* * * *

 

The Devoured

Earth

 

[The Cataclysm 04]

 

By Sean Williams

 

Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

 

* * * *

 

What does it mean to be human? It’s more

than the right number of arms, legs, fingers

and toes, the ability to talk, and walking

upright. It’s more than the Change and the art

we make. It’s more than all of this, and less.

We follow a path through the realms that

makes us uniquely different to any other

creature. Not all the realms, for there are

more than we can imagine, of every possible

flavour and logic. We inhabit just three, and

they define our character as surely as a fish is

defined by the sea or a snake by the earth.

That’s not to say that we can’t aspire to

transcend the limitations of our environment.

We are dreamers, we humans, and what lies

outside has always held a fascination. But we

must remember that the achievement of that

dream carries a high price. Sometimes the

boundary is too easy to cross. We should not

lightly set aside our humanity, because it’s not

always possible to get it back.

 

A SCRIBE’S BOOK OF QUESTIONS

 

* * * *

 

 

Out of the darkness, something came — something as alien to the human mind as it was to the world humans inhabited. It passed through realms as easily as a beast might cross a stream, yet it was not, by nature, a wanderer. It possessed desires no earthly being had ever imagined; it craved satiation in ways beyond description.

 

It hungered.

 

But it told itself to be patient. Its time was nearing. Soon, the waiting and watching would be over, and the human world would know its face.

 

Then its need, finally, would be fulfilled.

 

* * * *

 

The Breach

 

 

‘What is the shape of the world?

The answer to that question depends entirely on

where you are standing.’

 

A SCRIBE’S BOOK OF QUESTIONS

 

 

verything hurt. Skender could barely move without confronting that grim reality. From the pounding of his temples to the chill biting at his toes, not one part of his body had been spared. His appetite was nonexistent, he was unable to sleep, and when he stood up too fast his head spun like a top. The tea brewed by Griel and his two Panic balloonists to ward off the worst of the symptoms of altitude sickness filled his bladder faster than ordinary tea, so he spent much of every day wanting to take a leak.

 

He refused to say anything, though, and not just because he knew everyone aboard the blimp was feeling the same effects of the staggered ascent as him. The memories of Chu’s dismissive, even rough, attitude when he was water-sick while sailing the flooded Divide were still fresh. That she was also sick this time around wouldn’t stop her exploiting an opportunity to needle him.

 

He felt her watching him even as he concentrated on Mage Kelloman’s suncatching charm. Opening one eye a crack, he saw her standing at the fore of the boat-like gondola, near Griel. Her black hair glowed with mahogany highlights in the sun. The skin of her cheeks was as golden-brown as the wooden instrument panel before her.

 

Dressed in a heavy woollen overcoat and gloves, she had swivelled slightly to look back at him. A faint smile floated on her full lips. His whole body tingled in response. Although the blimp was the biggest he had ever seen and the balloon supported an enclosed gondola roomy enough for thirty people, he had never craved privacy so much as he had during every moment of their journey so far. Barely had Chu told him her heart-name than they had been whisked out of the Panic city and taken to Milang, where Marmion had coordinated the expedition to the top of the mountains, the biggest ever undertaken according to local records.

 

Since then, the only moments Chu and Skender had found to be alone came very late at night, when everyone else was asleep, or during brief mountaineering expeditions while the blimp was moored to a jagged cliff face. And even then, with altitude sickness clawing at their guts and skulls, there was only so much they felt like doing.

 

Hana, he whispered to himself. Hana, I think I —

 

‘Eyes on the job, my boy,’ said a gruff, high-pitched voice from beside him. ‘Eyes on the job, or you and your friend will never get a second’s peace.’

 

Skender clenched his eyes shut and ignored the red-hot flush rising up to fill his cheeks. He hadn’t meant his thoughts to wander so much, let alone leak to the point where Mage Kelloman could pick up the details.

 

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, clutching at the shreds of his concentration, and his dignity. ‘I didn’t mean —’

 

‘Don’t get your tights in a tangle.’ Mage Kelloman’s slender hand touched his shoulder. ‘We’re all tired and impatient, easily distracted. But the end is in sight. By this night’s fall, we could finally be on level ground. Think of it — so much stone and bedrock to explore! None of this scavenging for the sun’s meagre rays. We’ll have real power then, boy. We’ll be in our element.’

 

‘What’s that, Mage Kelloman?’ came Sky Warden Eisak Marmion’s voice from the fore of the gondola. ‘Is the strain proving too much? We could pause and allow you a breather, if you’d like.’

 

‘I certainly would not,’ the mage said, his tone artificially crisp. ‘I was merely remarking to my young friend here that we could provide a little more lift. If you can handle it, of course.’

 

Marmion tilted his head. ‘More lift, not less? Are you sure?’

 

‘As sure as eggs. I, for one, am keen to stretch my legs.’

 

‘You speak for us all, I suspect.’ A rustle of agreement swept through the gondola, from Griel and the Panic tending the balloon’s stays and control surfaces to Lidia Delfine. Even the twins, so often caught in their own private world, nodded.

 

‘Very well, then. One final push and it will be done. Thank you, Mage Kelloman. When you’re ready, we’ll put your extra effort to good use.’

 

Kelloman bowed with exaggerated dignity, giving the body of his host — a young woman whose mind had long since fled — gravitas far beyond its years.

 

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Skender hissed to him. The wardens returned to charms made by Panic Engineers and reinforced by foresters in Milang. ‘We’re stretched too thin as it is!’

 

‘Quiet, boy.’ The mage made a minute adjustment to the pattern scorched onto the wooden floor of the gondola at his feet. ‘We have work to do.’

 

‘But —’

 

‘Work. This isn’t a holiday, you know.’

 

Skender swallowed his irritation and sought the still centre required to shore up the mage’s effort. Their job was simple: to draw energy from the sun and channel it into the balloon’s many charms. Griel, Chu and Marmion ensured the charms were employed against thinning air and strengthening winds. Skender felt, however, that Kelloman was putting too much emphasis on their end of the deal. Yes, he was the only mage for hundreds of kilometres and, outnumbered on all fronts, correspondingly determined to make his presence felt. But that didn’t justify nearly killing them both in the process.

 

Forty pinpricks made him jump as the mage’s pet — a tiny brown-furred bilby with pointed ears, big eyes and sharp claws — leapt into his lap and climbed onto his shoulder. He patted it, encouraging it to settle.

 

‘Concentrate, boy,’ the mage growled through his borrowed lips. Skender willed himself to stop thinking entirely, so that through the Change and his link with Kelloman he dissolved into the charms enveloping the skin of the blimp. As well as being larger than any other balloon in the forest, it was easily one of the most complex machines he had ever seen. From the glowing rotors thrumming outside the gondola — two each to port and starboard — to the web of charms maintaining everything from elevation to insulation, the blimp required constant attention to make sure it functioned as required.

 

A strong gust of wind shook the blimp, making his stomach lurch. His eyes opened automatically, just for a second. Chu was at the controls, helping Griel adjust their flight. Beyond the windows was nothing but blue sky to the west, black and grey everywhere else. The monstrous mountain range still loomed over them, even as they approached its summit. And Kelloman wanted to turn the situation to his advantage! Sometimes that thought made Skender want to laugh. Other times it made him want to turn tail and hide.

 

Instead, he simply crossed his fingers and hoped for the best.

 

* * * *

 

They had left Milang six days earlier, ascending into the clouds three dawns after fire had nearly burned the forest city to the ground. The mission was a cooperative venture: everyone caught up in the awakening of forces from the previous Cataclysm had joined together to find out what was to the north-east, where the twins assured them the greatest threat lay. No one knew quite what to expect. Skender didn’t take any encouragement from the floods, murderous wraiths, earthquakes and man’kin invasions that he and others had already endured. With no seers remaining to peer into the future, all they had to go on were a smattering of hints from prophecies old and new, plus their own wits.

 

A series of delicate soundings taken, firstly, at Milang, and then at several points along their journey, unveiled the shape of the mountain range beyond the region known to the Panic and the people of the forest. It was in fact several mountain ranges — at least seven — converging on a central point like a giant starfish with limbs reaching across the plains. At the intersection of those limbs the earth bulged up in a mighty rupture. This, the highest point of the mountain ranges, was the mission’s primary destination. Kelloman’s soundings weren’t clear enough to tell what exactly lay there, but he spoke in guarded terms of a circular patch of elevated land several kilometres across, surrounded by peaks that shook and rumbled under the influence of forces Skender could barely imagine.

 

When the balloon had reached the limits of the foresters’ geographical knowledge and then flown beyond even the charts of the Panic, they relied on Kelloman’s soundings to find their way through steep valleys and broad fissures, rising further and further with every hour.

 

On the second day, they had punched through the uppermost layers of the permanent cloud cover hugging the lower ranges and valleys to find themselves flying for the first time in clear air. From then on, navigation became somewhat easier, but the daunting mass of mountain looming above them reminded them not to become complacent: vast shelfs of snow and ice lay ahead, just as dangerous in its own way as the cloud. The balloon could not fly continuously, and safe docking points had become harder and harder to find. The whining sound of chimerical engines echoed off sheer rock faces, occasionally triggering avalanches of stupendous proportions.

 

Yet, despite the hostile conditions, there were signs of life: streamers of smoke rose from small communities huddling in sheltered niches; paths crisscrossed several more accessible regions, linking caves that were almost invisible until the balloon came directly alongside them. Once, when surmounting a broad spur and coming into view of the valley beyond, the travellers had been confronted by a vast, flat roof large enough to cover two Milangs. Canted at a steep angle to prevent snow from piling too deeply, it sheltered nearly a third of the valley below. Exactly what it protected was unknown to either Panic or forester, and was likely to remain that way, for nothing and no one came to stare at the intruder in the skies. Very few people had emerged from any of the places they had seen, made cautious by the events of recent weeks.

 

Everywhere they went Skender saw evidence of the flood. Deep channels that diverged and joined traced complex paths down the side of the mountains. It soon became clear that the torrent that had filled the Divide had taken many routes from its source. Several of these channels had played havoc with the region’s struggling communities, sweeping away animals, crops and homes. Some of the channels were still carrying water that roiled and foamed as it fell. One waterfall dropped so far that from its middle Skender could see neither top nor bottom. For an enchanting but unnerving hour he could pretend that the flow was endless.

 

By the fourth day, he had begun to wonder if their journey, too, might have no end. Upwards and upwards they strove, snatching every metre of altitude from a reluctant sky. The cloud level dropped away and the vista of jagged, twisted stone below and beside them had become even more terrifying, yet the summit, visible only as a dark line against the sky far above, seemed to come no closer. The strain on the balloon’s mingled crew increased the higher they went. Altitude sickness took a severe toll on minds and bodies that were already fatigued.

 

Nowhere was that more obvious than in the rivalry of Kelloman and Marmion. The air had always been tense between the two men, both of them ambitious and masters of their very different disciplines. That tension was now manifesting in the form of fierce battles of pointed politeness. Skender — caught up in the ongoing campaign because he was nearly a mage himself and therefore the only ally Kelloman had — found himself becoming impatient with both men. What was the point of expending so much energy on pointless one-upmanship? It only made the rest of the crew more uncomfortable than they would otherwise have been.

 

A long, sustained shudder rippled through the gondola, bringing him back to the present and sending the Panic crew scurrying about, checking instruments and adjusting control surfaces. One opened a hatch in the ceiling and slipped quickly outside. A wave of bitter cold swept through the interior to where Skender knelt at the back, doing his best to concentrate. He shuddered, despite the thick layers of thermal underwear under his black robe. The caulking around the gondola’s joins and seams was far from perfect, allowing hair-thin, knife-sharp breezes to slash past his ears, so he knew going outside would be colder still.

 

He stole another peek forward. Marmion had joined Chu and Griel. All three peered up and out the pilot’s window.

 

‘That looks promising,’ Skender heard Chu say, ‘and about time too.’

 

‘Fifty metres to the summit,’ the warden announced to the crew in general. ‘There’s a pass near the top. We’re aiming for that. Once through and out of this wind, the going should be steadier.’

 

So close! Skender thought, but it still seemed another world away. He remembered something the twins had said about the Second Realm being next to the First in the sense that one second was next to another; they occupied the same space, and yet were quite separate, and crossing from one to the other could be incredibly difficult. That was how he felt about the top of the mountains. It was there, and always had been, but getting to it was proving far from easy.

 

‘Would you like to rest before the final push?’ asked Mage Kelloman without either opening his eyes or moving from his meditative posture. ‘If the wind is problematic —’

 

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Marmion with a faint smile. ‘In fact, I thought we might increase the pace. There’s no point holding back now. The sooner we get to the top, the sooner we can rest.’

 

‘Why not?’ Behind Kelloman’s nonchalant reply, Skender sensed exhaustion and determination in equal measure. ‘I’ll give you all the potential you need.’

 

‘Right, then. Let’s get on with it.’

 

Someone groaned. Skender couldn’t tell who, but he echoed the sentiment. Not for the first time, Skender wished Sal were there to help them. With his wild talent behind the push upwards, the journey would be over in moments. But Sal had his own quest to pursue.

 

Mage Kelloman resumed his concentration on the suncatching charms. The gondola’s engines throbbed at a deeper pitch, casting a golden light on the cliff face as the blimp continued its upward journey. Fifty metres didn’t sound far; Skender could have walked it with no effort at all. But flying was a different matter to walking, especially as they were now very close to the theoretical limits of powered-balloon travel. Every metre was a challenge.

 

‘That’s the way,’ Marmion said. ‘That’s the way.’ He ran a hand across his bald scalp. The last of his hair had fallen out on the long journey, leaving his head as smooth and round as an egg. ‘One last push and it’ll be over.’

 

‘You’re in entirely the wrong field, you know,’ said Chu. ‘Have you ever considered midwifery?’

 

Marmion didn’t rise to the bait. The blimp seemed to be hanging dead in the air, its upward drift was so subtle.

 

‘Mage Kelloman, a skerrick more oomph if you wouldn’t mind. The charms are at their breaking point.’

 

‘A skerrick? Why, certainly.’ The mage’s voice was frostily formal, and he did find extra potential from somewhere within himself.

 

‘That’s the way.’ Marmion breathed again.

 

The words became a mantra Skender clung to as the metres slid slowly by. He lacked the perspective of those at the front of the gondola, but he could make out the cliff face through the nearest window. It was moving, slowly but surely.

 

The blimp swayed above them, rattling the gondola’s occupants like nails in a tin.

 

‘Hold fast,’ Marmion encouraged them all as he moved down the gondola’s central aisle, brushing shoulders reassuringly with his one hand. The other arm hung close to his gut, wrapped in the folds of his blue-clad sleeve. ‘We’re almost there. Almost…’

 

Skender closed his eyes tightly and put everything he had into the final stretch. He saw nothing but the complex curves and axes of the suncatching charm; he felt nothing but the sun’s potential as it swept through him and into the interstices of the blimp. Kelloman’s mind blazed feverishly beside his, a shining example to follow. Yet there was something dangerous about that blaze, as though it could swiftly turn on itself and consume the mind that stoked it. If Kelloman’s concentration faltered for a second, if the sun’s output changed even minutely…

 

Wind struck the blimp from an unexpected direction, prompting a new series of rattles and creaks and a rising mutter of voices. His eyes flickered open. He blinked to focus them. The gondola hung near the cliff face. Through the window nearest him on the starboard side he saw the bottom of a massive cleft in the dark stone. As though a giant sword had hacked a notch in the uppermost ramparts of the mountain, the sides of the cleft were steep and jagged. Its V-shaped base was clogged with dirty snow. Wind rushed down it with a sustained roaring sound, making the blimp sway as it came closer to the opening. The vessel shook as individual concentration failed and charms flickered. It held its course, just.

 

Wisps of cloud wreathed the sides of the cleft. Skender strained to see through them. All he could see was the cleft itself, snaking off into the distance like a high-altitude version of the Divide.

 

‘Well,’ said Marmion, ‘it appears we still have some way to go.’

 

‘Forward will be a welcome change to up,’ Chu said, prompting a chorus of agreement from human and Panic alike.

 

‘Indeed it will. Mage Kelloman, I thank you for your hard work and suggest you conserve your strength through this section of our journey. We have enough potential in reserve to fly some distance. Let us take the burden from here.’

 

The mage looked for a moment as though he might argue, but exhaustion won out over pride, for once. ‘I — yes, thank you. I will rest for a moment.’

 

Skender helped the mage’s borrowed body to its feet and eased him into a chair. He was surprised as always by Kelloman’s slightness.

 

‘The way looks clear of obstructions,’ Marmion told the others, ‘but the winds are going to be tricky. Keep it steady as we go. We haven’t come this far to crash.’

 

And get stuck, Skender added silently to himself, at the top of a mountain so far from home.

 

The propellers whirred at a deeper pitch than before, turning the blimp around to face nose-first into the cleft. The deck rose and fell beneath him with a steady rhythm as they slid gracefully into the cleft, rocked by air currents. Skender peered out either side of the gondola, energised despite his altitude sickness by their finding the summit. Lidia Delfine and her bodyguard-cum-fiance, Heuve, did the same. Muddy snowdrifts as thick as houses lay below, hugging folds and wrinkles the pallid sun couldn’t breach. Nothing but granite was visible between them, black and forbidding like ancient stained bones.

 

* * * *

 

The twins felt they had spent far too much time staring out the windows at the endless grey cliff sliding by, interrupted by ledges, ramparts, shelves of snow and mighty fissures. Rock was rock. In their original, earthly life they had been used to landscapes where time and nature had flattened the land like teeth worn down by grinding. They hadn’t seen snow or mountains until their disastrous trip to Europe. There, Seth had been murdered by the agents of Yod in order to bring the First and Second Realms together. There, the old world had died, taking all its time-worn vistas with it.

 

The eyes of the Homunculus, the artificial body in which they were now confined, glazed over as the walls of the cleft slid by. The twins’ earlier disconnection from the world had faded at last; there was no hiding now from its complexities and perils. The same was true of themselves; their memories had cleared as though a curtain had parted. Where unwillingness or uncertainty had shielded them from the worst of their pasts, now nothing protected them from both sets of memories. The feel of Locyta’s knife stabbing into Seth’s chest; the draci straddling Hadrian; the confrontation with the Sisters of the Flame…

 

In Sheol, under the guidance of the Sisters, they had each explored their life-trees, the many-branched tangle of possibilities that revealed every conceivable event in their lives from the perspective of the Third Realm. Only in one world-line — one long, tapering branch — had they seen a chance of escape from their fated deaths at the hands of Yod. Hadrian had followed that world-line to the point where it suddenly diverged into possibility again, and there he had stopped. There he had seen a chance that Yod would fail. That had been enough to give him hope.

 

Both of them now wished that he had gone further, to see what actual chance awaited them. How would Yod be beaten? What did the twins need to do to ensure their survival? Of those who had helped and hindered them since their arrival in the new world, who would live and who would die? Skender, Marmion and the others had been strangers once but were no longer. They mattered too.

 

Either way, Yod was back, rattling at the bars if not yet fully free. It had devoured the Lost Minds in the Void Beneath, gaining strength for… something. With every day’s ascent, they felt its presence growing darker and stronger, looming deeper and more ominously. Now, with the end of their journey so close, Yod sucked at them like a black hole, tugging them onward and inward to their destiny.

 

Reflected in the window facing the dark cliff, they saw the silhouette of the Homunculus staring back at them. A shadow with hard edges, it had no recognisable features: no eyes, no nostrils, no wrinkles, no personality at all.

 

Who’s an ugly boy, then? whispered Seth into Hadrian’s mind.

 

Hadrian felt absurdly like laughing — but the impulse had gloom at its heart as dark as the Homunculus’s aspect. I reckon we’ve lost weight.

 

Something glowed with a faint silver light deep in the reflection. They leaned closer to the pane of glass in order to see more clearly. The Homunculus’s face seemed to swallow the entire view.

 

What’s that? Hadrian asked. Low in his view was a shining cross where his chest might have been.

 

Not a cross, little brother. An ankh.

 

Hadrian understood, then. In the Second Realm, Seth had confronted eight godlike beings known as the Ogdoad. The ancient sign they had marked him with had enabled them to survive in the Void Beneath when so many other minds had not. Seth had taken the mark for granted all that time, and Hadrian had had no reason to think of it. Only at that moment did they realise what a great boon it had been.

 

It stopped us from dissolving into the hum, Seth said.

 

So we thought. But we know now that the hum was Yod itself, which means —

 

The ankh protects us from Yod, Hadrian finished. Does that mean Yod can’t kill us?

 

Don’t get too excited. Maybe it just stops Yod from noticing us.

 

Hadrian leaned away from the reflection, and his brother came with him. Still, it’s something.

 

It is indeed.

 

The twins pondered their new understanding as the blimp traversed the cleft. The Homunculus was immune to altitude sickness, but they slept more and more the higher the balloon took them, sometimes as long as three hours a night, and their dreams were spectacular. In one of them, Yod had taken the form of a giant clown whose mouth was the entrance to a glittering fairground. Rows upon rows of people queued patiently and filed inside. The clown’s eyes grew redder and darker, filling up with blood, until finally a flood of crimson tears flowed down grimacing cheeks and swept the twins away.

 

Skender came and sat next to them, pulling his black robe tightly around himself in order to keep the draughts off his stockinged legs.

 

‘What do you think?’ he asked them. The white-skinned young mage wasn’t looking at them or his girlfriend, for a change; his attention was firmly fixed on the dark edifices visible through the windows.

 

Only then did Hadrian realise that they had almost reached the end of the cleft. People peered and whispered excitedly among themselves at glimpses of their destination. His first impression was that a whole other range lay in the misty distance — as though they had crossed one barrier only to encounter another just as large beyond it. Then he realised that the northern and southern ends of that range curved westward to form a giant circle.

 

‘A crater,’ Seth said. ‘Like a volcano, only much bigger.’

 

‘I’ve read about volcanoes in The Book of Towers,’ Skender said. ‘They’re mountains that vomit fire, right?’

 

Seth nodded, studying the far side of the crater with a sense of unease. The jagged peaks were white with ice and snow as though dusted by a giant baker.

 

‘A volcano with a lake in it?’ asked Chu, overhearing and pointing ahead and down. Just coming into sight was the shore of a mighty body of water. The crater was flooded, filled halfway up its steep sides with run-off from the surrounding peaks.

 

‘How could there be a lake up here?’ Skender asked. ‘Why hasn’t it frozen over?’

 

‘Both good questions,’ said Warden Banner, seated not far from them with a crutch held tightly in her hand. Since breaking her leg during the attack of the Swarm on Milang, she had been confined to light duties. ‘Here’s another: are those houses down there?’

 

Sure enough, on the southern shoreline of the lake huddled a cluster of low, black-roofed dwellings, perhaps forty in all, with a long, narrow pier protruding into the water.

 

No, the twins told themselves on a closer inspection. Not into the water. The shoreline had dropped precipitously in recent times, by the look of the frosty mud caked below its original high-mark. Now the houses stood twenty metres back from the shoreline and the pier led to nothing but more mud. There were no boats visible anywhere.

 

‘Who would live up here?’ asked Griel.

 

‘Maybe no one, now,’ said Marmion, and Seth could see his point. No smoke issued from the houses; no people walked the village’s narrow streets.

 

Skender looked disappointed. ‘I was expecting something grander, I’ll admit.’

 

‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Hadrian told him. ‘I’ve had enough excitement for one lifetime.’

 

‘Two, even,’ Seth added.

 

‘True, true,’ Skender said. ‘Do you recognise anything? Is any of this familiar to you?’

 

Hadrian shook his head.

 

‘Look at the lake,’ said his brother, pointing with one black finger. ‘They’re not islands.’

 

Attention shifted from the village to the centre of the lake. Three broad columns stood out of the water, dozens of metres high and as black as jet. One loomed higher than the others, its top truncated as though sheered off by a giant knife. The light caught it and radiated sickly gleams.

 

‘Tower Aleph,’ Seth said. ‘That’s from the Second Realm.’

 

‘So you do recognise something?’ Marmion asked, peering as closely at the twins as he was at the distant structures.

 

‘What Seth’s saying,’ said Hadrian, ‘is that these are the tops of three towers Yod was building before it made the big leap. They were supposed to act as bridges across Bardo when the Cataclysm took effect. We stopped Yod in its tracks, of course, so I guess these got stuck halfway too.’

 

‘I’ve never heard of them,’ said Skender. ‘You’d think they’d be mentioned in The Book of Towers.’

 

The twins had no opinion on that, just a similar, nagging feeling of being left in the dark. Skender glanced at his girlfriend at the other end of the gondola and the Asian-looking miner from Laure winked back at him. Embarrassed, the twins looked away. The mutual attraction between the two young lovers reminded them of cold nights in Europe and an unhappy ending in Stockholm, long ago…

 

Something moved in the corner of Hadrian’s eye. On the already receding flanks of the cleft, a long-limbed grey figure broke cover and took a running leap across the space between it and the gondola. The twins barely had time to recognise the terrible shape before another followed. There was no mistaking their intent. The two hideous creatures leapt with limbs flailing and steel-grey teeth bared. Long-bladed scissors opened and closed where hands should have been.

 

‘Watch out!’ Seth yelled.

 

Then all was breaking glass and shrieking wind, and the terrible clash of blades snipping at everything in reach.

 

 

Devels? Here? Impossible!

 

Seth ignored his brother’s mental protest and pushed Skender behind him. His hands went through the young mage’s back until Hadrian added his own impetus to the shove. They forced their way up the aisle to where Panic and wardens struggled with this new danger. Both groups were exhausted from the long ascent. Any reserves of strength they possessed would be sorely tested.

 

Seth and Hadrian pushed through with necessary brusqueness. The two scissor-handed devels lunged and snapped at anyone within reach, issuing terrible, ear-piercing howls. One of the balloonists fell back with her throat fatally cut.

 

A roar came from one side, where the forester Heuve slashed ferociously back at the nearest devel. The bodyguard looked almost grateful for something to do, but the expression was soon wiped off his beardless face — almost literally when a pair of blades barely missed his nose. Only a wild lunge backwards saved him. A skilful parry from Lidia Delfine defended his exposed stomach from another slash. Together, the two of them drove their adversaries back to the fore of the gondola, where Marmion and Chu were guarded by Griel. Seth shouted at one of the devels and lunged to keep its attention firmly on him. While it was distracted, Griel rammed the point of his hook deep into its spine and twisted. Black blood sprayed in a thick arc across the inside of the gondola, befouling the air with a potent chemical stench.

 

The second creature slashed a hole through the ceiling and leapt outside. The twins snatched at its heels too late, and clambered after it, wary of the blades that instantly snapped at their emerging head. The creature snarled at them, prompting memories of crossing Bardo to the Underworld. Then, a creature identical to the one he was following had taken Seth by surprise and cut off his hand. The hand had grown back almost instantly, restored by the persistent impression of himself that was more important in the Second Realm than actual flesh and blood — but that hadn’t lessened the shock and pain Seth had experienced.

 

The memory gave him an idea. As the blades snapped at them again, he raised his right arm and thrust it deliberately between them.

 

The blades bounced off his skin with a shower of sparks, repelled by the Homunculus’s rock-solid maintenance of his sense of self. The devel shrieked in frustration. Seth twisted his arm to free it, and lashed out with a clenched fist for the creature’s face.

 

It recoiled with a hiss. Together, Seth and his brother slithered out of the gondola, mindful of their footing on the ice-rimed wooden exterior. Three metres above them, the giant bladder strained and rocked, held down by dozens of thin, charm-strengthened cables. Strange geometric shapes raced across the balloon’s light brown skin.

 

The remaining devel raised its scissor-handed arms and faced the twins. Wind snatched at them as they planted their four feet wide and held their arms high.

 

‘Who sent you?’ Seth shouted. ‘Culsu? Yod?’

 

Grey eyes blinked at them. They didn’t doubt that it could understand them. They had seen enough of the new world to know that Hekau worked just as well as it had in the Second Realm: anyone who wanted to be understood could be understood, regardless what language they were speaking.

 

For a second they thought the devel might reply. It hesitated, tilting its head to one side as though wondering who or what they were.

 

Then it reached out with both arms and began snipping cables.

 

‘No!’ The twins jumped forward, knocking the creature flat on its back. It didn’t retaliate. In its brief moment of consideration it seemed to have decided to care less about its own life than bringing down the gondola. Even as it sprawled across the slippery roof, its scissor-hands snapped at every cable and wire within reach. Each sharp twang sent a nail of fear through the twins. How many cables could snap before the whole contrivance unravelled, sending the gondola tumbling down to the unforgiving rock below?

 

The balloon shuddered. Its angle of flight steepened upwards. The twins threw themselves bodily at the devel, knowing they had to deal with the threat quickly.

 

The roaring of propellers grew louder as the twins wrestled with their assailant, tumbling from side to side through the forest of cables. With a snarl, the creature slipped free and lunged for a dense knot near the rear of the balloon. The twins caught it in a flying tackle, sending it skidding across the slippery gondola. The points of its scissors struck off splinters of ice as it sought to find a grip. The attempt failed. Emitting a high-pitched cry, it slipped over the side and was sucked into the balloon’s rear-port engine.

 

Propeller blade and scissor-creature met with a powerful explosion. The twins ducked instinctively. Shrapnel whizzed past them, ricocheting off the gondola and arcing into open air.

 

When the echoes of the explosion faded, they raised their heads to inspect the damage. All that remained of the propeller and its chimerical engine was a smoking black stump. A high-pitched whistling came from several jagged tears in the balloon.

 

‘Crap.’ Seth drove them back to the hole in the gondola. Griel needed to be told about the damage. The balloon shook and rolled, already destabilised by the severed cables.

 

‘I know, I know. I’m doing everything I can,’ said the Panic soldier as they dropped into the gondola’s chaotic interior. The pilot console was emitting a persistent chiming sound; needles dipped and shuddered on every gauge.

 

‘Is there anything we can do?’

 

‘Just hold tight. I’m going to try to bring us down safely.’ Griel tugged at levers and pushed buttons. The balloon swayed giddyingly.

 

Seth filtered out the sound of people shouting in order to concentrate on what lay through the shattered windows ahead: the crater lake and its dark ruins.

 

‘I’d be happy to land in one piece,’ said Marmion, gripping a black-stained wooden pole for balance.

 

‘Give me space and I’ll do what I can.’ Griel waved them away. Chu pressed forward from where she had been standing with Skender. The twins noted her shaking hands and ashen skin. The cold air rushing through the gondola was taking its toll on those less hardy than the Homunculus.

 

‘If there’s anything we can do,’ Hadrian started to say again.

 

‘There is,’ said Marmion, pulling them towards the rear of the shaking gondola. ‘You can tell me what those things were, just in case there are more waiting for us when we land.’

 

The balloon shook and canted downwards. The twins did their best to ignore it. ‘It’s a devel,’ Seth said. ‘They lived in the Underworld before the realms were jammed together. These particular devels were ruled by a minor dei called Culsu.’

 

‘A dei?’ The warden’s expression was simultaneously worried and puzzled. ‘Is that something like a god?’

 

‘Someone probably worshipped them at some point. I don’t know. Their job when I knew them was to cut up the souls of the dead as they tried to get to the Second Realm. The remains would be given to Yod to eat.’

 

‘So ultimately they worked for Yod.’

 

‘Yes.’ Seth watched black-spattered Lidia Delfine focussing an eyeglass on the lake’s dark shoreline. It was growing visibly closer. ‘I guess they still do.’

 

‘Do you think there could be more of them?’

 

‘I’d be amazed if there weren’t.’

 

Griel had taken a measure of control over the balloon. With a discernible effort, it was turning towards the nearest village. Seth swallowed his misgivings. There might still be people around, huddling for shelter from the cold and the devels. They might need help as badly as the expedition when it landed among them.

 

‘Take your seats,’ called Griel from the front of the gondola. ‘We’re going down.’

 

‘And by that,’ said Chu, ‘he means, “Hang on tight. We’re going to crash!”‘

 

The balloon lurched and tilted so steeply that even the Homunculus’s four legs had trouble keeping purchase. Seth was dismayed to see how quickly they had fallen in such a short time. He and Hadrian helped the others to safety, then took a position of their own towards the rear. Through the cracked window beside them, he could see the black scar left by the destroyed engine and the slopes of the crater rising up to meet them. There was no sign of more devels — or anything worse.

 

If the towers are here… Hadrian began.

 

Then Yod might be too, Seth finished. We’ve known it would be around somewhere. Doesn’t change anything.

 

It changes everything. It’s not a computer game or a dream. It’s right here, right now. Everything we went in the Void for is about to happen.

 

It’s much too late for second thoughts.

 

I know. I’m not having them. I’m just —

 

Terrified. Yes, me too.

 

They clung tight to the seat as the icy earth came up and, with a deafening crunch, the gondola bucked beneath them.

 

* * * *

 

The Trail

 

 

‘If love conquers all,

love itself must be conquered.’

 

THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 4:

 

 

n the fifth day Sal, Kail and Highson argued, as they had every other day. This time the debate was over whether to mark the coming of night by camping halfway up a cliff face or to continue to the top in the darkness, there to wait for the dawn to pick up the trail of the man’kin. Sal wanted to push on, unwilling to pause. Kail was more pragmatic, pointing out that the chances of losing the trail entirely were high. Highson stayed out of the discussion for the most part, except when brought into it by Kail or Sal. Highson didn’t come out and say why, but Sal knew, and it angered him more than did Kail’s stubborn refusal to agree to keep moving.

 

‘So you’re tired,’ Sal told Highson. ‘Big deal. We all are. Do you want special treatment? Do you want to stay behind?’

 

‘I’m not asking for anything, Sal.’

 

‘But you’re not agreeing with me. You don’t want to go any further.’

 

‘I can see Habryn’s point. And yours too, for the record. I just don’t want to take sides.’

 

‘Do you wish we’d stayed at the village?’

 

His father sighed, his broad features shadowed by the furred hood keeping the cold off his scalp. ‘I don’t want to argue, Sal. I’ll leave the decision up to you. I trust your instincts.’

 

Sal retreated into himself to spare the men his frustration. The Goddess knew they’d endured plenty of it in recent days. Following the trail of the man’kin was simply taking too long. While the three of them limped their way across ever steeper, ever more rugged terrain, Shilly drew further and further out of reach.

 

Deeply etched the trail might be — for creatures of solid stone could not tread lightly, even across a mountainside — but it still wouldn’t last forever. Every morning Sal woke afraid that this would be the day they lost the trail and had to turn back.

 

The heat of his anger kept the wind’s chill at bay, but he could still feel ice biting into his nose and face all the same. His fingers felt half frozen even in their gloves. Every muscle ached from climbing with a heavy pack on his back. In his mind’s eye, all he saw was Shilly receding into the distance. Every minute he paused, he slipped more behind. The man’kin didn’t stop to sleep; they climbed on into the night, every night.

 

‘Damn them,’ he said, looking up at the frosty stars. ‘They’re too fast, and we should’ve left sooner.’

 

‘Don’t blame yourself,’ said Highson.

 

‘I don’t. And I refuse to blame Shilly. That doesn’t leave me with many options, though.’ Highson went to say something, but Sal cut him off. ‘I’d rather just keep moving. Catching up will solve all our problems.’

 

‘They have to stop eventually,’ Kail said.

 

The thought offered Sal no comfort. They had been over this many times before. If they knew where the man’kin were going, they could head them off before they arrived. But beyond up, the tracker could guess little in the unfamiliar terrain.

 

‘So do we,’ Sal said, admitting that much, ‘but not now.’

 

‘All right,’ the tracker said, reluctantly agreeing. ‘But let’s stop at the top of the face and rest. The more tired we are, the more likely we are to make mistakes, and mistakes will get us killed. That won’t help Shilly at all.’

 

Sal nodded, mentally satisfied but physically dreading the long climb ahead. He tightened the straps of his pack. ‘Let’s get on with it, then.’

 

Highson said nothing as they resumed their journey.

 

For a brief instant, as he pulled his own hood tighter around his ears, Sal heard the sound of mocking laughter on the wind, but it was gone before he could ask the others if they had heard it too.

 

* * * *

 

The half-moon cast a cold, silver light over the face of the mountain. The route they followed was less a path than a series of goat tracks occasionally used by humans too. Below, at the base of the cliff, huddled a tiny village where they had paused briefly to reprovision. Its lanterns were barely visible, shuttered against sinister forces supposedly abroad on the mountains: Sal and his companions had been viewed as such, and had never completely earned the villagers’ trust.

 

Kail said that Shilly and the man’kin had taken a route straight up the sheer cliff looming over the small settlement. The man’kin had casually scaled an edifice that Sal could barely climb, let alone quickly enough to catch up. His life in the flat coastal Strand had never prepared him for this. Highson fared little better. Only Kail — with his lifetime of outdoor experience — had any knowledge of climbing, but even he struggled, his Sky Warden training next to useless in the mountains.

 

At the top of the cliff, when they finally reached it, there were no more arguments. Sal was glad to help Highson and Kail unfurl the tent and crawl inside. Sleeping close together for warmth as the wind howled outside, they had no energy for disagreements. There was only well-earned rest, as dreamless and barren as the mountain face itself.

 

That wasn’t true, Sal told himself as he drifted off. Life struggled, but the mountain was no more barren than a desert. Just that day, he had found a spray of bright blue flowers growing from a niche between two giant slabs of black rock. Tiny red ants crawled up and down the flower stems. A fragile spider web connected the two slabs further up. Even in such extreme conditions, nature found its way.

 

He would find a way too. He wouldn’t give up. The man’kin did have to stop eventually, and Shilly with them; she couldn’t climb even a metre with her bad leg the way it was. And when he caught up with her —

 

That was where his thoughts always froze. What happened then? Rescue her? Berate her? Argue with her over how the world would end?

 

Sal thrust all thought of Tom’s prophecy from his mind. He would worry about that later. For now, he needed only to rest.

 

* * * *

 

He woke at dawn. The air inside the tent was thick with the smell of the three unwashed men it sheltered. He could tell from the rhythm of Kail’s breathing that the tracker was also awake. In wordless agreement, they waited until Highson stirred before making any move to rise.

 

Kail may have been the eldest by at least two decades but he wasn’t remotely the weakest. Sal’s father was still recovering from his close encounter with death while chasing the Homunculus across the Strand’s parched hinterland.

 

After breaking their fast and stowing their gear, Kail scouted the top of the cliff in search of the man’kin trail. The broad-brimmed hat he wore in preference to a hood gave him a dark halo and left his face in shadow. Less than a minute passed before he called Sal and Highson over.

 

‘Well, we didn’t lose them,’ he said, pointing out the crushed pebbles and heavy scrapes indicating the passage of their quarry. ‘That’s something.’

 

The way ahead looked easier than yesterday’s climb. That was something else to be thankful for. A winding ridge led up to the meeting point of two broad expanses. There the ridge became a valley that snaked higher up into the massive mountain range. The tracks of the man’kin clearly went that way, stretching to the limit of Sal’s sight. The sun was still hidden behind the mass of stone to the east; more tracks would become apparent towards noon, when the day was at its brightest. They would reach the valley by then, if Sal’s new knowledge of mountain trekking could be trusted. Should any surprises lie in wait for them there, that would be good timing.

 

‘Let’s get moving,’ he said, not seeing any point in delay. If the way ahead was easier for them, it would also have been easier for the man’kin.

 

Highson tipped the dregs of his tea onto the grey stone. Thick stubble painted his dark face black and grey. ‘What day is this?’

 

‘Day six.’ Kail shrugged into his pack and flexed his long limbs. His dark eyes perfectly matched the stony vista around them.

 

‘My calluses are getting calluses.’ Sal’s father stowed his cup in his pack and lifted it onto his shoulders. ‘Okay. I’m ready.’

 

Sal brought up the rear, watching his footing on the ridge as closely as he would have on a cliff. The slopes to either side were steep and the safety rope connecting him to Highson and Kail would mean little if he dragged them both after him.

 

The steady crunching of their footsteps on cold stones was the only sound they made that morning.

 

* * * *

 

At noon, on schedule, they reached the entrance to the valley and stopped briefly to reconsider their options. A chill wind blew from far above down the V-shaped channel of stone, directly into their faces. Yet another thing that wouldn’t have bothered the man’kin, Sal thought. The skin of his cheeks was peeling; his eyes felt like pickled onions. The scarf wrapped around his face barely kept the worst of it at bay.

 

Looking up the valley to where the pallid sun was peering down the face of the mountains, a trick of perspective made him feel profoundly dizzy, as though the world were turning upside down. He staggered back a step, into Kail, and looked hastily at the ground.

 

‘You’re feeling it too, huh?’ The tracker’s chapped lips formed the words without any sign of surprise or dismay. ‘Mountain fever, my teacher used to call it. Never thought I’d experience it myself.’

 

Highson was panting heavily. ‘Can’t seem to catch my breath.’

 

‘It’s going to get worse,’ Kail declared. ‘We need to watch out for each other. At the slightest sign of real disability, we stop to rest.’

 

‘Is there anything else we can do?’ asked Sal, thinking of the man’kin’s lead.

 

‘Yes. Give up and turn back.’

 

‘No.’

 

‘I knew you were going to say that.’ Kail took a swig from his water bottle. ‘You do need to be aware, however, that it remains an option.’

 

‘Not for me. You can turn back if you want to, but I’m going on.’

 

‘You can’t do this on your own,’ said Highson from beneath his hood.

 

‘I will if I have to.’

 

‘That would be stupid. You’d kill yourself.’

 

Anger flared in Sal like kindling bursting into flame. ‘Don’t you tell me what’s stupid or not. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. I’d be back home in Fundelry with Shilly, safe and warm. There’d be no Homunculus, no man’kin, no fucking mountains to climb. Why couldn’t you have stayed in the Haunted City like you were supposed to?’

 

‘You know why, Sal.’

 

‘Sure. My mother. You should have given up on her like you did before.’

 

Highson stared up at him, unblinking. ‘I tried to save her for you.’

 

‘No. Don’t lie about that. You have no idea what I wanted. You tried to bring her back for you.’

 

‘For both of us, then. Do you blame me for trying?’

