.’ The girl started in recognition, then gave a solemn determined nod.
Shimmer ached to hold her then but the sorceress beckoned again, calling, ‘Come.’
‘Strangers frighten her!’ Ardata called.
The sorceress took the young woman’s hand. She faced Ardata. ‘Or perhaps it is you who are frightened that others should see her?’
A wordless animal snarl escaped the Queen of Witches. Power now rose about her in glimmering tendrils like the lacing of webbing. She threw out an arm, pointing. ‘Who are you? How dare you?’
The sorceress held the girl before her, hands on her shoulders. The ground between her and Ardata erupted into flames. The thin grass blew away in rising ash and soot. Then the soil crackled and smoked as if dropped into a crucible. It slumped into a growing pool of glowing liquid rock.
K’azz, Shimmer, her companions, the Avowed and Disavowed, all flinched back then. They shielded their faces against the blasting heat. A lean woman had been hovering close to the sorceress all this time. She had one good arm, the other bound to her side. At that moment she darted forward and wrapped her one arm round the girl to pull her aside. The woman’s sandals, shirt and hair burst aflame as she did so. Soldiers rushed forward with a few tattered blankets to throw over her. Through the waves of heat and smoke it appeared to Shimmer that the girl was weeping.
‘Let her go, Ardata,’ the sorceress called through the crackling filaments. ‘It is time to let go.’
‘Who are you!’ the Queen of Witches howled.
‘Look closely … sister,’ the sorceress answered.
Ardata jerked back a step, her eyes growing huge. ‘No! Not you.’
The sorceress’s voice came loud and reverberating: ‘Let it all go, sister.’
‘No!’ She thrust her arms out and a coruscating wall of power washed towards the sorceress, only to halt suspended between them. The sorceress seemed to be holding it in place, somehow containing it.
K’azz bellowed over the roar in his best battlefield voice: ‘Retreat!’
Everyone now scrambled in earnest. The one-armed woman chaperoned the girl off while soldiers carried the unconscious, or bleary, mages. Shimmer saw Quon soldiers falling and being helped up by Disavowed as everyone fled in a panic from the titanic and still escalating confrontation.
Behind a set of low ruined walls and a broken bell-shaped tower, Shimmer paused and turned back to watch. A glaring light of summoned powers blazed from the clearing beyond. K’azz came to her side, as did an older officer whose bearing fairly shouted imperial service. Both forces gathered here all intermingled. One of the Quon soldiers was hurried over; he was supported by two others. This one wore only a loincloth, his hair a tangled mess. His goggling eyes were tearing, bloodshot, and he was squeezing his head as if to keep it from flying apart. ‘Still too close!’ he shouted to the officer, his words slurred. ‘Just run for it!’
The officer caught K’azz’s gaze and they shared a curt nod.
‘Move out!’ K’azz yelled.
Everyone set off once more at the fastest possible pace. Soldiers shared the burden of the staggering and dazed mages. Two ran past carrying Petal draped over a stretcher between them. The one-armed woman, singed, her hair half gone, actually scooped up the girl and took off with her at a run. Shimmer stared, amazed. Damn! Who is that woman?
Glancing b
ack over her shoulder, she saw the top of a swelling dome of lightning-lanced power. It appeared to be chasing after them. The expanding wall of flickering energies swallowed trees and ruins as it came.
‘Hurry!’ she yelled, now truly panicked.
Everyone ran. They dodged trees, jumped the low stone foundations of buildings long gone. Far ahead, Black the Lesser pointed aside to a long earthwork mound. Yes! Intervening ground. The ragtag column curved in that direction.
When they reached the rear of the steep earthen mound they threw themselves down behind stone blocks and tall thick trees. Beyond the hillock, the sky blazed now with an astounding swelling concentration of power that appeared as bright as a sunrise. To the west, behind them, the sky hung a deep purple-black that choked the setting sun.
Then the bubble burst. That was the only way Shimmer could interpret what happened. A wave of pressure struck the mound a hammer blow and it juddered. Trees flew backwards from its crest. The wave hit them all like mattocks to the chest and Shimmer grunted, her breath knocked from her.