 

Sal threw his hands up in exasperation, at himself and at Highson both. What was the point in going over this? His mother was long dead. Only Highson with his bold and stupid plan of resurrecting her from the Void Beneath had thought otherwise. If he hadn’t built the Homunculus to act as her new body, the twins would have had nowhere to go. And if the twins hadn’t left the Void Beneath…

 

‘We’re back here again,’ said Kail, watching them both with hands on hips. ‘What is it with you two and blame? In the long run, it doesn’t make any difference.’

 

‘It makes all the difference,’ said Sal.

 

‘No, it doesn’t. If you get to my age, you’ll realise. And you’ll never get to my age if you go charging up this mountain on your own. Highson’s right on that score and I think you know it.’

 

Sal looked down at his feet. The emotions boiling in him were hard to control sometimes, but he rarely exploded so violently. Mountain fever clearly didn’t improve his temper.

 

‘Do you really think we should go back?’ he asked Kail.

 

‘I don’t, Sal. I never said I did.’ The tracker’s long face was even more weathered than usual. In just five days, the trek had added new lines around his mouth and eyes. He too was recovering from injury; sometimes that showed in a certain stiffness when he moved. ‘I want to see where the man’kin are heading as much as you do.’

 

‘Good.’ Sal felt bad, then, for getting angry. Highson and Kail were on his side. They weren’t his enemies.

 

Something obscured the sun for a split second. He looked up, expecting to see clouds overhead. But the sky was clear of any but the faintest wisps, as it had been since they’d emerged from the cloud-line the previous day. Perfectly clear, in fact.

 

Now my eyes are going, he told himself.

 

‘Let’s rest,’ he said, tugging the pack from his shoulders with a sigh and stretching out flat on the ground. Even through numerous layers of clothing the stone was cold against his back and backside, but it helped clear his head. Six days of walking and climbing were just the beginning: he had to tell himself that or else the next six might drive him mad, for it could well take him that long or more to catch up with Shilly. However, the chance remained that the man’kin’s destination was just at the end of this valley, or perhaps the next one. He might stumble across her tomorrow or the day after. Hope warred with despair, leaving him feeling very battered between them.

 

Somehow he nodded off, and woke to Kail’s hand shaking his shoulder. Less than half an hour had passed but his muscles seemed to have completely seized. Hobbling like an old man, he set off after the others under sunlight so weak he could barely feel its warmth on his cheeks.

 

* * * *

 

The beast surprised them shortly after nightfall. At the summit of the valley, the path had soon devolved into a series of switchbacks and rockfalls, the latter probably triggered by the man’kin as they had passed through. Negotiating them consumed a large proportion of the fading light and left Sal and his companions even more exhausted than they had been the previous night. The Change was strong in them, but there were limits. The wardens in particular had little dominion over stone, leaving Sal to do any heavy lifting required.

 

By mirrorlight there was only so much progress to be made. Even Sal could see that. Disturb the wrong rockpile and the whole mountainside could come down on top of them as it had for Kail not so long ago.

 

Wiping his dusty gloves on his outermost pants and wishing, not for the first time, for a hot bath, Sal took the tent roll from Kail and prepared to unfold it.

 

A rattle of stones from further uphill prompted him to look up. A pair of wide eyes gleamed back at him. Seen, the creature abandoned stealth and bounded downslope towards the camp. Barely had Sal uttered a warning cry when it lifted off all fours and leapt right for him.

 

Reflected light flared from sharp claws and teeth. The animal landed bodily on Sal, knocking him clear off his feet and squeezing the air from his lungs. Hot fluid gushed over him. His mouth filled with a salty copperiness that instantly made him gag. For too long he flailed helplessly at the beast before remembering the Change. He was weak after the day’s exertions, but strong enough. With a flash of burning fur and blood, the beast flew away from him and into solid stone. The smack of its flesh sickened him as much as the taste of its blood.

 

Hands clutched at him. ‘Sal, are you all right?’ Highson pulled him to his feet.

 

Sal pushed the hands away. ‘I — I think so. Goddess!’ He spat. By the light of a brightly shining mirror, he wiped at his face and chest. Blood as black as the sky above had soaked through layers of wool almost as far as his skin. ‘What happened? What is that thing?’

 

The body lay limp on its side five metres away. ‘It’s a Shiva bear,’ said Kail, crossing to inspect it. ‘A hungry one, by the look of it. They normally hunt on moonless nights. This one must’ve been desperate.’

 

Just an animal, then. Sal had feared that they’d encountered more wraiths, or worse, but this creature was little larger than a big dog, with shaggy reddish fur and a broad snout. Nothing more sophisticated than a bow and arrow could have killed it.

 

Highson still fussed at him, as though unwilling to accept his word that he was okay. ‘It came out of nowhere. Habryn threw something. A knife, I think.’

 

They both turned to look at the tracker. He had bent over the corpse and pulled a slender steel blade from its throat. Sal swallowed, amazed by the man’s speed and accuracy. ‘You know these things?’ he asked.

 

‘By reputation.’ The tracker ambled back, his eyes avoiding the light, taking in the night all around them instead. ‘They travel in pairs.’

 

‘We’d better be more careful then,’ said Highson. ‘If that thing had got its mouth around Sal’s throat…’

 

Sal brushed away his father’s concern, irritated by it as much as he was at his own incompetence. He should have reacted as quickly and as capably as Kail. He might need to in the future in order to survive the journey.

 

‘Well, it didn’t,’ he said, startled by the brusqueness of his tone, ‘so let’s not make a big deal of this. We’re tired. We were taken by surprise.’ Maybe, he thought, I have been pushing us too hard. Bruises were already making themselves felt where the bear had hit him and he had fallen on his arse. ‘We won’t make that mistake again.’

 

‘And look on the upside,’ said Kail, his teeth gleaming. ‘We’ve gained some fresh meat. I think there’ll be enough on its bones to feed the three of us tonight. It won’t take me long to butcher it.’

 

Sal swallowed automatic revulsion, telling himself that cooked bear meat was bound to taste better than its blood. ‘We could light a fire,’ he said. ‘Have a proper meal, for a change.’

 

‘We could.’ Kail nodded. ‘You two keep watch, just in case the mate is lurking around somewhere. The fire might not keep it away for long, if it’s as hungry as this one was.’

 

Highson kept his pocket mirror radiating at full strength while Kail went about his grisly job away from the campsite. Once their packs were placed at the centre of their impromptu campsite, Sal began looking for something to burn. There wasn’t much, but it did exist. The bulk of the heat could come from the suitable stones he gathered, but there would certainly need to be real flames on top of them, and real smoke. They would all feel better for meat cooked properly.

 

The small blaze was crackling happily by the time Kail returned with the first cuts from the dismembered beast. The smell of it roasting sent saliva rushing through Sal’s mouth. He had to force himself not to look at the fire and concentrate on the darkness around them instead. He saw and heard nothing untoward. Perhaps, he thought, the scent of blood had frightened the bear’s mate off. Nevertheless, he agreed with Kail that watches should be posted through the night, just in case it found the three of them sound asleep.

 

Sal ate until he could physically eat no more then settled back in his bedroll. He felt warmer with the soothing sound of flames in his ears, even if the wind was cold and his cheeks and toes ached; insulating charms stitched into collars and blankets helped as well.

 

When Kail volunteered to take first watch, Sal had been happy to accept the offer. His body remained tender from the attack of the bear, and a headache was building in his temples. He drifted off into blackness with the thought that bear meat had been nothing like lamb or rabbit, but a vast improvement on the tough jerky they had picked up in the village below…

 

Highson shook him awake after midnight. The night was dark and clear. A thin wind moaned eerily through the switchbacks, setting Sal’s teeth on edge. That and a slight queasiness brought on by too much food made staying awake easy. Even when his two hours were up, he delayed a little longer to give Kail some extra rest. The tracker slept with a pinched, pained expression on his face, as though worrying in his dreams. Highson’s face was barely visible at all, with little more than his nose showing from inside the bedroll.

 

When Sal finally returned to bed, barely an hour remained before dawn. He fell instantly and deeply asleep, and woke only when a light rain misted over his face. He blinked, startled, and sat bolt upright in his bedroll.

 

The sun was up, but the camp was silent. Highson lay beside him, snoring peacefully. Kail had slumped over where he sat by the fire, which smoked thinly under the half-hearted shower. Between them, the contents of their packs lay spread out across the stony ground. Something had thoroughly rummaged through them, leaving clothes, supplies and equipment in disarray.

 

Sal’s cry of alarm woke Kail with a start.

 

‘What?’ The tracker took in the ruin of their camp with one sweeping glance. He looked equal parts haggard and appalled. ‘How did this happen?’

 

Sal left that question unanswered. He was already sorting through the scattered items, dividing them into three piles in an attempt to see what was missing. It seemed obvious that Kail had nodded off during his watch, leaving the camp exposed, but he didn’t want to openly accuse the tracker of anything, especially after the previous day’s discussion about blame.

 

‘Was it the bear?’ asked Highson, emerging sleepily from his bedroll.

 

‘No.’ Kail had stood on cracking limbs and was staring in puzzlement at the ground around the camp. ‘Bears don’t use charms. Not in my experience, anyway.’

 

Sal followed the direction of Kail’s gaze and saw too the black circle enclosing the campsite. Arcane symbols surrounded the circle, drawn, Sal realised, just outside the warm glow cast by the fire. ‘Is that charcoal?’

 

‘Yes.’ Kail looked angry, now.

 

‘I recognise these signs,’ said Highson. ‘Whoever drew them wanted to keep us quiet while they took what they wanted. What’s missing, Sal? Give us the bad news.’

 

That was the odd thing. ‘Nothing,’ he said, checking through their belongings one more time to make sure. ‘It seems to be all here. Even the bear meat. Nothing’s been taken.’

 

‘That doesn’t make sense.’ Highson squatted next to him to double-check.

 

‘I agree, but there it is.’ Sal ran a hand through his long hair. ‘It could be worse. We could have been murdered in our sleep.’ Despite the evidence of the charm, part of him was still annoyed at Kail for letting this happen. If Upuaut had been behind this particular gambit, or something even nastier… ‘What about tracks?’ he asked Kail. The tracker had stepped outside the circle to inspect the stone surrounding it. ‘Can you tell who or what did this?’

 

The tracker shook his head. ‘There are some marks over here —’ He pointed back the way they had come, where a shelf of rock overhung the path downhill. ‘I can’t tell what made them. It was big, whatever it was.’

 

‘A man’kin?’

 

Kail shrugged.

 

‘Do you think one of them could have doubled back on us?’ asked Highson.

 

‘It’s possible,’ Sal said. ‘Why, though, I don’t know.’

 

‘We were being tested,’ said Kail, looking now at the jagged stone surfaces above and around them. ‘Someone wanted to know more about us than they could tell at a distance.’

 

‘That seems an awful lot of trouble to go to,’ said Highson.

 

‘I can’t think of another explanation.’ The tracker sighed. ‘Not one that makes any sense.’

 

‘How do we stop it happening again?’ asked Sal.

 

‘I don’t think it’ll happen again. Whoever did this learned everything they needed to know. If they’d wanted to hurt us, they would’ve done it when they had the chance.’

 

‘Even so…’ Sal bit back a sharp retort. ‘They might change their mind. Or it could be someone else, next time. I don’t think we have any choice but to take precautions.’

 

‘Yes, that’s fair.’ Kail turned his gaze on him. ‘I’ll think about it during the day. In the meantime we should get moving again. We’ve slept in so we’re already running behind.’

 

‘Yes.’ The passage of time worried Sal almost as much as the violation of their security. Not only were they already late to set out, but now they had to repack everything. He set about the task with dismal determination. His fear of falling further and further behind Shilly was now compounded by this new fear: that someone was following them. A distinct feeling that he was being watched only made matters worse, and it kept him looking back the way they had come or up at the mountainside ahead, although not once did he see anything out of the ordinary.

 

Hardly reassured, he shouldered his burden when the others were ready and they continued on their way.

 

* * * *

 

Habryn Kail walked furiously in the footsteps of the man’kin, conscientiously noting the comings and goings of familiar tracks. The broad round feet that left deep indentations or crushed pebbles probably belonged to the Angel, the large man’kin Sal and Shilly had met in the forests. Others were smaller: clawed stone feet with three toes; flat pads that seemed to have no toes at all; at least one set of Panic prints visible in patches of soft earth; and human tracks that didn’t all belong to Shilly. It proved, as always, a challenging study, and was occasionally sufficient to distract him from the issue weighing most on his mind.

 

Not an hour went by in which Kail didn’t berate himself for falling asleep on his watch that morning. His lack of care profoundly unsettled him, charm or no charm. But for dumb luck, he and his companions should have been dead and cold hours ago. There was no getting around that.

 

Sal and Highson knew it too. That was the worst part. He had let them down in the worst possible fashion. For a while, he considered suggesting that he should turn back — beaten by age, frailty, incompetence — before convincing himself of the ridiculousness of that plan. He had only made one mistake, and they would need him in the coming days. Neither Sal nor Highson possessed the skills of tracking and foraging that he did, and they would rely on those, and more, as the path became steeper and more rugged in the days ahead. There was no getting around that.

 

Before the day was halfway done, with the sun peering over the crest of the mountains and scattering the last wisps of cloud that had dogged them all morning, the ground kicked beneath them, as it had on several occasions during their tortuous ascent. Kail froze, listening carefully. A sustained rumble that might have been thunder echoed along a nearby canyon. It grew louder instead of fading away. The ground beneath him began to shake again, and his palms broke out into a sweat.

 

Avalanche.

 

He had no memory of the landslide that had almost killed him ten days earlier, but he knew enough to be afraid. He turned to face the others. The looks on their faces told him that they had realised too. Sal looked up, seeking the source of the noise, but echoes made it hard to find. Instead, Kail looked for shelter, and found some in the form of a narrow crack between a canted slab of rock and the cliff it leaned against. Pointing, he urged Highson and Sal ahead of him, noting distractedly how similar they looked when they ran. They weren’t good sprinters but they possessed incredible stamina, as the uphill trek readily proved.

 

The rumble grew louder. Kail slipped into the crack after his two companions and held his breath with them. The landslide didn’t have to hit them to end their lives. Burying them in the crack would be enough, unless Sal could find a way out. The thought of being entombed again held no appeal at all.

 

The roar of falling stone peaked and began to ebb. They saw no sign of it from their cramped hiding place. Still, Kail waited until only echoes remained before even considering stepping outside.

 

He had half-expected the landscape to have completely rearranged itself — the noise had been so loud — but nothing appeared changed at all. Feeling slightly foolish, he suggested a quick stop to settle their nerves.

 

Sal would have none of it. ‘No,’ he said, ‘we’ve delayed enough already today.’

 

Kail didn’t argue, although the tightness across his chest urged him to. Warden Rosevear’s Change-rich salves were doing a good job of repairing the wound inflicted on him by the Swarm, but the endless climbing and the heavy pack he wore were taking their toll. He would never admit it to Sal — who, he was sure, had a pretty good idea of how much the wound still bothered him, since nothing much escaped those blue-flecked eyes — but the thought of sitting down for an hour sounded like a pretty good approximation of paradise.

 

They hiked on, following the trail of the man’kin and keeping their ears open for any secondary rockfalls that the first might have triggered. The journey was uneventful until they rounded a knife-like spur surmountable only by leaping from one smaller boulder to another. There, as Kail lifted the brim of his hat to take in the way ahead, he saw just how simply and thoroughly Sal’s plans had been thwarted.

 

The source of the avalanche lay far above them. Whatever caused it had sent a vast shelf of ice and snow crashing hundreds of metres down the relatively bare mountainside below. The dirty white scar left in its wake stretched right across the man’kin’s path, fanning out as it hit less precipitous terrain below. For a worryingly large distance, the trail was buried under metres of unstable debris.

 

‘This isn’t good,’ said Highson.

 

‘That’s stating the obvious,’ Kail muttered. Mindful of any sudden loud noises, he trotted to the nearest edge of the avalanche’s wake. Sure enough, the trail vanished under it and showed no signs of emerging. Even the shape of the terrain beneath was difficult to make out.

 

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Sal, tugging back his hood to expose his horrified face. ‘This can’t be happening.’

 

Kail watched him closely. The young man was perpetually poised on the brink of violence, to himself and those around him, and that only worsened when he became upset. Ever since Shilly’s disappearance, he had been bottling his emotions under incredible pressure. The Change boiled around him like a stormy sea.

 

Now he had turned pale and stood without moving, eyes fixed on the devastation before them. His hands shook only slightly, but revealingly.

 

‘Nothing’s going right. Maybe we should turn back.’

 

‘Hey,’ said Highson, looking at him in surprise. ‘You don’t really mean that.’

 

‘Don’t I? If we hadn’t been held up this morning, we’d be under that pile right now.’

 

That was a sobering thought. ‘We always knew this climb was going to be dangerous,’ Kail said.

 

‘Maybe I didn’t. How could I have? I’ve never been on a mountain before. I’ve never tracked man’kin moving at speed. I’ve never had to worry about freezing in my sleep, or being eaten by a bear.’ Sal rounded on him. ‘Can you tell me it’s going to be any easier from here? That we’ve survived this long by skill, not luck?’

 

‘I think we should take that rest stop we talked about earlier,’ said Kail, not wanting to agree with Sal under these circumstances. He too shared the certainty that all hope of finding Shilly was now lost — unless they could shift several thousand tonnes of debris in a matter of hours, and he doubted if even Sal in a bad mood was capable of such a feat.

 

Highson agreed immediately. ‘That’s a good idea. My nerves could definitely use some settling.’

 

‘It won’t make any difference,’ said Sal woodenly. ‘At least if we turn back, it’s downhill all the way.’

 

Kail untied the water from his hip and took a deep swig. He needed to think. There might be a way around this situation. The man’kin’s tracks would resume on the far side of the avalanche’s trail of debris. All they had to do was find them and they could move on. Yes, it would remain dangerous, and probably become more so the higher they went. But giving up at the first serious hurdle wasn’t in his nature. And it wasn’t in Sal’s, either.

 

A new thought occurred to him. What if the avalanche had been triggered deliberately to put them off the trail? That was a possibility he couldn’t afford to ignore. But who might do such a thing? The man’kin themselves?

 

Kail understood, then, exactly what was going through Sal’s mind. Shilly had gone willingly with the man’kin. Perhaps she didn’t want to be found by anyone, Sal included.

 

Kail felt for him. ‘This was an accident,’ he told Sal, putting a hand on his shoulder that was instantly shrugged away. ‘We’ll find her. Don’t worry.’

 

‘You won’t,’ said a voice from above them. ‘And your young friend is right. You have every reason to worry.’

 

Sal, Highson and Kail instantly turned. The Change turned with them, kicking up an expanding bubble of dust and pebbles. Highson put himself physically between Sal and possible attack and formed an open-handed Y with his outstretched arms and body. Kail tugged off his right glove to free his fingers.

 

On top of the spur of rock they had just passed sat a strange figure, a manlike thing with qualities that weren’t entirely human. The size of a small child, with an underfed, bony look, his face was narrow, as though squashed between two hands. His blade-like nose had a sharp upward bow to it, like a skinning knife, and his eyes formed a disconcerting V to either side. His mouth was pursed in a piercingly sharp smile.

 

‘I won’t hurt you,’ said the figure, ‘unless you give me good reason to.’

 

‘Stay back,’ warned Highson.

 

‘Oh, I will. I can smell you from here.’

 

‘Who are you?’

 

‘I’m Pukje, and I’ve come to do you a favour. In fact, I’ve already done you a favour, although you might not see it that way. I’ve been watching you for a while now. You’re determined to get yourselves killed, aren’t you? Perhaps I should let you, but I feel oddly compelled to offer you my aid instead. I have these flashes of selflessness occasionally. One day I’ll get them seen to.’

 

‘You’re the one who searched our camp last night,’ guessed Kail, not believing for a second that the creature’s motives were so ill-defined.

 

‘What if I am? I did you no harm.’

 

‘You want something from us,’ Kail persisted. ‘Something you didn’t find, otherwise you would’ve just robbed us and moved on. What is it?’

 

‘Wouldn’t you like to know, warden man?’ The creature’s eyes narrowed and his smile became markedly malicious. ‘It’s not in that pouch around your neck, if that’s what you’re wondering. I took a good look at your pretty bauble while you snored on. Do you have any other secrets you’d like to share with the group? Who Vania is, perhaps, and why you carry her letter with you everywhere you go?’

 

Kail felt himself flush from the top of his head down to his chest. ‘That’s none of your business.’

 

The creature laughed. When his mouth opened, Kail saw no teeth. ‘You have nothing I want except your business.’

 

‘Pukje.’ Sal spoke the unfamiliar name with deliberate emphasis: Pook-yay. ‘We don’t have time for this. If you’ve got something to tell us, get it over with and let us do what we have to do.’

 

‘I know why you’re here,’ said the creature, sobering. ‘I know who you’re looking for. I know where they’re going, and I know you’re too late to get there in time.’

 

‘How can you know all this?’ asked Highson.

 

‘I have eyes and ears, and other senses,’ said Pukje. ‘I use them.’

 

‘Will you tell us where they’re going?’ said Sal.

 

‘I can do better than that, Sal. I can take you there.’

 

‘Why?’

 

‘Out of the goodness of my heart.’

 

‘We don’t even know you’ve got a heart,’ said Highson.

 

Casually, and as lightly as a leaping possum, Pukje jumped down from his perch. Although he was barely a metre tall, the sudden move prompted the three men to scatter. Kail had a bola spinning in his right hand before Pukje landed and started brushing himself down. What Kail had taken to be skin was in fact a grey-green covering of some kind, like felt or densely-compacted moss.

 

‘I’m not human, gentlemen,’ Pukje said. ‘That should be immediately obvious to you. But I’m not without feelings you’d recognise: compassion, curiosity and fear among them. I do have a heart of flesh and blood, and it will stop as surely as yours if Yod ever breaks loose in this world.’ One canted eyebrow raised at their reactions to the name. ‘Yes, the ancient enemy. I’ve been around. I’ve seen a few things. You’d be wrong to assume I don’t have my own agenda — but for the moment it’s aligned with yours. You might as well take advantage of that fact while it lasts. I know, and you should be suspecting it by now, that I’m your only chance of getting up these mountains alive.’

 

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Sal, tight-lipped.

 

‘Why do young men always ask stupid questions?’ Pukje strolled close to Sal and stared up at him. Although the impish creature barely reached Sal’s waist, his presence was such that they seemed to be talking eye to eye. ‘You remind me of someone I knew a long time ago. Someone else caught in a situation well beyond his knowledge, but not his ability. He changed the world, him and his brother. You might have heard of them: the twins Castillo.’

 

Sal’s indrawn breath was audible in the still air. ‘You’re talking about Hadrian and Seth.’

 

Pukje smiled. ‘Hadrian once carried me up a mountain, in a manner of speaking — just as you’re about to let me carry you. I’ll show you the way to the top, as I showed him, because that’s where you have to go. That’s the intersection; the meeting point of everything. The beginning and the end; the cusp between this world and the next. You need to be there, but the way you’re going won’t take you. You need a short cut, like the one I have in mind.’

 

‘A short cut.’ Sal’s scepticism was obvious. ‘What sort of short cut?’

 

‘The only sort that matters. One that will get you where you need to be in a manner appropriate to your needs.’ The hungry little smile widened. ‘Trust me. I’m offering you your only chance of seeing this done. Take it or you really might as well turn back — and say goodbye to your beloved Shilly forever.’

 

Sal bunched his fists at the strange creature’s threatening tone. A gust of unnatural wind swept down the mountainside, spinning around the two of them and buffeting Kail with freezing dust. Sal’s dark hair swirled around his head. His eyes glittered.

 

‘Shilly’s not mine. She’s her own person, which is exactly how we got into this mess. If she’d only give us a sign. If she’d only explain!

 

Sal stopped and shook his head. His long hair hung down over his forehead like a veil. When he opened his eyes again, they were clear.

 

‘All right. I’ll go with you and take my chances as they come.’

 

‘Sal, wait —’ Highson stepped forward with his hand raised.

 

‘Don’t argue, Highson. I have to do this. And you’re not coming with me.’

 

‘No. Really no, now.’ Sal’s father’s face flushed with anger. ‘You’re being stupid as well as reckless.’

 

The wind swept higher. ‘I said, don’t argue. It has to be like this.’

 

‘It doesn’t. I haven’t come this far to let you leave without me, and I’m not going back to Milang without you. There’s only one other option, Sal.’

 

The air suddenly stilled, freezing into swirling vortices and tangled currents that dissolved away in bitter silence. Kail felt father and son’s clash of wills echoed by the Change in the world around them.

 

Pukje’s low chuckle broke the silence. ‘Looks like you’re the tiebreaker, Habryn Kail. What say you? Where does your heart lead?’

 

Back home, he thought instantly to himself, to the low, dry flatlands of the Strand, where mountainsides don’t collapse and water — what little there was — stayed comfortably liquid. Where his duties were simple and well defined, and the world might end between one day and the next but he would know nothing about it beforehand. Free of dread and doubt, he could live his life as he had always wanted, no matter how short it might be.

 

He suppressed a sudden apprehension. The bola was still spinning. Its insistent hum was an anchor to the present, to what he needed to say.

 

‘We’re with you, Sal,’ he said, ‘whether you choose to follow Pukje, or try to find the trail here, or go back the way we came. Shilly would want it that way.’ As you well know, he added silently to himself.

 

Sal bowed his head and some of the tension left the air. ‘If you both end up dead, I’ll blame her.’

 

‘I wouldn’t worry about that. Anything that gets both of us is going to get you too.’ Kail forced a smile. ‘You’re not that strong.’

 

‘This has nothing to do with strength,’ said Pukje in serious tones. ‘It’s about being in the right place at the right time. It’s about symmetry and shape, and geometry. Give me a lever long enough and I’ll prove to you that strength is nothing more than an illusion — an illusion that can kill, gentlemen. Don’t let me hear you making that mistake again.’

 

With that, Pukje turned to face the precipice on their right and took a running jump out into space.

 

Sal gaped in shock as the little creature dropped from sight. Highson cried out. Kail had no time to do more than take two steps towards the edge, already dreading what he would see.

 

A large beast rose up in front of him, grey-green wings cracking mightily.

 

‘Now,’ it said in Pukje’s voice, ‘let’s get this show on the road.’

 

* * * *

 

The Crone

 

 

‘For every present there are many futures,

distinguished by details as small as a cough or as

large as a Cataclysm. There are many pasts, too,

just as many roads can have the same destination.

And for every discrete now, there are a multitude

of other nows, all existing side by side with the

one we know, related but not connected to each

other. This is the world-tree, revealed to us in all

its glory when we die and enter the Third Realm.’

 

SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

 

 

he sun was a bloated red ball in the sky, too bright to gaze into directly but casting little heat and no comfort at all across the blasted landscape below. Shilly had stopped looking at it long ago, keeping her head bowed as she hobbled along the open sections of the ravine. When she reached shade, she stopped to take a breather.

 

Ever since the sun had stopped moving across the sky, light had become a baleful force in the world. Only shadows and darkness offered sanctuary. Night was an alien concept, a dream she occasionally woke from with wet cheeks, like the dreams of Sal that still plagued her after so many long years.

 

She walked the ravine once a week, going from her workshop to the struggling community where the people traded precious supplies for her remedies and advice. No one ever offered to help carry the supplies back for her. She was on her own in the Broken Lands as far as the villagers were concerned, and most of the time she liked it that way. But every now and again, with her back aching and her bad leg on fire, she pined for a little more generosity of spirit in the world. The track seemed longer every time she walked it, although she supposed that said more about her advancing years than the route itself. But, on the positive side, the weight of her supplies shrank as she got older and ate less. Maybe one day, she idly thought, she’d become so thin she wouldn’t need to eat at all.

 

‘Death would be a relief,’ she said aloud, for the benefit of ears not her own. ‘For me and everyone.’ She raised a gnarled fist and shook it above her head, to where the sun would have been were she not still in shade. ‘Damn you and all your ugly friends. Why don’t you just finish us off and be done with it?’

 

The anger faded just as fast as it had flared, leaving her feeling more tired than ever. She clutched the walking stick Sal had carved for her — also much the worse for wear now — and braved the burning glare outside the sheltering overhang once more. Its heat was the heat of fever and pestilence, not life. Her skin crawled under its touch. She hissed a percussive, urgent rhythm as she walked, telling herself to hurry, to get out of sight as quickly as possible, to avoid drawing attention to herself, to make it home one more time without the sun’s diseased eye focussing down on her and seeing her for what she was, at last.

 

She was drenched in sweat and aching all over by the time the end of the ravine came in sight. Upon reaching it, she turned right and walked a dozen metres, sticking close to the rubble-strewn cliff that overlooked the desert beyond. Nothing lived in the desert. Nothing she wanted to meet, anyway.

 

At a struggling bush she stopped and poked her walking stick into the ground. When it hit resistance, she twisted it half a turn clockwise. With a gentle sigh, a hole opened in the cliff and closed behind her when she walked through it. Following a well-worn path down a short, rough-hewn corridor, she entered the welcoming, cool space of her underground workshop.

 

It was smaller than the one she had inherited from Lodo, or seemed so at first glance. Her living area was little more than a cave containing a niche for her to sleep in and several low cupboards for instruments and books. A mage had made it for her, years ago, before his betrayal and murder. The space-bending Way that connected it to the edge of the desert was short, but it was enough distance to divert Yod’s dogs from finding her as well. Ways were difficult to trace if they led underground.

 

The air was musty and smelt of old woman. A feeble spring sent a muddy trickle of water down the wall which she channelled into a ewer. She was able to filter the worst of the muck out of it and drink it cold, straight from the container.

 

Sometimes pieces of the ceiling fell on her, dislodged by distant tremors. But the place had its uses, and not just as a shelter.

 

She had chosen it over her former home for one simple reason.

 

Putting down her supplies for unpacking later, she did what she always did after spending any time outside and went to inspect her unfinished masterwork.

 

At the rear of the workshop was a curtain draped over a narrow crack that led deeper underground. She slid through the curtain and the crack with a grace that belied her years. Her posture straightened by several degrees. Many times a day she made that short journey, down into the caves she had discovered long years ago. Undisturbed by humans, they had been inhabited by a solitary crumbling man’kin who had befriended her for reasons of its own. A tiny hunched monk with big eyes and a hint of curling beard, he answered to the name Bartholomew.

 

The same man’kin awaited her at the bottom of the crack.

 

‘Give us some light,’ she said.

 

Bartholomew struck a dissonant brass gong. As the sound propagated through the enormous chamber, an expanding field of tiny glowstones sprang to life. Each hung by silk threads from the ceiling, spun by worms trained specially for the purpose. The wave of light illuminated a sea of sand below, a sea that stretched from her vantage point to the shadowed edges of the cave, where the glowstones reached their limit. Each handful of sand had been carefully carried by her and Bartholomew from the desert at the end of the Way and placed into this chamber to create a canvas large enough for her to work on. She had initially tried many different methods, but this was the one that came closest to meeting her needs — the same one she had used in Fundelry when first learning how to draw. And even though of late she had begun to wonder if it might be insufficient, it was all she had. Time was running out. It would have to do.

 

Time.

 

She reached up to touch the back of her neck. Her hackles were rising, which could only mean one thing. The girl was back.

 

‘D’you see this?’ she asked, speaking not to Bartholomew but to the empty air, to the one she knew was watching. ‘Are you looking with your eyes open, this time? I haven’t spent my entire life on this just so you can screw it up.’

 

There was no answer. Thus far there hadn’t been, although she could feel the link growing closer every time. True conversation was inevitable at some point. Huffing quietly to herself, Shilly slowly moved her ageing body out onto the sand, stepping delicately across marks she’d made weeks, months, even years before. The resin Bartholomew had applied to the finished sections protected it from footprints, but she still trod lightly over complex whorls and rayed stars, and between sections defined by arterial lines as long and straight as a taut string. She knew every mark of the charm intimately, lovingly. She felt potential radiating from it, even though she herself would never be able to wield it.

 

It took her a gratifyingly long time to reach the centre of the charm from its outermost edge. Her life’s work wasn’t complete, but it still covered a space as large as a small town. She was proud of it, and wished only for the chance to finish it before she died.

 

‘Get it down, girl,’ she said, hearing the disgruntlement in her voice and knowing it came from the ever-present fear of failure. There was no time to be pleasant. ‘Take down every detail. Don’t miss a smudge. You’ll probably have to finish it without me, the way things are going here, so don’t waste this opportunity. It might not come again.’

 

Her weakening eyes watered at the charm’s mind- and space-bending properties. Sometimes when she stood as she was now and just looked at it, letting her eyes skate over its form rather than dive down into its intricacies, she felt awestruck at what she had accomplished. She had always known that she could bring great things into the world, given the chance. Her talent might not have been for the Change itself, as Sal’s had been, but hers had ultimately, in a way, been the most powerful. The Change burned too brightly if used unwisely.

 

Shilly blinked tears from her eyes. Damned charm making them water, she told herself, even though she knew that was a lie. She wanted to tell the watcher to kiss Sal for her, to convey some of the feelings that had been bottled up and preserved for so long. But she held her tongue; she kept it all in. In her world-line, she would never see Sal again. She was used to that idea now, even if the pain never went away.

 

‘Get this right for Sal’s sake,’ she told her younger self in a world where there was still hope.

 

‘He’ll need it, and he’ll need you. And you need him just as badly. Don’t make the mistake I made — not unless you want to end up like me. And who would want that, eh?’

 

Not a ghost of a reply came down the link connecting her to her other self. Brushing the memories and hope aside, along with her fears, she hobbled to the far edge of the resin and dipped the tip of her cane into the soft sand beyond. With smooth, economical gestures, she began once again to draw.

 

* * * *

 

Shilly opened her eyes. The image of a flat expanse of sand etched with lines in a pattern too intense to comprehend briefly overlaid itself onto the broad shelf of perfectly white snow that lay before her, wind-carved into a series of intricate ripples. The colour was wrong, and the temperature was much colder than it had been in the dream, and instead of one tiny man’kin there were dozens all around her, and glowing green people, and an old man who wasn’t quite a man, and —

 

Shilly closed her eyes at the sight of the glassy black figure watching her from the fringes of the group. The glast. She couldn’t deal with him — it — right now. At one sound from those smooth crystal lips she might shatter into a million pieces.

 

‘What did you see?’ asked Tom, brushing her wavy brown hair back from her face. He of all of them understood what it was like to have crazy dreams. ‘How was she, this time?’

 

Not so angry, Shilly thought. That was a change, but she wasn’t sure it counted as an improvement. The awful grief she felt in her future self wasn’t new — she had picked that up before, in fractured, fleeting glimpses — but its cause had never been obvious. Now she knew. In that world, Sal was dead. Her future self had let him down, somehow. That the world was dying seemed a lesser concern against that one hard, unbearable fact.

 

But this other Shilly was bearing it, somehow. She continued with her life’s work: the creation of a charm that was supposed to be important. She endured.

 

Shilly felt a bubble of sorrow swell up inside her. Swallowing it was difficult. This latest dream confirmed so many of her present fears: that Sal was in danger, that the world might not be saved, that all her efforts could yet come to nothing. What would happen to her if she failed to understand the charm in time? Would she become the future self she saw in her dreams, hunched and withered and living in a hole in the ground?

 

The complexities of past and present were too much for her to grasp. It was difficult enough concentrating on the charm alone. That was the point of it all. That was what Tom was really asking. She forced herself to push everything else aside, to swallow the bubble, and answer him as best she could.

 

‘I saw a new section,’ she said, still with her eyes shut.

 

‘Do you think you can get it down?’

 

She nodded. Images of lines and patterns danced in the pinkness of her closed eyelids. She felt the pen and parchment in her hands, poised to draw. The details were difficult to hold in her mind. After five days of concerted effort, she still had little more than disconnected fragments, many dozens of them, with no clear way of putting them together.

 

Her right hand began to move, almost of its own volition. She opened her eyes a crack to follow its progress. Details were all she had, and she would get them down as best she could. For half an hour, all she did was draw, ignoring Tom and the others as though they, too, were in another world — one she was equally happy to forget for the time being.

 

When she was done, she felt exhausted to the very core. Altitude sickness was only part of it. Twice every day, the growing band halted its headlong journey in order to let her sleep in peace. An hour was enough, with the help of Vehofnehu and his strange meditation techniques, for her to dream of her other self. A time of feverish drawing usually followed. Then it would be back onto the man’kin steed she shared with Tom to resume the journey. And somehow, while she slept, their numbers kept on growing…

 

Vehofnehu helped her to her feet and rubbed her mittened hands between his to bring circulation back to her fingertips. She could barely feel them. ‘This is hard for you,’ he said. ‘I know.’ His dark brown eyes were recessed slightly above prominent cheeks and whiskery white hairs, but they radiated nothing but compassion. The corners of his wide mouth were very slightly turned down. His fingers were callused, but long and strong and very warm as they wrapped right around her hands. ‘We are asking a lot. If it wasn’t so important —’

 

‘Yes, yes,’ she said, dismissing his concerns with a weary nod. She was the only one with a link to the distant future. The vision of all the other seers failed beyond a particular point. Even the Holy Immortals, who travelled backwards in time as naturally as humans travelled forward, couldn’t say what happened after that point. That the future Shilly glimpsed appeared to be another life entirely, or was only a possible future rather than a certain one, didn’t devalue its importance. A glimpse was better than nothing.

 

She counted sixteen of the green figures sitting together at the edge of the campsite. She was sure there had been no more than fourteen when she had gone to sleep.

 

‘Are we almost there?’ she asked, aching to tug off all the layers of clothes confining her and feel warm air against her skin again. ‘Please tell me we are.’

 

‘We’ll be at the top no later than tomorrow.’

 

‘Thank the Goddess.’

 

Vehofnehu’s face split into a broad grin. ‘With luck, you’ll be able to in person.’

 

‘And not before time. My arse is killing me,’ she muttered as he let go of her fingers and moved to get the travellers on their feet.

 

‘Here,’ said Tom, pressing a flask into her hands.

 

She drank deeply of the ice-cold water within, then winced at the sudden pain in her temples it provoked. ‘I’m so sick of this,’ she said to no one in particular. ‘There must be a better way to travel.’

 

Their steed thudded mutely over to her and knelt forward on two legs. A broad-backed statue with a wildly maned bestial head and thick tail, it had an unerring ability to find toeholds in even the sheerest of cliffs. Its claws dug deep into slippery ice walls. Thus far, it hadn’t even tripped once.

 

But its back was hard, even through the blankets bound around its waist, and the straps that held her and Tom in place were tight by necessity. There had been numerous traverses during which she had kept her eyes tightly shut for fear of slipping free and plunging to her death. When she dozed in transit, she dreamed of wild leaps across crevasses and hanging upside down over bottomless pits.

 

The grief of her future self encouraged her to stop complaining and mount her ride. Anything would be better than enduring that fate. A small sacrifice now might make all the difference. What was a little discomfort when the future of the world was at stake?

 

She felt someone watching her, and turned to see the glast’s white-pupilled eyes fixed in her direction. A chill went through her, colder than the bitter air of the mountains. She forced herself to ignore it, as she had before, while climbing awkwardly onto her steed’s back. Arranging her lame leg so it wouldn’t cramp, she fastened herself in, then waited patiently for Tom to do the same. His long frame was bony against her back but welcome when the wind kicked up and tried to steal her heat away.

 

Vehofnehu rode a stone beast he called a ‘lion’, which looked like a giant cat in a fur coat. The Holy Immortals spread themselves among the many other man’kin that had joined the Angel’s band of pilgrims. The Angel itself climbed alone, following routes more suited to its blunt frame. It would meet them at the top, Vehofnehu assured her.

 

Only the glast out of all the non-man’kin had the strength and stamina to keep up without help. She didn’t know where its energy came from, but it seemed inexhaustible. It scurried up the mountain like a glossy, dark-shelled beetle, decorated with the white symbols that had once been Kemp’s tattoos. She was certain the tattoos moved when no one was looking, but that was the least of her problems with it.

 

Upon its awakening — or its birth — three days ago, the glast-Kemp had stood up steadily on two legs. Out of all the people standing around it nervously watching to see what it would do next, it had faced Shilly.

 

It was trying to become one of you, Vehofnehu had said, days earlier, in order to communicate.

 

Instead of speaking, it had opened its mouth and emitted a long, low hiss, as filled with threat as a leaky balloon.

 

The memory of it still made her shudder.

 

‘Here we go again,’ she muttered as the broad back moved under her, and the icy stillness of the mountains was broken by the sound of bouldery footsteps.

 

* * * *

 

After seven days of nonstop climbing, Shilly had become immune to spectacle. Before the sunlight faded, the man’kin procession crossed a river of blue ice, scaled a sheer cliff topped with a crown of snow, and negotiated a field of debris left in the wake of a recent avalanche. The steeds traversed every type of terrain with equal ease, jumping surely or creeping with painstaking care across, around, under or over every imaginable obstacle.

 

Shilly dozed through most of it, and was partly ashamed of herself for doing so. While she hung limp in her saddle, Tom took in everything with eyes wide open.

 

‘I wonder what people back home are doing,’ he said breathlessly in her ear as their steed skated down an ice shelf to more stable footing. She almost didn’t hear him through the scarf protecting her neck from the cold.

 

‘Which home? The Haunted City or Fundelry?’

 

‘Fundelry.’

 

‘Fishing, probably,’ she said. ‘And farming and selling stuff at the market and arguing about stupid things. The usual. Why?’

 

She felt him shrug. ‘I don’t know, Shilly. It just seems we’ve led the most incredible lives. Who’d have thought, all those years ago, when Lodo adopted you and I applied for Selection — who’d have thought we’d end up here, at the top of the world?’

 

‘What happened to the caves of ice and the thing that wants to eat us? That doesn’t sound like much fun.’

 

‘Oh, sure.’ He waved that protest away. ‘But right now, in this present moment, we’re the luckiest people alive.’

 

She didn’t respond to that immediately. It was hard to think through the aches and pains and the second-hand grief from her future self and the fear that she might fail at the task set before her. Once she’d pushed through all that, though, she did see his point. The scenery, and the company she was enjoying it with, were magnificent. If she’d seen herself from a distance, she would have been jealous. That didn’t mean she was wrong to feel less than excited all the time. It just meant that the view from a distance showed less than everything. It didn’t show the scrapes and saddle sores and constant headaches and rising nausea. It didn’t show how it felt to reach out for Sal in the middle of the night and not find him beside her. And it didn’t show their destination, where awakening a Goddess might be the last thing they ever did.

 

‘I didn’t expect to end up here,’ she said, holding on tight as their steed galloped around a boulder set square in its path, ‘but if this was as far as I got, I’d be pretty upset, overall.’

 

‘I don’t think you’d be the only one.’

 

‘Mind you, if we aren’t around to be upset, would it make any difference?’

 

It was Tom’s turn to take his time replying. They bounced roughly over a region of tumbled boulders and icy spurs. When their steed levelled out, she was simply glad to be in one piece.

 

‘I think it does make a difference,’ Tom eventually said. ‘Our lives matter. They have to — or what’s the point?’

 

‘But who or what do they matter to? The Goddess — if she really exists — is asleep, so she obviously doesn’t care much. And The Book of Towers tells us we’re better off without gods in general. If Yod’s a typical example, then I’m inclined to agree. Maybe it’s all just wishful thinking.’

 

‘It would matter to me, Shilly.’

 

‘We’re back where I started. If you’re dead, how can anything matter to you at all?’ She sighed, not wanting to think about the version of herself she saw in her dreams. ‘Maybe there’s no answer.’

 

‘Or no answer we can comprehend.’

 

‘That’s the same thing, from where I’m sitting.’

 

They rode in silence until their next rest stop, an hour later, when they dismounted to stretch their legs and unkink their spines. Her buttocks were completely numb. The procession had reached a plateau abutting a sheer cliff face above them that, apparently, stretched to infinity.

 

‘The last climb,’ Vehofnehu told them, adding that it would probably be the most difficult stretch of all.

 

‘You know we make it, right?’ she asked the gathering in general. ‘Someone’s seen that far ahead?’

 

Vehofnehu put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Do you think we’d be here, otherwise?’ His wry brown eyes didn’t reassure her one iota.

 

Four of the Holy Immortals were fiddling with alphabet tiles not far from her. For the first couple of days, they had been willing to talk, answering her questions before she’d actually asked them, which made for strange and tense conversations. In recent times, however, they had avoided her, averting their faces when she approached and putting the tiles away. This time was no exception.

 

As she watched, two more joined the group. One of them seemed to be weeping, while the other spoke tonelessly in their strange, backwards language. The others looked up at her from beneath their dark-coloured hoods. Thick and warm, they seemed to be doing a far better job of insulating their wearers than all the layers Shilly wore.

 

‘Are they all right?’ she whispered to Vehofnehu.

 

A frown flickered across his oddly wrinkled features. ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. A long time ago, I wove a charm for my friends to help them communicate on their travel backwards through time. It would be a lonely life otherwise, to be so few in number and surrounded by people you couldn’t talk to. Now, that charm is wearing thin, and there’s nothing I can do about it. That saddens me. It doesn’t augur well.’

 

‘Why wouldn’t they want to talk to us?’ Shilly asked, but Vehofnehu only shook his head. Everything about the Holy Immortals puzzled her. The weeping woman refused to look at Shilly. Her hands made strange clutching motions at her hair, which seemed to be growing longer before Shilly’s eyes. Dismayed, Shilly realised that from the woman’s point of view, she was actually tearing out clumps of hair.

 

Vehofnehu checked that Mawson’s straps were tight. ‘Are you comfortable, my friend?’

 

“Kin don’t carry ‘kin,’ was the man’kin’s huffy reply. The high-templed stone bust lay strapped, with dignity wounded, on the back of a stone lizard sporting long horns and a forked tail.

 

‘Well, they do now.’ Vehofnehu clapped him on the chest and moved on.

 

Shilly followed him. ‘What about that?’ she whispered, nodding at the glast. It stood perfectly poised on the tip of an upthrust spur, uncannily as though about to dive off into the air. The sun caught its crystalline body, making it appear to glow from within.

 

‘That, my human girl, is a very good question. One I’m not equipped to answer just yet. The stars are difficult to interpret so far away from my observatory and instruments.’

 

‘Screw the stars,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we just ask it?’

 

‘Why don’t you, Shilly?’ Vehofnehu broke his inspection of the man’kin steeds to turn and face her. ‘Have you tried? Has it given you an answer you can understand?’

 

Shilly felt her face turn red. She had never heard Vehofnehu berate anyone before, and his tone definitely had the sting of reproach in it now. That she deserved it didn’t make the verbal slap any easier to take.

 

‘I — I’m afraid to,’ she said.

 

‘To ask or to hear its answer?’

 

‘Both.’

 

Vehofnehu nodded. ‘Me too, Shilly. Me too.’ One long-fingered hand patted her cheek lightly. ‘One job at a time. Maybe when we reach the top it’ll talk to us, eh?’

 

The Panic empyricist moved off and she let him go. She shot another glance at the glast, and saw it balancing Kemp’s massive frame on the tips of its toes with arms outstretched at shoulder-height.

 

Just jump, she urged it. Go ahead and do it, if that’s what you’re thinking. You’re not wanted here!

 

If it heard her unspoken wish, it didn’t obey. It closed its eyes in alien bliss, and basked in the weak sunlight until it was time to leave.

 

* * * *

 

If climbing during daylight was nerve-racking, climbing at night was positively terrifying. Shilly didn’t know how the man’kin could find their handholds and toeholds by starlight, let alone keep to the route they silently agreed to, but somehow they managed it. She just clung tight to the near-vertical back of her steed and tried not to shake too much. Tom clutching her didn’t help either. With every sway and lurch of the man’kin, she felt him grip a little harder.

 

Midway through the final stretch, a strange sound became audible through the thin night air. It was a woman’s voice, singing. The tune was haunting and exotic, following no familiar rhythm or key. Its words, also, were unfathomable. She wished — not for the first time — that Sal was with her, since he might have recognised it from his travels across the Strand. He might even have joined in, adding his soft baritone to the others now joining the original thread.

 

The Holy Immortals were responsible for the song. Softly, sadly, their voices rose and fell in inconsolable unison. A lament, Shilly thought. That was what it sounded like to her. A song for the dead or dying. She remembered the one she’d seen earlier that day, weeping while others of her kind stood around in shock. What was happening to them? Why, after centuries of being one way, were they suddenly changing?

 

She couldn’t possibly know, and it didn’t seem likely that she would ever find out. She forced herself to put that mystery — along with all the others — out of her mind as best she could. The long climb might be the last chance she had to rest before things reached a head. At the top lay possibly nothing at all, or anything at all, including Yod itself with maw open to swallow the world.

 

She let the plaintive song carry her like the ebbing and flowing of a gentle sea. Her thoughts wandered to Fundelry, to the harbour, and the dunes, and the friends she had left behind there.

 

Leaving home is the hardest thing to do, whispered the voice of her future self, half-in and half-out of her mind.

 

Part of her knew that she wasn’t completely asleep and could wake at any moment, if she wanted to. But she didn’t, not yet. This was the first time she had felt that she could reply, and she wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. Why are you telling me this?

 

You’ll understand later.

 

I don’t want to understand later. I want to understand now.

 

You don’t need to. You have more important things to worry about.

 

I know, I know. Draw the charm, save Sal, stop myself from becoming you… She felt instantly bad for the harshness of her tone. I’m sorry. I know you’re just trying to help.

 

No, no. The response came heavy with infinite weariness. You’re right. You don’t want to become me. Why would you? I don’t want to be me either. It’s not an easy life.

 

Do you have to do it alone? Why don’t you live with other people?

 

How do you know I don’t?

 

Because I’ve seen you, in your workshop. You showed me. There’s just you and Bartholomew —

 

That’s not me. I’m another version of you, Shilly, the one making possible the link between our many selves. Without me, you wouldn’t see anything at all.

 

Shilly’s head spun. Another version of herself? How many could there be?

 

The task before us is too much even for two lifetimes, said this third version of her as though she had read her thoughts. Do you want to know why?

 

She nodded, and a new vision unfolded within her closed eyelids.

 

Undulating orange sand stretched to a shimmering horizon under a sky as blue as coloured glass. The sun burned her head and shoulders, and she felt sweat trickling down her back and between her breasts. She wasn’t as old as she was in the other world; here she might have been no more than forty years, with back straight and hands steady. Her leg still ached, though; that seemed to be a constant, wherever and however she lived.

 

The owner of the eyes she saw through gave her a moment to take in the sudden shift of her perception before swivelling them downward. She saw that she was standing on a giant red stone that protruded from the desert like a pimple from a cheek. Strange signs had been scratched across the stone, forming a charm that was indeed quite different from the one she glimpsed in her other dreams. This one fairly throbbed with power, and she realised belatedly that this Shilly wasn’t alone, as she had hinted. The base of the hill was surrounded by man’kin — hundreds, maybe thousands, of them, of every possible shape and size — all facing inwards with their arms outstretched to touch the stone or, if they couldn’t reach, the backs of those in front of them. The Change rippled through them like liquid heat, focussed inward on the pattern at Shilly’s feet.

 

This charm wasn’t for use in another time and place. This charm was for right then — and right where she really was, climbing up a sheer cliff face like a bug up a wall.

 

Do you see it? asked her other self. Do you see us?

 

I do. It’s… wonderful.

 

It is, and it won’t last long, long enough, though, to do the job, for once in place this charm will reverberate through time. You don’t have to worry about that. We’ve done our job here. We’re not needed any longer. I just wanted to say hello. I wanted you to know that, no matter what happens, you aren’t on your own.

 

Shilly had barely begun to verbalise the first of many questions she had to ask when her other self silenced her.

 

No. Just watch. You don’t have to remember this charm. I’ll work it out in my world, where it’s needed. Just remember that you were equal to the burden placed upon you. You made the sacrifices asked of you. You did everything you could to put yourself in the right place at the right time, and with the right knowledge to do what so many failed to do. Let that knowledge give you the strength we lack. You will need as much strength as you can bear. You cannot fail us, we who are your selves in other worlds, other lives — you mustn’t. You are our hope.

 

Shilly felt tears joining the sweat on her cheeks as her head tilted back and she stared into the sky. The sun hung high above, as red and swollen as in her other future’s world. She felt a moment’s concern for all these people, standing exposed to such a terrible glare. Didn’t they know how dangerous it could be?

 

Then she wondered how she knew it was dangerous, and why.

 

Her hand rose to blot out the sun. With that terrible brightness eclipsed, she could see the sky more clearly. Dark threads stretched across the firmament, radiating and branching from the sun’s bloody disk. The threads pulsed and flexed like veins. She felt faintly sick at the sight of this new strangeness. Something was very wrong with this world. Something fundamental and foul.

 

Hello, Shilly, whispered her other self. Hello and goodbye forever.

 

Out of the obscured disk of the sun came something black and awful. It descended with the speed of a falling mountain — not a thing, or even a shadow, but an emptiness, a hunger. Shilly barely had time to acknowledge its imminence before it swept over her vantage point, taking her, the charmed stone and the people surrounding it in one giant convulsion.

 

Yod, said her future self, and fell silent.

 

Shilly convulsed, thrown back into the frigid discomfort of her real self with a near-physical jolt. The echoes of her sudden, fearful cry came back to her, as sharp and terrified as she felt on the inside. She clutched her man’kin steed so tightly it shook itself as though in irritation.

 

No! she screamed inside her head. No, no, no! This can’t be happening!

 

But there was no consolation in the terrible night. Tom held her awkwardly, certainly aware from her shaking that she was crying and needing comfort, even if he didn’t know what for. A nightmare he probably assumed, and so it certainly had been. But in the world they lived in, nightmares had real currency. They were real. Her future self had died.

 

The tears froze on her cheeks as the Holy Immortals sang on, and the man’kin didn’t pause for rest.

 

* * * *

 

By dawn, they were barely halfway up the cliff. The man’kin made slow progress, mindful of their weight and their delicate passengers over such treacherous terrain. At noon, they finally reached the summit. There, the passengers dismounted and stood shivering in the cold sunlight, staring down into a vast crater half-filled with water. The lake was kilometres across and as blue as the sky. Several small towns dotted its perimeter, each sending slender wooden piers out towards the water’s edge.

 

‘How can it be liquid?’ asked Shilly. ‘Surely it should freeze solid up here.’

 

Tom just shrugged. Under their feet and all along the edge of the crater, snow and ice lay densely packed, where it had obviously lain for centuries. A brisk wind painted feathers of white over the highest points. There was no sign as yet of the Angel.

 

‘Look down there,’ said Vehofnehu, pointing with one long finger towards one of the towns. He handed her a brass spyglass. ‘Do you see?’

 

Shilly took off her mittens. Her hands flinched from the touch of the cold metal. It took her a moment to make out the tiny cluster of buildings he had indicated. They were low and black, made of wood stained with tar or something similar. The few windows they possessed were shuttered tightly against the cold. She was about to ask what Vehofnehu wanted her to see, when movement caught her eye. Someone was coming around a corner, dressed in bulky dark clothing and a beanie. Then a second person, sporting blue robes over similar garb.

 

Her heart sped a little faster. She backtracked with the spyglass to a bulbous shape she had noticed near the town but glossed over in order to focus on the more obvious landmark. The shape was squatting low on the ground and swaying gently from side to side.

 

‘Do you see it now?’ asked the empyricist. ‘The balloon?’

 

‘Yes,’ she said, wondering if Sal was among the people down there. Only the Panic flew balloons like that, and that robe had been the blue of a Sky Warden.

 

‘Good.’ Vehofnehu took the spyglass from her. His smile was wide and his eyes sparkled. ‘Because we’re going to steal it.’

 

* * * *

 

The Death

 

 

‘Some say the Lady sleeps and will one day

awaken. Some say She watches over us even now,

and speaks to us through dreams and prophecies.

There are, of course, those who say She died long

ago or never existed at all but such heretics are

few in number. The evidence of Her presence is

writ large on the Earth: the Divide is Her

signature, the Change Her awesome will.

Her Flame still burns steady and true,

somewhere in the world, and from that

knowledge we take great comfort.’

 

THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 14:41

 

 

he twins had never been in any kind of air accident. They were surprised at how well the people around them took it. Then they remembered that all of them had experienced similar situations in recent times: most during the Swarm attack on Milang, and Skender and Chu on numerous previous occasions. It helped that the deflating air sac had retained enough buoyancy to prevent a full-on crash, thereby keeping injuries to a few scrapes and sprains. The damage to the bottom of the gondola, however, was extensive. Momentum dragged the balloon for dozens of metres, scraping and tearing the wooden hull and ripping off one of the starboard engines entirely. A steady stream of cursing accompanied Warden Banner, Griel and Chu as they inspected the damage.

 

‘Is it fixable?’ Marmion wanted to know.

 

‘Yes,’ said Griel. ‘That is, we’ll be able to get off the ground again once the bladder and charms are repaired.’

 

‘How long?’

 

‘A few hours. But don’t expect any great mobility. We’ll be down to two propellers — barely enough to get us airborne.’

 

‘The air is calmer here,’ put in Chu. ‘And we only have to go down, ultimately.’

 

‘Then that’s all we need.’ Marmion looked out across the cold expanse of the lake, at the distant nubs of the submerged towers. He took off his beanie and rubbed at his bald scalp for a moment, thinking hard. ‘Get started,’ he told the trio of aviators and Engineers. ‘We’ll post a guard in case any more of those scissor-creatures come back to finish the job. The rest of us will explore the village.’

 

‘Good thinking,’ said Lidia Delfine in a rich contralto. ‘No one’s come to see what’s going on out here. That worries me.’

 

‘You think the devels might have got to them too?’ asked Skender.

 

‘Best not to think anything at all,’ said Marmion, ‘until we have some evidence.’ The warden divided the expedition into two halves. Warden Banner, Chu, Griel and the surviving Panic crew member would work on the balloon with Lidia Delfine, while Heuve and Mage Kelloman kept watch. The mage looked relieved to have avoided the walk to the village, although it probably wouldn’t take more than ten minutes. The twins bet he would change his tune if the balloon was attacked.

 

That left Wardens Rosevear and Marmion, Skender, and the twins themselves to explore the village. The curly haired healer looked tired, having spent the time since the crash patiently treating those injured in the impact, and Skender would obviously have rather stayed with Chu.

 

A motley crew, said Hadrian to his brother, who had been strangely silent since the near-disaster.

 

So what’s new?

 

Are you worried about what we’ll find in the village?

 

No. It bothers me more that this looks like a volcanic lake even though the world no longer has a molten core. How do you figure that works?

 

I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with the towers.

 

Maybe. We know they’re connected to Yod, so…

 

You think it’s under the water?

 

I think the devels might have been nothing but a warm-up act.

 

Hadrian shuddered. With jagged, teeth-like mountains all around them, he felt like a morsel in a yawning man’s mouth. The ankh will hide us, won’t it?

 

Maybe. Maybe not. Your guess is as good as mine.

 

Seth’s thought about volcanoes nagged at Hadrian as Marmion distributed appropriate clothing and packs — an extra-large one for the Homunculus’ body — and made final preparations for moving out. The sun was high in the sky, shining weakly through the thin air. The air was less agitated inside the wide crater, but there was a real bite to its stillness. Something like hunger niggled at the back of their minds. They took a strip of jerky from their pack and munched absently on it.

 

Marmion gave the order to move out. Skender and Chu hugged farewell. ‘Bring me back a souvenir,’ she told him.

 

The four explorers set off for the village at a brisk pace, walking parallel to the shoreline across frosty mud that had obviously been under water until very recently. Delicate spines of ice crunched underfoot, reminding Hadrian of autumn leaves. Only then did he consciously note that there were no trees on the lake’s shoreline. No bushes, either. The Homunculus’s keen eyesight picked out black circles that might have been caves.

 

A line of thin white bones, like a high-tide mark, ran parallel to the waterline two metres inland. The air stank of rotting fish.

 

‘Who would live up here?’ asked Skender, echoing the twins’ thoughts. He looked twice his usual size under numerous coats and jumpers, woollen hats and gloves. His breath fogged the air.

 

‘How would they?’ Rosevear added, his curly hair flattened by the wind coming off the lake.

 

‘There’s an old story I heard as a child,’ Marmion said, ‘about a tribe of people who live at the top of the world. They have nothing to eat but ice and snow, and that’s how they get their name: the Ice Eaters. They hate the warmth of the sun and melt if exposed to a naked flame. They come down in winter and take away naughty children — of course — to live in their village, where they wait for the day when the sun will go out forever and they inherit the frozen Earth.’

 

‘Charming,’ said Skender. ‘Ice Eaters, huh? They’re not in The Book of Towers.’

 

‘Not everything’s in The Book of Towers, Skender — and not everything in The Book of Towers is true.’

 

‘I know that, but…’ The young mage shrugged and concentrated on walking.

 

Hadrian couldn’t imagine Marmion as a child, frightened by his mother’s horror stories into being a good boy. The image was faintly ludicrous.

 

He turned his attention to the village ahead. Dark-stained wooden buildings huddled together for warmth against the old shoreline. Hadrian counted three piers, two of which looked oddly truncated, as though they had been snapped off in mid-length by some catastrophe. Looks to me like the villagers ate fish rather than ice, Seth commented.

 

Still there were no signs of life.

 

‘The water level has definitely dropped,’ Hadrian said.

 

‘It must’ve gone somewhere,’ said Skender, worrying at his bottom lip.

 

‘The flood?’ asked Rosevear.

 

‘I’ve been wondering just that.’ Marmion walked with his eyes fixed on the buildings ahead. ‘If the wall of the crater was breached, perhaps by one of the recent earthquakes, then that would allow some of the water to escape. Not all of it would reach the Divide, but enough to cause the flood we saw. And if the gap were to widen, more would spill, causing the second surge the foresters reported ten days ago.’

 

The proposal prompted nods all around. Over three weeks had passed since the first deadly deluge had swept down the Divide. Marmion’s secondary mission — after finding Highson Sparre and the Homunculus — had been to locate the source and see if it posed any further threat. On one level, Marmion had succeeded at every task given him. Looking at the man, though, Hadrian knew that he himself didn’t view his actions in such a positive light.

 

Every discovery prompted new uncertainties. Life was like that. The twins knew nothing about the Alcaide, Marmion’s boss in the distant and mysterious-sounding Haunted City. He seemed a larger-than-life figure, one of impenetrable moods and ruthless disposition. They wondered if the Alcaide would understand — and if he didn’t, whether it would make any difference.

 

‘It’s a big dyke to plug,’ said Seth, looking at the jagged crater wall.

 

‘It is indeed,’ said Marmion glumly.

 

As the fringes of the village approached, the members of the small expedition slowed their pace. They spread out, taking different perspectives on the first hut. The top of its curved roof barely reached Skender’s head, prompting Hadrian to wonder if it was partly submerged in the earth.

 

That would make sense in terms of keeping out the cold. None of the shutters was open. The single door faced the lake and was also soundly shut.

 

Skender raised a hand to knock, but Marmion shook his head. They moved on to the next hut, and the next. They were the same. No voices disturbed the silence. Only the wind moaned through the narrow, cobbled streets.

 

The twins spotted a window without shutters and moved off to inspect it. Leaning close to the thick black glass, they brushed away a rime of ice that frosted over it and peered inside. The view was as black as coal, and for a moment all they could see was their own reflection: the empty silhouette of the Homunculus and, around that, a glimpse of the crater and sky. Hadrian leaned closer, and something loomed at him out of the darkness — a face so thin as to be skull-like, with wide eyes, pale skin and mouth in an open O. He flinched away, knocking him and his brother off-balance. They sprawled backwards onto the hard ground, limbs waving.

 

He or Seth cried out in alarm; it was hard to tell who. The others came running.

 

‘What is it?’ barked Marmion. ‘What have you found?’

 

The twins rose shakily to their feet. ‘There’s someone in there,’ Hadrian said. ‘I saw them.’

 

The door was shut but not locked. Rosevear took off his gloves and knocked. On receiving no response, he cautiously nudged the door open and peered inside. For a breath he didn’t move. Then he went down a step and through the door, out of sight. Marmion, Skender and the twins waited nervously.

 

‘You say you saw someone?’ came the healer’s voice from inside the house.

 

‘Yes,’ said Hadrian. ‘Someone looking back out at us. An old man, I think. It was hard to tell.’

 

‘Well, you must have been mistaken. The people in here aren’t old at all, and they’ve been dead for some time.’

 

Marmion, Skender and the twins exchanged glances. ‘How many?’ asked the bald warden.

 

‘Three. A man, a woman and a young child. A girl. By the looks of them they died in their sleep.’ Rosevear’s curly head appeared from the doorway, making Skender jump. ‘You can come in. It appears to be quite safe now.’

 

The bald warden followed Rosevear through the door, and Skender did the same, albeit more warily. The twins came last, hesitating on the threshold for a moment, almost defiantly.

 

I know what I saw, said Hadrian. I didn’t imagine it.

 

I don’t think you did, his brother replied. I saw it too.

 

Then what do you think it was? A ghost?

 

No. But let’s take a look inside.

 

They stepped into the low-ceilinged house. It was sparse and simple, with a central hearth under a flared chimney surrounded by cooking utensils and pots. The ashes were grey and cold. One corner of the single room was curtained off for privacy. A surprising array of digging tools — picks, shovels, spikes, and more — leaned against one wall, below an impressive selection of patched coats hanging from wooden hooks. In an alcove on the far wall was a narrow bed, inside which were curled the three people Rosevear had described.

 

It did look like they were sleeping, except their faces were withered and shrunken, perfectly preserved by the dry, cold air. Only the child looked at all disconcerted by the death that had befallen them. Her eyebrows were frozen in a perpetual frown over eyes tightly closed, and her mouth was turned down. She might have been suffering a nightmare. Her parents had died beside her, protecting her from the cold with their body heat. Their expressions were peaceful and calm, even though everything in the house was now equally frigid.

 

‘What happened to them?’ asked Marmion. ‘A disease? Poison?’

 

‘Neither, I think.’ With a tug of a thick curtain, Rosevear brought a shaft of grey light into the room and bent to examine the bodies more closely. ‘They died without great suffering.’

 

‘The cold, then?’ Skender put his arms around himself and shivered. ‘Or water? Perhaps the lake rose before it fell, and drowned them.’

 

‘Unlikely. Something killed them in their sleep, and killed them quickly.’ He lifted back their bedclothes. ‘There’s no blood, no disturbance, no nothing. Unless someone killed them elsewhere then put them to bed afterwards…’ He screwed up his nose as though at a bad smell and lowered the bedclothes. ‘No, I don’t think so. What killed them wasn’t physical in nature.’

 

‘The Change?’ asked Hadrian.

 

Rosevear nodded. ‘The Change can kill like this, although the deadly arts aren’t often taught any more. Mages and wardens haven’t been at war for centuries.’

 

‘Who says anything human was behind it?’

 

Seth’s question hung in the frigid air, unanswered, as Marmion prowled the room looking for evidence. His injured right arm moved oddly, as though touching furniture and walls with invisible fingers. He muttered under his breath.

 

‘This doesn’t explain what you saw,’ said Skender, watching uncomfortably. He glanced at the twins. ‘You said you saw someone looking out at you, through the window.’

 

‘I did.’

 

It was you, said Seth to Hadrian. That was your face I saw. An older you, poking through the Homunculus somehow. It wasn’t a ghost at all.

 

Hadrian couldn’t have been more surprised if Seth had told him it was Albert Einstein. Me?

 

Yes, you. I understand why you didn’t recognise yourself. It’s been a long time since we had a face, either of us.

 

Skender was watching them, now, his expression even more concerned. ‘Are you two all right?’

 

‘Yes,’ said Hadrian, fighting a stammer. ‘I — that is, we’ve had something of a shock. I don’t know what we saw. Maybe we imagined it, whatever it was.’

 

Skender didn’t look convinced.

 

Why didn’t you tell him? Seth asked.

 

Why didn’t you? And why didn’t you tell me when you guessed?

 

Because it sounds crazy. And because … Well, because it suggests that the Homunculus is coming apart at the seams. Is that something you want to boast about?

 

Of course not.

 

‘There’s no sign of forced entry,’ Marmion concluded. ‘No residue of any kind. I think we should check some of the other houses and see if they’re the same. Let’s not come to any conclusions until we’ve done that. Agreed?’

 

They all nodded. Hadrian could tell that Seth had already made up his mind about who had killed the family. As they followed the others back out into the street, Hadrian whispered, I can think of only one explanation: Yod murdered them.

 

I agree. It’s close. I bet it’s in the towers right now, building up its strength before breaking out across the world. First it ate the Lost Minds in Bardo, and now the minds of the people in this village.

 

Should we tell the others?

 

Marmion already knows, little brother.

 

Yes. I think you’re right.

 

They watched Marmion lead the way to another low building, where they found another family, this time three generations of women in two beds, as restful as the others and as cold in death. The warden’s face was taut and worried, and it was clear he didn’t like being inside for too long.

 

The third hut was the same, and the fourth. On the way to the fifth, they found a body sprawled in the street — a man in thick protective hides who lay splayed as though felled in mid-step.

 

‘How long?’ Marmion asked Rosevear.

 

‘Death is hard to read in this weather,’ said the healer. ‘There are signs of insect infestation and decay in all the bodies, but the species aren’t the same as the ones back home and the cold slows everything down.’ The healer rocked back on his heels. Two bright red patches glowed on his brown cheeks. ‘Over a week, but not as many as two. That’s my best guess.’

 

Marmion nodded. He looked about to say something, but at that moment the ground kicked beneath them and the sound of water splashing caught their ears. Rosevear stood and together they ran cautiously through the streets in order to get a view of the shore.

 

Thick ripples were lapping against the frozen soil. As they watched, a tall wave rolled in and made a splashing noise similar to the one they had heard a moment earlier.

 

Hadrian’s gaze drifted from the shore to the centre of the lake, where the three squat towers poked their heads out of the dark water. He knew instinctively that they were the source of this new disturbance.

 

Someone’s getting restless, he said.’

 

Do you think —

 

‘Run, you idiots!’ called a voice from behind them. ‘It’ll be here any moment!’

 

The twins spun around. The only evidence that anyone had been on the street behind them was a clatter of footsteps receding into the distance.

 

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ said Skender.

 

‘Neither do I. Get after him,’ Marmion said, waving urgently at the twins. ‘You’re the fastest. We’ll follow.’

 

Neither Seth nor Hadrian resisted the bark of command in Marmion’s voice. With arms and legs moving in perfect synchrony, they ran in pursuit of the stranger. They didn’t have time to think. It was all they could do, even with the refined senses of the Homunculus, to follow the sound to its source. Echoes of their own footsteps and the increased agitation of the lake behind them made the task doubly difficult.

 

By the time they caught sight of their quarry, he was well outside the village and making good progress up the crater’s sloping edge, to where a series of dark cave mouths gaped at the base of the curving cliff wall.

 

‘Wait!’ Seth shouted. ‘Where are you going?’

 

‘To hide, of course!’ the boy bellowed over his shoulder. Despite his many layers, he was making impressive time. ‘Warn the others. They don’t have long to get out of sight!’ He waved vaguely at the downed balloon and the cluster of figures surrounding it, then he put his head down and sprinted for the caves.

 

The twins vacillated for a moment over whether to follow or turn back. They chose the latter. Marmion and the others were just leaving the village behind them. The surface of the lake was becoming choppier by the second, as though a storm was blowing in.

 

The twins passed on the message from their unknown benefactor, and added their own interpretation.

 

‘It’s Yod,’ said Hadrian, feeling a rising panic of his own. ‘I don’t know how, but I can guess why. It spotted us and it’s coming for lunch. We have to get the others under cover. This isn’t the time to stand and fight.’

 

‘We can watch, though,’ Seth added. ‘We need all the intelligence we can get.’

 

Marmion nodded. ‘I’ll call Banner. She’ll get everyone moving. Now, keep going. It won’t do anyone any good if we all die.’

 

Hadrian agreed wholeheartedly. As one, the four of them began toiling up the slope. Marmion’s eyes half-closed in concentration. Rosevear stayed at his side, one hand ready to catch the older warden should he stumble. Skender pumped his skinny arms in an uncoordinated sprint. His expression was pale and frightened.

 

As he ran, he cast one desperate glance over his shoulder, and Hadrian understood.

 

Chu was down there with the others, and they hadn’t even started running yet.

 

Skender mouthed something under his breath and found an unexpected turn of speed. As the caves came nearer, he first drew level with the twins then took the lead. Hadrian was willing to hang back in case Marmion and Rosevear got into trouble. He had seen enough death for one day.

 

* * * *

 

Come on, come on, Skender urged himself in time with his ragged breathing. One foot in front of the other. Don’t think about what’s coming up behind, just run like the crabbier queen herself is on your tail. Run like you’ve never run before, and then some!

 

He didn’t hear the keening noise he was making until the nearest of the caves finally came within range. As he ran into its stony embrace, the echo of his wail came back to him, startlingly loud. He choked it off and let himself pant. The shadow of the cave was dark and cold. The light coming from entrance revealed a narrow but long empty chamber that stretched deep into the bedrock.  The others weren’t far behind. Letting his lungs suck down air like every breath could be his last, he knelt on one knee, took off his right glove and pressed his hand flat against the stone. The Change rippled through it and across his naked palm, distracting him from the cold. Through the stone he felt the distant footsteps of the rest of the expedition. They had started moving at last, warned by Marmion’s call. Skender could also feel the shadow of something dark and unfathomable rising from the depths of the lake. It slithered along the bottom like a tangle of snakes, writhing and squirming, and making furious time. It would reach the shore long before Chu and her companions reached shelter.

 

Some souvenir, he thought.

 

Marmion and the others arrived and gathered around him.

 

‘Tell Kelloman —’ Skender could barely get the words past the gasping of his lungs. He was sweating under all his layers. ‘Tell Kelloman to find stone and touch it. Quickly.’

 

Marmion relayed the message. An answer came immediately, direct from the mage.

 

What are you thinking, boy? There’s a fine spur of rhyolite near here, hut it’s out of our way.

 

Just get there and do it— quickly!

 

Of all the impertinence! Whatever’s going on, it had better be important.

 

Skender bit back a flash of irritation. What could be more important than saving everyone’s lives? I need to Take from you. You’re too far away to touch, but I can reach you this way. Please — we-don’t have long.

 

He hadn’t fully recovered from the exertions of the flight up the mountains. That small effort wore him out. Fortunately, Kelloman didn’t waste time continuing the conversation. Skender waited impatiently, gripping the cold stone with his fingers until finally he felt an echo of the mage in the bedrock of the world. It was like hearing a sound underwater: muffled and hard to pin down but definitely there. He reached for it, felt Kelloman reach out to him in return, and connected.

 

Potential, refined and strong, flooded through him. The mage gave him everything he could spare, keeping only enough to maintain the link between his host body and the one lying far away in the Interior. The exchange was swift and total, leaving Skender feeling full of light, as though his bones were glowing.

 

‘Brilliant,’ he said, looking up from his kneeling position to the entrance of the cave. His scalp tingled. He wondered if his hair was standing on end. It certainly felt that way. ‘Now, I’ll have to time this right.’

 

Down the slope they had followed, he could see the village and its three piers. The surface of the lake roiled like the surface of a saucepan of water on a stove. A mist had risen up over the water, hiding the tops of the towers from view. Strange shapes danced in the mist; inhuman figures came and went.

 

The twins stiffened. Their odd double gaze was fixed on the village. Breath hissed out of them like steam.

 

A moment later, Skender saw what they had spotted. Something black and fluid wound along the narrow streets, snake-like but as tall as a human. Skender couldn’t tell if it was made of water or smoke; it possessed a little of both in its translucency and flexibility — yet the shape of it was fixed in cross-section along its length. It progressed in the same way that a drop of water trickled down a window pane, growing longer at its leading edge rather than wriggling like a snake.

 

The tip of another tentacle appeared, sliding soundlessly along a second street. Its path curved to intersect with a house, which it passed right through as though the wooden walls weren’t even there. Behind it, Skender glimpsed a dark mass bulging out of the restless water — the source of the black tentacles, he was sure — and imagined it sniffing out life in the town. Drawn by their movement, perhaps, or by subtle disturbances in the flow of the Change, this strange limb of the creature living in the lake had been woken and sent forth to investigate.

 

And to feed.

 

Skender roused himself. He had been frozen with horror for far too long. Chu and the others would surely not have reached cover yet, and he didn’t dare doubt that another such deadly limb would be rising to devour them. What happened when the tentacles touched something living, he didn’t know for certain, but he wasn’t going to wait to find out. A village full of dead people suggested it wasn’t anything good.

 

A distraction. That was what he needed. The back of his mind had been riffling through the many charms he had glimpsed once and never forgotten. Charms to turn solid stone into liquid and liquid stone into solid; charms to create bizarre metal alloys and extract impurities from mixed samples; charms to make fire burn cold or to make it invisible; charms, in particular, to focus sunlight into brightly coloured beams powerful enough to split a tree in two. Even on a frosty plateau where the sun seemed hardly to have any strength at all, the potential was obvious.

 

There wasn’t time to physically prepare the pattern required. He would have to do all the hard work with his mind alone. Keeping his cold-numbed hand tight against the rock, he bent forward and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, imagining a series of concentric circles radiating out from him, through the entrance of the cave and onto the beach. Adjacent circles spun in opposing directions, creating a strange, highly stressed tension in the air. He could feel the Change throbbing all around him. Beside him, Marmion drew in a sharp breath.

 

That was only the beginning of the charm. The art lay in what came next. Ordinarily a mage would draw the lines together, forming a cone leading from the focus up into the sky, to where the sun hung overhead. The cone would concentrate the sun’s radiant energy, which could then be directed away from the mage in whatever direction he or she chose. Skender didn’t want a tight beam. That wouldn’t be distracting enough. Instead he gathered what sunlight he could from as wide an area as he could reach, held it for a moment, feeling as though he was holding the world’s breath in a giant set of lungs. Then he set it free.

 

Even in the cave with his eyes shut, he saw the charm take effect. Dull afternoon turned to brilliant daylight in an instant — and went beyond even that, to a powerful, searing glare that burned the skin where it touched and made ice crystals flash instantly into steam. It pulsed to a rhythm much faster than a heartbeat, a rhythm he could almost hear with his ears as well as see through his closed eyelids. Around him, Marmion, Rosevear and the twins fell back with their hands over their eyes.

 

Not too much, he told himself. He didn’t want to blind anyone. Tweaking the charm again, he encouraged the light to focus on a patch of earth midway between the balloon’s crash site and the village. With luck, the tentacles would be drawn to that spot, to the energy concentrated there, rather than follow the life signs of those fleeing from it.

 

The light ebbed in the cave. Someone edged towards the entrance. A moment later, one of the twins — Seth — said, ‘It’s working. They’re getting away.’

 

‘That’s amazing, Skender,’ added the other twin. ‘How do you do that? It’s like magic’

 

‘Who says it isn’t?’ asked Seth. ‘A spell by any other name…’

 

‘Tell me when they’re safe,’ Skender grated through clenched teeth. The necessary concentration was taking its toll. He could feel himself rocking back and forth on the spot. His arms tightly clutched his stomach and sides, as though holding his insides in. Kelloman and the sun might have provided the energy for the distraction, but he was responsible for making it behave in an unnatural way. There was a price to be paid for that.

 

‘Give them a bit longer,’ Hadrian urged him. ‘Almost there, almost there… That’s it. You can kill it now.’

 

Skender let his concentration unravel and fell back with a gasp. His hand came free from the stone with an audible snap, like a miniature lightning strike. He flexed his fingers, wondering if he would ever feel them again. Bonelessly, helplessly, he slumped over onto his side.

 

Chu was safe.

 

‘That was very well done,’ said Rosevear, putting a cool hand against his forehead and peeling back both eyelids to inspect his condition. ‘You’ll be okay, and so will the others, thanks to your quick thinking.’

 

‘What’s happening down on the beach?’ he asked. ‘Is it leaving?’

 

‘No,’ Marmion said from the cave entrance. ‘It’s spreading out again, searching for us.’

 

‘I’m sure it’s Yod now,’ said Seth.

 

‘So am I,’ added Hadrian.

 

Marmion didn’t argue. ‘That would make sense.’

 

‘We call it the Death,’ said a voice from deeper inside the cave.

 

Everyone turned. Skender -managed to crack open an eyelid.

 

Out of the shadows stepped a skinny boy of about thirteen dressed in dirty skins. His expression was haunted and hunted both, mixed with a strange kind of desperate hope. He came for them, ready to bolt at the slightest odd move, but it was clear he wanted to do anything but.

 

‘It was you,’ said the twins. ‘You’re the one who warned us, who led us here.’

 

The boy nodded.

 

‘Are you from the village?’ asked Marmion.

 

Another nod, abrupt and fearful.

 

‘What’s your name?’ asked Rosevear more gently.

 

‘Orma.’ The boy looked close to tears. ‘I ran away the night the Death came to my home. I didn’t know until the next morning, when I went home and found —’ He swallowed. ‘Have you come to save us?’

 

‘We certainly hope so,’ said the twins. ‘Are there more like you, living back here?’

 

The boy nodded a third time. ‘It can’t feel us in the caves. Or if it can, it can’t reach us. We’re safe here while food lasts. There’s room for all of us, and more.’

 

‘These caves must go a fair way, then,’ said Marmion. ‘Could you lead us to where our friends have taken shelter?’

 

‘I could.’ Orma’s gaze settled on Skender, still sprawled on the cold ground. ‘Is he all right?’

 

‘He will be,’ Skender grunted, forcing himself to move. His lassitude didn’t stem from any physical injury. He simply felt so drained as to be almost transparent. ‘Just give me a moment.’

 

‘Orma.’ Marmion took the boy by the arm. ‘Tell us more about this thing, this Death. How fast does it react? How far can it reach? Can it be in more than two places at once? We need to know everything you do if we’re going to stop it before it hurts anyone else.’

 

‘Y— yes, sir.’

 

The boy stammered answers as best he could while Skender struggled to his feet. He made it, but the air in the cave seemed suddenly too thin. His head spun. Stars sparkled before his eyes.

 

‘No way,’ he said, putting a hand to his forehead. He could feel the world receding, growing faint and dim. ‘I can’t — I have —’

 

The thought that he had too much work to do remained unfinished. He was unconscious before he hit the stone.

 

* * * *

 

He dreamed of the hearths of home, of the busy Keep kitchens and the chatter of his fellow students; of his father’s stern face and his mother’s voice coming from an adjoining room. A real fire was burning in the commonroom, which struck him as odd because the Keep wasn’t well ventilated and smoke tended to accumulate in the upper floors. This fire was special, though: its flames gathered in long slender ropes that twisted and snapped at the ceiling. Their focus was on a shadow in a corner that grew deeper and broader the more they whipped at it. A wave of cold radiated from the shadow, sucking all the heat of the fire out of the room. Skender shivered. How could it be so cold? And why did the shadow seem to be sucking him in too? He sensed something ageless and malign staring out of the shadow at him, exerting all its will to draw him nearer…

 

* * * *

 

When he woke up, the air was smoky and close but surprisingly cool, much as it had been in the dream. Someone had loosened his clothing, making it easier to breathe. His cheek rested on a furry, animal-smelling surface that, when he opened his eyes, turned out to be some sort of skin. Three fist-sized crystalline lanterns cast a still, sterile light across rough-hewn ceilings and walls. The chamber was one of several linked by broad circular portals much taller than him. On the walls and in some of the portals hung ornate decorations of woven multicoloured cloth. He wondered if they were charms of some kind, even though the patterns rang no bells with his extensive memory.

 

A deep black silhouette drifted across his vision. ‘If your eyes are open,’ said the twins in unison, ‘then you must be awake. That’s an improvement.’

 

Skender groaned and lifted his head. ‘Where am I?’

 

‘The shelter, in the caves. Orma took us here after you blacked out.’

 

‘How —?’

 

‘We carried you. Don’t worry. We won’t tell Chu.’

 

Skender flushed. He had a bad enough reputation as it was, always tripping over or freezing up in a crisis. But he supposed he had done better than usual by giving Chu time to reach safety in the caves before passing out.

 

‘Rosevear went with Orma and Marmion to find them,’ the twins explained when he asked about the others. ‘You seemed like you might recover after a bit of a snooze.’

 

‘How long ago?’

 

‘Did they leave? Not long. How you tell time down here is a mystery. They’ll be a while, anyway. Orma said he’d take the back tunnels, to be safe.’