Dirt, dust and broken branches swept over and past them. Shimmer waved the dust from her, coughing, and searched among the crouched soldiers and Disavowed. She found the girl still with the one-armed woman. From the girl’s shuddering Shimmer could tell she still wept. The woman appeared to be whispering soothingly to her.
After the dust and branches swirled away there came a descending wave of leaves, and intermingled with them fluttered countless flower petals. They rained down over everyone in tears of crimson, purest white and orange and pink. She plucked one from her arm to rub its skin-like smoothness in her fingers.
She allowed herself to fall back against the tree she’d taken shelter behind. She draped her arms over her knees and let out a long breath. It was over – yet what was over? Just what had happened? From her encounters with Ardata, and from what they heard, she could only guess that the being was somehow holding on to everything. The past, the present, the future. Grasping them all at once and not letting anything go. Not even discerning between them. And perhaps she could live like that, as one of these Elder Gods. But what of others? What of her daughter? If indeed the girl truly was her daughter – not that she had to be. She deserved a life regardless. Even if it would be a hard one.
Everyone lay where they had fallen, breathless, almost dazed. The mages groaned and held their heads, wiped dried blood from their faces. Sitting back, Shimmer studied the western horizon and the setting sun. She saw Black the Lesser approach K’azz and the commander rose to take his hand and they shook.
So we are reunited. As we should be. One company. One troop. One … family?
Her gaze went to the girl. She appeared to be asleep now, nestled in the lean woman’s arm.
Shimmer let her head fall back. Yes, sleep. Could use some of that now. Have a look in the morning. She shut her eyes and allowed the muscles of her neck, shoulders, back and legs to unclench and fall into relaxation. And only then, finally, after weeks of fruitless searching, did she finally slip into a proper slumber.
*
Jatal opened his eyes to a landscape of undifferentiated grey. Pewter ash filled the air like a thick storm of drifting snow. It covered everything in pillow-like humps: the field of fallen tree trunks lying scattered for as far as he could see, the broken stripped branches, the scoured-smooth ground between. Even his arms, hands and legs lay beneath a downy layer of the flakes. He raised a hand to brush it away.
‘Ah!’ announced a disembodied voice nearby. ‘You live!’
He peered about; he could see no one.
An ash-fleeced boulder nearby moved. It stood and stretched. The slate-hued powder fell away in great clouds.
‘So, my friend – they missed!’ Scarza announced. ‘Us, in any case.’
‘Mostly,’ Jatal added, managing a self-mocking twist of a smile.
‘Ah-ha! Glad to be alive, hey?’
Jatal’s smile fell away. ‘We must search for him.’
‘I believe we will find him beneath a very large rock.’
‘None the less.’ Jatal struggled to rise. The half-Trell pushed him down. ‘Do not attempt that yet. Rest. Recover.’ He held out a singed black carcass about the size of a rat. ‘Eat.’
Jatal took it and held it up to examine it. ‘Did you cook this?’
‘The firestorm did,’ Scarza offered blithely. ‘I believe it used to be some sort of tree-dwelling rodent.’
‘Firestorm?’
‘You do not remember?’
‘No.’
‘You saved my life.’
‘I did?’
‘You most certainly did.’
Jatal tried to tear some meat from the dry carcass. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘“The stream!” You shouted that right away. I hadn’t thought of it. But running back to the stream saved us.’
‘What stream?’
Scarza bent and dug up a handful of clotted mud and ash. ‘This one.’
‘Ah. I see.’ He felt his tattered robe and shirt. They were damp. He touched the back of his head where only bristles of hair remained. ‘All I remember is that flash. Like the world ending. Golden light.’ He did not mention that when they were running he thought he saw another bright gleam of light. It had come from the western horizon and had flashed a vivid emerald green.
He glanced up to the sky, squinting. The Visitor still glowed there, fat and monstrous, like a gibbous moon behind the thick churning black clouds. He pushed himself to his feet. There was no sense hanging about here. Nothing to eat or drink; they would only weaken – better to do that on the march. He struggled past Scarza who watched him go, his face falling into a deepening frown.