 

Skender rested his head on the fur and let his eyes drift shut again. He felt so tired, but he didn’t want to lie around uselessly while everyone else did the work.

 

‘We’ve met some more survivors,’ the twins told him. ‘They’re actual Ice Eaters, straight out of Marmion’s story.’

 

‘Really? They’re not just something to frighten kids with?’

 

‘Apparently not.’

 

‘Tell me about them. What are they like?’

 

‘If you open your eyes all the way,’ said a new voice, ‘you’ll see one.’

 

His eyelids flickered. Sitting opposite him, where the twins had been a moment ago, a woman of middle years squatted on her knees with her broad, strong hands crossed in front of her. She wore skins with fur poking out of the collar and sleeves, and her face was handsomely lined. Long grey hair hung in a dense plait as far as her waist over a loose shawl of knitted string and thread that draped from her shoulders. It wouldn’t provide much warmth, Skender thought. A sign of rank, then.

 

‘Oh,’ he said, sitting up so quickly his head spun, ‘I didn’t know you were there.’

 

‘Clearly.’ A cautious smile danced across her features. ‘Are you feeling better?’

 

‘Yes. Mostly.’

 

‘Good. Orma told me what you did to save your friends. You’re smarter than you look.’ Again the smile came and went. ‘I can offer you some tea, Skender, if you’d like.’

 

‘I would like,’ he said, sensing that she was taking the measure of him, bit by bit. ‘You know my name. What’s yours?’

 

‘People call me Treya.’

 

‘Is that what I should call you?’

 

She nodded. ‘If you like.’ From a nearby hearth she produced a kettle and poured him a small bowl of dark-coloured tea. ‘I don’t come from the same village as poor Orma. No one else survived there, apart from him. I come from the east, from further around the lake. The Death visited my home during the daylight hours, so we had some warning. Not enough, though. Out of one hundred people, only three survived. If I hadn’t been dragged away, I probably would’ve died too.’ Her expression was deeply funereal. No trace of a smile now.

 

‘Did you lose someone close to you?’ Skender asked, warming his bare hands on the bowl.

 

‘In a village of that size,’ she said, ‘everyone is close to everyone.’ With a smooth economical gesture, she brushed at imaginary dust on her lap.

 

‘I’m sorry,’ Skender said. ‘I really am.’

 

‘We are used to hardship. Our lands are unforgiving and the sun cold. The Song of Sorrow is a familiar tune to our ears. But we endure, and we continue to endure, despite the creatures you call devels. They roam the mountains freely, as you have discovered to your detriment. We are too few to keep them in check, as we used to.’

 

‘If there’s anything I can do —’

 

‘Your strange friend here tells me that you’ve come to fight the Death. You Sky Wardens and Stone Mages and foresters and Panic — and maybe other things, about which we know little. I ask that you let us help you, to honour those who have fallen.’

 

Skender covered his uncertainty by sipping from his tea. The steam made him blink. ‘Have you asked Marmion? Sky Warden Eisak Marmion, I mean; he was one of the ones who came here with me. He’s our leader.’

 

‘I did ask,’ Treya said. Her eyes were as hard as flint. ‘I’m not sure he trusts me. He wouldn’t tell me what he had planned.’

 

Skender could see how Marmion might have given her the wrong impression. He didn’t take on new allies lightly.

 

‘Maybe he doesn’t have a plan yet,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask him when he comes back.’

 

‘Thank you.’ Treya nodded, and stood smoothly. ‘Whatever you do, if it doesn’t succeed, my people are certain to die.’

 

She was gone before he could respond, striding out of the chamber with a rustle of leather and skins. He watched her go, feeling as though he’d been hit by something large and fast-moving. Treya unnerved him, although he couldn’t put his finger on why. She looked at him as though he was a problem to be solved.

 

The fact that, if their mission didn’t succeed, everyone would die didn’t cheer him up even slightly. And he still didn’t know how Chu was faring, far away through this labyrinth of caves.

 

The twins were watching him closely, an oddly bulbous shadow perched on a rough cushion in one corner. The light of the crystals barely seemed to touch them.

 

‘What?’

 

‘We were just wondering,’ Hadrian said, ‘whether it would have been easier to know our world was ending in advance than just have it happen to us out of nowhere.’

 

That put Skender’s problems in stark perspective. Before him were two people who had already lost, not just a village and a few friends, but an entire world. It was hard to imagine what that world must have been like. In talking to the twins during their long ascent, Skender had learned more about that world than anyone had from The Book of Towers. He could see how that world had evolved into the present world after the dramatic rupture of the near-Cataclysm, a thousand years or more ago. But the deaths of so many billions of people he could not imagine. His mind and heart automatically rejected that notion as too awful, and therefore untrue.

 

Yet in the twins’ heavy gaze, Skender saw a weight of grief and knowledge greater than any he could bear. That discouraged any scepticism he might occasionally indulge.

 

‘Who did you lose?’ he asked them.

 

The twins froze inside their artificial body. Skender almost regretted asking the question, but he knew that the only way to get the twins to talk sometimes was to confront them directly.

 

Still, it took them a long time to answer, and Skender waited out that time with a growing uneasiness, utterly unable to fathom what was going on in the Homunculus’s deep black head.

 

* * * *

 

Where to start? asked Hadrian with a bitter laugh, and Seth knew exactly what his brother meant. Still, he was the first to try.

 

‘Her name was Ellis Quick. We met her in a place called Vienna. She —’

 

He stopped there. Talking about her prompted a hot feeling of shame and resentment. Reminiscing with Skender about those times brought back memories he would rather have left dormant, memories mulled over too many times already and pushed to the back of their entwined minds to rot.

 

Surprisingly it was Hadrian who voiced the truth. ‘She loved us both, I think, but we fought over her. We were idiots. That was when Yod made its move while the three of us were separated. Seth and I caught up with her again in different places, different ways — or thought we had.’ Hadrian shuddered; his memory of being attacked by the draci in Ellis’s corpse flooded them both with revulsion. ‘But she was betrayed too, in the end. By herself — her true self. She was actually one of the Sisters of the Flame, the guardians of the entrance to the Third Realm. She had been reborn in order to be closer to us, to be part of the Cataclysm as it happened. She showed us a glimpse of this future, the one we went into the Void for. Then she let us go-’

 

Seth remembered that much perfectly well.

 

Will we see you again? he had asked her.

 

That’s what Hadrian asked me in Sweden, she had said instead of answering. I’m as decided now as I was then. The Flame had flared, signalling the opening of the gateway and the coming of the end. To the two of them, she had said: Boys, I set you both free.

 

Free? Seth thought now with no small sense of irony. They had spent a millennium pondering what had happened in Sheol, until their memories had become little more than motor reflexes, twitching uselessly in response to stimuli that no longer existed. The revelation that Ellis had been much more than she appeared to be had been as much a shock to her as to them, but that didn’t ease the vague feeling that she had betrayed them. Used them. And to what end? To delay the inevitable? She had told them nothing about how to get rid of Yod. She had left them beached at the end of their long journey, as helpless as stranded whales with nothing left to do but flounder and die in a hostile, alien world. If she’d only given them a hint, a single clue regarding what to do next…

 

‘We don’t know what happened to her,’ he and his brother said in unison. ‘She escaped the destruction of Sheol, though. We’re pretty sure of that, but what happened after that, we can’t say. We were stuck in the Void.’

 

‘Did you say “Sheol”?’ asked Skender.

 

The twins nodded.

 

‘There’s no mention of any Ellis Quick in The Book of Towers,’ Skender explained, ‘but something called Sheol does appear. It’s referenced in some of the oldest fragments, and comes up again later after a discussion concerning legends and stories handed down after the Cataclysm.’

 

‘Really?’ asked Hadrian. ‘Who wrote them?’

 

‘The earliest fragments were written by a man known only as “the Sinner”.’

 

‘Why was he called that?’

 

Skender shrugged. ‘He was a murderer or something. I don’t really know. No one does. But his stories are the ones that most closely match your memories, so I’m inclined to think that he knew what he was talking about.’

 

‘What does he say about Sheol?’

 

‘Uh. Let’s see.’ Skender thought for a moment. ‘That it was broken in the final days of the old world, and rebuilt in the form of a tomb.’

 

‘A tomb for whom?’

 

‘The Goddess, I guess. Scholars have looked for this Tomb for centuries and never found it, so most think it nothing but another legend. Like the Goddess herself.’

 

A strange feeling began to stir in Seth’s chest. ‘What does the Sinner say about her? This Goddess of yours.’

 

‘Heaps. He calls her his “redeemer” and claims that she charged him personally to write down her message: “You must take it to the world in my name,” he wrote, “and deliver the ones I love from oblivion.” She helped put the world back together after the Cataclysm, you see, so without her and her message, there might have been none of her people left for you to save, now.

 

‘In fact, she had something to say about the future, now I think of it. “The sleepers will one day awake, and the world will know of them.” Do you think that might be you? You were kind of asleep, I suppose. “Who can know what might be undone when the quick returns for the dead?”‘

 

‘That’s an odd turn of phrase,’ said Hadrian thoughtfully, and Seth knew what was clicking into place in his brother’s mind.

 

The Sinner, said Seth. Ron Synett.

 

Of course. And Ellis is the Goddess.

 

Does that make us the ones she loves?

 

The possibility reverberated through the Homunculus like a shockwave.

 

‘Are you all right?’ asked Skender.

 

‘We’re idiots,’ the twins said together. ‘Idiots. You and us and everyone who ever wrote this stuff off as a legend. Everything happened just as he said. And that means everything’s going to happen just the way she said.’

 

‘Who?’

 

‘Ellis — and she’s no more a Goddess than we are.’

 

Skender’s eyes opened wide. ‘Our Lady of the Eye, the Mistress of the Veil, the Three in One —’ His voice was hushed. ‘“The world will not forget the deeds of She Who Walked the Earth, nor of those who walked with Her: Shathra the Angel, who saved Her from the ceaseless champing teeth of the Underworld; Xolotl the Penitent and Quetzalcoatl the Slave who both died, each at the side of the other, during the Dissolution of the Swarm; the ghosts Anath and Megaira, who whispered advice in Her sleep; and the unnamed murderer She forgave, and whose words She blessed.”‘

 

‘He said this?’ asked the twins, jointly reeling from so many familiar names. Xol and his brother: dead. Ellis’s two mystical sisters: ghosts. Ron Synett: a redeemed prophet from the other end of time. ‘This so-called Sinner?’

 

Skender nodded.

 

My god, whispered Hadrian directly into Seth’s mind.

 

Wrong gender, little brother. He felt light-headed. Ellis did leave us instructions, after all. We’ve just been too stupid to listen to them.

 

The look of shock drained from Skender’s face and was replaced by a growing sense of alarm. His eyes took on an unfocussed look that the twins had learned to recognise. Skender was receiving a message from someone through the Change.

 

‘What is it?’ they asked him. ‘What’s going on?’

 

The young mage blinked. ‘That was Marmion. We have to get moving.’

 

‘Why? Is it Yod?’

 

‘No. It’s something else entirely. He’s found the others, but they can’t come here. The balloon’s under attack. If it’s destroyed, we may never get home!’

 

* * * *

 

The Fall

 

 

‘The Gods claimed that nothing preceded them.

That was but one of their many lies.’

 

THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 12:44

 

 

here was no possible way to talk, clutching as he was to Pukje’s leathery back while the winged imp flew up the endless mountainside; barely did Sal open his mouth when the furious, icy wind snatched the breath right out of it. Each crack of the powerful wings sounded like a drumbeat. Muscles as large as tree-trunks flexed and writhed down Pukje’s spine, shaking Sal from side to side. He concentrated on staying put.

 

At brief moments during their long flight, Pukje glided with wings taut and outstretched, the tension vibrating through him as he skimmed the turbulent air, tipping unpredictably from side to side. Then, Sal would open his eyes a crack and look at the landscape around them. Mountains, always mountains, with occasional glimpses of the clouds below — although sometimes it was hard to separate the two. Snow and ice became increasingly common the higher they ascended, until every vista seemed a bizarre construction of random lines drawn jaggedly against white. They had come so far so quickly he could barely believe it. After so many days struggling like ants, they now soared higher than any bird.

 

Looking behind him, Sal could see Highson and Kail stretched flat like him against Pukje’s flexing spine, gripping folds of dry, wrinkled skin and tied with safety lines to a cable fixed by Kail around the creature’s flexible neck. Apart from that small precaution, they were completely at the mercy of their bizarre guide. Sal had no doubt that Pukje could shake them off at any point during their ascent and there would be nothing he could do to avoid it. He had tried probing the creature using the Change, but Pukje was utterly impervious to him. Every overture slipped away like a needle across glass.

 

After a small eternity, the pitch and rhythm of Pukje’s flight changed. His wings cupped the air with short, rapid flaps and his body tipped from horizontal to nearly vertical. Sal snatched a glimpse of the mighty tail whipping back and forth behind them, acting as a counterweight to steady the creature’s slowing flight. Below, almost within reach of Pukje’s clutching talons, naked earth slid into view, startlingly brown against the snowy backdrop.

 

They landed with a rolling thud. Pukje took three momentum-absorbing steps, then stopped. Highson’s groan was clearly audible against the sound of the creature’s mighty lungs bellowing in and out. Kail rolled over and tugged at the rope around his waist. Sal relished the relative stillness and the surety of the ground beneath them. Every patch of exposed skin was numb from exposure to the cold. His fingers were cramped into claws, and his arms ached. He didn’t feel ready yet to test his legs.

 

The best he could manage was to raise his head and assess his surroundings.

 

They had landed on a plateau — so it appeared at first — that somehow remained clear of ice and snow. Angular brown stone lay naked under the sky, radiating age and something more, something Sal couldn’t immediately define. The air felt different over this patch of land: more potent, perhaps. Full of a strange kind of potential that had nothing to do with the Change, but which he recognised instantly, although it puzzled him. Wide cracks spread across the plateau, as though long ago it had been shaken by a powerful earthquake.

 

‘Why have we stopped here?’ he asked, forcing himself to sit up on Pukje’s shoulders. There was no sign of Shilly or anyone else nearby. ‘Where are we?’

 

‘You don’t know?’ The sound of Pukje’s reedy voice had initially seemed at odds with his new bulk, but at close quarters Sal could feel deeper resonances booming out of his massive barrel chest. ‘This is the closest thing to home you’ll ever have — you and all those like you.’

 

‘Home?’ He took another look. The dry brown stone did remind him of some of the borderlands he had travelled with his father a lifetime ago, but he had certainly never been anywhere near the mountains before. That, he would have remembered. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You said you were taking us on a short cut to Shilly.’

 

‘I am. This is just somewhere along the way.’

 

Kail tugged at the rope around Sal’s waist, encouraging him to descend. He did so on legs that felt rubbery and weak, and slid the pack from his shoulders. Pukje shivered like a dog once the last of his passengers and their baggage left his shoulders. His broad wings flapped once then folded flush against his back.

 

‘Much better,’ he said. ‘This form wasn’t built for carrying people.’

 

Sal didn’t let him off so easily. ‘What did you mean by saying this is my home?’

 

Pukje’s long beaked face twisted to face Sal. His tilted eyes blinked with a distinct clicking noise. ‘Look away. All three of you. I can’t change while you’re watching. Your wills interfere.’

 

Sal scowled in annoyance, but did as he was told. Highson and Kail did the same. From behind them came the sound of slithery motion, as of a barrel of snakes being tipped on the ground. The light subtly shifted.

 

‘There. You can look now.’

 

When Sal turned around, Pukje had returned to his imp form. And he was no longer alone. Standing next to him was a gaunt white-haired man who towered a full head over Kail. His light brown robe was far too thin for the conditions, but he didn’t appear to be cold. His bare hands clutched a long, thin staff that looked as if it was made of solid honey with a wickedly sharp tip at the lower end. On his head he wore a gold crown with a single raised disk at the front and pointed, curved tongues around the sides and back. Despite his emaciated form, there was an air of brutality about him, and Sal instinctively backed away.

 

‘Who’s this?’ he asked, unnerved by the unexpected development.

 

‘This is Tatenen,’ said Pukje slyly.

 

The man himself spoke in a low, resonant voice. ‘Tatenen, the great and ancient land that separates sky from earth. I, its guardian, am called by the same name. We recognise you, wild one.’

 

With a single fluid and surprising movement, the tall man dropped to one knee and bowed his head to Sal.

 

A chill went through Sal that had nothing to do with the cold. ‘What do you mean, you recognise me?’

 

‘We anticipated your coming, and now you are here.’ The man’s head rose. His expression was one of puzzlement. ‘Do you not know why?’

 

‘No, I don’t know.’ Sal turned angrily to their guide. ‘Pukje, what the Goddess is going on? No more dodging the question. Tell me now, or —’

 

‘Or what?’ The imp’s wrinkled face broke into a wide toothless grin. ‘You’ll show me what you’re capable of? I would like that, Sal. Really I would — and so would Tatenen and his friends. That’s why you’re here: to make allies, not enemies, and to hear good advice. You want to save the world, don’t you?’

 

Highson came alongside him and Sal was obscurely grateful for his father’s proximity.

 

‘That’s not a burden for one person’s shoulders,’

 

Highson said, ‘and who are you to offer it, anyway?’

 

‘Not I,’ said Pukje. ‘The Old Ones.’

 

‘I speak for them,’ said Tatenen, his eyes flashing bright green. ‘I tamed them. I am their voice.’

 

‘Whose voice?’ snapped Sal.

 

‘Kuk and Kauket were the darkness that reigned before creation.’ At Tatenen’s words, the sky grew black. ‘Huh and Hauhet brought forth matter from the eternity of space.’ The air became so cold that each word seemed to tumble from his mouth like blocks of ice. ‘Nun and Naunet parted the primeval waters.’ The stone underfoot rumbled. ‘Amun and Amaunet breathed life into the formlessness.’

 

A wave of numbness swept across Sal: he didn’t look down, afraid that his skin might have turned as thick and leathery as parchment. Around him, out of the shadows that had replaced the daylight, appeared eight enormous faces, all wrinkled and long with mournful mouths, slitted nostrils and protuberant eyes. Four possessed intricate tattoos, the like of which Sal had never seen before. The other four exposed curved, pointed teeth.

 

The faces surrounded the strange brown land on which they stood. All eight stared at Sal with an eerie fixedness that didn’t fade in the slightest, even as the world around them returned to normal.

 

‘They protect the gods with their shadows,’ Tatenen concluded, ‘and I am the stone that binds them. I, the Lord of Tomorrow, am here to advise you.’

 

Sal shuddered. ‘I didn’t ask for your advice.’

 

‘That doesn’t mean it’s worthless.’ In the unnatural darkness, Pukje looked much more substantial than he had before. Shadows clung to his diminutive form like robes as he paced in a wide circle around Tatenen and his three former passengers. His eyes gleamed with an unearthly light. ‘The Old Ones existed long before humanity or my kind came along. They were the gods’ gods, back when being a god actually meant something — before treachery and betrayals, and Cataclysms, and beings from beyond, when gods weren’t predators devouring the souls of their worshippers and demoting everyone else to lowly deii, fit for administration and feeding the cattle. No, the Ogdoad, the Eight, the Old Ones, call them what you will, have their roots in the deeper fabric of the universe, in the dance of realms that made our world what it was and could be again. They are the living faces of magic and destiny, and although they rule here in much reduced form, they are still potent. They are the essence of potential. You would be wise to listen to them when they speak, for they do so rarely and to very, very few.’

 

‘There are no gods,’ said Kail, his voice breaking Pukje’s spell like a hammer through glass. ‘There are no gods,’ he repeated, ‘except those we allowed to rule as gods, and they were deposed in the Cataclysm. They rule no more.’

 

‘And what sort of world is this?’ countered Tatenen, raising his head and standing with the fluid grace of a cat. ‘This stone on which you stand is to your world what your world is to the one we once knew. You cannot imagine such greatness. Do not judge those who held dominion over what was. You are not fit to stand in their presence.’

 

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ Kail held out his hands palm up and lifted them, as though weighing Tatenen’s words and finding them wanting. ‘You’re pretty quick to judge, yourself. What gives you the right?’

 

‘I tamed the Old Ones.’

 

‘So you said, but what does that mean? All we’ve seen so far could be an illusion fit to frighten the ignorant. Well, I’ll confess to being ignorant; I’ve never heard of these so-called Old Ones and I’ve never heard of you, either. But I’m not frightened — and I’ll not bow to you or anyone out of fear. You have to earn that privilege.’

 

Kail’s defiant stance gave Sal time to conquer the overwhelming sense of strangeness that had gripped him since landing. ‘It’s okay,’ he said to the tracker. ‘Let’s hear him out. I’d rather not argue. Every minute we waste here is one more before we find Shilly.’

 

‘I’m not sure this one ever intends to take us there,’ said Kail, indicating Pukje. ‘But if that’s your wish, I’ll bite my lip. For now.’

 

Pukje puffed up his child-sized chest. ‘I resent the implication that I’ve lied to you. I always keep my word — although I may give you more than you bargained for along the way. That’s just part of the service.’ His face split into a mischievous grin. ‘Sal will see his Shilly again. I will do everything in my power to ensure that.’

 

‘I told you. She’s not mine,’’ Sal said with genuine irritation, ‘and I’m not going to believe you until you come good on your promise.’

 

‘Which I will, in due course.’ The imp resumed pacing. ‘Be patient. You haven’t heard Tatenen’s advice yet.’

 

‘Okay, then.’ Sal ran a hand across his tired eyes. His face ached from exhaustion and stress. ‘Tell us, Tatenen, what you want me to hear.’

 

‘Yes.’ The tall man bowed his head, and Sal feared that he would descend to one knee again. But the obeisance was temporary; the bright green eyes immediately came back up and stared at Sal. ‘The end times are imminent. They reverberate through all these lands, and through time itself, casting echoes of what’s to come backwards to us who await the event. These echoes are impossible to read, except in terms of what might be. Can you tell the shape of the original wave when its faded remnant arrives at the far shore? You, wild one, are such an echo — strong in the old ways as few have been this long millennium, but as all are when the First, Second and Third Realms are joined. To us you are hope, that the world that once was will return. You are the sign that we have been waiting for.’

 

‘Do you understand?’ asked Pukje, coming around from Sal’s right hand to look up into his face. ‘The Eight ruled when the three realms you know of weren’t separate, but one, and their power is diminished when the realms are apart. They see in you the chance that the separation of the realms is about to end. They hope that you will be the one to undo the damage done long before Yod came onto the scene — when the natural order of things was disrupted by those you humans and others worshipped as gods.’

 

‘Wait.’ Sal held up a hand. ‘The Old Ones want me to unite, not just the First and Second Realms, but the Third as well. Is that right?’

 

‘Yes,’ said Pukje.

 

‘And they think that my being a wild talent in some way proves that I’ve succeeded — before I’ve even tried?’

 

‘Yes,’ Tatenen intoned. He stood with legs slightly apart and both hands gripping his slender staff. A look in his viridian-coloured eyes forbade argument.

 

‘But what about Yod?’ Sal wasn’t going to roll over and accept a fate he hadn’t asked for. ‘If the realms are united, won’t Yod win?’

 

‘Not if we gain control of all three at once,’ Pukje explained.

 

‘And how would we do that?’

 

‘Simple. By permanently bonding the twins together and asking the Goddess to light the Flame for us. With the three realms combined, the Eight will be strong again. Yod won’t stand a chance against them. It’ll be over in seconds. See?’

 

There was a small silence. Beside him, Sal felt Highson lean forward slightly, as though about to speak, but when Sal glanced at him his lips were tightly closed. Highson had created the Homunculus in which the twins now lived; if anyone could make that bond permanent, it would be him. That he didn’t immediately volunteer reinforced Sal’s own gut-feeling that they needed more information before agreeing to the simplest of plans.

 

‘What flame?’ said Kail.

 

Pukje sighed. ‘Don’t you people remember anything?’ With a world-weary expression, he began to explain.

 

 

Kail listened with a growing feeling of disorientation as the revelations kept coming: Sal’s wild talent was the echo of a future victory over Yod; the Homunculus would be the tool by which humanity reunited realms he hadn’t even known existed until a fortnight earlier; the Goddess was real and trapped in a Tomb built from the remains of Sheol, once the gateway to the Third Realm; the Tomb was currently to be found deep under a glacial lake at the very top of the mountain range they were ascending; if the twins weren’t already there, they would be soon, and Shilly wasn’t far behind.

 

He had crossed the boundaries of his normal existence when he had entered the Hanging Mountains. Now those boundaries were so far behind him he wondered if he would ever see them again.

 

‘So that’s how the twins will save the day,’ Sal said, thinking it through aloud. ‘They kept the First and Second Realms together by being stuck in the Void. If they make their connection permanent, and join the Third Realm as well, the realms won’t ever bounce apart.’

 

‘That’s right,’ said Pukje encouragingly. ‘That’s what the seers are picking up when they say the Homunculus is important. They don’t need to see all of the picture to know that much.’

 

‘I too did not understand,’ said Tatenen. ‘When one of the mirror twins came to Tatenen on his journey along the Path of the Holy Immortals, he was tested, as all were at that time. The Old Ones marked him as under their protection, against my wishes. They knew that we would need the mirror twins in future times. That we would need them now, upon your arrival.’

 

‘You see?’ said Pukje with a sly wink. ‘They can’t act without you.’

 

‘And why’s that, exactly?’ asked Sal, looking confused again.

 

‘They’re trapped here, for one. This single fragment of the old world is the only place left in which they can exist — in which anything like wild talent still belongs — and it’s a prison. They can’t leave its borders without falling to dust, just like everything else they knew.’

 

‘And when it’s done…’ Sal grappled with details while Kail was coming to grips with the big picture. ‘… everyone will be like me. A wild talent? Is that what Tatenen meant, before?’

 

‘Essentially, yes.’ Pukje took his measure of the young man with one long, slow look. ‘Does that worry you?’

 

‘No.’ In fact, Sal looked relieved.

 

Kail knew he was thinking of Shilly. Shilly, who had no talent for the Change and had always, behind every demonstration of understanding and acceptance, desired what came so easily to her lover. Would Sal go so far as to accept the plan just to give her what she wanted?

 

The wrinkled, lumpy visages of the ancient gods watched the debate with a disinterested air.

 

‘What do they say?’ Kail asked Tatenen. ‘Why don’t they speak for themselves?’

 

‘They have grown weary waiting for this day,’ the tall man said. ‘They conserve what little strength remains for the tests ahead.’

 

‘Convenient.’

 

‘What are you suggesting?’

 

‘That you want something for yourself, not them at all’

 

‘Why do you mistrust us, Habryn Kail?’ Pukje asked. The strange little man’s expression radiated puzzlement and hurt, but Kail didn’t let himself be fooled.

 

‘Because you come to us when we’re separated from the rest of the expedition. Because you expect us to make a decision that will affect everyone without consulting anyone else. Because it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that you’ve been following us, just waiting for an event, like the avalanche, when you knew we couldn’t refuse your help and so would be indebted to you. Because if your motives were entirely pure, why wouldn’t you have approached us days, even weeks ago? And why has no one here ever heard of you and your withered totems before? If they were really the gods’ gods, shouldn’t we at least know their names?’

 

Tatenen bared his teeth. ‘Speak with respect, human.’ The sharp end of the amber staff swung up to point at him. ‘You should tread lightly on my soil. We have power here.’

 

Pukje hushed him, and the staff came slowly down. ‘No one’s saying you can’t consult with the others. We’d prefer it if you did, to be honest. As you say, this isn’t a decision one should take lightly — and it’s not even one you have to make right now. You can decide when I complete my bargain and take you from here to the lake where the Goddess’s Tomb lies submerged. Will that go some way to assuaging your fear?’

 

Kail could only nod, although his mind wouldn’t be eased until they did reach the top of the mountain.

 

‘As to why we didn’t approach you before…’ Pukje put his hands on his hips and stared up at the tracker. ‘Well, do you blame us for waiting? Your suspicion warrants every effort we took to maximise the chance that you’d listen to us. I mean, if everything had been going well, would you have come here, to this isolated fragment of a dead world and the creatures imprisoned on it — even for a moment? No, you had more important things to worry about. You would have marched blindly onward, unaware that the answer to everything had just passed you by.’ The little man injected a note of scorn into his voice. ‘Your scepticism, natural though it might be, would’ve killed us all.’

 

‘Did you trigger the avalanche?’ asked Highson Sparre, and Kail was surprised to see his own suspicions magnified a thousandfold on the face of Sal’s father.

 

‘No,’ said Pukje.

 

‘I don’t believe you.’

 

‘That’s your prerogative,’ the imp said icily. ‘But the fact remains —’

 

‘The fact remains that creatures like these are mentioned in The Book of Towers.’ Highson encompassed the ring of ghastly faces with a sweep of his right hand. ‘We are taught that the gods were evil — or at the very best, self-serving. They didn’t care about us, no matter how much we cared about them. Why would the gods’ gods be any better for us? We would be fools to let them back into our world.’

 

‘Fools, eh?’ Pukje surprised Kail by laughing. ‘No, I’m not mocking you, Highson Sparre. Well, perhaps a little. Don’t you see what those edicts handed down to you in The Book of Towers really are? They’re memories of another time, and they are not always relevant today. There have been other such edicts, you know. Several Cataclysms ago the edict was to worship no other god but the one true god — who turned out to be Yod’s servants in the First Realm. Why did such an edict survive for so long when complete obedience to it would mean the death of humanity? Because humans are creatures of habit — and habit is impossible without memory.

 

‘So, The Book of Towers tells you that gods are bad. Well, yes, that’s perfectly true, if they behave like Yod and the other gods used to. But, you see, bringing the three realms together won’t just make the Old Ones powerful: you will be powerful, too. Keep them apart and you will die as you have always feared you would, under the boot heel of a hungry god.’

 

‘I want to talk to them,’ said Sal. ‘I want to hear them speak. If these Old Ones really want us to help them, they should be prepared, to give up a little. We’d be doing their dirty work, after all.’

 

Pukje glanced at Tatenen, who thought for a moment then said, ‘You do not know what you ask, wild one.’

 

‘I know exactly what I’m asking for. A few words won’t cost much, surely.’

 

‘The Old Ones are unlike you. Their words are not simply words, but trials. To converse with them might mean your death. There will definitely be a price.’

 

‘What sort of price?’

 

‘I cannot say.’ Tatenen looked nervous. ‘That depends on the judgement the Old Ones cast.’

 

Kail stepped forward to confront the tall man. ‘I’ll take that risk.’

 

‘It’s all or none, I’m afraid,’ said Pukje, blocking Kail’s way with one hand raised. ‘Believe me. You don’t need to do this. Tatenen speaks for the Old Ones. His word is theirs.’

 

‘I have no reason to believe you,’ Kail said. ‘And words can easily be bent.’

 

Highson agreed. ‘Bent and tied in knots even by people who think they’re doing the right thing. I know all about that.’

 

Sal nodded. ‘You’ll let us talk to them, or we’ll never do what you want.’

 

Tatenen bowed in submission. ‘Very well, wild one.’

 

‘My name is Sal.’

 

‘Your name is irrelevant. Who you are is all that matters.’ Tatenen straightened and waved Sal forward. ‘Step closer.’

 

Kail, with no small amount of admiration, watched Sal approach the tall man. The young man walked with his long hair hanging freely. Nervous though he must surely have been, it didn’t show, not even when Tatenen gestured for Sal to stop and raised his free hand to cup Sal’s forehead. Sal froze but didn’t flinch as the hand — which surely must have been as cold as ice — brushed his hair out of the way and touched his skin palm-first. All he did was close his eyes.

 

The world seemed to hold its breath.

 

Then Tatenen removed his hand and Sal stepped back, blinking rapidly. ‘What?’ He raised a hand to the place where Tatenen had touched him and looked around at the faces surrounding them. ‘Oh, that was weird.’

 

‘Are you all right?’ asked Highson, gripping his shoulder.

 

‘I’m perfectly fine,’ he said. ‘I’m certain of that much.’

 

‘Now you,’ Tatenen told Kail.

 

The tracker swallowed his concern and did as Sal had done, stepping forward until Tatenen raised a hand. The tall man’s bright green eyes seemed to consume the world. Kail almost pulled away from the hand at his temple, disturbed by the intimacy of Tatenen’s touch. He knew he shouldn’t, but the reflex was there.

 

Then it was too late.

 

‘We are the Old Ones,’ whispered a voice, ‘the architects of the devachan.’

 

‘Born in darkness, invisible, vital,’ came another, as subtle and insidious as poison gas, ‘we ruled the voids surrounding the realms and the immortal depths of space.’

 

‘We are ancient beyond measure, beyond time itself.’

 

‘We are the Eight, and so we will remain until Ymir returns to set us free.’

 

Kail’s eyes rolled. He was frozen solid where he stood, alone on the broken stone ground, which now appeared to be hanging unsupported in space, surrounded by nothingness. Everyone else had vanished. The faces of the Old Ones were the only things moving in the universe: they sagged and jerked as though on the verge of collapse. Their eyes dripped thick, slow-motion tears and their teeth turned black with decay. A stench so dense and liquid it could have been a living thing coiled around Kail and made his throat constrict.

 

He could say nothing as the Eight conversed among themselves.

 

‘A lonely man.’

 

‘Loveless.’

 

‘No loyalty in him.’

 

‘And yet loyal to the idea of loyalty.’

 

‘He is conflicted.’

 

‘Who does he long for?’

 

‘What does he want?’

 

‘If he doesn’t choose a side soon, it will be chosen for him.’

 

Kail struggled against the paralysis gripping him. Loveless? No loyalty? He wanted to defend himself, to argue against such arbitrary summations of his character, but all he could do was listen.

 

‘His heart would side with the girl.’

 

‘His head will see reason.’

 

‘It always does.’

 

‘But his own brand of reason.’

 

‘Convenience.’

 

‘Cynicism.’

 

‘Isolation.’

 

‘Out of the emptiness such things come, and to emptiness they inevitably return.’

 

The faces slumped towards him as though melting from a heat he couldn’t feel. Their mouths gaped; their ears ran like thick mud. The stench grew stronger and stronger until Kail couldn’t breathe.

 

‘He has learned some lessons.’

 

‘He is proud — perhaps too proud.’

 

‘As are we, with good reason.’

 

‘The road he follows is long.’

 

‘He walks with his companions but his feet do not touch the ground.’

 

‘He has a long way yet to go.’

 

‘The price is not his to pay.’

 

‘We are decided.’

 

The world returned, first with a shock of cold where Tatenen’s hand still pressed against his forehead, then with a rush of fresh air. He took in details: Sal and Highson were staring anxiously at him; Pukje watched with a guarded expression from the sidelines; Tatenen’s green eyes still threatened to drown out the wonder of the mountainous backdrop; and the Old Ones had returned to their former frozen state. Tatenen’s hand fell away.

 

Kail stepped back, understanding why Sal had seemed so shaken by the experience. He felt drained, rattled, and simultaneously nervous, as though something had reached into his mind and stirred up all the things he preferred to keep buried in its depths.

 

A lonely man.

 

Loveless.

 

No loyalty in him.

 

Tatenen turned to Highson. ‘And finally you, sire of the wild one.’

 

Highson squared his solid shoulders and came forward.

 

 

Sal watched helplessly as his father submitted to Tatenen’s frigid touch. The memory of his own experience was still piercingly vivid: the eight decaying faces; the slithering, insinuating whispers; the complete inability to move or respond to anything the Old Ones said.

 

Such anger.

 

Such impatience.

 

Who does he long for?

 

He doesn’t know himself as well as he thinks he does.

 

And ultimately the strange and definitely threatening feeling of having passed under the gaze of something large and unknowable, something against which he must have seemed less than an insect.

 

He hugged himself, feeling the cold right down into his bones. The sun was fading to red in the west, casting a bloody veil across the mountains. Soon it would be night and they would have to think about taking shelter. A nagging sickness roiled in his guts — either the lingering after-effects of their flight, or a new symptom of their increased altitude — and he dreaded travelling anywhere. Yet the thought of staying any longer than they had to on this fractured, unnatural fragment of an ancient world made him uneasier still.

 

Highson blinked and stepped free of Tatenen’s touch after barely a dozen breaths. His own encounter with the Old Ones had seemed to drag forever.

 

‘It’s done,’ said Tatenen. He gripped his staff with white-knuckled hands, as though worried about how the three of them would react. ‘You have been tested by the Eight and found worthy.’

 

‘Did you get what you wanted?’ asked Pukje, surprising Sal by running around him and leaping onto his back. The strange creature, lighter than a cat and smelling faintly of mildew, crawled up onto his shoulders, where he crouched and peered over into Sal’s right eye.

 

‘Uh…’ Sal didn’t know what to say or do in response to the strange assault. ‘I couldn’t really ask any questions.’ Highson and Kail shook their heads in agreement. ‘But they did tell me to believe you, I think.’

 

The imp-dragon speaks truly, they had whispered at the conclusion of their examination of him, but he hears not.

 

There is only one path.

 

Pukje’s face broke into a wide smile that was no less ugly for being at such close quarters. ‘Excellent. We can get moving, then.’

 

‘I want to try calling Marmion first,’ said Kail.

 

‘You can do that from the air,’ said Pukje.

 

‘What’s the big hurry?’ asked Sal as the imp dropped from his shoulders and ran behind him.

 

‘Time is passing. Events don’t stand still at your convenience. Keep looking forward, now. I’ll be ready in a moment.’

 

‘What about the price?’ asked Highson, a worried look on his face. ‘They told me that I’d be the one to pay.’

 

‘If they said so, it is already so,’ Tatenen stated.

 

‘I’ve already paid?’ A deep frown creased Sal’s father’s features. ‘How?’

 

‘You might not notice, at first.’ The tall man bowed his head. ‘Accept this offering, lords of the ancient world. Take what is yours in accordance with the rights once bestowed upon you by all of creation, and allow these humble travellers to do your bidding.’

 

With those words, the eight hideous faces faded away like mist under bright sunlight. Sal hadn’t realised how silent the day had become until the whistling of the wind returned, and he shivered, feeling suddenly exposed.

 

Highson crossed to where their packs lay in a bundle. A frown settled on his face as he hastily rummaged through his belongings, seeking the thing that the Eight had taken. Sal knew everything in his father’s pack, since there had been little privacy during the long climb and each had helped the others pack and unpack many times. It contained nothing of any great value, he assumed, to creatures that had once been gods.

 

‘I have one last question for you,’ asked Kail of Tatenen. ‘You say you tamed the Old Ones, that you bind them here.’ The tall man’s crown caught the weak sunlight as he nodded. ‘If you’re their jailer, why are you so keen to set them free?’

 

‘Because while they are chained, I am chained. My existence is tied to theirs. I could be free too, one day.’

 

Kail nodded his understanding.

 

The sound of Pukje’s transformation came from behind them, followed by a single sweep of massive wings.

 

‘Ready when you are,’ said the strange creature.

 

Sal went to Highson who had finished going through his belongings and now sat staring at his pack with a confused expression.

 

‘There’s nothing missing,’ he said. ‘What could they have taken?’

 

‘I don’t know,’ Sal said, more bluntly than he intended. ‘But we have to get moving. I want to get out of here before they change their minds.’

 

Highson nodded and stood, slipping his pack over his shoulders and tightening the straps. ‘Yes, you’re right. Maybe they’re just playing with us. Maybe they didn’t take anything at all.’

 

Sal didn’t believe that for a second, but he kept his opinion to himself.

 

When they went to mount Pukje’s wrinkled, muscular back, Sal noted that Tatenen had disappeared; no point in sticking around, he thought, once the job was done. Still, Sal felt vaguely offended that Tatenen, who wanted him to do so much in the name of those he represented, couldn’t be bothered to at least wish Sal good luck. He figured he would need it.

 

Once they were all aboard, Pukje ran to the edge of the ancient plateau and leapt off into space. As his mighty wings caught the wind and swept them out across the icy peaks, Sal looked behind him and realised for the first time that the plateau wasn’t part of the mountains at all. It hung unsupported in the air above a steep valley, a single chunk of jagged rock literally ripped out of its own time. The underside of the strange island tapered to a ragged point, like a giant top. Sal imagined it wobbling and tipping as the energy sustaining it began to run out.

 

Then Pukje was rising, gaining altitude slowly but inexorably with each flap. Their flight wasn’t as vigorous and bone-jarring as the first had been, but Sal still found it hard to concentrate on anything more than making sure he didn’t fall off, clinging desperately despite his rapidly cramping fingers.

 

A ripple through the Change told him that Kail was trying to contact Marmion. It came several times, striving to get the attention of someone far away and possibly hidden through many hundreds of metres of mountain.

 

‘I can’t reach him,’ the tracker eventually admitted to Sal, speaking through the same medium he was using to reach out for his superior. ‘Do you want to have a go, Sal?’

 

’Okay.’ Sal agreed readily enough, even though he wasn’t certain he could maintain the focus required. Neither did he have any intention of doing exactly as Kail had done. Marmion could be incapacitated or worse. That would explain his silence as readily as the stone separating them.

 

‘Skender?’ he called instead, focussing on the mnemonics with all the will he could spare. ‘Skender, if you can hear me, just say so.’

 

From immeasurably far away came a faint affirmative.

 

‘We’re on our way to you. Me, and Kail and Highson. We might have found a way to deal with Yod. Expect us in, um, hang on …’ He broke off his mental communication to shout a question at Pukje. ‘How long?’ The wind snatched at his words but he hoped the strange creature could hear them. ‘How long until we get there?’

 

The steady flapping rhythm paused and the broad head twisted back at him. ‘An hour,’ Pukje bellowed.

 

‘Expect us in an hour,’ he relayed to Skender. ‘Is everything okay there?’

 

For a moment nothing came. Then a confused signal that might have been an attempt at words rose up out of the background potential.

 

‘I can’t quite make you out,’ Sal told him, straining as best he could to hear more clearly.

 

‘… attack… man’kin ... towers…’

 

‘The man’kin are attacking towers?’

 

‘… balloon …’ With one last garbled squawk, Skender reached the limit of his strength.

 

‘Don’t worry,’ Sal sent, trying his best to sound reassuring. ‘We’ll be there soon and can help you out then, if you need it.’

 

A faint echo of farewell came out of the ether, then there was nothing but silence.

 

Sal relayed the fragmentary information to Kail and Highson, who responded with worries that echoed his own. The suggestion that man’kin were connected to whatever was going on at the top of the mountain only made Sal more worried, not less. Shilly might be with them, voluntarily or against her will. Sal didn’t want her caught up in any action that he might be forced to take.

 

He tried to keep his worries contained as Pukje flew on. There was no point in talking to the others, even though he would have loved to compare their experiences of the Ogdoad with his own. He simply wasn’t able to maintain his attention. Instead he watched the landscape change the higher they flew. Dusk turned to dark in eerie slow motion around him. Crystalline stars came out in sprays across half the sky, untainted by the moon, and with almost imperceptible slowness the vast bulk of the mountains to the east began to fall away, so the stellar vistas could be viewed in that direction too. Sal hadn’t realised just how used he had become to being able to see only half the sky. The immensity of the heavenly dome made him dizzy.

 

He thought of Vehofnehu, the Panic empyricist who had disappeared with the glast-infected Kemp shortly before the Swarm’s attack on Milang. What would he have made of the view above him? Would he have seen the events unfolding on top of the mountains? Would he have seen Pukje and the Old Ones intercepting Shilly’s would-be rescuers as they lagged behind the man’kin? And what would he have seen coming next, in the whorls and curlicues that defied Sal’s vaguest interpretation?

 

The east gained a horizon — an impossibly jagged, perfectly black line that looked like nothing earthly or natural to Sal’s eyes. Pukje spiralled in a broad, rising arc, following invisible updraughts or using sheer strength to gain altitude until they were roughly level with that line. Then he changed pace and began to fly horizontally. Sal could feel Pukje’s massive lungs labouring to suck in enough of the cold, thin air. Even Sal was gasping at such an extreme altitude. The stars felt so close that he imagined Pukje could rise just a little higher and they would fly amongst them. Part of him wished they could, rather than face the uncertainty ahead.

 

Pukje said something he didn’t quite catch, beyond the words ‘prove’, ‘betray you’ and ‘easier way’.

 

‘What?’ Sal shouted, feeling a renewal of his earlier fear that Pukje’s motives were far from pure.

 

‘I said, this should prove something to you. If I was going to betray you, there must have been an easier way.’

 

Sal managed a laugh. Weak starlight and growing proximity turned the jagged line into a wall of fearsome mountaintops marching across their path. Pukje would just miss them, judging by their current trajectory, although it was hard to measure distances at that hour and in such unfamiliar surroundings.

 

At times it seemed as though Sal could reach out and touch the approaching wall, while at other times it seemed to be at the very edge of the universe.

 

Then, suddenly, Pukje was flapping amongst the peaks themselves, following angular valleys across the top of the wall that lay in their path. Sal couldn’t guess what lay on its far side and tried to prepare himself for anything. He didn’t know if the balloon had come this way or followed a different route entirely.

 

And he couldn’t assume their ride would be a safe one, not after Skender’s mysterious message.

 

Pukje surmounted a ridge of ice and snow that looked big enough to bury Milang. The mountains became higher behind than those ahead. Only slightly at first, but the transformation was fundamental; they had made it. They were on the far side.

 

Pukje’s flight began to angle downwards. He flapped less often and began to breathe more easily.

 

‘Where are Shilly and the others?’ Sal asked, taking advantage of the opportunity to talk.

 

‘Not far from here,’ Pukje replied. ‘I’ll take you over the area, and then —’

 

A blast of bright orange light cut him off. The flash of light was so bright that Sal could see everything at the summit of the mountains as though lit by full daylight. Only the colour was wrong, casting the sides of the massive crater he saw in colours of fire and molten metal, while the lake at the centre shone a burnished bronze. Just for an instant, everything was gold and red, even Pukje’s moss-green hide.

 

Then the orange light went out, and Sal was effectively blind: the after-image was much brighter than the starlight. All he could see were the imprinted images of the crater and its contents. He could clearly see in the oval of the crater the bright speck that had been the source of the light. It seemed to be hanging directly over the lake’s centre.

 

Pukje twisted in midair and began to flap vigorously in the opposite direction. Sal clung tight in alarm, wondering what the sudden urgency was. Then a wall of air hit them, rushing outwards from the centre of the lake and striking Pukje from behind with all the force of an avalanche. They tumbled as helplessly as a hawk in a hurricane. A roaring sound filled the night. Sal could barely hear himself shouting to Highson and Kail — and himself — to hang on.

 

The shockwave passed them by and they fell into its turbulent wake. Pukje regained control and pulled out of a dive that moments later would have seen them smack headfirst into the crater wall. A hand gripped Sal’s leg with powerful force, and when he reached down to see who it belonged to he found Highson, his father, clinging on with eyes tightly shut.

 

Pukje levelled out. Sal groped across his leathery back for Kail, but the place where the tracker had been was empty. Alarmed, Sal reached further, stretching out across Pukje’s heaving flank and straining to catch a glimpse of even the faintest glitter of starlight off pack or clasp.

 

‘Kail!’ he called. ‘Kail, can you hear me?’

 

Pukje twisted his flexible neck and fixed Sal with one great eye. Slowly, and with no possibility of misunderstanding, Pukje shook his head.

 

Sal forced himself to accept the truth — that Habryn Kail had fallen from Pukje’s back during the terrible moments following the flash, and was gone forever.

 

* * * *

 

The Tomb

 

 

‘The First Realm of matter, the Second Realm of

will, the Third Realm of fate — what happened

to these facets of human life while the Goddess

slept? Matter and will existed side by side,

companions but not wedded; fate was infinitely

malleable until the Flame burned again.’

 

A SCRIBE’S BOOK OF QUESTIONS

 

 

hilly watched with impotent horror as ghostly black tentacles swarmed out of the roiling surface of the lake and swept across the churned-up shore, seeking anything living, anything at all. Through the spyglass she had identified Skender and the Homunculus walking with Marmion and Rosevear through the small town some distance from the crashed balloon. Their movement seemed to have attracted the thing inside the lake, and they had barely escaped with their lives.

 

Now the members of the expedition who had remained behind to repair the balloon were fleeing from a similar attack with the help of spectacular Change-working on someone’s part. She clearly discerned Griel and Chu among the fleeing figures. The tentacles were not things of material substance — they passed through buildings and balloon as easily as air — but they had a profound effect on the living. The remaining Panic balloonist lagged behind to finish a last-minute chore. Barely had she laid down her wrench when a sinuous black worm, thicker than her own body was tall, lunged out of the gondola and passed right through her. She dropped lifeless to the ground and the tentacle moved on, seeking new prey.

 

Shilly’s hands shook as she watched her friends and former companions run for their lives. She was reasonably certain that Sal wasn’t among them, but that didn’t stop her worrying.

 

‘What is it?’ she asked Vehofnehu. ‘What is that thing?’

 

‘It’s Yod,’ replied the Panic empyricist, reaching for the spyglass. ‘Part of it, anyway. That’s what we’ve come to stop.’

 

From high above, the drama taking place on the lake’s shore looked irrelevant, unimportant, but Shilly knew from her visions of the future that that single death she had witnessed could be the first of uncountable numbers. All life on Earth would be extinguished if Yod found the strength to leave the lake and assume its throne in the sky.

 

Shilly felt as heavy as lead as she contemplated what lay before them. The lake’s surface looked furred, it was rippling so violently, and out in the middle, where the three tower-like structures poked out of the water, the turbulence was particularly strong. Occasionally, dark shapes moved half-seen in the depths, sending low surges back and forth. White breakers lapped against the shore in a sinister parody of the sea.

 

‘How do you intend to do this?’ she asked Vehofnehu. The more she thought about the plan, the more slippery the plan became.

 

‘In a little while,’ said Vehofnehu, ‘when the others are safe, the man’kin will make their way down to the balloon. They’ll finish the repairs and make it airworthy. They’re not the best pilots, and they’re heavy to boot, but they can fly well enough to get up here and collect the rest of us. We’ll take the balloon out over the lake to the Tomb of the Goddess, which is where we need to be. At the moment, the Tomb is all that’s keeping Yod at bay — and only just, as you can see. It’s acting like a plug between the Void and this world, keeping Yod confined to the lake and its surrounds. Once we open the Tomb, we’ll have to act fast to wake the Goddess and finish the job.’

 

That was the part she had problems with. Bad enough that she was stealing from her friends and allies, leaving them stranded on the edge of a deadly lake without their balloon, but the reason for doing it relied on far too many it’s and maybes. ‘How do you know the charm my future self created will do what you want it to?’

 

‘It has to, otherwise why would you have sent it to yourself?’

 

‘But we don’t really know what it’s for.’

 

Vehofnehu shook his head. ‘That doesn’t matter. We’ll know when it’s working.’

 

She wanted to ask: What if I can’t get it working? What if I do, but it backfires on us? What if something we can’t possibly anticipate goes wrong? What if the mistake we make today means that Yod wins and everyone dies?

 

She pictured the balloon being swatted from the air as dark tentacles rose up out of the lake. She wondered if that was why the balloon had crashed in the first place, and wished that Vehofnehu would let Tom call Marmion to at least ask what had happened. But the empyricist forbade any communication with the wardens for fear that they might interfere with his plans. As far as Vehofnehu was concerned, Marmion knew nothing about the Tomb and would only get in the way if he found out.

 

She felt uneasy about that, too.

 

‘We’re making a new future,’ the empyricist said in reassurance. The bulk of his attention was focussed along the spyglass and the view of the shore it gave him. ‘We’re victims of fate no longer. The man’kin know how to move through many possible futures. With their help we can navigate to the one we need. Don’t you see, Shilly? Success is guaranteed. Yod can’t possibly win now we’re here.’

 

Shilly didn’t feel reassured at all. They were a handful against a creature that ate entire worlds.

 

‘Go rest,’ he told her. ‘You don’t have to sleep. We know what we have to do now. I’ll call you when it’s time to leave.’

 

She nodded and backed away from their vantage point on the lip of the giant crater.

 

Slightly downhill was a ledge where the Holy Immortals gathered, their greenish glow well out of sight of anyone looking up from below. They had stopped singing on reaching the top of the ridge and Shilly certainly didn’t wish to hear the potent sadness of that song again. Tom sat among the Holy Immortals, trying to make himself understood via the letter tiles. One of them — a man — reciprocated, but the tiles spelt only gibberish and they soon gave up in frustration.

 

On the edge of the group, the glast sat on a stone, observing. Its pose was rigid, its expression determined. Green accents flickered across its glassy features.

 

Shilly opened up a bedroll and lay on it with her back to the gathering. She felt she should be preparing for the confrontation with Yod, trying to piece together the fragments of her future self’s charm, but she wondered what difference it would make if she tried or not. She would work it out when the time came. Wasn’t that the point of having the man’kin present? They could choose the future where inspiration struck and she saved the day.

 

Instead of freedom, she felt only a heavy despair settling over her. It weighed her down, pressed her firmly into the stone. She imagined herself sinking into the mountain and disappearing forever, leaving all her problems behind. The thought was an alluring one, and hard on its heels came sleep, no less black at first than the inside of a mountain, and no less unsatisfying.

 

* * * *

 

‘You’re not paying attention.’

 

Shilly was on her hands and knees in the underground cavern, working on the finer details of her charm. It was closer to completion than it had been the last time the younger Shilly had visited. Almost all of the complex pattern was fixed in place. Nearby, Bartholomew laboured painstakingly to secure her most recent work against the ravages of time. The question of what would happen to him when the charm was finished passed fleetingly through her mind, as it often had in recent weeks. She suppressed it. More important things demanded her attention.

 

‘Do you hear me, girl? I said you’re not paying attention.’

 

The tingling at the back of Shilly’s neck returned, stronger than before. Her younger self hadn’t gone yet, as Shilly had feared she might.

 

‘This bit here pins down some of the finer details of the map we’re helping to build. Not a literal map, of course; you wouldn’t need a charm this complex for that. A metaphorical map — and we both know that metaphors have power, don’t we? Give a thing a name and you grant it shape. Grant it shape and you make it real. That’s all I’m doing, really. Before, there was nothing; soon, in your world, there’ll be this. It’ll make the difference, I hope.’

 

She placed the blunt wooden trowel she had been working with back into the pouch at her hip and produced another tool, one for finer work. Delicately and without hurrying, she added intricate details to the broad lines she had etched into the sand. She could feel the flow of the charm and the potential it yearned for in every stroke. The tool seemed lighter than a hair as her right hand moved surely and smoothly.

 

This is my duty, she told herself, nothing else. It wasn’t to worry about the village nearby, which she had found deathly silent and stinking of rotting flesh two days earlier when she had gone for her weekly trek. Stunned and shocked, she had limped from stall to stall, past dwellings she had visited many times in the past. She recognised faces, even twisted and swollen in death: Mentzel the baker; Smerdoni the weather-worker; Doust the vet; and others. She had known them all well, even if she would never have counted them as friends. Those survivors, the people in the village, had been her sole human associates for many, many years.

 

The only sounds in the town had been her footsteps and the tapping of her cane. When she’d heard sobbing, she’d thought for one wild moment that someone might have survived, but it turned out to be her own grief echoing back at her. She hadn’t realised she was crying aloud. With useless tears streaming down her cheeks, she had gathered what supplies she could carry from people who would need it no longer and hurried home.

 

It wasn’t her duty to worry about where the next meal would come from, once those few supplies ran out.

 

‘Yod kills,’ she told her younger self, ‘make no mistake about that. It holds us in no regard at all, except as food or the means of getting more food. In the early days, after it broke loose from the mountains, there were those who tried to curry favour with it, hoping to avoid destruction by keeping its appetite sated. And for a while, such treachery did seem to work. But Yod turned on them all one by one; every conniving, vicious scheme came to nothing in the end. Nothing. Yod spares no one. You need to know that, I think. This isn’t a game.’

 

Shilly felt a flash of resentment that didn’t come from herself. It was weird having two minds in the one head. She didn’t know how the twins had managed it for so long — and that thought prompted her to wonder what had happened to them. The last she had seen of them, they had been fleeing with one of Yod’s tentacles at their backs. For a long time she had assumed them dead, but one dusk a year or two later she had glimpsed their distinctive four-armed silhouette against the pink sky, on a rocky outcrop. She had called to them, but they hadn’t answered her. A moment later, they had leapt down from the outcrop and disappeared. She hadn’t encountered them since.

 

‘Everyone’s dead,’ she sighed. ‘Everyone who matters, anyway.’ A familiar, throat-filling grief rose up in her. The part of her that had always known where Sal was still ached, as useless and scarred as Marmion’s truncated wrist had been. She hadn’t been with him, but she had felt him die the very instant it had happened. Despite everything that had happened since, it remained the worst moment of her life — the moment, she sometimes thought, when her life had actually ended, leaving her trapped in this grisly limbo until Yod got around to finishing what it had started.

 

‘When I’m gone, at least you’ll remember me,’ she told her distant junior. ‘And maybe you too, eh, Bartholomew?’

 

The little man’kin looked briefly up at her, then returned to its work. It had spoken only twice in the twenty years they’d been companions, once to tell her its name, the second time to explain to her about the first visitation from her past, back when contact had been fragmentary, inconclusive experiences for both sides. The man’kin were close conspirators in her plan, since they could see all times as one, in series and in parallel. They helped design the charm to link her with her younger self; they had, before their own near-extermination, helped her hide from Yod’s all-scouring glare. That protection was fading now, but the fact that she remained gave her hope that it retained some efficacy.

 

‘They’ve told you what they want of you, I presume. Or maybe they haven’t. I’m never entirely sure where I fit into your world-line.’ Talking to her younger self helped settle her emotions. Not all of the memories were hopeless. ‘The proximity of the realms is what’s allowing Yod back into the world. The Void kept it at a distance for a while, and it’s still not entirely across that gap, thanks to the Tomb. It’s hovering on the brink, gathering its strength. If we can open the Void wider than it ever was, it’ll become a gulf, a bottomless pit, from which Yod could never escape. That pit can then be sealed shut forever by extinguishing the Flame. The Third Realm was always the flaw in the original plan: while the world-tree continues to give Yod possibilities it can explore, there will always be a way out for it, one day. The only way to be rid of it forever is to cut the realms off from each other and kill the world-tree, like severing an infected limb to spare the rest of the body. That sounds pretty drastic, and it is, but it need not be disastrous. Humans will survive, just as we’ve survived other Cataclysms. We’re a resilient, adaptable lot, and given a chance we will prevail.

 

‘That’s where you and the Goddess come in. Only she can permanently quash the Flame; only you can design the charm to keep the realms apart. We need both of you to get this thing done, once and for all.’

 

Disbelief and alarm came back to her from her other self. That this explanation from her older self clearly differed from the one Vehofnehu had given her had increased the younger Shilly’s doubt.

 

‘No, listen. It has to be this way. We in this and other worlds haven’t exactly been sitting on our hands all these years, you know. We explored every option, and changing the face of the world is the only one that stands a chance. The ultimate Cataclysm, with no possibility of turning back. Your Earth will become one lonely bubble floating through the devachan. Yod will tumble away into nothing; it deserves nothing less. And perhaps we deserve it too, for dropping our guard and giving it a toehold. Parasites don’t overwhelm us with force and batter us into submission; they find our weaknesses and exploit them. If we hadn’t been weak, if we hadn’t forgotten —’

 

The chisel in her right hand slipped and carved a discordant line in the sand. She cursed her carelessness and told herself to calm down. Her hands were shaking. She hadn’t realised just how tightly every muscle in her body was clenched.

 

No time, she thought. No time! And still so much left to say.

 

Then a strange thing happened. The pattern before her moved, taking on a life of its own. Lines shifted and spun; curls tightened and relaxed. She felt dizzy, and tried to stand up, which she eventually, slowly, managed to do.

 

When she had reached her full height, she was no longer in the stuffy cave, but standing on top of a ridge at night-time with icy air cutting right through her. Gone was the sound of Bartholomew’s patient brushwork. In its place were the howling wind and voices she couldn’t immediately identify. Some of the words were clear — someone nearby was asking if she was all right — but others weren’t. She remembered the twins trying to describe what their world had been like when the Second Realm had been relatively distant; people had spoken different languages and failed to understand each other most of the time. That was what this sounded like — except this particular language was one she had heard before…

 

She whipped around and saw a huddle of green-glowing people conversing in strange, backward speech. Her heart leapt to her throat.

 

‘This isn’t supposed to be happening,’ said the Shilly whose eyes and mind she was seeing through, ‘is it?’

 

No, she wanted to say. No, it isn’t. But she didn’t want to fight it. Quite the opposite. If she was when she thought she was, on the ridge before the assault on the towers, with the Holy Immortals and the man’kin, there was still time. She could save Sal if she moved quickly enough. She could change things.

 

A familiar and much-missed face loomed in front of her. Tom, all bones and height, still not quite a man and, in her world, doomed never to become one. He was trying to tell her something, but his words vanished in a roaring sound. She wanted to take him in her arms and hold him tight. An urge to weep rose up in her, as chokingly powerful as the hope that made her want to push him aside and start running.

 

Pain flared, dragging herself out of her younger, firmer body and back to where she belonged. The warmth of the glowstones dangling by their slender threads seemed pallid after the Holy Immortals’ verdant light; the air stank and hung close around her; her knees and back ached, and when she looked down at her hands she saw that her right hand had plunged the tip of the chisel into the palm of her left, drawing blood that dripped in a steady stream into the pattern.

 

She wept as she hadn’t wept for years, for the way things had been and might have been, for the way things were in her world and for the sorry end she had come to. This wasn’t what she had dreamed of that night on the ridge. She had been afraid, yes, but afraid of letting everyone down, of a quick ending, of one last catastrophe then nothing: not this lingering, pathetic struggle to survive as Yod savoured every last morsel, taking its time to devour the Earth.

 

The last echo of her youth faded away. It would have been easy for hope to vanish with it, but she fought that impulse with every tear, every sob. This wasn’t the first time she’d wept for the world and for herself, for Sal and for everyone she had known, starting with Lodo and moving through her long life to her most recent loss, the people in the village. She knew how to deal with such calamities.

 

When she could see again, she cleaned up the blood and went back to work.

 

* * * *

 

‘Are you feeling all right, Shilly?’

 

She blinked. Tom was standing in front of her, a worried expression on his face. ‘What?’ Then she looked down at herself and realised that she was standing with her coat unbuttoned and the warmth leaching rapidly out of her. Her whole body was shaking from the cold, and she hadn’t even noticed.

 

Hastily, she did up the coat and hugged herself. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked through chattering teeth. She had no idea how long she had been asleep, just that it had been light when she lay down and it was dark now. ‘Did I miss anything?’

 

‘The man’kin left a couple of hours ago,’ he explained. ‘It didn’t take them long to get down to the balloon, and they got it to work right away. Yod doesn’t seem to bother them at all. Its tentacles tried to get at them for a while, but then went back into the water. It stayed in the water until Griel and Marmion and the others tried to take the balloon back by force. The man’kin stopped them from getting too close, and then Yod came out again and they ran away. There are caves all around the lake, Shilly. Caves.’

 

She nodded, remembering all too well the prophecy Tom had shared with her a month ago.

 

He wasn’t distracted for long. He recounted the events she had missed with the eagerness of a schoolboy describing a play. ‘Things have been relatively quiet since then. Marmion and the others stay in the caves and Yod stays in the lake. Yod can’t kill the man’kin, but it doesn’t seem to care about what they might be doing either.’

 

It might start to care, she thought, if their impending attack on the tower went well. ‘Did you see Sal down there with the others?’

 

Tom shook his head.

 

She nodded, knowing that it was only the experience of her future self that made her so anxious. Sal was still alive, somewhere. Of that she could be completely certain. He was probably safely hidden in the caves, where he would have the good sense to stay. She hoped.

 

Everyone’s dead, her future self had said, a woman so used to living with grief she obviously didn’t realise that her voice was laden with it. Everyone who matters, anyway.

 

A low thrumming noise rose up over the wind. Heads turned to look at the top of the crater wall, facing in the direction of the lake. Shilly had just enough time to reach down and pick up her stick when the rounded bulk of the balloon rose up and occluded the stars.

 

She covered her mouth and nose as the two working propellers kicked up dirt and snow. Tom let out a cheer, but the man’kin crew didn’t wave or make any signs of celebration or satisfaction; they simply continued to do their jobs.

 

As the balloon settled to a quivering halt in a relatively sheltered space, Shilly got a better look at the damage it had suffered. The man’kin may have got the engines running, but they had done little to fix the gondola. Huge rents gaped in its underbelly and sides. Most of the windows were shattered. Several long slash marks were evident in the balloon itself, hastily stitched back together and covered with strengthening charms. Shilly knew that the crash couldn’t have done all of that damage.

 

‘They were attacked,’ she said, feeling even guiltier now about stealing the balloon from her friends. They had probably thought they were safe on the shore — before Yod tried to kill them and their only means of getting away was stolen…

 

Tom nodded, apparently unconcerned, then hurried down the steep slope to the balloon.

 

The throbbing of the engines died down to a dull drone. The Holy Immortals followed Tom at a stately pace, forming a glowing line to where the battered gondola rested on naked granite. They moved oddly, as always, and blurred as they moved, as though simultaneously facing forwards and backwards. Shilly thought of the charm Vehofnehu had mentioned earlier and wondered how close it was to failing entirely. When that happened, how would the Holy Immortals interact with the rest of the world at all?

 

‘The time is almost upon us,’ said the empyricist, coming alongside her.

 

‘If you’re trying to hurry me up,’ she said, ‘it’s not going to work.’

 

‘I have every confidence in you.’ He smiled his too-wide smile and leapt with inhuman agility down the rocks to the balloon. He was gone before she could tell him what her future self had revealed about the charm, that it was for changing the shape of the world, not opening the Tomb at all.

 

No one seemed to be taking their provisions or personal effects. She supposed they wouldn’t need them for the mission ahead. It would either work, in which case they could return at their leisure, or it would fail. The only things she needed were her notes and drawings, which she checked were safely stowed in her new pack and slung over her shoulder. With considerably less grace than Vehofnehu, she wound her slow and painful way down to the gondola.

 

The Angel was waiting there when she arrived. She hadn’t noticed it catch up before then. It looked only marginally more battered than the first time she had met it, and it stood firm beneath the irregular dusting of snow across its narrow back and head. As she approached, it dipped its featureless head in something like a bow.

 

She didn’t know how to respond to that. Instead of bowing back, she simply patted its rough nose as she hobbled by.

 

Tom reached down a hand to help her aboard. She was careful where she put her feet, mindful of the holes and broken boards everywhere. Even stationary, the whole structure creaked and swayed. Already she dreaded the flight out across the water.

 

‘Never again,’ she said as Tom showed her to a seat and she dropped gratefully into it, hugging herself to keep the cold out. ‘Leaving the ground, I mean. When I get back home, I’m not so much as climbing a tree.’

 

‘It’s not that bad, is it?’ Tom said, squeezing his bony frame in next to her.

 

‘Oh, it’s fine if we don’t crash. That’s a big “if”, though.’

 

‘Do you think we’d be going if Vehofnehu wasn’t sure we’d make it?’

 

Shilly liked and respected the empyricist well enough, but she still reserved judgement on his plans. ‘Making it there, I’m sure he’s sure of. It’s what comes after I’m worried about.’

 

Once they were all aboard, the propellers picked up speed. The gondola rattled and shook and with a lingering scrape took to the air. Shilly peered forward along the crowded interior. Every available space was filled with glowing people and man’kin. Vehofnehu operated the controls with vigour, while ahead of him someone had propped up Mawson like a figurehead.

 

Slowly they rose above the jagged lip of the crater and began moving towards the lake.

 

Shilly looked back at the campsite and the Angel, wondering if she would see either again. As she did so, she caught sight of a dark figure standing among the bedrolls and packs, watching her right back. She sat up straighter and was about to cry out when she recognised the glast. Its glassy flesh caught the starlight. Silver flickered and faded as it raised a hand in farewell, then began climbing slowly down the crater wall.

 

‘This doesn’t bode well,’ she said to Tom. ‘Isn’t the glast supposed to be the key to everything?’

 

‘I don’t think anyone’s so sure about that now,’ he replied. ‘It hasn’t said or done anything since it woke up. Maybe Vehofnehu was wrong.’

 

If Vehofnehu could be wrong on that point and on the purpose of the charm, she wanted to say, he could be wrong about everything else. But she kept that to herself as the balloon laboured its way across the shore and out over the lake.

 

 

The people hidden in the caves made no move to impede the balloon’s progress. All through its long journey across the lake, it was unmolested in any way. Yod’s tentacles ignored it, although the surface of the lake, visible by starlight, was restless. The only thing that attacked them was the wind.

 

Shilly’s feet were numb by the time they reached their destination, the largest of the three blunt towers that rose out of the lake ahead of them. As they approached, Shilly could make out weatherworn charms carved over its curved walls, although their meaning eluded her. Ancient dead things, they spoke of another world, another time, and she wasn’t up to translating it. She had too many mysterious shapes and signs in her head as it was.

 

The top of the tower puzzled her: black and featureless, or so it seemed to her; unmarked by any hand, natural or unnatural. Only when they came directly overhead was she able to peer down and see that it was in fact a hole, thirty metres across. The tower was hollow.

 

‘We’re not,’ she said as the balloon began to drop. ‘Please tell me we’re not.’

 

‘It looks like we are,’ said Tom.

 

Her stomach rose into her mouth, and not just at the speed of their descent. They were going down into the tower.

 

‘Doesn’t anyone else think this is a terrible idea?’ she asked the crowded gondola.

 

The only reply was the sound of the engines’ steady pitch as they controlled the balloon’s gradual fall.

 

A breath of warm air brushed her face. Shilly leaned closer to the open window and realised that hot air was blowing past her, rising out of the tower like smoke from a chimney. The stars seemed to shimmer as the top of the tower rose up to shut them out. She looked down and saw, faintly, a bluish light. She couldn’t estimate how far away it was. It could have been at the very bottom of the lake, for all she knew.

 

The thought of the lake and all the water it contained gave her another reason to be nervous. She could practically feel the water pressure rising around them. As the temperature increased and the air became stuffier, with a sharp metallic sting that hurt the back of her throat, she wanted to scream — but she knew that if she did the echoes might never stop. That thought alone kept her mouth shut and her terror contained.

 

She soon reached a point where she could no longer tell how fast they were moving. The walls reflected the glow of the Holy Immortals so amorphously that sometimes she actually seemed to be rising, not falling. When the uncertainty began to make her feel dizzy, she shut her eyes to block it out.

 

But with her eyes closed there was nothing to keep out the memories of her future self. She wasn’t sure which was worse. The charm still wouldn’t come into focus, and everything burned with grief for Sal. A sense of futility threatened to overwhelm her.

 

‘It’s okay, Shilly,’ whispered Tom over the droning of the propellers. ‘You don’t die here. I know that.’

 

‘But what about you?’ she shot back, forcing her eyes open again. ‘What about the rest of us? It’s no comfort at all if I live and no one else does.’ I’ve seen it, she thought bitterly.

 

Tom looked startled by her impassioned response, and she felt instantly bad. He was only trying to help. But what comfort was there at the bottom of a lake when Yod could presumably kill them all at any moment? She didn’t know how they had survived this long.

 

The light from below had grown brighter while she sat with her eyes closed. It was strong enough to cast the walls of the tower into sharp relief, overpowering the green light of the balloon’s strange passengers. Shilly leaned cautiously out the window for another look, and saw what appeared to be a large brilliant sky-blue crystal, on the tower’s floor below. Its light was cold and oddly distant; she stared at it for several breaths before glancing away and finding that it left no after-image.

 

The balloon began to slow. Creaking, swaying, shuddering in the steady updraught, it reluctantly obeyed Vehofnehu’s hand at the controls as he guided it slightly to one side to avoid the object resting at the bottom of the tower. Shilly noticed that walls were now receding, flaring out in a broad bell-shape across a floor of naked black stone. The crystal rested in the middle of that space on a squat stone dais, broad and ugly, that was only visible when they landed.

 

It wasn’t a crystal at all — or like no crystal Shilly had ever seen, anyway. Instead of flat, angular planes and clean, geometric lines, the glowing structure was all curves and ragged edges, as though someone had smashed a bantam’s egg then put all the fragments back together with no concern for its original shape. Shilly was reminded of the petals of a flower as it first blossomed from its bud. The fragments of the shell overlapped and clashed everywhere she looked, creating a jarring impression of violence frozen in mid-motion. The light remained a chilling steady blue.

 

With a sigh of discontent, the balloon touched down. Man’kin dropped from the gondola and anchored it to the stone, using their own weight and strength to physically hold it in place. One by one, the Holy Immortals filed out to inspect the object they had found. Flickering, indistinct, inscrutable, they were barely recognisable.

 

When it was Shilly’s turn, she followed Tom closely, taking comfort from his familiar humanness. Vehofnehu put the balloon’s propellers on a steady idle that echoed through the space like the buzzing of giant bees. The clicking of her walking stick was the only harsh sound to break that ambience.

 

The glowing blue structure towered over them all. Shilly craned her neck to look up, wondering who had built it and for what purpose. It was as large as a building but had no obvious doors or windows. There were no charms inscribed on or implied by its curving faces. It radiated neither cold nor heat and it emitted no sound that she could discern.

 

‘Now what?’ she asked.

 

‘Now you open it,’ said a voice from behind them.

 

Shilly, Tom and even Vehofnehu jumped. Out of the shadows stepped the tallest creature Shilly had ever seen: a vast, imposing figure in a suit of orange armour that stood head and shoulders above the most massive man’kin in their party. All sharp edges and cruelty, the figure wore a long two-handed sword at its hip that looked strong enough to fell a ghost gum with one stroke. The face visible through the helmet possessed masculine lines, with high cheekbones and pale white skin, but had a distant, calculating air that was anything but human.

 

‘Ah,’ said Vehofnehu, a little shakily, ‘the traitor. Gabra’il. I’d wondered if you had survived the Cataclysm.’

 

‘No Cataclysm, so-called King.’ The giant man’s voice echoed through the chamber like the clashing of steel. ‘A hiatus only. My master’s work will soon be finished and the Cataclysm complete. You will fall, every one of you.’

 

The empyricist stood straighter and strolled with studied nonchalance around the base of the glowing object. ‘They’re fine words, coming from a guard dog.’

 

‘The Tomb of the Sisters falls under my protection. There is no shame in that.’

 

‘Only one sister left, I’m given to understand. And most people today refer to her as the Goddess.’

 

‘There are no gods but my master.’

 

‘Who you let into the Second Realm. Isn’t that right? You betrayed the people who gave you life; you betrayed every living thing. Is your conscience easy? Do the years weigh heavily upon you?’

 

Instead of answering, Gabra’il took two long strides forward. His armour grated and clashed, and Shilly backed hastily away. Expressionlessly, coldly, he reached down and cupped Vehofnehu’s head in his massive right hand. ‘Open the Tomb, or I will kill you now.’

 

Vehofnehu didn’t flinch. ‘I don’t know how to open it.’

 

‘Then why are you here?’

 

‘Why are you here?’

 

‘I serve.’ Gabra’il’s gloved hand tightened around Vehofnehu’s head and began to squeeze.

 

Instead of answering, the empyricist pointed at the Holy Immortals.

 

Unnoticed, the circle of green figures had linked hands and formed a circle around the base of the Tomb. Strange energies swirled among them, and their flickering increased. The greenish light they radiated seemed to war with the blue of the Tomb, creating a stuttering, erratic light display that hurt Shilly’s eyes.

 

Gabra’il let go of Vehofnehu and stepped back. One great hand rested on the hilt of his sword, ready to draw it and cut everyone down.

 

Shilly fought the urge to be violently sick. She didn’t know who Gabra’il was, but Yod was clearly the master he spoke of — and why would anyone willingly do something it wanted? Only her utter impotence in the face of the giant’s strength and the length of his sword stopped her from doing what she normally did in such crises: rush in and start laying about with her cane.

 

She couldn’t open the Tomb, so it was up to the Holy Immortals now. They seemed to know what they were doing. She watched through narrowed eyes as the jarring light grew brighter, oscillating wildly from blue to green with occasional flashes of pure white. The stone beneath her began to vibrate. Dust rained down the length of the tower, making the air even thicker and fouler smelling than it already had been. She put her free hand over her nose. A low rumble rose up, drowning out the sound of Tom’s coughing.

 

A cracking sound came from the Tomb, corresponding with a streak of lightning that carved a jagged path up the tower and into the sky. Then another. Shilly stepped back, feeling utterly overwhelmed by the power swirling around her. She had never felt such a concentration of the Change before, even around Sal. There was more in each mote of dust than there had been in Lodo’s workshop; more perhaps than in the entire Haunted City. Whatever source the Holy Immortals were tapping into, it outshone anything humanity had ever tamed.

 

With the third crack, the lightning came and didn’t go away. An intensely bright line of energy cast hellish shadows all through the tunnel, dancing and leaping and making Shilly even dizzier than she had been before. Telling herself not to falter, she gripped the top of her cane and walked forward, closer to the source of the lightning. She had to see what was going on.

 

The Holy Immortals still circled the Tomb, hand in hand. One of the Tomb’s shell-like ‘petals’ had fallen away. Another followed, dropping heavily to the stone and shattering into countless tiny crystal shards that flashed in all directions. Shilly took another step forward and felt a crunching underfoot. Gabra’il’s attention was focussed firmly on the unfolding Tomb, and with each falling petal he stood straighter and gripped his sword more tightly. Lightning cast his angular features into sharp relief.

 

Vehofnehu had sidled away from the giant’s side and come close to Shilly. ‘Be ready,’ he shouted into her ear. The words were barely audible over the opening of the Tomb.

 

‘But you were wrong about the charm!’ she shouted back. ‘What do you expect me to do?’

 

He just gripped her arm. ‘You’ll know. I trust you.’

 

She thought frantically of her future self’s work and found it hard to concentrate on anything but the lightshow and the growing thunder. The elder Shilly had shown her the charm numerous times, pointing out specific features and broader patterns that she knew better than anyone. The sketches Shilly had taken down were pale shadows of the finished product. She required the essence of the pattern, the mental image of what it should be. As long as it existed in her mind, that would be enough to bring it into the world, for a while.

 

The trouble was, it didn’t exist in her mind, not in its entirety, and not even in all its component parts. She was beginning to see how some of the pieces slotted together. Every time she slipped into the mind of her future self, she came back with a little more of the knowledge required — and the most recent time, when the exchange went both ways, she had gleaned even more. But knowledge wasn’t the same thing as understanding. She needed that before she could do anything.

 

More of the petals fell away, dropping faster and faster as though the loss of the outer petals had unleashed a pressure from within. The bolt of lightning became thicker and more fluid until it began to look like a fishing line cast into the sky.

 

The booming of thunder became a low throbbing that made her insides tremble. A feeling that she might wet herself only made her efforts to concentrate that much more difficult.

 

Then, in a wild storm of violence, the final layers of the Tomb suddenly blew apart, sending crystalline shards in all directions. Shilly shielded her eyes as wind and energy raged, whipping her hair around her face. When she dared look again, everything was covered in snow-like dust and lit from above by an intense column of white light. What had once been lightning or a line whipping through space no longer moved at all, just pointed up into the night sky like a spear. A spear a god could have wielded against the stars, as wide across as the base of the Tomb.

 

Tom stood with his mouth open, aghast. Vehofnehu peeped out from around his knees. Even Gabra’il was taken by surprise, with one arm upraised against the brightness of the light. Only the Holy Immortals and the man’kin were unmoved by the silence that filled the air — the silence that wasn’t silence at all, but a sound so large and loud that it defied perception.

 

The circle of Holy Immortals contracted as they stepped hand-in-hand into the light and onto the dais, closely followed by the man’kin. Gabra’il drew his sword with a snarl and physically threw himself after them, roaring like an animal. Metal met stone with a terrible sound. Pieces of man’kin flew in all directions. One powerful stroke split the steed that had carried Shilly up the mountains in two, from forehead to tufted tail.

 

‘Now, Shilly!’ cried Vehofnehu, rising from his crouch and waving for her attention. ‘This is the moment! Use the charm now!’

 

Shilly frantically tried to gather the fragments and assemble them into a whole. Whatever inspiration Vehofnehu had been hoping for, it wasn’t coming easily. A faint shadowy structure began to take shape in her mind, a broad outline of what her future self had been trying to impart, but it was as slippery as a fish. Every time she tried to pin it down, it slipped through her mental fingers and darted away.

 

Help me! she silently cried out to the other versions of herself who were entangled in this dreadful conspiracy.

 

Urgency gave her the power. One mighty mental lunge saw her catch the image in her mind. ‘Yes,’ she breathed, seeing finally how the fragments could fit together. Individual patterns coalesced into broader swathes that attracted more and more pieces of the puzzle, until it almost seemed that she really could emulate her future self’s feat and bring the charm into being.

 

The potential in her stick stirred at her command, ready to answer her call.

 

Then something struck her head from behind. Something hard. She went down with stars flashing before her eyes. The surprise was as debilitating as the pain and made her even more confused. Who had hit her? Had someone else stepped out of the shadows like Gabra’il had? What other menace had come forward to deal with them?

 

She raised herself to her hands and knees, prompting another round of stars. Some of them were real, she slowly realised. Through blurry eyes she made out the crystal fragments of the Tomb rushing upwards around her, shining with their own light like miniature suns. A wind was rising, hot and dry. Her hair curled against her scalp. She reached up to touch the centre of the pain and felt a warm stickiness on her fingers.

 

Then Tom’s hands were under her armpits, hauling her to her feet. Disoriented, she batted at him with her cane. He shouted words she couldn’t quite understand. Everything was doubled and the world swayed violently beneath her. The green light of the Holy Immortals had vanished and the blue light was getting stronger. A hurricane seemed to be brewing at the bottom of the hollow tower. The Tomb was closing, trapping the Holy Immortals. Although the view swam crazily in and out. of focus, she thought she saw Gabra’il caught half-in, half-out of the crystal petals, trapped like a giant bee in blue amber.

 

‘I’ll help you,’ said a voice she didn’t recognise. A woman’s voice, mature and confident. Hands grabbed Shilly under her right arm, taking half her weight from Tom. Still she couldn’t stand, but she could turn her head to look. She saw a small pale-skinned woman with a crooked nose and hazel eyes, clad in a black robe with a hood that draped down her back. Her hair hung in a long ponytail over her right shoulder, bound in brass. It was brown and shot through with streaks of grey.

 

Together, she and Tom dragged Shilly to where the balloon was waiting for them, the sound of its engines rising sharply in pitch.

 

We’re going to escape, Shilly realised through the pain and the disorientation as they scrambled into the gondola and lay her across a seat. No one was stopping them. The floor moved and the balloon leapt upwards, gaining altitude much more quickly than it had descended, thanks to the swirling hot wind. They shook from side to side, but Vehofnehu kept them as far away from the walls as he could. Only once did they brush something with a terrifying scrape and lurch that almost threw Shilly from the seat.

 

Tom crouched beside her with pieces of white crystal in his hair. She wanted to ask him so many questions. What happened? Who hit me? Who’s she? But she felt her consciousness slipping. Her fingers were stained red with the blood from her head wound.

 

The mystery woman joined Tom just as the world began to recede. Shilly tried to reach for her, but her arm wouldn’t move. A hunch formed too late for her to do anything more than stare.

 

Then all thought ceased and she was gone.

 

* * * *

 

 

The view across the lake was magnificent. Even in its current agitated state, the water reflected a large number of frequencies, many of them invisible to the human eye. The alien observer found time to appreciate the play of this reflected light across the world. There were more things to life than hunger, to eating or being eaten. Transcending such base axioms, it sometimes considered, was what life might actually be about.

 

Accordingly, it found the antics of the humans more than simply amusing. Their strivings might have seemed petty or pointless to some, but not to it. In aspiring to greatness — by opposing a force more potent and deadly than any they would normally come up against — they exposed the spark that was missing from realms that contained no sentient life. They called that spark will, and it was both a blessing and a curse for them. It made them vigorous and vital, but such vitality always aroused attention.

 

Eat or be eaten. Not everything aspired to transcend. And there was definitely greatness to be found in any extreme, be it one of consumption or of destruction, or of any act that might on the surface seem similarly pointless. Was there a point to humanity’s striving to save itself, or were beings who wondered about such things deluding themselves? The alien observer didn’t know, and it didn’t spend a great deal of time worrying about it.