‘You are in such a hurry to die?’
‘Live or die, it matters not.’
Scarza called, ‘There is nothing left of him!’
Jatal halted, peered back. ‘No. He still lives. I am sure.’
The half-Trell rose, rubbing his jowls, and followed. ‘How can you be so sure?’
‘I am.’
They walked a nightmare landscape of blasted jungle and sludge-choked streams. Everywhere lay the flash-seared fallen trunks. Ash smothered everything. It still fell from the roiling clouds in great flurries that cloaked the distances. Jatal tore off a strip of cloth and tied it over his nose and mouth. It was like the sandstorms they sometimes endured in their homeland. Scarza merely tramped on, uncomplaining, brushing the powdery layer from his arms.
The trees, Jatal saw, had all been flattened in one direction – roughly angled from the southeast – the point of impact, he realized. If the demon were to be found anywhere, he imagined, it would be there. He started following the line marked by the fallen trunks.
‘And if we find him?’ Scarza asked much later that day. ‘What then? I wanted to kill him. But now I’m tired of it. I’d rather just have a drink.’
Jatal ached with thirst as well, and he hungered. Such urges, however, were mere demands of the flesh – brute expectations of continued existence. An expectation he did not share. Sometimes he fancied he could see her face in the swirling clouds of ash. She was smiling down upon him.
Soon, my love. Soon. I shall give myself to you.
*
Saeng started awake from a strange dream; a sensation of drowning, oddly enough. Not since she was a child had she dreamed of drowning. Yet it hadn’t been water she’d been slipping into – it had been a strange glowing liquid more like molten gold or some other white-hot metal.
Aside from the nightmare of that struggle, she felt physically rested, renewed even. Better than she had since leaving home. She stirred and opened her eyes: she lay in what she recognized as the temple grounds. Dirt covered everything, and over that lay a pillowy layer of ash. White drifting flakes still fell in a light snow. All was eerily silent. Her ears rang with the quiet after the constant cacophony of the jungle.
She tried to stand and reached out to steady herself. Her hand rested on a hump next to
her that felt familiar. She brushed the ash and dirt away to reveal Hanu’s gleaming mosaic of inlaid armour. She rushed to clear his helmed head.
‘Hanu!’
She listened, her breathing heavy, but he did not answer.
‘Hanu – speak to me!’ she sent to his thoughts.
Still he was silent. She ran a hand down his chest to find a sticky layer of congealed ash and dirt. Her hand came away smeared.
Oh, Hanu … I’m so sorry …
She gently lowered her head to his side and wept.
After that she slept again for a time. When she awakened once more she kissed his helm on its forehead and pushed herself up. She’d been wrapped in a loose cloak, and this she adjusted as best she could. She remembered, vaguely, that there had been others as well – the Thaumaturg mage, Pon-lor. She looked back to the main temple: it had collapsed into a heap of cut stone blocks. So, he too. I am sorry, Thaumaturg. I misjudged you.
She turned away to trace her route back. Her sandalled feet pushed through the thick blanket of ash. The pale flakes dusted her robes, hair and eyelashes. Soon, she came to a trail through the heaped layers. She followed it to one of the colonnaded walks of the temple complex that led to a hall and an arched opening facing west. The arch was tilted rather alarmingly, and the stone floor was uneven, the stones having been pushed up here and there. Sitting in the threshold of the pointed arch, facing away, was a familiar figure: the Thaumaturg himself.
‘Pon-lor!’ she called.
He did not respond. She came up behind him. Still he did not move. Close now, above and behind him, she believed she saw why. The entire left side of his head was a misshapen mess of weeping fluids caked and crusted in blood and dusted in ash.
Slowly, she came round him to stand before him. His eyes were open but no recognition lit them. Indeed, nothing inhabited them. They stared sightlessly, inanimate, like painted orbs on a statue. Tentatively, she reached out to touch his chest. He breathed still, and his heart beat. But he was no longer present. She had seen such things before in her village. Severe fevers had left their victims like this. Then, the only answer had been the mercy of a swift gentle death.
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