 

One particularly powerful chimerical discharge lit up the night like a supernatural firework, causing a shockwave that sent ripples cascading out from Tower Aleph. The alien told itself to stop watching water and light and to concentrate on the world right in front of it. Things were coming to a head. It had work to do.

 

* * * *

 

The Price

 

 

‘We are buds on the outermost twig of a tree

vaster than we can imagine. It stretches in

directions we cannot see or measure, and grows

new branches with every passing breath, thought

and deed. Each branch connects one possible life

to another, so all that might have been is united in

the Third Realm — even though it seems

profoundly disconnected to us here in the midst

of our lives.’

 

SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

 

 

e careful with that, you ugly mug!’

 

Chu’s shout came clearly from the uphill fringes of the lake shore, where she waited out of reach of the deadly black tentacles.

 

Blacker than the night itself, they rolled like currents of oily smoke across the churned earth where the balloon had rested. They were capable of sudden and surprising turns of speed, especially at their tips, so the twins had learned to be very careful in a very short amount of time.

 

The fact that the twins were balancing Chu’s wing on their combined shoulders and running uphill at night didn’t make the situation any easier at all.

 

Remind me again how we were volunteered for this, Seth muttered.

 

Later. Hadrian ignored the determined grumbling of his brother. Let’s get out of this alive first.

 

They circled a long knot of tentacles that had rolled out of the lake a moment before, the tips blindly groping, trying to find them. The tentacles seemed confused, disoriented by the ankh glowing brightly in the twins’ chest, but Yod had numbers on its side. Once already the twins had almost been cornered.

 

They lost sight of the lake behind a wall of black. Starlight was barely sufficient for them to navigate by, even with the Homunculus’s superior eyesight. Marmion kept a mirror shining at the entrance of the caves. Hadrian did his best to hold that small beacon in sight.

 

‘To your right!’ Chu shouted.

 

A new knot of tentacles had burst from the water. The twins changed course, shifting the wing’s considerable momentum with a grunt. One of Seth’s feet slipped on the icy soil and they almost went down. Hadrian lowered his head and refused to let them fall; Yod wouldn’t win like this, with them spent uselessly on a barren shore. They would have their confrontation; they would see it done.

 

Seth recovered. Together they dodged the latest threat and found a clear path up the shore. The young flyer met them eagerly at the entrance to the caves.

 

‘You did it,’ she said, inspecting the wing for signs of damage before the twins put it down. ‘I knew you could.’

 

Hadrian said nothing. In fact, Chu had been highly sceptical of the twins’ chances of getting back alive with the wing in one piece. It had been her idea to retrieve the wing from where she had unpacked it from the gondola. Had she tried to do so herself, she would almost certainly have died. The number of tentacles on the shore was rising with every hour.

 

‘You’re welcome,’ said Seth pointedly.

 

The flyer looked up and blinked. ‘Oh, yes, thank you. I mean it.’

 

‘I know,’ said Hadrian.

 

‘What’s that?’ asked Marmion, pointing at the twins’ chest.

 

The twins were both startled. ‘You mean you can see it?’

 

‘Of course. Why wouldn’t I?’

 

They explained about the ankh — how it had been given to them by the Ogdoad and their suspicion that it might help hide them from Yod. Their proximity to the enemy of life seemed to make the charm more active. As they studied it from their position of relative safety, it began to fade.

 

‘Is there anything else we don’t know about you?’

 

‘Nothing springs to mind at the moment.’ Hadrian tried to keep sarcasm from his tone.

 

Heuve barked an alarm. Lidia Delfine’s bodyguard was watching the distant tower tops through a spyglass. His eyesight was keener than anyone else’s, apart from the twins’.

 

‘Movement,’ Heuve said. ‘At the tower.’

 

Everyone clustered around the bodyguard: the twins, Marmion, Chu, Lidia Delfine, Rosevear, Banner and Griel. Skender was still recovering with Kelloman in the Ice Eaters’ underground sanctuary, ordered to return there via the cave system riddling the crater walls despite his insistence that he could help with matters on the surface. His protests fell flat in the face of the abortive attempt to recover the balloon from the man’kin earlier that evening. Any chance they might have had vanished when Yod’s tentacles had emerged from the lake to drive them off. Since then, all they had been able to do was watch as the man’kin had performed rudimentary repairs on the craft and flown it away.

 

Heuve and the twins had monitored its progress from the caves, first to the top of the crater wall to collect some more passengers, then out across the water to the submerged towers. Even at night, it had been easy to follow. Apart from the golden chimerical light of its propellers, a bright green glow had filtered through the holes in the gondola, indicating that at least some of the passengers were Holy Immortals. Unmolested by Yod or anyone else, the balloon had flown in a straight line to the largest of the towers then apparently landed.

 

When Kelloman had suggested the wardens raise a storm to knock the balloon out of the sky, Marmion had vetoed the idea immediately.

 

‘Shilly might be aboard,’ he had said. ‘Or Tom. I’ll do nothing to risk their lives until I know for certain, either way.’

 

‘Even though they ran away,’ asked Chu, ‘and stole our only means of getting home?’

 

‘Even so. Our options aren’t as limited as you think.’ And there had been no changing his mind, no matter how much Kelloman had argued. The debate had only ended when Chu had come up with the plan to get the wing to safety and fly it out to the towers in an attempt to find out what the man’kin were up to.

 

‘Something’s leaving the tower,’ said Heuve. ‘The balloon, I think, but it’s hard to be certain.’

 

The twins took the spyglass from him and trained it on the distant tower. Their, eyes detected subtle flashes and currents of energy that the human eye couldn’t see. Earlier that night, the sky had been lit by brilliant white streaks visible only to the Homunculus’s senses. Now, they saw a black lozenge rising against a growing maelstrom spewing out of the tower. The lozenge was clearly the balloon, but it was missing its green glow. Whatever had happened in or around the tower top, the Holy Immortals hadn’t made it back.

 

‘It’s the balloon.’ The twins confirmed Heuve’s guess. ‘It’s not flying so well. There’s a lot of turbulence out there.’ They explained about the missing Holy Immortals.

 

‘Should we set that mirror shining again?’ asked Lidia Delfine. Marmion had extinguished the light upon the twins’ return with the wing.

 

The warden nodded and gestured for Rosevear to see to it.

 

Hadrian thought the attempt to attract their attention important but didn’t see that it would make much difference. The balloon was making speed at a wide angle to the cave they huddled in, fleeing rather than making a dignified retreat.

 

Fleeing from what? he wondered.

 

I’d have thought that was pretty obvious, said Seth.

 

At that moment, a bright orange flash lit up the sky. Hadrian pulled the spyglass away with a pained gasp as night turned suddenly to day. He wasn’t the only one to react with shock. The flash lasted barely an instant, but its intensity remained, painting the gloom of the cave a virulent purple no matter how often he blinked.

 

‘What the Goddess now?’ exclaimed Banner. A noise like thunder rolled over them, making the air shake.

 

Seth took control of the spyglass from Hadrian and trained it back on the distant towers. A column of steam was belching from the lake, as though a volcano had erupted under the water. The balloon wasn’t anywhere to be seen for a moment, and the twins felt a stab of concern that it had been knocked out of the sky by the shockwave following the blast. Sweeping the spyglass in wider and wider arcs, they eventually found it limping through the air, much further from where they had last seen it. One of its two working engines emitted streamers of red sparks. The gasbag itself seemed to be leaking again. Crippled, it made for the nearest shore as best it could.

 

The twins relayed what they could see to the others. Marmion listened, tight-lipped, to their prognosis.

 

‘The balloon’s going to crash again for certain,’ they said. ‘The only question is, can it make the shore in time?’ The water under the balloon was too far away for the twins to make out clearly, but they had no doubt that it was as full of black tentacles as anywhere else.

 

The column of steam grew thicker and more turbulent. It mushroomed as it ascended, forming a ceiling that slowly spread to occlude the stars, one by one. Hadrian followed his brother’s lead and concentrated on the descending balloon, wishing there was something he and the others could do to help.

 

With a distant red flash, the balloon came down near an outcrop that resembled the silhouette of an old man’s face. His bulbous nose stood out clearly from a wrinkled, sagging cheek. ‘I think they made it down in one piece,’ Seth said, ‘but it’s hard to tell’

 

Beside them, Marmion stiffened. He gripped their shoulder and pointed in a completely new direction. ‘Look over there, quickly.’

 

They did so. A winged black shape was coming towards them. Too large to be a bird, it looked like a pterodactyl or even a —

 

Dragon…

 

Hadrian stood a little straighter, straining to see more closely. By starlight, both of them could make out two people clutching its muscular back. One of them wore blue.

 

Could it be? Hadrian asked, unable to believe his eyes.

 

I don’t know. Let’s wait to find out.

 

‘They’re following the light,’ Marmion said. ‘It’s Sal and Highson.’

 

‘What are they flying on?’ asked Chu, squinting. ‘That’s not a wing. Not one like I’ve ever seen before, anyway.’

 

‘I don’t know.’ Marmion stepped out of the cave to meet the new arrivals. She followed close behind.

 

Seth took one last look at where the balloon had crashed. The wreckage wasn’t directly visible, just a lingering red glow that flickered and faded even as he watched.

 

The sound of beating wings drew their attention back to the shore. The creature was coming in low and fast, just metres above the ground. As it approached the cave it tilted backwards, and angled its cavernous wings to catch the air. Two wide-spaced eyes in the beak-nosed face shone silver in the reflected mirrorlight. Strong legs pedalled as the ground came within reach, bringing it to a running stop a short distance away.

 

The motley group cautiously approached the creature. Chu stared at the winged beast with a shocked, fascinated expression that didn’t change as it folded its wings and turned to allow its passengers to dismount. Sal and Highson rode without bridle or harness, hanging on by little more than determination and a rope around the creature’s belly. One end of that rope swung free, reminding Hadrian that there had been a third member of the hunting party that had set out after Shilly and the man’kin, the day before the balloon had left Milang.

 

Sal dropped to the ground with a tired, pained expression. His cheeks were pinched red with cold. Marmion walked up to him, hesitating only briefly when the winged beast brought its head around to examine him.

 

‘You have a story to tell, no doubt,’ the warden said.

 

Sal nodded. Hadrian was shocked by how thin the young man had become in so short a time. His thick clothes and stubble were encrusted with dried blood.

 

‘What was that flash?’ Sal asked. ‘Was it your doing? It almost knocked us right out of the sky.’

 

‘We don’t know what caused it, yet.’

 

Rosevear helped Highson down from the back of the beast, which shifted from foot to foot like an impatient horse. Sal’s father moved slowly, stiffly. He looked older than Hadrian had ever seen him. ‘We lost Kail.’

 

Marmion nodded once, his expression rigid. ‘Sal told me as you were landing.’

 

‘And we’ve lost the balloon,’ said Griel. ‘I hope you have access to more creatures like your friend here.’

 

‘I think he’s the only one,’ said Sal, acknowledging the Panic soldier with a nod. ‘This is Pukje. He’s… not what you expect.’

 

Hadrian felt himself smile tightly. I knew it.

 

The broad head came around to focus on them. ‘Two for the price of one, eh?’ said a familiar voice, barely deepened at all by the larger throat and chest cavity. ‘Fancy that.’

 

‘And you’ve put on weight.’ The twins walked down the slope to confront the creature that had helped Hadrian escape the Swarm and meet his brother in the Second Realm. ‘So you’re a dragon, now.’

 

‘I always have been.’

 

‘How can that be possible?’

 

Pukje’s tail swished across the dirt. ‘I did say you were better off not knowing.’

 

‘You’ve met?’ asked Marmion, looking from one to the other with a frown on his face.

 

Hadrian nodded. ‘Before the Cataclysm. He’s a friend, sort of. He saved my life twice, maybe three times. Although he definitely had his own reasons for helping me, he wasn’t on Yod’s side. That was good enough, back then.’

 

‘We thought we saw him once,’ added Seth, ‘not long after the flood. Upuaut said that he was about. With the crunch coming, I guess he was always going to show up.’

 

‘Why?’

 

‘To make sure things go the right way,’ Pukje said with a wink.

 

‘The right way for who?’ asked Chu.

 

‘That’s the question,’ said Sal dryly. ‘What’s going on here? You’ve obviously been in the wars too.’

 

‘It could take us all night to catch up.’ Marmion rubbed at the stump of his missing hand, swaddled in a thick sock. ‘There’s only one thing you need to know right now. The man’kin have stolen the balloon and crashed into the crater wall. We think Shilly might have been aboard.’

 

Sal straightened. The fatigue on his face vanished. His jaw tensed. ‘Where?’

 

The twins indicated the direction in which they had seen the flash. ‘There’s a landmark, but it’ll be difficult for you to find in the dark.’

 

‘I don’t care.’

 

‘Wait until morning, Sal,’ said Marmion. ‘You need rest, and getting lost won’t help anyone.’

 

‘Those scissor creatures…’ Banner began, then stopped at a look from Marmion. ‘Well, there could be more of them out there. Someone needs to warn her.’

 

‘Can you find that landmark?’ Sal asked the twins with his hands on his hips.

 

‘Yes, but —’

 

‘Then you’re coming with us.’

 

‘I need to eat,’ said Pukje. ‘This body doesn’t fly on goodwill, you know.’

 

‘You’ll be fed when you come back with Shilly,’ Sal said as though talking to a small child. He looked up at the dragon’s back. ‘How many people can you carry?’

 

‘Three. The twins count as two.’

 

‘You’ll have to stay behind, Highson.’

 

Sal’s father shook his head. ‘I’m not doing that.’

 

‘But there’s no room —’

 

‘There’s no room for you, Sal. You need to stay here to tell Marmion about the plan. That work is more important than anything else.’

 

‘It can wait.’

 

‘No, it can’t. If Yod breaks free, Shilly’s dead anyway. We all are. Hard though it is to accept it, you know I’m right. And you also know that you can trust me to do everything in my power to bring her back to you.’

 

Father and son glared at each other, perfectly matched in height and determination.

 

‘I’ve seen the lengths you’ll go to,’ said Sal. ‘I’ll not have that on my conscience.’

 

‘The lengths I’ll go to?’ A frown flickered across Highson’s face. ‘I don’t understand.’

 

‘Come on. You know what I mean: my mother, the Void, the Homunculus — all that. Shilly wouldn’t need rescuing if you hadn’t made almost exactly the same promise five weeks ago.’

 

The frown only deepened. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Sal.’

 

‘How can you say that?’ Anger turned to puzzlement. ‘There’s no way you could just forget her.’

 

‘Unless someone made him forget,’ Pukje rumbled.

 

Puzzlement turned to shock. ‘Oh, Goddess! The Old Ones and their price. Tatenen said we might not work it out straightaway. They took your memories of my mother.’’

 

Highson had turned as pale as his dark skin possibly could. ‘I can’t remember what she looked like or where we met — what she did, what she liked, how she smelled, where she came from. It’s all missing. I didn’t even notice it was missing until just now. How is that possible? I don’t even know her name!’ Highson’s jaw worked and he turned to Sal in supplication.

 

‘Her name was Seirian,’ his son said. ‘And she is dead. I’m sorry.’

 

The tension between them melted. Highson took Sal’s hand and held it, visibly shaking.

 

Did he just say ‘Tatenen’? Hadrian asked Seth. And ‘the Old Ones’?

 

‘Whoever’s going after Shilly needs to go soon,’ Highson said. ‘She could be hurt.’

 

‘I know.’ Sal’s eyes gleamed in the mirrorlight. ‘You go. I’ll wait here. Call me when you find her.’

 

Highson nodded once, gravely.

 

‘Are you willing to do this?’ Marmion asked the twins.

 

I’m glad someone thought to ask, said Seth in the privacy of their joined minds. What the hell is going on here?

 

Shhh. ‘Yes,’ said Hadrian. ‘We’re happy to help.’

 

Pukje opened his massive wings in order for them to mount. The twins could feel the imp’s dragon body shaking with fatigue, but they climbed aboard with few reservations. Finding Shilly was important. Finding out what had happened on or in Tower Aleph was more important still. Who knew how close Yod was to making its final move?

 

Highson and Sal gripped each other’s gloved hands for a breath, then let go. Pukje took five lurching steps to get up to speed. With a grunt of effort, he dragged himself and his passengers into the air. The twins resisted the temptation to look over their shoulder at the people they were leaving behind, and hung on tightly, remembering what Sal had hinted about Kail. Lost, they wondered, or dropped?

 

Highson wriggled forward so he lay next to them.

 

‘It’s strange,’ he shouted over the wind, ‘I remember you and that body you’re in perfectly well, but I can’t remember why I made it. Did it have something to do with Sal’s mother?’

 

Hadrian didn’t know how to answer. What to tell a man whose driving passion had evaporated in an instant? Highson stared at the twins with the frightened, angry look of someone whose life has begun to unravel in front of his eyes. The twins recognised that feeling; they had experienced it on making the connection between the Goddess and Ellis Quick.

 

‘Yes,’ said Seth, shortly and simply.

 

‘Will you tell me —?’

 

‘Later. That’s enough for now.’

 

Highson nodded, although it was clear he didn’t want to let it go, and slid back to his original position.

 

‘Take us to the left a bit,’ called Hadrian to Pukje, and the imp-dragon did as he was told without question.

 

They flew on in silence, each bound up in their own private thoughts.

 

* * * *

 

Sal watched Pukje carry his father and the twins away with a sourness in his stomach that had nothing to do with air or altitude sickness. How would it feel to lose all memories of a loved one? How would he feel if it had happened to him and Shilly? Perhaps, if she had died, he would be relieved of the grief and loss, but how could he mourn someone he didn’t remember even knowing? He could only grieve the part of him that had been taken, without really knowing what it was.

 

Pukje vanished into the darkness and distance. Sal turned to face the gathering of humans and Panic, all of them looking as dirty and disoriented as he felt.

 

‘If we’re going to talk,’ he said, ‘let’s do it under cover. I’m sick of being cold.’

 

‘I’ll second that,’ said Chu, shivering inside her leather flyer’s uniform, even with extra layers over the top to keep her warm.

 

‘Also, our new friends the Ice Eaters may know what’s going on out on the lake,’ Marmion added, looking harried. ‘I don’t mind admitting that I’m at a bit of a loss at the moment.’

 

They retreated through a series of tunnels in the side of the crater. They looked superficially the same to Sal’s untrained eyes, but even he noticed simple, angular marks at each intersection that acted as guides for travellers. An upward-pointing triangle, he soon worked out, meant this tunnel leads uphill; a spiral indicated that the way ahead looped back on itself. Occasional crystals, mounted firmly in the stone, glowed icily as they passed.

 

‘The Ice Eaters charted the tunnels hundreds of years ago,’ said Warden Banner as they followed the winding underground path. She still walked with a crutch but made good speed alongside the others. ‘They only use them in emergencies or during particularly severe winters.’

 

‘I don’t see how it matters,’ grunted Heuve, holding one end of Chu’s wing behind his back. ‘Unless we end up living here because we can’t get home.’

 

‘We’ll get you home,’ said Griel, glowering from under his shelf-like brow. ‘Or we won’t. And if we don’t, it won’t matter because we’ll all be dead.’

 

‘Quiet, both of you,’ said Lidia Delfine gruffly. Her leather uniform was splattered with something that looked very much like dried black blood.

 

‘Why are they called Ice Eaters?’ asked Sal to change the subject.

 

‘As near as I can tell,’ said Banner, ‘it’s because the lake used to be frozen solid. Instead of fishing, they’d mine the ice for food. Fish and other creatures were trapped in the lake during the Cataclysm, you see, and preserved perfectly for centuries.’

 

‘Hence the lack of boats,’ said Rosevear.

 

‘Until the ice melted,’ said Marmion, ‘and the water burst its banks.’

 

‘Bringing all manner of creature downhill.’ The stocky Engineer nodded. ‘Like hullfish.’

 

‘And the glast.’ Small details suddenly became clear to Sal. So many of their problems centred around a lake few people had known existed until hours ago. ‘So what made it melt in the first place?’

 

‘Something to do with Yod,’ said Marmion. ‘It has to be. The twins recognised the towers from their worlds. The man’kin stole the balloon to get out there. The Death emerged from the lake. It all comes back to Yod.’

 

Sal blinked. For a brief moment, things had seemed to be coming together so neatly. Now he was confused again. ‘The Death…?’

 

‘In a moment…’ Marmion replied softly. ‘We’re almost there.’

 

At the head of the group, Lidia Delfine held up her right hand, palm forward.

 

They all came to a halt.

 

‘The Ice Eaters usually place a sentry at the intersection,’ she explained in a tense whisper. ‘There’s no one there now.’

 

Heuve put down his end of the wing and drew his sword. Creeping past his fiancée, he took the lead. Griel shadowed him, hook in hand. The two — so different in form, but united by stealth and purpose — moved silently ahead to inspect the intersection.

 

A moment later, Griel returned. ‘No sign of anyone,’ he said. ‘I suggest we continue, but cautiously.’

 

‘No one at all?’ asked Chu.

 

The Panic soldier shook his head and padded back to where Heuve stood, waiting.

 

‘You told me Skender was here,’ Chu said to Marmion, her tone accusing.

 

‘He was.’ The warden shushed her. ‘Let’s not jump to any conclusions. Sal, you bring up the rear. Keep an eye out for anything. Anything at all.’

 

Rosevear picked up the other end of Chu’s wing. The flyer looked frustrated and angry, and Sal felt much the same way as they slowly moved on. He still didn’t know what an Ice Eater looked like, so he could only follow his instincts if confronted by anything different or strange. But he was still a little frazzled after the dramas of travelling with Pukje, meeting the Old Ones, and losing Kail. He didn’t want to lash out by reflex, only to regret it later.

 

The stretch of corridor around the corner was very different to the one they had left. Lit by crystals and warmed — literally and metaphorically — by brightly coloured wall hangings, it led to a series of chambers where twenty or more people had obviously been living: cushions and bedding filled two low-ceilinged rooms, and another contained food, eating utensils and low mats where diners might sit.

 

A haze of incense and smoke filled the air. Nothing seemed disturbed or damaged. The only unnerving detail was a complete and utter absence of life.

 

Heuve instructed everyone to wait in one of the larger chambers while he and Griel scouted the rest of the rooms. They returned within minutes, shaking their heads.

 

‘No blood, no signs of struggle, and no bodies,’ the bodyguard said.

 

‘Not the Death, then,’ said Marmion, rubbing his scalp with his one hand.

 

‘Not unless they saw it coming.’ Banner eyed the entrances to the chamber as though expecting something to burst out of them at any moment.

 

Sal pointedly cleared his throat.

 

‘The Death is part of Yod,’ Marmion explained. ‘Black tentacles that kill if they’ touch you. They come out of the lake but can’t reach as far as the caves. The Ice Eaters have lived here since Yod began to stir — or at least they did.’ Even Marmion seemed subdued by this development.

 

Which was hardly surprising, thought Sal, if Yod could make a whole group of Ice Eaters flee so completely and suddenly.

 

‘Why not try calling Skender?’

 

‘I have already, with no success.’

 

‘So I’ll try.’

 

‘There’s no point,’ Griel stated flatly. ‘All we can do is wait here and see if anyone — or anything — comes back. We’ve nowhere else to go. Without the Ice Eaters or the balloon, we’re effectively stranded.’

 

‘But we can’t just let Skender go,’ Chu muttered angrily. ‘What if he’s hurt — or worse?’

 

‘You can only hope that he will be all right,’ said Sal, not hiding the bitterness in his voice. He was uncomfortably familiar with how Chu must be feeling. ‘It’s no consolation, I know, but it’s better than nothing.’

 

The flyer stared at him tight-lipped, then turned away.

 

Sal focussed his attention back on Marmion. ‘Tell me everything you know about the Ice Eaters.’

 

The warden shook his head. ‘Unfortunately, we already have.’

 

‘Then let me tell you about the Old Ones and the Goddess and this tomb we’re supposed to find. I know we’ve got our work cut out for us,’ he said, looking at everyone in turn, ‘but if we never start we’ll never finish. And I for one don’t particularly like that thought.’

 

Marmion raised his injured arm, uncannily as though pointing at Sal. For one surreal instant, Sal thought he felt an invisible finger poking him in the chest.

 

‘Just tell us what you know,’ said the warden. ‘Then we’ll decide what we think.’

 

Startled, Sal stammered through a quick explanation of everything that had happened to him in the last seven days, acutely conscious of Heuve, Griel and Banner watching the entrances to the chamber through every word he spoke.

 

* * * *

 

Skender did his best to stay upright, but the hands shoving him in the back made it difficult. The third time he fell over, he threw caution to the wind and finally lost his temper.

 

‘Will you stop it?’ he demanded of his Ice Eater captors once he was back on his feet. ‘If you want me to walk, just show me the direction and let me go. I’m not trying to run. I’m not trying to fight. Why do you want to make it harder for me to obey you?’

 

They relented, but only slightly, and only because Treya intervened. ‘Let him walk freely,’ she said after checking his bonds. The ropes were so tight he had long ago lost all feeling in his hands. ‘Keep an eye on him. At the slightest wrong move, remind him of the wisdom of behaving.’

 

The two giant men grunted obediently. They had a distinctly fishy, sweaty smell that made Skender wrinkle his nose.

 

‘I don’t know why you’re expecting me to betray you,’ he said, genuinely puzzled. ‘You’re the ones who turned on me. One moment you want to be buddies. The next you’re taking me prisoner and hightailing it, leaving everything behind. What’s the deal?’

 

‘It was a mistake to treat with you,’ said the middle-aged woman, her eyes as hard as ever. ‘If we’d known of Marmion’s plans at the start, we would have rejected you utterly. No wonder you kept them secret from us.’

 

‘Plans? What plans? I asked Marmion as I said I would. You heard what he told me. We’re as much in the dark as anyone.’

 

Treya gestured, and Skender’s guards encouraged him to get moving by shoving him in the shoulder. ‘I know all I need to know. I know what to do.’

 

They followed tunnels Skender had never seen before. It seemed to him that they were descending deeper into the heart of the mountain range. The air grew thicker and more debilitating with every breath, and the floor became steadily rougher and more treacherous.

 

It came, therefore, as a complete surprise when they passed through an unremarkable portal and stepped out onto the lake’s pebbly shoreline. A wide black cloud obscured the stars, making the night almost as deep as it had been under the Hanging Mountains. Skender blinked, startled by the sudden transition, but there were more and stranger disorientations to come.

 

A sound like heavy hoofbeats came from their left; the Ice Eaters froze and formed a circle around Skender, as though afraid he was about to be snatched away from them. Treya raised a long, wooden staff with a wicked-looking hook on the end, and waited in silent challenge.

 

A strange shape loomed out of the darkness. Massive and blunt-headed, the Angel was galloping along the beach. Skender had never seen it before, but he remembered the descriptions perfectly well — only one creature in the world could have such a featureless triangular head. Three cylindrical legs propelled it with an odd but efficient gait across the icy ground, and Skender was profoundly relieved to note that its trajectory would take it near but not over the top of him and his captors.

 

As it galloped by, seeming to neither notice nor care about the group watching it, an even odder detail struck him. On the Angel’s back, riding it as a man would a horse, sat a figure that seemed to be made entirely of smoked glass. He stared at it for a good second before recognising it — or its features, at least. They belonged to someone he knew.

 

The body had once been Kemp’s. The creature riding the Angel pell-mell along the lake shore had therefore to be the glast.

 

The glast raised a hand in greeting as it and its strange steed galloped by. Skender half-waved back, wondering if he had slipped into a strange, surreal dream. Or maybe the Change-sink collar Treya had fastened around his throat was afflicting him with hallucinogenic side-effects.

 

No, he told himself. Treya had seen it too, and he had a small advantage over her in that he at least knew what the apparition had been. She was completely in the dark.

 

‘More trouble,’ she grunted as the sound of hoofbeats faded into the distance. Lowering the business end of her staff, she cast a scathing look at Skender. ‘We’re used to monsters here, but the ones you brought with you are strange indeed.’

 

‘I’m on your side there,’ he said, wondering what on Earth was going on. The collar ensured he was unable to contact anyone. And even before the collar had been fitted — apart from fleeting messages from Sal and Marmion — he had been left ignorant.

 

Although, he supposed, he wasn’t as badly off as Mage Kelloman who had been knocked unconscious when he showed the first signs of resisting capture. The mage’s host body hung limply over the shoulder of another hefty Ice Eater. The bilby that accompanied Kelloman everywhere now quivered in a pocket within Skender’s black robes, shivering with either fear or cold or both.

 

Treya took a look around, as though sensing something that Skender couldn’t see or hear, then motioned to keep moving.

 

They travelled a short distance, hugging the base of the crater, until they came to another cave entrance. There Skender was blindfolded.

 

‘Is this really necessary?’ he asked, not trying to hide his testiness as the rough cloth came down over his eyes and he was pushed once more into motion. ‘I keep telling you, I’m on your side. We all are. You asked for our help and we’re trying our best to give it to you.’

 

‘We didn’t ask for your help. You just arrived. I said what I did to find out your intentions, and when it became obvious that you knew nothing, I began to worry. Now that worry has been confirmed.’ Treya sounded as rattled as Skender felt, which was strange considering she had the upper hand. ‘This is a terrible night. I pray to the Goddess that we aren’t too late.’

 

The tunnels led steadily downwards. Skender’s toes continuously caught on irregularities and rough steps. Only the hands tightly gripping his upper arms kept him upright. Over the powerful reek of his captors he began to notice a new smell: a sulphurous reek that made him want to gag.

 

His one consolation lay in knowing that, no matter how much his captors tried to disorient him, his feet would always remember the route they had followed. All he had to do was loosen his bonds somehow, and he could escape.

 

A subtle shift in ambience told him that they had entered a much larger chamber than any he had seen in the caves before. There they came to a halt. Skender was forced to sit on the ground with his hands behind his back and the blindfold still in place. People moved all around him, whispering queries and instructions and then hurrying off on unknown errands. Not far away, a chimerical engine thudded, low and fast. It sounded familiar to Skender’s ears, although he couldn’t place it at first. Something he had heard just once, under very different circumstances…?

 

He remembered eventually, as he had known he would. Os, the Alcaide’s ship of bone, had employed two pumps to keep bilge water from rising in its lower decks; he had heard them during his crossing to the island of the Haunted City from the mainland, five years earlier. This engine sounded considerably larger and more powerful, and that begged the question: what, in such a remote and frigid world, did the Ice Eaters need to pump in such quantity?

 

He shivered. All sensation to his fingers had long vanished. With a pang of fear, he remembered pictures of frostbite in books from the Keep’s library, a condition he had never in his darkest nights dreamed he might have to worry about.

 

‘Hello?’ he called, feeling ignored.

 

Rough fingers loosened his bonds. He pulled his hands free and brought them up to his chest, rubbing them together. The bilby wriggled in agitation, then settled down. When he was certain his digits were all accounted for, he went to tug the blindfold from his eyes.

 

‘Don’t,’ said the person who had untied him. ‘Not yet.’

 

Skender recognised that voice. It belonged to Orma, the young Ice Eater who had warned them from the village when the Death had come to kill them. ‘What’s going on?’ Skender asked him. ‘Why am I suddenly a prisoner? I haven’t done anything wrong.’

 

‘You haven’t, but your friends have. The ones in the balloon.’

 

‘I’m not so sure they’re our friends any more. They stole the balloon, remember?’

 

‘Yes, but they’re strangers like you, and Treya has trouble seeing the difference.’ Orma squatted beside Skender and whispered in a low voice. ‘They went to the Tomb, and that’s forbidden. They would never have made it had we not been hiding from the Death. Treya is angry at you, and us, and at herself most of all. The covenant should never have been broken.’

 

‘Covenant? What covenant?’

 

‘To guard the Tomb, of course,’ Orma said with a hint of impatience. ‘We are its keepers. The Goddess charged our ancestors with the key to opening it and made us promise never to do so — or to allow anyone else to do so, no matter what. In return, we receive eternal life. We’ve been keeping the promise for a thousand years, and now you and your friends in the balloon are mucking it all up!’

 

‘Shhh. Take it easy.’ Orma’s voice had risen and Skender didn’t want this opportunity to end just yet — as it surely would if Treya noticed. ‘So you’re sentries. The Goddess told you to guard her Tomb forever.’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘And what have the man’kin done, exactly? The last I heard, they were just taking the balloon out to the towers.’

 

‘That’s exactly what they did. And somehow they reached the Tomb. It’s supposed to be hidden to anyone but us, but they triggered the defences so they must have found it. Treya heard the alarm. That’s why we’re down here — the few of us who are left.’

 

Skender nodded, hoping he was understanding correctly. ‘But why are we down here? Is it to stop the others getting to the Tomb and waking the Goddess up? Maybe the time has come to do just that. Maybe she’s exactly what we need, to fight the Death.’

 

‘Some of us think so too,’ the boy said. ‘That’s why I’m talking to you. If that’s what your friends are trying to do, if that’s why they want to open the Tomb, we might be willing to help.’

 

‘Can they get me out of here?’

 

‘No. But they’ll side with you if you try to reason with Treya —’

 

He got no further. ‘Orma!’ The voice of the leader of the Ice Eaters cracked like a whip. ‘I told you to untie him, not talk him to death. Come here.’

 

Orma hurried away, leaving Skender alone in the darkness of the blindfold. He resisted the urge to take it off, not wanting to attract any more attention than he already had. More important was loosening the Change-deadening collar so he could warn the others that the Ice Eaters were considerably more than innocent bystanders in the fight against Yod.

 

But the buckle was securely fastened at the back, and the exact mechanism to release it eluded his numb fingertips. He dropped his hands uselessly into his lap and tried to work out what to do.

 

The sound of the pump had grown louder while he talked with Orma. Voices called out in the distance, adding a melodic counterpoint to its steady rhythm. He couldn’t quite make out what the Ice Eaters were saying. It was bad enough that the man’kin had stolen the balloon, but if they had unwittingly set in motion a chain of events that could turn the Ice Eaters against the outsiders, then that would be too much to bear.

 

Footsteps approached him. ‘Take off the blindfold,’ Treya said.

 

Skender did as he was told and blinked in surprise. He had imagined a brightly lit cave, much like the mighty caverns of Ulum, but instead found himself in darkness that was nearly complete. Treya, a slight but powerful figure in black, stood over him with a crystal lantern in her hand.

 

‘Stand up. Go see to your friend. She isn’t waking up.’

 

Skender didn’t know who they were talking about for a second. Who else had they captured during their retreat from the other caves? Not Chu as well, surely?

 

He realised the truth almost immediately.

 

The Ice Eaters had placed Kelloman’s litter near a line of wood-and-skin drums that smelled like tar. The bilby squirmed as soon as it came within four paces of Kelloman’s host body, and it was all Skender could do not to be scratched as the tiny animal scrambled free. With a squeaking sound it jumped onto Kelloman and sniffed at his throat, where a collar identical to Skender’s had been fastened.

 

Skender knew what the problem was the moment he saw the collar, but feigned an examination anyway. He checked under each eyelid for a response and found none. He lightly slapped each cheek.

 

‘How hard did you hit, uh, her?’ he asked Treya.

 

‘Not so hard that she shouldn’t be awake by now.’

 

‘Well, you’re obviously wrong on that point,’ he said, looking suitably worried. ‘If you take off my collar, I might be able to —’

 

‘No,’ Treya said smartly. ‘Your collar stays on.’

 

‘Then what about hers, at least? The Change will give her strength to recover. Without that, she might die.’

 

Treya frowned with annoyance. ‘What concern is that of mine?’

 

‘What concern?’ Skender could hardly believe what he was hearing. ‘He — she’s done nothing to you. Letting her die would be as bad as murder.’

 

Treya relented with poor grace. ‘All right.’ With work-toughened fingers, she untied the collar and put it to one side. ‘But the moment your friend regains consciousness, it goes back on.’

 

The body on the stretcher twitched. Skender put a hand firmly on the empty girl’s forehead, stopping it from moving. ‘See? It’s already doing her some good. A little rest is all she needs.’

 

Kelloman’s body fell still. Treya nodded, looking only slightly reassured. Someone called her name and she hurried off, instructing one of the guards to keep an eye on the two captives as she went. The cool light of the lantern she left behind barely touched the darkness around them.

 

Skender smiled at the guard, who didn’t respond. The man stood close but not so close as to overhear a whisper.

 

‘Are you back?’ he breathed, leaning over the young woman’s face as though to inspect her eyes again.

 

Kelloman nodded so slightly that even Skender barely noticed it.

 

‘We’ve been taken captive,’ he told the mage through Kelloman’s newly-reconnected senses. ‘They put a Change-sink collar on both of us, and that broke the link with your real body. I convinced them to take yours off — but you shouldn’t stay here long. You have to warn the others. The Ice Eaters think we want to open the Goddess’s Tomb and they’re sworn to stop that at all costs. Marmion might be heading for trouble, if he isn’t in it already. He should also know that there are some among the Ice Eaters who don’t like what their leader is saying.’

 

Again Kelloman nodded, then his body went still again.

 

The bilby stirred from its position and looked questioningly up at Skender. ‘

 

‘What would I know?’ he told it. ‘I’m as much in the dark as you are. In fact, if you’ve got any suggestions…’

 

It blinked once and tucked itself under Kelloman’s left ear.

 

‘I didn’t think so.’

 

The guard cleared his throat and scowled. Skender took the hint and sat down on the cold stone floor next to the mage.

 

* * * *

 

The Crash

 

 

‘A seer’s life is an unhappy one.

Change and death are the only certainties.

Everything else is negotiable.’

 

THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 19:11

 

 

elp me! Shilly woke in the smoky darkness and opened her eyes wide. Her heart was racing. The sides of her cot seemed to rock and sway; a stink of sulphur filled her nostrils. In her mind, she saw a glowing blue flower that shattered into millions of tiny stars, and from somewhere startlingly close by she heard a sound like a thousand flints striking at once.

 

She forced her old bones to move, and sat up. The darkness rolled back as a golden glow filled the workshop. She tugged away the curtains from her alcove and gasped at the magnificent sight before her.

 

The charm was alive. That was her first thought. All the many lines she had carved in the long decades past now burned with a liquid golden light. The air shimmered over the pattern as though intensely hot. The pattern itself seemed to shift and flex, as potent as molten iron. Her keen, analytical eye saw that the work she had done had not been for nothing. Every line was perfect. The charm itself fairly sizzled with power.

 

She had finished it that very night, putting the final touches on one small section almost reluctantly, for she had been working towards the charm’s completion for so long that she had never truly thought about what would happen afterwards. Bartholomew had waited patiently and hadn’t reprimanded her for spending too long on the last details, fussing over angles and line width to a degree that was extreme even for her. Eventually she had had to concede that her work was done, and had sat back on her haunches and watched the man’kin apply the resin. It gleamed like honey under the yellow light of the swaying glowstones. For several minutes, the only sound had come from the soft motions of the moist brush against sand; then even that finished, and there was silence.

 

Neither of them had moved. Neither looked around at the charm that stretched to every corner of the cave. They were, in fact, sitting directly on the charm, and she felt a startling pang of alienation, as though now it was complete it had no use for her. She was just an old woman whose moment was over. The charm was all that mattered.

 

They had stayed that way for an unknown length of time. When Shilly did go to move, her knees had locked up and required a considerable amount of cursing to get moving again. Bartholomew didn’t move at all, not when she called his name, not even when she rapped on the top of his stony head to attract his attention.

 

‘Taking a nap, eh? I don’t blame you. Think I’ll do the same.’

 

She hadn’t retired immediately, however. First she’d made a cup of tea from her dwindling supplies and allowed herself a small meal. As she ate, she noticed the veins showing through the papery skin of her wrists. Veins and bones. Her left hand still hurt from where she’d stabbed herself a month earlier. She wasn’t healing like she used to.

 

That might have been a concern before she’d finished the charm. Now, she wasn’t so sure. The thought of death didn’t frighten her as much as the thought of lingering. She smiled upon realising that what she felt more than anything was restlessness. She didn’t want to sit there and rot any more than Sal had truly wanted to set down roots in Fundelry. Even though they had spent five good years there, she had sensed his wanderlust. She had known that the road was his only true home. If it had been safe for them to leave Lodo’s workshop and move around in the open, she was sure he would have forced the issue at some point.

 

And then what? Perhaps Tom would never have found them after his dream about the caves of ice. Perhaps they would have been well away from the mountains when Yod broke free. Perhaps Sal wouldn’t have been lost with the others, leaving her to spend the rest of her life alone.

 

Sleep had been hard to come by that night, and now it was disturbed by nightmares and the awakening of the charm. The sense-fragments of her dream clung to her still: the shattered blue crystal; the smell; the world rolling underfoot.

 

Standing impassively on the charm’s fiery surface was Bartholomew, who still hadn’t moved. His face was uplit, almost sinisterly so, by the golden glow.

 

He’s dead, she realised with a pang of sadness. His job was done, his purpose fulfilled, so he had simply stopped being. Typical man’kin. just when you think you’re getting to know them, they turn you upside down and kick you in the arse.

 

She rubbed the back of her skull, where an old injury seemed to be aching. But she had never hurt her head that way, not in this life. She had to be receiving impressions from her younger self. Something was going on in that other world. And the charm was responding to it, resonating with a completely different pocket of the universe.

 

‘Hang in there,’ she whispered. Then she half-laughed, unsure which version of herself she was talking to. ‘Hang in there, Shilly. It can’t be all bad.’

 

She almost believed it until, with a sound like a thousand candles all going out at once, the charm’s golden fire suddenly died and she was plunged into darkness.

 

* * * *

 

The first thing Kail saw when he opened his eyes was the small pouch he normally wore around his neck. It was lying two metres away from him in the snow, barely visible in the darkness. He didn’t know where he was or how he had got there, but he knew the pouch was in the wrong spot. He needed to put it back around his neck, where it belonged.

 

He lay on his side in the snow. Cold had seeped into his bones, making energy hard to muster. He lifted his head, then tentatively stretched out his right arm; his feet kicked out, moving him forward a little, then retracted and kicked again. He moved thus, in tiny increments, until his gloved fingers touched the pouch, gripped it, and pulled it close.

 

Relief flooded through him. Nothing seems to be broken, he thought, then wondered why he had thought there might be. Questions about what he was doing lying in the snow reared up again. Lying in the snow and worrying about cracked bones and skull.

 

He sat up in several painful stages and slipped the pouch’s thong over his head. It caught in his pack, which he found he was still wearing. His hat was missing. A length of rope hung from his belt. He reeled it in and discovered that the far end was frayed. Something was on the verge of coming to him. He could feel it nudging at his conscious mind, trying to get his attention.

 

Something about falling…?

 

‘Are you all right?’ a woman asked him. She stood less than three metres from him, but he hadn’t heard her approach. He hadn’t, in fact, even noticed his surroundings beyond the pouch. He appeared to be tucked into a sheltered niche at the intersection of two near-vertical snowdrifts. To his right, a steep slope led up from the bottom of the niche into darkness. Above him was nothing but the black night sky. There were no stars. For a moment he wondered if he was back under the Hanging Mountains.

 

‘Did you hear me?’ The woman came a step closer. He struggled to focus on her, aware that he was shivering much more than seemed healthy. Her face was partly hidden behind a deep hood. Her black robe looked decidedly out of place against the crisp white snow.

 

‘I heard you,’ he said. ‘I just didn’t know how to answer your question.’

 

‘Fair enough, I guess.’ She took another step. ‘Let’s take one thing at a time, then, and see where we end up. Do you need help standing?’

 

He could see the sense in moving, even if his bones cursed the idea. Sitting in the snow much longer would only see him dead, sooner rather than later. He had to get up.

 

He got one leg under him, then, with her help, the other. His head ached and spun, but he did manage to stay on his feet.

 

‘You’re taller than you looked,’ she said, edging away.

 

He resisted the impulse to say that she was shorter than she looked. ‘The only way I could hurt you would be by falling on you.’

 

‘What are you doing out here? You don’t look like one of the Ice Eaters.’

 

‘The who?’

 

She smiled faintly. ‘I guess you’re not one of them, then. You must be with the others.’

 

He rubbed his temple in puzzlement. Slowly the veils were parting. ‘I think — I think I fell.’

 

‘Not from the balloon. You weren’t aboard when we left the tower.’

 

‘No. I was climbing, then flying. We took a short cut past the Old Ones. There was a bright light. I woke up here.’ He clutched the pouch tightly in his right hand.

 

Her face had become very serious. ‘So, Tatenen is sticking his nose in again, huh? That probably means Pukje is lurking about somewhere.’

 

‘Pukje?’ The name triggered a whole chain of memories. ‘Yes, Pukje. We were riding him up into the mountains. He took us to Tatenen. He had a plan.’

 

‘He always does. That’s the one thing about him you can be sure of.’

 

He frowned at her. ‘How do you know who Pukje is?’

 

‘I never exchange stories with someone whose name I don’t know.’

 

‘Habryn Kail,’ he said, taking off a glove and holding out his hand.

 

She took and shook it. ‘Call me Ellis. Your fingers are freezing. I think you’ve been out here a little too long for your own good. We should get you to shelter.’

 

‘What about you?’

 

‘Oh, I’m fine. This robe is much heavier than you’d guess.’ She put an arm around his waist and took some of his weight. ‘Come on. I know somewhere you can rest for a while, get your strength back. It’s not far, but we need to get moving before you freeze solid.’

 

He didn’t have the strength to argue, even though all he wanted to do was lie down again and go to sleep. His gait was little more than a shuffle at first, but slowly, painfully, his muscles began to work. Every joint ached, and he became aware of a throbbing in his neck and back that hadn’t been there before. But at least he could still move.

 

‘I think I’m lucky to be alive,’ he said as they followed the niche into a ravine that had been completely invisible from his supine position. Its walls grew steeper and closer together until there was barely enough room for the two of them to stand side by side. ‘We were pretty high when I fell.’

 

‘Did Pukje throw you?’

 

‘No. There was an explosion of some sort out over the lake, then a terrible wind.’

 

She nodded. ‘That would be Gabra’il trying to get out of the Tomb. He’ll have to be cleverer than that if he ever hopes to succeed.’ When he looked askance at her, she dodged the unspoken question. ‘It doesn’t matter. Just keep walking.’

 

Something she had said earlier came back to him. ‘You were on the balloon?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘With Marmion?’ He wondered then if she was from Milang, one of the Guardian’s ministers who had come along for the ride.

 

‘No,’ she said. ‘He was busy elsewhere.’

 

Kail frowned, remembering the fragmentary communication Sal had received from Skender as they had left Tatenen. Something about an attack. ‘Where is he now? What happened to the balloon?’

 

‘Save your strength, Habryn Kail. You’ll find out soon enough.’

 

A suspicion began to nag at him, but he kept it unspoken. Soon enough indeed, he told himself. If she had wanted to kill or overpower him, she could have easily done so earlier, before he was moving.

 

The ravine became little more than a crack slicing into the side of the mountains. When it was too dark to see, the woman called Ellis produced a mirror from under her robe and shone its light ahead of them.

 

The ravine plunged downward for twenty metres, and Kail was forced to concentrate on the icy and treacherous rocks beneath his feet. By the mirrorlight, he could see the tracks of the woman’s original ascent, and no others. She had clearly come this way alone, but for what reason? What could possibly bring her back to such an isolated, forbidding place?

 

He found the answer to the question around a slight bend in the ravine. It widened and became an icy hall whose walls glittered and gleamed in the mirrorlight. Slender stalactites hung down from vast buttresses that reached in graceful curves up to a distant ceiling of solid ice. A ragged hole had been torn through that ceiling, and as his eyes adjusted to the new scenery he saw a black scar stretching down one wall. What lay at the base of the scar was hidden for the moment behind a mound of old ice and fresh snow. Only as Ellis led him along the base of the ravine and around the mound did it come into view.

 

The wreckage of the balloon lay nose down on the floor of the ravine. Nearby lay the gondola, tipped on one side and in only slightly better repair. Uncontrolled chimerical discharge had burned large sections of both gasbag and gondola to ash, exposing the skeletal structure beneath. They were crumpled and bent like the wings of a crushed moth.

 

On sight of it, his heart froze in midbeat. Without thinking, he shrugged free of Ellis and ran forward to check the gondola. Its interior was blistered and burnt, but not completely destroyed. The rear was relatively intact and might have provided shelter for anyone still aboard. Snow already dusted parts of the wreckage, indicating that it had been there for some time.

 

The bodies he had feared to find were absent.

 

‘You can shelter here,’ said Ellis. ‘It should be safe enough, now. I’ll go find the others and —’

 

He didn’t give her the chance to finish that sentence. In two paces, he had her in a headlock. With the advantage of height and mass, he overpowered her as easily as he would a child.

 

‘Who are you? What have you done?’

 

She squirmed. ‘— choking — me —’

 

He eased his grip, but only slightly. ‘I’ll do worse than that if you don’t answer my questions.’

 

‘I already told you who I am. Ellis Quick. I didn’t do anything.’

 

‘I think you’re lying. Did you steal the balloon? Did you crash it?’

 

‘Of course not. It was going to crash whether I wanted it to or not, smacked out of the sky by the same thing that brought you down. I didn’t kill your friends.’

 

He tightened his grip. ‘Are they dead?’

 

She squirmed like a fish on the deck of a boat.

 

‘Are they dead?’

 

Her head wrenched from side to side.

 

‘For your sake, I hope not.’

 

He let her go and pushed her off balance. She fell to the ground and coughed violently, clutching her throat. He stood over her, feeling feverish with anger and worry.

 

‘You’re going to tell me everything,’ he said, ‘or —’

 

It was his turn to be surprised. With one swift, efficient move, she kicked his legs from under him.

 

He went down with a startled sound and somehow found his arm twisted up behind his back and his face pressed into the snow. Ellis’s left knee came down hard on his back, pushing him deeper. Cold powder went up his nose and down his throat, and started to choke him. His body convulsed, to no effect.

 

‘Lie still, you big bully,’ she hissed into his ear. ‘I already told you I didn’t do anything. If you can bring yourself to believe that, I’ll let you go. If not, I’ll have to knock you out again and leave you here — and I don’t think you’ll survive another stint in the cold, even with the wreckage to shelter you.’

 

Humiliated and weakened, he let himself go limp.

 

‘Now I’m only going to say this once. I’m not your enemy. I’m an ordinary woman. I just know a few things, that’s all, and if you listen to me you might learn something important. I didn’t crash the balloon but I knew it was going to crash, and I was able to guide it to where it needed to be. I knew roughly where to find you, you see, even though I didn’t know who or what you were, and I knew you’d need me — just like I knew what Shilly was trying to do back in the tower, and why she had to be stopped. It all folds together if you look at it just the right way. One thing leads to another. If we follow exactly the right path we’ll end up at a safe place. If we don’t, well, the big bad wolf is waiting. And neither of us, I think, wants to be eaten.’

 

She eased the pressure, and his head came up out of the snow.

 

‘Now,’ she said, ‘tell me how to find the twins.’

 

His face was numb. He couldn’t tell if the moisture on his cheeks was from tears or melted ice. ‘I don’t know where they are. They should have been with Marmion, in the balloon.’

 

‘They weren’t. It was just Shilly and Tom and the King.’

 

‘And you.’

 

‘And me, yes. We’ve already covered that. Back to my question, please. I didn’t ask you where the twins were. I asked how I can find them.’

 

‘I guess they’ll be where Marmion is. Why don’t you know? I thought you knew everything.’

 

‘Not where they’re concerned. They’re unpredictable, two lives in one, with world-lines so knotted and tangled only they can separate them. Besides it’s much harder to unpick the threads out here in the thick of it all. In Sheol, it would’ve been easy, but I couldn’t have done anything. I would have been an observer, like my so-called sisters.’

 

She stopped talking as though bringing herself into check. He didn’t prompt her to continue, figuring she’d do so when she was ready.

 

The crash site was silent for a moment, apart from the dripping of melted water.

 

‘I know what you carry around your neck,’ she said in a very different tone. ‘You mustn’t lose it, no matter what happens.’

 

Then her weight came off him, and she was running lightly across the snow, back into the gloom of the ravine, her robe flapping in her wake. He went to sit up, thinking to follow her, but the pain in his back and neck was worse than ever. By the time he opened his pack and got his mirrorlight out, she would be long gone. Only her tracks would remain.

 

He rose, groaning, to his feet. Some parts of the wreckage were still glowing, and he could see well enough by their light to find his way closer to the site of the accident. His intention wasn’t to rest, as the mysterious Ellis had suggested, but to look for something he had only glimpsed earlier.

 

The woman’s tracks were visible, and others, too, as he had thought. Many sets of feet had tramped over the disturbed snow: more than just the four he should have found: Shilly, Tom, Vehofnehu, and the mysterious Ellis Quick.

 

She had said that there were only three others in the balloon apart from her, so either she was lying or more people had visited the site since the crash. His priority was to find Shilly, not follow strange women around the lake in pursuit of the truth, so he chose to presume the latter option and follow the tracks to their conclusion.

 

When he was ready, he told himself. First, he needed to gather both his thoughts and his strength. The encounter with Ellis had profoundly disturbed him, even more so than falling from Pukje’s back. He had a lot to process.

 

I know what you carry around your neck. You mustn’t lose it, no matter what happens.

 

Kail didn’t think she was referring to the letter from Vania, the lover he had left long ago and so very far away.

 

As he lowered himself gently onto a portion of the wrecked gondola that looked likely to hold his weight, a voice spoke out of the red-tinged darkness at his feet.

 

‘You will not find that position comfortable.’

 

He literally jumped, then put a calming hand to his chest. He knew that voice. ‘Mawson, you very nearly killed me.’

 

‘You very nearly sat on me.’

 

‘And that wouldn’t have been dignified for either of us. I apologise.’ Kail pulled at the wreckage and uncovered the stone bust that had at one time been Sal’s family heirloom. He was lying on his side, half buried in snow. With a wrench, Kail managed to prop him upright. ‘What are you doing here? No, don’t tell me. I can guess. You were on the balloon when it crashed. Ellis and the others mustn’t have noticed you.’

 

‘The Goddess,’ Mawson corrected him.

 

‘What about her?’

 

‘The being you speak of is usually referred to that way.’

 

‘What being?’

 

‘You used the name “Ellis”. That is not her real name, although she went by it for a time. She is properly called Nona and is, at this instant you call “the present”, the sole remaining Sister of the Flame.’

 

‘The Goddess was on the balloon when it crashed?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

An indefinable sensation swept up Kail’s spine, part disbelief, part fear, part wonder, part sheer terror. He didn’t for a second consider that Mawson might be joking. Man’kin weren’t known for their sense of humour.

 

He looked around for somewhere to sit. All the strength had gone out of his legs. ‘The Goddess was talking to me, and I tried to strangle her.’ He felt faint. ‘She probably could’ve stopped me at any time. Why didn’t she just tell me outright as soon as I touched her?’

 

‘She didn’t lie to you. She is a woman with extraordinary capacities. But away from the Flame many of those capacities are closed to her. She must rely on other skills.’’

 

He was reassured to know that he had been felled by someone with superior ‘capacities’, but there was very little other comfort to be found.

 

‘What was she doing here?’ he asked his stone companion. ‘What does she want with the twins?’

 

‘I do not know, Habryn Kail.’ Mawson looked uncharacteristically forlorn. ‘It pains me to say so. I am at the juncture my kind has feared for so long. The future is clouded. I am unstuck in time.’

 

‘And I’m stuck in space.’ Kail looked around the ravine, seeking the other way out. The second set of tracks led deeper into the mountains, away from Ellis and the lake — and, presumably, the rest of his people.

 

When he looked up he could see nothing but darkness in the sky. He had no idea what time it was, but dawn seemed a very long way off.

 

‘I think I’m going to have to leave you here,’ he told the man’kin. ‘I’m sorry about that, because no one’s likely to see this wreck from the air. But you’re too heavy for me to carry, and I’ll need to get moving soon. Those Ice Eaters the Goddess talked about might come back.’

 

‘I do not fear being alone.’

 

‘Well, good.’ Kail reached across and patted the bust on its head. ‘Even so, I’ll come back to get you just as soon as this mess is sorted out.’

 

‘I fear that it will never be.’

 

Kail leaned back and watched Mawson for a long time. He had never heard a man’kin speak of fear before. Fear assumed a degree of uncertainty over what might come next. If the man’kin truly didn’t know, anything at all could happen.

 

They said nothing as the wreckage continued to cool, ticking faintly to itself like a giant and very peculiar bug. When Kail supposed that he was as rested as he was likely to be that night, he put on his pack and set out after Shilly.

 

* * * *

 

The knife at her throat was made of bone but it felt as sharp as steel. That single thought occupied Shilly’s attention with a single-mindedness for which she was perversely grateful. If she was afraid, she couldn’t cry, she couldn’t wonder what might have been and she couldn’t berate herself for failing so badly and letting everyone down.

 

‘What were you doing in the Tomb?’ The man with the bad teeth and white hair pressed his face close to hers. She tried to pull away but the man behind her, the one holding the knife, wrenched her left arm so hard she thought her shoulder might dislocate. ‘Tell me!’

 

She shook her head, unable to quell the tears any longer. How could everything have gone so wrong? Why hadn’t she trusted her instincts? If only they hadn’t gone to the tower. If only…

 

The white-haired man turned and spat. Her captor pushed her savagely forward. She stumbled awkwardly on her lame leg and went down as fast and hard as a stuck steer, pain shooting through her hip. It was joined by a nasty jar to her elbow as she landed, and that set her wrenched shoulder singing with pain again. She gritted her teeth.

 

‘Why are you doing this?’ she hissed, anger cutting through the fear and shock. ‘Who are you people?’

 

‘We’re asking the questions,’ said the man with the knife. Under other circumstances, he might have been handsome, with a broad, open face and straight jet-black hair, but he was made ugly by distrust. ‘Tell us what you were doing in the Tomb or we’ll bleed you now and save Treya the trouble.’

 

‘Gee, that sounds tempting,’ she snarled back. ‘Tell this Treya of yours how glad I am I got to talk to you two idiots first. It’s made my life so much easier.’

 

The younger man went to kick her, but white-hair held him back. He squatted down next to her. The stench of his sewn-together skins was powerfully strong.

 

‘You need to understand something, young lady,’ he said. ‘Your life is as good as over unless you start talking. You may not realise it, but the Tomb is off-limits to everyone — and we’ve had the odd explorer or two through here down the years, trying to get their hands on it. They all failed, because we stopped them. They didn’t get past us like you did. Maybe you brought the Death with you in order to do so. That’s not going to make you popular with anyone, least of all Treya.’ He raised his ivory knife and moved it so a brittle glow of crystal-light ran across it like honey. ‘If you value your life, if you think we should value it, then you’d better give us a reason to.’

 

She nodded slowly without taking her eyes off him and let her face relax into a mask of shocked acquiescence. He seemed satisfied with that, and offered her a hand to help her up. She took it, ignoring the pain of her many bruises and bumps. For a moment the present seemed to overlap the future of her tired, arthritic self, but she shrugged off that sensation too.

 

‘My cane,’ she said, looking around the cave with a pained expression. ‘I have trouble standing without it.’

 

White-hair nodded, and his young friend handed it to her.

 

The wooden stick wasn’t the original one she had brought from Fundelry. That one had been destroyed by Skender during the flood, taking Marmion’s hand with it. This one was much more recent, with carvings and charms that were still being familiarised to her touch. Nonetheless, the relief she felt at holding the stick was immense — Sal had imbued it with the same potential as the last one. For emergencies only.

 

She brought it down hard on the icy floor, picturing a charm she had learned under Lodo’s tuition, long ago. Greenish flame wreathed her and the cane — an illusion only, but an impressive one. Her hair writhed about her head as though filled with snakes. Her eyes glowed a brilliant red.

 

White-hair fell back with his hands over his face. The younger one braved the illusion and tried to take the stick from her. She gave the illusory flames some bite, and he retreated, cursing bitterly.

 

‘If you’d asked politely, I would’ve told you anything you wanted,’ she said. ‘Instead you took me prisoner and threatened me, and I have no doubt you’ve done the same with my friends. Can you give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you both?’

 

‘Because you can’t,’ said a smooth male voice from behind her.

 

She spun with the cane raised before her. The flames leapt higher. ‘Don’t push me.’

 

‘Be careful, Mannie,’ called white-hair. ‘She’s dangerous!’

 

‘Oh, I won’t push you,’ said the new arrival, looking at no one but Shilly. He must have been standing outside the cave entrance the whole time. A tall man with big ears and strong features, he didn’t flinch from her display. ‘I won’t need to. Your lightshow is impressive, but I don’t think you can maintain it for long.’

 

She sensed white-hair moving behind her, and shifted position to put the wall at her back. That left her in a corner, but she couldn’t see what other option she had. The door was blocked. She would have to talk her way out.

 

‘Do you really believe that?’ she asked, poking the end of the cane at him and making his furred collar sizzle.

 

‘I know it,’ he said. ‘Unlike my friends here, I’ve had some training too.’ His left hand tugged the glove off his right. With fingertips that dripped a steady stream of clear, unnatural water, he pushed the tip of the cane gently but firmly away.

 

‘That’s it, Mannie,’ called the younger of her two captors with vicious glee. ‘Take her down.’

 

Mannie didn’t move. His stare didn’t shift from hers. He just waited.

 

Goddess take him, she thought. Still, it had been worth a try.

 

With only a small amount of effort, she unravelled the charm and let the flames die away. Her hair and eyes returned to normal. The cane came down and touched the floor at her feet. She put both hands on top of it — to signal that they would have to physically take it from her — and leaned her weight back upon it.

 

‘Thank you,’ said Mannie. ‘I’m glad that’s behind us.’

 

‘Only so long as you people stop threatening me,’ she said.

 

‘We will stop,’ he said with a sharp look at the other two. ‘It’s clearly not getting us anywhere — and I’m not sure the end justifies the means, anyway.’

 

She thought of the man’kin and the crashed balloon, and everything that had happened in recent hours. ‘We agree on that, at least.’

 

‘Good.’ He didn’t go so far as to smile, but there was a humanity in his eyes that went some way towards reassuring her. In white-hair and his young friend she had seen only fright and desperation.

 

‘Tell me something,’ she said. ‘What’s the Tomb to you? What does it matter who goes there and why?’

 

‘Call it a tradition,’ he said. ‘You might not believe me if I told you the details, but it’s important to us. Only one person can order us to open it, and that’s the Goddess herself.’

 

‘Order you to open it? So you know how to?’

 

Mannie did smile, then, but if anything the warmth retreated from his eyes. ‘Don’t think you’ll learn that secret from us. You’ve tried and failed once already, and that’s as far as you’re going to get.’

 

She thought of the giant blue crystal unfolding like a flower and the Holy Immortals stepping inside. He probably wouldn’t believe her either.

 

Then she remembered the woman who had knocked her down then helped her to safety aboard the balloon. Her mind baulked at accepting the truth even though she knew the woman had to be the Goddess. The only place she could have come from was inside the Tomb. There was nothing twisted about her, as there had been with the malevolent orange giant that had been Yod’s servant. She seemed so vigorously alive that Shilly couldn’t imagine her allied with something so devoted to death.

 

As they had fled the tumultuous activity in and around the tower, before the shockwave that had knocked them out of the sky, Shilly had asked her: What happened? What did we do wrong?

 

Nothing and everything. The woman’s face had adopted a compassionately pained expression. But it’s okay. Honestly. I’m outside where I need to be, and I’ve closed the Tomb safely behind us. It’ll work out if we just keep along this path, right to the end.

 

What path? Shilly had wanted to know. As far as she was concerned, the man’kin’s plans had resulted in nothing but a hideous debacle. Her head had still ached from where the Goddess had struck her and Vehofnehu had been taut and silent at the controls of the balloon, unable to meet Shilly’s gaze. Tom had just stared at the woman as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. There’s no path any more.

 

Sure there is. Setting Gabra’il free will keep Yod busy long enough for you to work out which way to go next. That’s up to you. Just you, not the others. I know you can work it out.

 

Then the orange flash had lit up the sky and the air had slapped them hard, and they had lost altitude rapidly, with only one engine working and the gasbag riddled with rips and tears. There had been no time to talk. The ground had loomed up before them, and it had seemed for a moment that they would land safely on an ice shelf near the top of the crater wall. But the ice shelf had collapsed under the weight of the falling craft, and they had been falling again, bouncing and crashing off the ravine walls as they went. The sound had been awful.

 

Shilly had lost consciousness for a time and woken to find Vehofnehu leaning over her. He still hadn’t spoken, and he didn’t break that silence when he showed her where Tom lay under a tangle of gasbag struts, his hair burned completely away and his eyes shut. For an awful moment, Shilly had feared him dead, but a pulse had still stirred in his veins and his lungs still moved. She had wept against his chest for all the terrible things that had and might yet happen.

 

The Goddess had been missing. A single line of tracks led through the snow along the ravine, but before Shilly could suggest following them, a dozen warmly clad people had come out of nowhere, not to rescue them but to take them captive. She had been separated from the others and taken to a cave deep in the crater wall, where ice and stone coexisted and the air smelled of rotten eggs. The caves of ice, she had thought on seeing them. Tom’s vision had come true. It was no comfort at all to have reached that moment, so long foreseen, when the interrogation of her had begun in earnest. She had seen the dark and hungry thing that wanted to eat them all.

 

‘Where are the others?’ she asked Mannie. ‘I want to see them before I talk to you.’

 

‘Of course you do. I would in your shoes.’ He turned on his heel and gestured for Shilly’s interrogators to bring her. Their hands on her shoulders weren’t gentle, but at least they were kept in check.

 

She was taken out of the ice cave and along a short tunnel. Vehofnehu sat in one corner of a room at its end, watched over by two heavyset guards. He looked up at her, his long face expressionless. The Panic weren’t generally good at hiding their emotions, so perhaps he had none left, she thought, and followed an instinct to cross the room and kiss him on the forehead. The natural odour of his skin was as alien to her senses as the arrangement of thumb and fingers on the hand that gripped hers in return.

 

When she straightened, she saw Tom on the far side of the chamber, lying next to the door. He was still unconscious despite an apparent lack of injury. His posture was childlike, curled as he was in a loose ball. He looked utterly spent.

 

The Goddess wasn’t with them, but at least Tom and Vehofnehu were accounted for. That was something. The three of them had survived crash and capture, against the odds, and now only had to convince their captors not to kill them.

 

‘We were trying to save the world,’ she told Mannie. ‘You’ve seen the towers coming out the lake? Well, they’re the vanguard of an invasion that will leave every woman, man and child in this world dead. Yod is… I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s on its way and we have to stop it. There are a few of us trying in different ways.’ She wondered with a pang what Marmion’s and Sal’s groups were up to. Not captured too, she hoped. ‘One of us must succeed, whatever the cost.’

 

‘You’re saying that if we stand in your way, we’re aiding the enemy of the world.’

 

She took a deep breath. ‘Yes.’

 

‘How inconvenient for you.’ His emotionless smile returned. ‘I want you to tell me exactly what you were doing at the Tomb. No generalisations; no evasions. This is your one chance to avoid the knife that’s awaited everyone else who broke our laws.’

 

Shilly gripped her cane more tightly than ever. ‘What’s the point if you’re not going to believe me?’

 

‘I haven’t said I won’t believe you. Every word you say could be true — and given the last few weeks I’d be a fool not to listen to you. If in the end you still can’t convince me… well, at least you’ll have told someone. There’s a chance your message may still get through after you’re dead.’

 

‘Is that supposed to cheer me up?’

 

He folded his arms across his chest. ‘Not especially, but if you care more about the world than yourself, you’ll start talking.’

 

She glared at him. Knowing he was right didn’t make it any easier to accept this strange and dangerous duty she had been given. The seers’ plan had gone terribly wrong. The Holy Immortals were caught in the Tomb; the Goddess had stopped Shilly from using the charm and was now missing, without explanation; Sal was far away and possibly facing perils of his own.

 

Just you, not the others.

 

I know you can work it out.

 

Feeling torn and bruised all through her mind and body, she began to talk.

 

* * * *

 

The Wreck

 

 

‘All things eat; all things are eaten.

There are no truths greater than these.’

 

THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 8:10

 

 

eth inched closer to the precipice and peered down. Far below, clearly visible to the Homunculus’s superb night vision, was the wreckage of the balloon. Even Highson could see it. Parts of it were still glowing, although not from fire, the twins suspected. The wreckage was almost certainly crawling with the Change after the failure of the engines. Like in an old-world aeroplane crash, the fuel had to go somewhere.

 

I can’t make out any bodies, said Hadrian.

 

Me neither.

 

That’s a good sign, right?

 

I guess so, but where has everyone gone?

 

I think I can see tracks. We should get down there if we can.

 

It looks pretty steep. And the walls are ice, not stone.

 

We’ve fallen further before.

 

But what about Highson and Pukje? I don’t think flying down is an option.

 

Seth glanced at their two companions. Highson stood not far away, craning his neck to see into the ravine. Pukje was still in dragon form, sniffing like a dog at the black scar left by the balloon. They had some climbing gear in Highson’s pack, but the bulk of the equipment had been lost with Kail, and the only rope still hung like a collar around Pukje’s neck.

 

Pukje’s stomach rumbled noisily as they stood under the starry sky, waiting for someone to make a decision.

 

‘If you leave it much longer,’ said Pukje, ‘I’m not going to be able to fly you out of here. This form burns a lot of energy and I’m running low as it is. Unless one of you has a sheep or goat handy that I can snack on, I suggest you get moving.’

 

‘We’ll go,’ said Seth. ‘You two wait here. We’re pretty sure no one’s down there, so all we need to do is make sure of that, and then we can move on.’

 

Highson nodded. He didn’t look entirely happy with the solution, but he didn’t argue either.

 

‘If you find any supplies…’ Pukje said.

 

‘Don’t worry. We’ll be back shortly with anything edible we can carry.’

 

The winged beast huffed and dipped his head. The rumbling, if anything, grew louder.

 

The twins chose a section of ravine wall that looked the least destabilised after the partial collapse of its ice ceiling. The ice was jagged and offered plenty of handholds, especially for someone with four hands and four feet. They had never been particularly good at rock climbing in their former life, beyond the occasional experiment in a gym, but even at night and under icy, slippery conditions, they made good speed.

 

When they were halfway down, however, they froze. A strange sound echoed up the ravine, growing louder with every second. It sounded like a horse galloping, but a horse as heavy as an elephant and with a marked limp. Seth leaned out from the icy wall and craned the Homunculus’s neck to see below. They stayed completely still as the source of the noise came closer.

 

A peculiar shape issued from the narrow end of the ravine: a giant man’kin with three legs, a tapering head and a conical tail. It lumbered towards the wreckage, its heavy footsteps only partially muffled by the snow. A humanoid shape sat astride its back, and for a moment Seth thought they were looking at another Homunculus. Its skin was perfectly black, apart from its tattoos, and there was a certain glassy sheen to it. Seth had heard sufficient descriptions in the previous days to guess the identity of both creatures.

 

The Angel and the glast were abroad together. As pairings went it was odd and unexpected, but very little surprised the twins these days. They watched as the pair neared the wreckage, fully expecting them to gallop by, unconcerned about the fate of ordinary people. Instead the Angel slowed and came to a halt by the crumpled gondola.

 

The glast made a sound like a boiler hissing. Hadrian’s jaw clamped shut. Seth, who had been about to call out a greeting, quickly swallowed the urge. The hiss echoed horribly down the ravine, meeting and combining with itself until it sounded like a dozen of the creatures were down there, not one. Above, neither Highson nor Pukje drew attention to themselves, although Seth was certain they were watching. There was something decidedly sinister about the glast and the Angel’s sudden appearance.

 

The glast dismounted from the Angel’s high back and strode fluidly to the wreckage. Red heat slid off it like water, making it shine. The Angel pointed at a patch of wreckage with its blunt snout, and the glast looked in that direction. It nodded once, then rummaged among the bent and charred struts of the gasbag. With impressive strength, it snapped off one of the struts and weighed it in its hands. Satisfied, it walked to the patch of wreckage the Angel had indicated and swung the makeshift club high above its head.

 

Seth strained to see. The club came down once with a solid crack, then a second time. It was too dark to see what the glast was hitting, but it definitely wasn’t flesh. A third time the club swung. A fourth.

 

Something tumbled into the snow, and the glast nodded in satisfaction. Throwing the club away, it rummaged through the debris then straightened with something roughly football-shaped in its hands. The Angel nodded too, and came around so the glast could mount again. With the object tucked securely under one arm, the glast climbed onto the back of its strange mount.

 

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-water snake. 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 human, or a crabbier 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 Trey a. 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. Trey a 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.’

 

‘I suppose I can expect no more of you.’

 

With that, the mage was gone. Sal became aware that Marmion was sitting next to him and had placed his one hand on Sal’s shoulder in order to listen in. The warden leaned away with a sigh. .

 

‘Was that Skender?’ asked Chu anxiously.

 

Sal shook his head.

 

A series of complex emotions passed across the young flyer’s face. ‘I hate this,’ she said. ‘I feel —’

 

‘Impotent?’

 

She nodded.

 

As Marmion began explaining what they had learned from Kelloman, another communication came through the Change. This time Sal took Marmion’s arm.

 

It was Highson, en route to the centre of the lake, with information about the balloon’s crash site and much more besides. Sal’s head began to reel at the news of the Angel, the glast, Mawson’s beheading, Ice Eater attacks, and the absence of any survivors.

 

‘I think you’ll have better luck tracking Shilly on the ground,’ Highson concluded. ‘The trail leads along the ravine and may end up underground, in the cave system. Obviously, we can’t track them from the air.’

 

‘Understood,’ said Marmion. ‘We’ll send Delfine and Heuve to the location immediately. When you reach the towers, report back to me. Don’t take any action, whatever you do. It looks as though the Tomb is critical, both in our relations with the Ice Eaters and in the fight against Yod.’

 

‘Tatenen and the Old Ones want us to lock the twins and therefore the realms permanently together,’ said Sal. ‘If the twins and the Goddess do have some sort of connection, and if we can get into the Tomb, we might actually make this happen.’

 

‘On that point, there could be a problem,’ Highson said. ‘The twins appear to be on the verge of some sort of transformation. The Homunculus gives them the form by which they imagine themselves, so theoretically it could grant them each a separate body. What would happen to the realms then is anyone’s guess.’

 

‘Keep them together as long as you can,’ said Marmion. ‘You made that thing, after all.’

 

‘I’ll try,’ said Highson, sounding weary. ‘I’ll try…’

 

‘We’re going nowhere fast at this end, Highson,’ Sal added in what he hoped was a conciliatory tone. ‘It may help to remember that.’

 

‘That’s not a terribly cheery thought, son.’ Highson did sound faintly better, however. ‘I’ll call you when we have better news’

 

As Highson broke off communications, Sal realised with some surprise that his face had turned red. That was the first time Highson had so casually acknowledged his parenthood. Normally, they were so caught up in angst over mistakes made and opportunities lost that the issue was rarely raised.

 

‘Eminent Delfine,’ said Marmion, turning away, ‘I have a favour to ask of you. You too, Griel.’

 

Marmion went about organising a party to search for the whereabouts of Shilly and the other survivors of the crash. Chu stuck close to him, determined not to be left out. Sal wondered what sort of Change-workers the Ice Eaters might be and if they would comprise a serious threat. Since leaving Fundelry, he had encountered people proficient in extracting the potential from blood, trees and fog, as well as the usual Stone Mage and Sky Warden reservoirs. Maybe they tapped into the cold, as their name suggested, to light their fragile-looking crystals. Nothing, he thought, would surprise him now.

 

It came, therefore, as a complete shock to receive a third message through the Change, one that sent him lunging for Marmion’s arm so he could hear too.

 

‘Sal, this is Kail. I’ve found Shilly. She’s a captive of the Ice Eaters along with Tom and the empyricist. They’re on the move. I’ll give you directions. I think you need to get here soon.’

 

For a moment, Sal was lost for words.

 

‘We’re glad to hear from you,’ said Marmion, as coolly as ever. ‘We’ll move out immediately.’

 

‘Good,’ came the reply. ‘They’re planning something, and I think it’s going to be big.’

 

‘I thought you were dead,’ Sal managed, feeling foolish even as he said the words.

 

‘It takes more than a fall to keep me down,’ said the tracker. ‘Thank the Goddess.’

 

Sal could tell, even as Kail began describing the route and the landmarks they should look for, that the comment was more significant than it might ordinarily have been.

 

* * * *

 

The Veil

 

 

‘The nature of the alien is to stand apart

until assimilated, to be different until accepted,

to compete until allied with.

The strange becomes familiar once it is

known and understood — but we must never

forget that a line existed no matter how smudged

it has become.’

 

SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

 

 

he pounding of engines and clanging of hammers continued unchecked long into the night. Strangely soothed by the driving rhythms, Skender actually managed to sleep crouched next to the head of Kelloman’s bed with the bilby curled on his shoulder, occasionally stirring when the creature licked his ear or shivered.

 

Only when the rhythms faltered and stopped did he fully wake. A chorus of shouts rose up out of the darkness, indicating that something had gone wrong.

 

He forced his knees to unbend and rose to his feet.

 

Not a flicker of awareness crossed Kelloman’s face as the guards approached. He was either still feigning unconsciousness or genuinely elsewhere.

 

‘What’s going on?’ Skender asked. ‘Is everything all right?’

 

‘No, it bloody well isn’t,’ said Treya, coming out of the darkness to stand with hands on hips in front of him. ‘Are you an Engineer?’

 

‘I do have some expertise in that area.’ He had read books on the subject in his father’s library so therefore didn’t feel he was completely lying.

 

‘Come with me, then,’ she said. ‘Watch the other one closely,’ she told the guards. ‘Collar her if she shows the slightest sign of waking.’

 

‘Yes, ma’am.’

 

Treya turned and headed off into the darkness. Skender followed in the hope that he might find out where he was being held captive. As the faint glow surrounding Kelloman and the guards receded behind him, he struggled to see Treya’s back, let alone keep up. He felt as though they were sinking down into a deep, lightless sea. The downward-sloping floor only encouraged that impression. From ahead, he presumed, still came the sound of people shouting, but a welter of echoes gave the impression that a horde of people surrounded him. The babble of voices made him feel much more nervous than wandering through the darkness did.

 

Then the gloom peeled away, revealing a startlingly well-lit scene before him. The far end of the cavern ended in a massive masonry wall that sparkled like granite in the array of crystal-lights shining upon it. Numerous rectangular blocks, each as large as a camel’s torso, fitted seamlessly together with tiny charms chiselled into every blunt face.

 

He had seen such handiwork on the wall around Laure. Designed to protect the ancient city from the depredations of the Divide, it had been strong and yet flexible enough to hold back the full force of the flood. Why, Skender wondered, would anyone build such a wall inside a mountain?

 

There were several other interesting features near this new structure that became clear as Treya led him closer. One was a series of lines etched into the wall that didn’t match the pattern of blocks. It looked to Skender as though someone had pushed a cookie-cutter through the charmed stone to create a door without hinges or obvious handle. Another feature consisted of three fat pipes emerging from one of the larger blocks and snaking off into the shadows.

 

To the right of the door crouched a squat black machine of uncertain provenance into which two of the pipes vanished. It had the look of something that had until recently been very active. Skender assumed this to be the source of the pounding.

 

Around the machine’s base stood a dozen men and women, some of them stripped down to their undershirts. The air was much warmer near the machine, and within just a few breaths Skender had broken out into a sweat. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt such heat, and he breathed deeply of it even as he loosened the collar of his robes and tugged at his undergarments.

 

‘Orma!’ Treya called.

 

The teenager crawled out of a hole in the machine’s side. His face was smudged black. ‘Yes, Treya?’

 

‘You thought he could help,’ she said, indicating Skender. ‘Now tell me why.’

 

‘Because he’s not from here,’ said the boy, wiping his hands and coming forward. His face revealed no sign of duplicity but his eyes were desperate. ‘If we can’t fix the pump, then someone else must. If not him, who?’

 

‘I’m happy to take a look,’ Skender told Treya, quite sincerely. ‘You don’t have to give me any tools yet, so there’s no damage I could possibly do. Of course it would help,’ he added, ‘if you told me what this thing did.’

 

‘You can’t tell by looking at it?’

 

‘Well, Orma did call it a pump so that gives me some idea. But a pump of air, water, oil, or what? From and to where?’

 

‘Water,’ Treya allowed him, ‘from the other side of the wall into the lake.’

 

‘Into the lake, huh? I’d have thought it full enough already.’

 

‘You don’t need to know any more. Take a look or go back to your friend.’

 

Skender shrugged and did as he was told, slipping out of his robes, feeling conscious of the hostile stares of the Ice Eaters watching him. The pump loomed over him as he approached the hatch from which Orma had emerged. Perfectly square and as wide across as his shoulders, it allowed access to the inner workings of the mighty machine. He nervously stuck his head inside and looked around. It wasn’t as dark as he had feared. Tiny crystal-lights glowed in corners, casting multiple sharp-edged shadows everywhere.

 

Someone pushed his back, and he stepped fully inside. There was a surprisingly large amount of room. Everything was metal and glass, with no wood or bone at all. It was definitely old — perhaps as old as the Cataclysm itself — but perfectly preserved. Screws were oiled and shining in the light; levers waited patiently to be pulled; glass dials gleamed, clean and perfectly transparent. A bank of switches, each labelled a different colour, hung in up or down positions.

 

What any of it meant, Skender had no idea.

 

‘Well?’ called Treya after him.

 

Tempted though he was to flick switches at random and thereby sabotage the Ice Eaters’ plans even further, he decided to do nothing at all.

 

‘It’s quite beyond me, I’m afraid,’ he said, backing out of the hatch and into the relatively bright light, ‘but it all looks in perfect working order. If the problem isn’t in here, I’d guess you have a blockage on your hands. Is there a way of checking the pipes?’

 

Treya looked unimpressed by his suggestion. ‘Of course there is. It involves sending someone skinny down them. Are you volunteering?’

 

‘It’s not my problem,’ he said, hoping she wasn’t about to make it his problem. ‘If you won’t tell me what you’re trying to do with this thing, there’s not much else I can offer you.’

 

‘Ordinarily there wouldn’t be a problem,’ said Orma, tapping a wrench against his leg. ‘When the lake was frozen, the most we ever had to deal with was a bit of a trickle, but now the lake has melted and the tunnel is completely flooded —’

 

‘Orma.’ Treya silenced him with a look. ‘A machine is a machine. It works or it doesn’t.’

 

‘Not if there’s a lot of silt in the water,’ said Skender, ‘or even solid debris. What sort of tunnel are we talking about, exactly? If it goes under the lake, it could have had all sorts of junk flushed along it. That’d be what’s blocking your pipe inlets. The only way to clear it would be to do it by hand.’

 

‘But we can’t go in there while the tunnel is flooded,’ Orma said, ignoring Treya’s warning. ‘You see our dilemma.’

 

‘Could it be as simple as reversing the flow?’ Skender suggested. ‘Blow the water back through the pipes for a bit to clear the blockage, then try sucking again. That might help.’

 

Treya was growing visibly impatient. ‘You’re no help at all.’

 

‘What you need is someone good with water,’ he said, deciding to play the only card he had left. ‘You know who’s good with water? Sky Wardens. Even better are Sky Warden Engineers.’

 

‘Is there one in your party?’ Treya’s eyes became tight and narrow like flint axe heads.

 

‘Do you think I’d be so stupid as to tell you if there were?’ He folded his arms. Both Warden Banner and Tom were qualified Engineers but he wasn’t going to put their names forward to be captured by anyone. ‘You know, you could try asking for help instead of kidnapping people at random. The results might surprise you.’

 

‘I will not parley with people who plan to violate the Tomb,’ she said, taking his shoulder and turning him around. ‘You will go back to your friend and wait. Your fate will be decided soon.’

 

That didn’t sound encouraging. ‘We’re honestly here to help, not to hurt you or your precious Tomb. Why don’t you believe me?’

 

‘Because the word of one of your own tells me otherwise.’ She shoved him in the back. ‘Move.’

 

Skender shrugged back into his robe and let himself be pushed back into the veil of darkness that protected the wall and its machinery from view. He tried not to let the situation get to him. He had, at least, learned something — that the Ice Eaters were trying to pump water out of a tunnel that had been flooded by the melting of the lake. More puzzling was why Treya thought that Marmion and the others wanted to damage the Tomb. As far as he was aware, that possibility had never crossed anyone’s mind. Until the previous day, they hadn’t even known it existed — so how could the Ice Eaters possibly level such an accusation at them and expect it to stick? Who could have done something so stupid?

 

The answer leaned against a wall next to Kelloman’s narrow cot, tapping her cane against the cold, hard ground. Shilly looked up as he approached and he saw such a terrible hopelessness in her eyes that all his joy at seeing her evaporated, and he had to fight a powerful urge to turn and run back into the shadows.

 

* * * *

 

‘What did you tell them?’ Skender asked her. ‘What on Earth have you said?’

 

The accusation in his tone almost made her cry. ‘The truth. And it’s nice to see you, too.’

 

‘But don’t you realise what you’ve done? Bad enough that your stunt with the balloon has left us stranded here, easy picking for this mad mob and their delusions of grandeur. Now you’ve turned them completely against us by spinning some nonsense about wanting to damage the Tomb!’ The guards scowled and the woman who had brought Skender out of the darkness looked as though she was about to object. He ignored them and ploughed right on. ‘The Goddess only knows how we’re going to sort this mess out before Yod breaks loose and eats us all. Nice one, Shilly. Nice one.’

 

She had never seen her old friend like this before. He could be irritable and tetchy, but never so outspokenly upset. That he was obviously tired didn’t help, nor that he was surely worried about Chu. Shilly was tired too, and the grief of her older self, for Sal, still clung to her. The thought of what might have happened had she not told the truth was still very fresh in her mind.

 

The Ice Eater called Mannie came unexpectedly to her defence — not Vehofnehu, whose plan it had been all along. The empyricist was still in a state of wordless shock. Tom hadn’t woken and lay on a stretcher next to Kelloman, collared like Skender to prevent him from using the Change, his burned scalp covered in a rough bandage. She felt very much alone in the face of Skender’s bitter tirade.

 

Nothing and everything, the Goddess had said.

 

‘Shilly did what she had to do,’ the Ice Eater told Skender, ‘as anyone would in her circumstances. The Goddess would not blame her, I think.’

 

‘You believe the girl’s story?’ snapped the woman with Skender. Shilly realised only then that the Ice Eaters had a way of communicating across distances similar to other Change-workers.

 

‘I do, Treya.’ Mannie inclined his head. ‘It’s easier to accept than the lie it must otherwise be. Who would spin such a fabrication and expect us to believe it? As puzzled as I am by her tale, I think we have to accept all of it — or none of it.’

 

Treya raised her chin at the hint of challenge in Mannie’s tone. ‘Have you never heard of a half-lie?’

 

‘Of course I have, but one lies to save one’s life. If we’re to believe you, Shilly lied about the Goddess for no reason at all, but told the truth and put her life in jeopardy. That makes little sense.’

 

‘Except to confuse or distract us while the others in her party go about their business.’

 

‘And what is their business, Treya? What have your spies reported?’

 

‘The winged one is flying across the lake even as we speak. It killed two of us when they tried to approach. The others are on the move. We are watching from a safe distance.’

 

Mannie nodded cheerlessly as Shilly wondered who or what the ‘winged one’ was. Skender was still staring at her with hot betrayal in his eyes.

 

‘If the Goddess told you how to open the Tomb,’ she said through a mouth as dry as the desert, ‘it must’ve been for a reason. Have you thought about that?’

 

‘There are certain conditions,’ Mannie said, and might have said more had not Treya waved him silent.

 

‘We need explain nothing to you,’ the stern, middle-aged woman said. ‘You are the violators. Your lives are forfeit. While your people continue to kill us and threaten our sacred duty, you can assume only one thing: that your endings will come swiftly the moment you are no longer useful.’

 

Skender looked shocked at this. Clearly no one had informed him before then of the Ice Eaters’ harsh penalties.

 

‘You’re going to kill us?’ he asked, gaze dancing from Shilly to Treya and back again. ‘You can’t do that. We’re not the enemy!’

 

‘You still have value as hostages,’ said Treya, turning away from him. ‘Thank you for bringing her and the others here, Mannah. Their oddness only grows the more we learn about them.’

 

She was staring at Vehofnehu as she spoke, and Shilly was surprised to see the empyricist react.

 

‘You don’t know me,’ he said in a weak imitation of his usual bluster.

 

‘Of course I don’t,’ the leader of the Ice Eaters said. ‘What manner of being are you?’

 

‘I am inconsequential,’ he said. ‘My forecasts were wrong. The Goddess herself rebuked me. The world has no use for me now.’

 

The despair in his voice made Shilly’s heart want to break. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘It’s not over yet.’

 

‘We didn’t just fail,’ he insisted. ‘I will live to see my friends cursed and bereft. Although I might try to stop it, I have no hope of succeeding. I will fail again. What use is a king who cannot act? Any power I might have retained is spent. I am dead to the world.’

 

‘He’s talking nonsense,’ said Treya.

 

‘Am I? You don’t understand now, but you will.’

 

‘I have no time for this. Attend your duty, Mannah, with no more talk of clemency. Dark times are upon us.’

 

She strode purposefully back into the darkness, leaving Shilly and the others behind. Shilly watched Mannie closely. He was possibly the only hope they had of breaking any future death sentence, either by convincing Treya to rescind it or by outright defying her. The chance of the latter seemed slim, despite his deeply unhappy expression. Shilly would continue to hope.

 

‘Are they serious?’ asked Skender, coming to stand in front of her and talking in a soft, strained voice. ‘Would they really kill us?’

 

‘They convinced me of it,’ she said, unable to completely hide the hurt she felt at his poor welcome of her. ‘Why else would I have told them what I did?’

 

The corners of his eyes tightened slightly. Her barb had hit home. ‘But is any of that true? Did you really try to open the Tomb?’

 

‘That was the plan,’ she said, feeling infinitely weary. Putting her back against the wall, she let it take her weight. The cold stone sucked heat from her body, even through her many layers of clothing. ‘If we had separated the realms forever, we could have trapped Yod in one timeline of our choosing, thereby minimising the damage. Getting to the Flame was just part of that process, but I didn’t see the Flame when the Tomb opened. I don’t know what went wrong there.’

 

‘Separate the realms forever…?’ Skender’s forehead crinkled. He was clearly struggling with the thought of it, as she first had. ‘But that would be terrible. We’d lose the Change for starters, and the man’kin too.’

 

‘Better than losing our lives,’ she snapped, although she hadn’t thought of those particular ramifications. Would the man’kin really have embarked so readily on a suicide mission? Perhaps that was why Vehofnehu had been keen to keep their intentions a secret. ‘It’s not as if we went into it lightly,’ she said. ‘Do you have a better plan?’

 

‘There was talk of something,’ Skender said, leaning next to her against the wall and placing a hand over his eyes. ‘I didn’t follow all of it. The Tomb was involved too.’ His hand fell away from his face and he stared up into the darkness. ‘Could the Ice Eaters be right? Could going to the Tomb be exactly the wrong thing to do?’

 

Shilly thought of the Goddess’s words in the balloon. Not all of it had been an admonition. It’s okay. Honestly. I’m outside where I need to be, and I’ve closed the Tomb safely behind us. It’ll work out if we just keep along this path, right to the end.

 

But where was the path and what lay at its end? Without knowing either, Shilly had no reason to feel confident of anything.

 

Slowly, leaving nothing out she told Skender everything that had happened to her since her kidnap by the man’kin, nine days earlier. She covered her dreams, the glast, the Tomb, and the Goddess. He listened in silence, nodding encouragingly whenever she faltered. He interrupted her only once, when she mentioned the completed charm her future self had created. Still in her pack were the fragmentary sketches she had made. The Ice Eaters hadn’t confiscated them, thinking them harmless doodles. She produced them and lay them on the ground before him.

 

By crystal-light they looked strange and otherworldly. Skender’s gaze tracked steadily across them, taking in every detail.

 

‘This is designed to keep the realms apart,’ he breathed. ‘Is that right?’

 

‘She said it was a map.’ Shilly tried to remember her future self’s exact words, and cursed once again the fact that she didn’t have Skender’s perfect memory. ‘A map of the world as it would be afterwards, when the realms were apart. Metaphorically speaking.’

 

‘I think she was telling the truth,’ he said, ‘but it’s not a map as such. It’s a map only in the sense that an Engineer’s blueprint might be called a map. Without the blueprint, a thing or place would never exist. A map is the other way around.’ He tapped his chin. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before, Shilly. It’s an incredible piece of work.’

 

Despite her exhaustion, she felt a flush of pride. Skender had grown up surrounded by Stone Mage scholarship accumulated down one thousand years. He knew what he was talking about.

 

‘But what about you?’ she asked. ‘It’s your turn to talk. I’m going hoarse.’

 

He gathered up the sketches in a bundle and returned them to her. Then he leaned back and brought her up to date with his adventures. Attacked by strange creatures; downed on the shore of the crater lake; chased by black death-dealing tentacles; rescued then kidnapped by the local indigenes; confronted by strange machines fulfilling mysterious functions deep underground — his story sounded as improbable as hers, but she had no cause to doubt it. When a rhythmic thumping started up on the far side of the veil of shadow beyond them, she had even less.

 

‘They’ve got it going again,’ Skender said. ‘I’m not sure whether to be relieved or worried.’

 

‘Where do you think the tunnel goes?’

 

‘Under the lake. That’s all I know for sure.’

 

‘There’s only one place it could go,’ she said, feeling the certainty of it sinking into her like lead. ‘If the Ice Eaters are the guardians of the Tomb, they must be able to get to it, somehow. Maybe when the lake was frozen over they could have just walked across and dug down, but even that sounds like too much work. A tunnel would make more sense, for use in emergencies.’

 

‘There’s certainly something going on out there,’ Skender agreed, ‘whether they believe your story or not. The towers and that column of steam you mentioned — it all points to bad things to come.’

 

She nodded, thinking of the future where Yod had taken over the sun. Death and destruction hadn’t come immediately. It had taken time for the enemy to infiltrate the world and to begin its long-anticipated feast. That was the only thing working in their favour. Even if the last of the impediments holding Yod back dissolved right then and there, they still had a chance. Fast-moving and small, they could slip under its guard and do some damage before the opportunity expired.

 

But what could they actually do? Skender and the other Change-workers would naturally resist giving up the Change. They would insist upon looking for another way. Was this what had wrought the destruction of her future self’s world?

 

Was this what had cost her Sal? Was this what they were destined to argue about?

 

She thought of Tom and the last prophecy he had made. The glast would stand between her and Sal, he had said, as they argued over the ultimate decision. Whoever wins gets to choose the way the world ends.

 

She would do anything to avoid having to choose between saving her lover and condemning the world at one stroke.

 

As though the pieces of the charm had attracted her attention, Shilly felt her dream-self stirring. Grief and smoke filled her head, making her dizzy. The increasingly familiar lines of the charm overlaid the darkness before her just for a moment, as though reminding her of what was truly important.

 

‘You’re very quiet,’ she said to Skender, fighting the distraction.

 

‘So are you. What are you thinking about?’

 

Shilly shook her head. ‘You first.’

 

‘I’m thinking about what it means if you’re right about that tunnel,’ he said. ‘What if Treya succeeds in getting the water out and opens the door? We know what lies at the end of it.’

 

‘Yes, the Tomb.’

 

‘And?’

 

She saw where he was going now. ‘Yod.’

 

He nodded. ‘The last thing we’d want to do is draw attention to ourselves.’

 

‘Is there any way we can stop her, do you think?’

 

‘Not like this. I’m completely useless with this collar on. And Kelloman…’ He lowered his voice. ‘If he’s in this body when the time comes, he might be able to do something, but it’ll be hard to make sure of that with the guards watching us all the time. What about you? Does your stick have any potential left?’

 

She shook her head.

 

‘That friend of yours is pretty sharp,’ he said, looking at Mannie. The Ice Eater was deep in a whispered conversation with one of the guards. ‘He might be one of the rebels.’

 

‘We can only hope so.’ She watched Mannie closely but couldn’t decipher his motives or intentions. He had helped her but only so far. Arguing with Treya was very different to actually betraying her.

 

What had she called him? Mannah, not Mannie. That triggered a very faint memory, far back in her brain. Somewhere, and recently, she had heard that name before…

 

‘I’m sorry I yelled at you,’ Skender said.

 

‘It’s okay.’ And it was. ‘I’ve yelled at you plenty of times and you never complained.’

 

‘Yeah, but you always had good reason. I was just running off at the mouth.’

 

‘You think I never do that? Ask Sal next time you see him. He can tell you some stories.’

 

‘I bet he can.’ He smiled briefly then sobered and asked, ‘What’s wrong with Tom?’

 

That was a topic she didn’t like to think about. ‘Beats me. He’s neither unconscious nor asleep, and he isn’t playing dead, either.’

 

‘He has lost his connection to the Third Realm,’ said Vehofnehu softly. ‘As have I, Shilly. I saw the stars as we left the Tomb and they meant nothing to me. Nothing.’

 

She hadn’t known the empyricist was listening to their conversation. She leaned past Skender to whisper, ‘So why are you awake, unlike him?’

 

‘Tom dreams the future the same way you remember the past. To lose your memory would be a terrible thing, and perhaps you would prefer the oblivion of sleep as Tom does. Who can say?’ The empyricist folded his long arms around his knees. ‘I thought opening the Tomb would solve everything. Instead, I have put the realms into a disequilibrium that only the Goddess can repair. The Third Realm has abandoned us all.’

 

‘Most people live that way and cope all right.’

 

‘That’s not true. All societies in this world are guided by those who can see the future, whether it’s through humble market seers, the Weavers, man’kin or empyricists such as myself — people who exist at least partly in the Third Realm. They influence decisions large and small. How will such decisions be made now? Badly, and at great risk to everyone, is my thought. We need wisdom now more than ever.’

 

‘You don’t have to see the future in order to be wise,’ Shilly said. ‘That’s exactly where the Weavers went wrong with Sal, all those years ago. He made his own future —’

 

‘He jumped to another world-line rather than accept the destiny that had been shaped for him,’ the empyricist corrected her. ‘See? Even he employs the Third Realm to get what he wants. Without it, without the Goddess and the Flame to facilitate the proper interaction between her realm and ours, this world will certainly unravel.’

 

‘But you wanted the world to unravel,’ she said.

 

‘Only one. Not all. With Yod spread across the world-lines, its victory will be complete.’

 

Thinking about alternate futures and worlds made her head hurt. Most people would go to their doom unaware of the world-tree and their other lives, but not her. If the Flame never burned again, access to her future selves and their grief would cease. To be rid of them would come as a consolation, if not necessarily a victory.

 

Something clattered to the floor beside her left leg, distracting her. She leaned forward and picked up a small blue pebble she was sure hadn’t been there before. As she stared at it, another joined it, dropping from above and skittering to a halt by her left foot. She looked up with her mouth open, ready to sound the alarm at the first sign of a cave-in.

 

Instead of a wall of rock about to topple on her, she caught a brief flash of yellow light. It was gone as soon as she saw it, giving her barely enough time to register Kail’s face, with a finger pressed firmly to his lips, peering down at her from the ceiling of the great stone cavern.

 

Shilly blinked and dropped her head back down lest someone notice her gawping up at the roof. Her heart beat more quickly at the thought that he had come to rescue her.

 

Skender had gone completely rigid beside her. ‘It can’t be,’ he whispered.

 

‘Why on Earth not?’ she hissed back.

 

‘Because Kail is dead. He fell from Pukje’s back around the same time the balloon went down.’

 

Shilly resisted the impulse to glance back up. Her heartbeat quickened again. ‘Perhaps he survived.’

 

Skender met her gaze under knotted brows. ‘I guess we must assume so.’

 

The small of Shilly’s back itched as she took her cane and placed it across her lap, ready for anything.

 

* * * *

 

Kail watched Shilly, Skender and Vehofnehu with no small feeling of uncertainty. He could tell that his appearance had given them hope. Their postures were straighter and they paid more attention to their surroundings, particularly to the guards. But it was a hope he didn’t entirely share. The Ice Eaters were growing in numbers as far-flung survivors converged on the chamber, summoned by a call through the Change that he had barely detected. There were now perhaps two dozen in all. If many more arrived, the prisoners would have no chance of escaping.

 

As it was, their position was desperate. Kail had followed the trail from crash site to temporary shelter, then through the caves to the place they were currently being held. Along the way Kail had notified Marmion and given him directions. Until reinforcements arrived, it was up to Kail to step in should Treya decide to do as she threatened and enact the traditional punishment. Kail’s back and neck were stiff from the fall and the cold, and the wound he had received from the Swarm felt as though it had reopened. He was lying face down in a narrow crack that led to the chamber from another section of the caves and feeling very much the worse for it.

 

Getting old, he told himself. I should rely less on the body and try using the brain instead.

 

He half-lidded his eyes and studied the tense group below. Apart from Sal, Shilly and Vehofnehu, there were four Ice Eater guards and the more senior personage called Mannie or Mannah watching under the halo of light cast by a strange crystal lantern. The rest, presumably, were on the other side of the cavern, hidden from sight by a dense charm. Tom lay out cold on a stretcher next to Kelloman, whose quiescent host body wasn’t collared. That observation provoked an interesting possibility.

 

Gently so as not to arouse the suspicions of Mannie, Kail reached out with his mind and felt for the ‘sleeping’ mage’s thoughts.

 

‘Kelloman, can you hear me?’

 

‘Great galloping galoshes! Half the cavern probably can!’

 

Kail winced at the stinging rebuke. ‘Is this better?

 

‘Significantly. Now, Warden Kail, what do you want?’

 

‘To get you out of there, of course. I’m close. In fact, I can see you.’

 

‘Don’t worry about me. I’m perfectly safe. You should worry more about the others’

 

‘I was including them.’

 

‘How far is that fool Marmion? He said something about being on his way but I haven’t heard a tweet from him since.’

 

‘Neither have I. He should be here with Sal and the others soon.’

 

‘Are you expecting us to sit around and wait?’

 

‘I think it’s sensible to make plans’

 

‘I’m glad you agree. Now, tell me the layout — everything you can see from your vantage point. Nothing more fancy than that, and for the Goddess’s sake don’t do more than whisper. If we bungle this, they’ll kill us for sure.’

 

Kail did as he was told, describing where everyone was sitting, lying or standing in relation to the recumbent mage. Mannie had stopped whispering to the guards and was now pacing back and forth in a line between the prisoners and the shadow veil. His pacing matched the rhythm of the machine pounding away on the far side. To Kail’s eye the man seemed to be tracing out a line between the prisoners and their main threat, the woman called Treya. He could, perhaps, side against her when it came to the crucial moment, but Kail felt it unsafe to rely on him. As a likely Change-worker, he would have to be the first targeted.

 

‘There’s no way to talk to Skender,’ Mage Kelloman said. ‘What about Shilly? Is she sensitive enough to hear you now you have her attention?’

 

‘I could try.’

 

‘I suggest you do. It could make all the difference.’

 

Kail sent Shilly a brief request to tap her bad leg if she heard him clearly. Without hesitation, she reached down and rapped twice on her knee.

 

‘Excellent,’ said Kelloman when Kail reported his progress. ‘That gives us three possible angles of attack. What do you suggest we do with them?’

 

Kail had already begun thinking along those lines. ‘Well, we’re in a powerful position here. You’ve got access to lots of stone, and the air is cold and moist. If you can create a distraction, I can whip up a fog that’ll hide Shilly and the others from view. They should be able to move Tom before the guards work out what’s going on. Once the collar is off Skender, things should become easier, too. It’s just a matter of finding the right moment.’

 

The sounds of footsteps on stone came over the pounding of the motor. A young Ice Eater male ran out of the shadow veil and spoke rapidly to Mannie. The older man nodded and glanced, frowning, at the prisoners.

 

With a rattle and a prolonged grinding sound, the mysterious machine wound down into silence.

 

‘I think you might have your moment,’ said Kelloman as, unnoticed by everyone but Kail, his body’s hand slipped off the edge of the stretcher and dropped so its knuckles brushed the cold stone below.

 

‘Be ready,’ whispered Kail to Shilly, barely thinking the words to himself. ‘You’ll know when to act.’

 

Treya followed the young Ice Eater out of the dark veil, walking slowly but purposefully. Two large men trailed her. All four of them wore solemn black robes over their normal insulating garments.

 

‘It’s almost done,’ she said. ‘No good reason has come to me to spare these violators, and I have no intention of leaving them behind. The time has come to do what must be done.’

 

Skender, Shilly and Vehofnehu stood, keeping their backs firmly against the wall. ‘You can’t be serious,’ said Shilly. ‘You’d kill wounded people who can’t defend themselves?’

 

‘If you do this,’ added Skender, ‘you’ll be as bad as the Death.’

 

‘The guilt will haunt you forever,’ said the empyricist with something like pity in his eyes. ‘You will never escape it.’

 

‘Shut them up.’ Treya clapped her hands and her two thugs moved in.

 

Mannie stepped forward. ‘No, Treya. I can’t allow this.’

 

‘It’s not up to you,’ Treya snapped. ‘It’s the law we’ve upheld for centuries. I’ll not break it now.’

 

‘Now is a special case. Never in all our history has there been a time like this. We are decimated and the lake itself has turned against us. I say the old laws no longer apply. We must find new ones.’

 

‘The Goddess herself gave us those laws.’ Treya’s eyes widened in anger. Although physically much shorter than her challenger, her certainty was a match for his. ‘Are you saying that we should turn our back on her as well?’

 

‘Why don’t we ask her what we should do? If she truly walks among us now, we can do just that. We owe her — and ourselves — that much after a thousand years of service.’

 

‘The time for arguing is past.’ Treya clapped her hands again. ‘We must act.’

 

Mannie waved a hand and the two guards stepped forward to confront Treya’s thugs. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry it has come to this, Treya.’

 

‘So am I. There are few of us left. I am loath to lose any more.’

 

‘Then listen to reason. Don’t take this extreme course of action.’

 

‘I will take whatever course of action I think best,’ she spat. ‘It’s not your place to judge. I am doing the Goddess’s will. You should learn from my example — or face the same penalty as the violators.’

 

As battlelines were drawn, Kail watched the shifting alliances with concern. The divide between loyalists and rebels wasn’t clear-cut. Mannie may have turned the guards to his cause, but two of his own companions were clearly not so sure. One, a white-haired man who looked old enough to be Treya’s father, fingered a curved bone knife as though eager to use it. If it came to a brawl, Kail decided, he was one to watch.

 

‘I don’t want to fight you,’ said Mannie, drawing a knife of his own from within his furs, ‘but I will in order to prevent this terrible wrong.’

 

Treya whistled. Out of the shadow veil stepped six more Ice Eaters. Four men and two women, they formed a line to Treya’s left with weapons drawn. The teenager Kail had earlier seen with Skender wasn’t one of them.

 

‘What say you now, Mannah?’ asked Treya. ‘How do your principles fare in the face of certain defeat?’

 

‘No matter who dies today, I will still be right and you will still be wrong.’ The Ice Eater waved Shilly and the others behind him. ‘Force changes nothing.’

 

‘OH, BUT I VERY MUCH DISAGREE.’

 

The voice was so loud it made the walls of the cavern shake. Kail clutched the sides of his narrow chimney to stop himself from slipping headfirst to the ground, below. Treya and Mannie put their hands over their ears as they looked around for the source.

 

‘LOWER YOUR WEAPONS OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES.’

 

It took Kail far too long to realise that the walls of the cavern were the source of the voice, and that the mind behind it belonged to Mage Kelloman, still feigning unconsciousness on his stretcher. Once he realised, however, it took only a moment to gather the concentration required to weave a familiar weather-working charm and direct it out into the cavern. Mist began to gather around the legs of those below.

 

Two of Treya’s thugs put down their knives and backed away. Their leader, however, was not so easily intimidated.

 

‘Who speaks?’ she called out, raising her head and turning it from side to side in order to address the entire ceiling. ‘By whose authority?’

 

‘I NEED NO AUTHORITY BUT MY OWN. OBEY ME. OBEY.’ Kelloman added a faint rumble to the final word. A fine rain of dust began to fall into the fog. ‘YOUR LIVES ARE IN MY HANDS.’

 

Treya was beginning to look nervous but no less determined. ‘Until you tell me who you are —’ She stopped, noticing the mist for the first time. It had reached the level of her knees. ‘This is a trick. Take them now. Now!’

 

Kail cursed and put all his energy into the charm. At the same time, he sent a chill wind through the chamber, stirring up the mist. Kelloman triggered a series of small rockfalls that sent people running in all directions with their hands protecting their heads. Dust and mist mixed, forming an impenetrable smog through which people ran like mice.

 

The time had come to leave his hiding place. Kail worked his aching limbs loose and inched forward onto the ledge below the chimney. Once on the ledge, he found solid grips for his arms and swung his legs over into space. A flash of bright red light signalled that Kelloman was openly fighting to defend the prisoners. Wisps of fog swirled into strange, sinister shapes. A single Panic voice rose up in challenge.

 

‘Shilly!’

 

That was Skender. Kail let go and dropped to the floor. Pain flared from the base of his spine to the back of his head on impact. Shoving aside a bleeding Ice Eater, he made his way to where he had last seen Shilly. The wall was empty now.

 

His strength was ebbing, but the fog continued to build. He cursed it as he searched through it for Shilly and the others. Vehofnehu and one of the Ice Eater guards stood protectively over Tom. The guard lunged at Kail but the empyricist held him back.

 

‘Have you seen Shilly?’ Kail asked him.

 

Vehofnehu shook his head. ‘Treya was trying to get to her, the last I saw.’

 

Another flash turned the world blood-red. Black silhouettes stood out in strange poses. Kail dived into the thick of it, grabbing Ice Eaters and pushing them bodily aside. The sound of fighting grew louder even through the deadening air. Someone lunged at him with a knife and he jerked away too quickly, too awkwardly for his back to bear. He went down with a cry and his chest exposed, certain to be stabbed.

 

A sword wielded by a brown-uniformed arm intercepted the blow. Metal clashed with bone and the metal won. Fragments of knife went flying, and the woman wielding it dropped away with a cry.

 

Heuve leaned down to help Kail to his feet. Lidia Delfine stood beside her bodyguard, watching his back. ‘Looks like we arrived none to soon,’ she said bleakly. ‘We decided to rendezvous with Marmion and the others before moving in, otherwise we could’ve been here earlier.’

 

‘Your timing is excellent.’ Kail felt as though every muscle down his left side was torn. He could barely walk. ‘Look for Shilly. She’s the most vulnerable. If she’s been taken —’

 

‘We’ll find her.’

 

‘Do you know where to go?’

 

‘Yes. They’re retreating to the far side of the chamber.’

 

Heuve slipped a knife into Kail’s hand and hurried with his fiancée into the swirling fog. Kail wondered where the others were: Griel, Marmion, Rosevear and Sal. It wouldn’t be long now, surely, before the fight was over.

 

It soon became clear, however, that the Ice Eaters had more up their sleeves than simple illusions. When he reached the shadow veil, determinedly following the fringes of the fighting, his faltering steps became even slower. The floor seemed to be covered in a dense pool of molasses. The harder he tried to walk, the slower he went.

 

Another voice called Shilly’s name — Sal’s this time. Her return cry was muffled by the distance and the veil. A shockwave rippled through the Change, carrying the wild talent’s distinctive flavour along with a hint of Skender. The obstruction around Kail’s legs dissolved. Suddenly he was running unencumbered through the veil of darkness and to the far side.

 

The fog had reached there too. Ice Eaters ran past him, briefly glimpsed. He had neither the means to tell which side they were on nor sufficient energy to stop them. Many wore black robes, although why they needed extra layers he didn’t know. The air was hot and sulphurous on the far side of the veil. A series of powerful flashes only made the atmosphere more foul still.

 

Then a rush of cold, damp air blew the fog to streamers. Kail gagged on a stagnant fishy smell. Lights coalesced out of the gloom, revealing a mighty stone wall truncating the far end of the cavern. At its centre hung a wide rectangular door. Several black-robed shapes slipped through the open door to the darkness on the other side and he raised his voice to sound the alarm.

 

‘They’re getting away! Stop them!’

 

The door was already swinging closed. Sal rushed out of the veil, right hand outstretched in a futile pushing gesture. The stone was too heavy even for him. Smoothly and without any sound at all, the gap between door and lintel kept shrinking.

 

‘No!’ cried Skender, sporting a bloody gash down his left arm.

 

Sal kept running after the fleeing Ice Eaters. In the time it took Kail to manage two steps, Sal had dived headlong into the gap with barely a finger’s-width to either side. The heavy door slammed shut behind him.

 

Complex charms danced across the joins, locking it tight. Skender pounded on the stone with his good hand, to no avail.

 

‘Well,’ said Kail, hobbling to join him, ‘at least he’s in a good position to help Shilly.’

 

‘Don’t be so sure about that,’ said a voice from behind them.

 

Kail turned and saw Marmion bending over a small figure lying near the edge of the shadow veil. Rosevear hurried to join him. The sound of fighting faded into insignificance as Kail limped over, his heart pounding.

 

‘Is she alive?’ he heard Marmion ask.

 

Rosevear nodded. ‘Stunned, I think.’

 

Under his healing hand, Shilly stirred. ‘What happened?’ she asked, trying to sit up. There was blood in her hair, but less than Kail feared he might see. ‘Did I hear Sal?’

 

‘You did,’ said Marmion.

 

‘Where is he?’ She looked around, the whites of her eyes showing. ‘Is he all right?’

 

Marmion pointed over her shoulder, at the wall. She took the situation in at a glance.

 

‘What’s he doing in there?’

 

‘Looking for you,’ said Skender, squatting down next to her with his injured arm tucked close to his stomach. ‘We thought you’d been kidnapped.’

 

She laughed once, then put her head in her hands. ‘Typical.’ There was no mirth in her voice, just fatigue and grief.

 

‘He’ll be all right,’ Rosevear soothed her.

 

‘You don’t know that,’ she said. ‘You don’t know that at all.’

 

‘I think we can trust him to look after himself,’ Marmion said.

 

‘There are no guarantees.’ She let herself be pressed back into a reclining position. ‘Get that bloody door open as fast as you can. They’re on their way to the Tomb. I don’t know what’s waiting for them there, but I think we can assume they’ll need reinforcements.’

 

The big bad wolf is waiting, Kail said to himself, his thoughts spiralling from the scene in front of him to his encounter with the Goddess. He was the last to reach Shilly’s side. He leaned heavily on Skender to lower himself next to her. Even so, the pain was incredible. He barely managed a gasp, but that was enough to catch Rosevear’s attention. The last things he saw were the healer’s outstretched hands coming up to catch him.

 

* * * *

 

The Guardians

 

 

‘Where She lies, the Flame will burn.

When the Flame burns, the world will be whole.’

 

THE BOOK OF TOWERS, FRAGMENT 117

 

 

t was cold and dark on Pukje’s back, under the starless sky. Highson Sparre had gone into a deep trance to preserve his body heat, and responded only when directly spoken to. Even the twins, in their unnaturally resilient body, were beginning to feel the effects of such prolonged exposure. As they finally approached the towering column of steam rising from the taller of the three towers in the middle of the lake, the twins decided to rouse their companion to see what they had found.

 

‘Nothing? You can’t be serious.’ The wind caught his voice and tried to snatch it away, but Pukje was for the moment not bucking the currents swirling around the immense vertical cloud, and it was relatively easy to talk.

 

‘See for yourself,’ they told Highson, not quite believing it themselves. Compared to the immense column of steam rising above them, they were smaller than a fly circling a Doric column. Apart from the odd flash of orange or green sheet lightning, the strange atmospheric phenomenon was utterly dark, and whatever was causing the water to boil far below did so in complete silence. Tower Aleph was dimly visible through the steam. Seth could see that it was still hollow, as it had been in the memories he had gleaned from Ron Synett, and that its exterior was still enigmatically carved. In essence, it seemed, it had hardly changed — except it now poked out of the new world like a syringe through a rubber sheet.

 

Around it he could feel the presence of Yod. The dreadful spoor of the world-eater stifled his thoughts and smothered the breath in his throat, making him feel smaller than ever, if that was possible.

 

His life may have been ruined by Yod, but the closest Seth and his brother had previously come to it in person had been a thousand years earlier, in the Second Realm, when Seth had glimpsed the hulking black pyramid in the bizarre city of Abaddon. It had looked more like something inanimate, a built object rather than a living being. It is alien, Xol’s friend Agatha had told him when he had asked what it was. Its nature is hidden from us. That hadn’t helped him understand, but it had gone some way towards stopping him from trying.

 

‘I think we should go lower,’ said Seth. ‘There’s nothing but cloud up here. The real action must be on top of the tower, or inside it.’

 

Hadrian disagreed, of course. ‘That’s exactly why I think we should stay up here. We’re risking enough as it is. The closer we get to Yod, the more dangerous it’s going to be.’

 

‘You think we should return to the shore?’ Highson asked, peering over Pukje’s bony spine at the sight ahead of them.

 

‘I think there’s only so much we can learn out here,’ Hadrian said. ‘We need to find another way into the Tomb.’

 

‘But if it’s as quiet down there as it is up here,’ protested Seth, ‘we might be able to land on it.’

 

‘Do you really think that’s likely?’

 

‘Do you think any of this is likely?’

 

Highson waved them silent. ‘I agree with Seth,’ he said, ‘but not because you’re wrong, Hadrian. Because we’re desperate. I think we have to put our faith in Pukje to get us out of any trouble that might come our way. Does that sound reasonable?’

 

‘I’m in no hurry to die,’ the imp-dragon rumbled in agreement. ‘The moment anything so much as looks at us, we’ll be out of there.’

 

That went some way towards mollifying Hadrian, who until then had stubbornly refused to accept Seth’s opinion on anything. He had been like that all the way from shore. Something had changed since Highson’s announcement that the Homunculus might be able to give them separate bodies.

 

Or maybe it was just the thought of being close to the resting place of Ellis’s body. No matter that she was revered now as a Goddess. To both of them, she was still the woman they had loved.

 

The ankh will hide us, Seth told his brother. Don’t forget that.

 

‘I suppose.’ Hadrian spoke aloud, giving in to the pressure from all sides.

 

‘All right,’ Highson said to Pukje. ‘Take us down to the top of the tower, as slowly as you like. I may be freezing to death out here, but that’s better than the alternative.’

 

‘At least it’d be quick,’ Seth said.

 

‘It would at that.’ Highson actually smiled.

 

Losing his memory seems to have done him a world of good, said Hadrian with more than a hint of surliness.

 

Perhaps we should go back to the Old Ones ourselves, Seth said. There are a few moments I’d lose quite happily.

 

Pukje angled his left wingtip and sent them on a broad spiral that would take them at least twice around the column of steam before reaching the top of the tower. Through the Homunculus’s night vision, Seth could dimly make out the surface of the column. Although it looked smooth from a distance, rising like the stem of a mushroom to the spreading pancake of cloud above, it was in fact roiling and tempestuous. He thought of a bath tap on full, but upside down, pouring the contents of the lake into the sky. How long it would take for the lake to boil dry he couldn’t guess.

 

‘What did the Old Ones tell you about saving the world?’ he asked Highson. ‘You mentioned something about that before but didn’t get a chance to tell us anything.’

 

‘Well, it’s a long story,’ said the warden. ‘Maybe now’s not the right time.’

 

‘I think we should keep our voices down,’ Pukje said.

 

‘Do you?’ asked Seth.

 

‘Yes. Just because we can’t see any danger doesn’t mean it’s not out there waiting.’ The big eyes glanced back at him. ‘Let’s not give it a reason to find us.’ Pukje flapped his wings once for emphasis.

 

Interesting, said Seth.

 

Yes, Hadrian agreed. Pukje cut Highson off last time too. Do you think he’s trying to hide something?

 

I think Pukje’s always hiding something.

 

Something about us?

 

Undoubtedly. He thinks we’re going to help him get rid of Yod — otherwise why would we be here?

 

Not for decoration, that’s for sure.

 

Seth simmered in silence as Pukje glided down the outside of the rising column of steam. If Pukje didn’t want them to talk, there wasn’t much they could do about it just then. But later there would come an opportunity. He would make sure of it.

 

Not far now, little brother, he whispered. The end is almost here.

 

He felt Hadrian shift inside the Homunculus’s body. Their strange, overlapping head flexed, stretched, and it seemed for a moment as though they were looking eye to eye. Hadrian’s face, the same as Seth’s but reversed, stared back at him with an agonised, anguished expression, older and more haggard than they had ever been.

 

Then it faded back to black. The Homunculus returned to its usual shape. Seth felt the essence of his brother — his soul, his being, his self— slip into the same space he occupied. It was like shrugging on an old overcoat, worn but not entirely uncomfortable.

 

A strange sensation rippled through him. He felt like a pond someone had dropped a pebble into.

 

‘What was that?’ asked Hadrian.

 

‘Did you feel it too?’ Highson responded.

 

‘Both of us did,’ Seth said. ‘Was that through the Change?’

 

‘Yes. I think someone’s watching us.’

 

‘Who? Where?’ Hadrian craned the Homunculus’s neck for a closer look at the black sky.

 

‘I don’t know, but I suspect we’ll find out soon.’

 

Pukje angled his wings to increase their rate of descent. Chill air rippled past them, fluttering Highson’s robes like a sail.

 

‘If we can feel the Change,’ Hadrian said to Highson, ‘does that mean we could learn to use it, one day?’

 

‘Maybe.’ The warden studied them with a curious expression. ‘It would be an interesting experiment.’

 

Seth didn’t like the thought of being a laboratory rat. ‘We didn’t have the Change in our world. We remembered it in stories about magic and wizards, but it hadn’t worked since the last Cataclysm, when the realms were separated. The moment I died and the new Cataclysm started to bite, magic started working again.’ He had clear memories of Hadrian killing the draci that had inhabited Ellis’s body and tried to suck the life out of him — memories that provoked a shudder every time they surfaced. ‘There was so much loose potential around that tapping into it was easy. All you had to do was reach out and take it. This world since then has had time to settle, to find its own rhythms. The potential is all bound up in special places: stone, fire, trees, fog, blood, Ruins, and so on. We have no idea how to tap into those sources.’

 

‘Sal could probably show you,’ Highson said.

 

‘Why Sal?’ asked Hadrian.

 

‘Because he’s a wild talent.’

 

‘We tried to tell him that he was special,’ said Seth. ‘He could hear Upuaut when no one else could. He disagreed, though.’

 

‘He would. He doesn’t like being the odd one out.’ Highson frowned. ‘But he is. He’s tapping into something deeper than the rest of us. Not necessarily more powerful. Just… different.’

 

The odd sensation swept through them again.

 

Like a sonar ping, said Hadrian.

 

That was an interesting analogy. Seth considered it while he studied the roiling exterior of the cloud column. A signal propagated through the Change would bounce off — what? Anything possessing the Change? But that could be a lot of things. Someone using the Change, then?

 

The ping came a third time, then a fourth. The gaps between them were decreasing. That made Seth even more nervous than he had been. They weren’t just being watched, but targeted.

 

What was that you said about the ankh, Seth?

 

A silver shape shot out of the clouds like a bullet. Three more followed it, then another two. Hadrian pointed, but Pukje had already seen them. His broad wings narrowed and swept back. Seth’s stomach rose to his throat.

 

‘What are they?’ he cried over the rising wind.

 

‘Devels,’ Pukje rumbled.

 

‘Are they the same things that attacked the balloon?’ asked Highson.

 

Seth peered up and behind for a better look at the creatures. These were child-sized with thin, rippling wings and needle-sharp proboscis. Their colouring reminded him of the Vaimnamne, the barrel-like steeds of the Second Realm. They glided in a fashion reminiscent of swallows, but when their wings flexed, eye-wateringly fast, they strained like bat wings, not the feathered variety.

 

‘No,’ he said in answer to Highson’s question, ‘those couldn’t fly.’

 

‘Perhaps these don’t mean us any harm.’

 

‘Wishful thinking, I suspect.’

 

As though the silver swallows could hear him, the flock banked sharply and emitted a flurry of rippling Change-pings. Seth tensed, feeling Pukje’s muscles, bunch in readiness. When the flock dropped their noses and dived, Pukje did the same.

 

Suddenly, they were hurtling towards the sea. The wind whipped Highson’s cry of alarm away, unheard. Seth clung to Pukje’s broad back as the wind tore at him. The top of Tower Aleph swept by, and still Pukje dived. The surface of the lake bloomed before them with terrifying swiftness, going from smooth black to roiling waves and a forest of life-sucking tentacles in a matter of seconds.

 

Highson’s eyes were tightly shut, and would have been blinded by the screaming wind had they been open. More silver swallows had joined the first flock, diving like arrows after Pukje and his passengers. Seth wondered if the imp-dragon would be able to pull up before they hit. He couldn’t decide which would be worse: the crushing impact with the lake’s surface, having his will sucked away by Yod’s black tentacles, or being impaled on the swallows’ wicked beaks.

 

With a sinew-stretching effort, Pukje began to angle out of the dive. His wings shook and muscles strained. Highson and the twins endured a fierce battering on the imp-dragon’s back. Seth closed his eyes too as the lake rose up before them. A foul-smelling mist greeted his nostrils, kicked up by the waves. He imagined black tentacles snatching at him like the cilia of sea anemone. Pukje tipped violently from side to side. His wings clapped like thunder. When Seth opened his eyes again they were flying low and fast across the lake, heading for the shore.

 

Uttering a series of piercing shrieks, the swallows followed.

 

‘Not now!’ they heard Highson yell. ‘Your timing couldn’t be worse!’ Talking to one of his fellow wardens, Seth presumed. He agreed totally with the sentiment.

 

Pukje banked and dodged as the swallows grew closer. On the flat they had the advantage. Darting and weaving like deadly dolphins, they were coming inexorably closer. Their forward-thrust spikes now looked more like horns than beaks or noses. They tapered to points sharp enough to skewer an ice cube.

 

Egrigor, said Hadrian, awkwardly shifting position inside the Homunculus. That’s our only chance.

 

I don’t know. Seth didn’t like egrigor. Twice Hadrian had used them and twice almost killed him.

 

Those things are going to be hard to hit, and every miss is a piece of us gone.

 

I’m not thinking of shooting them.

 

What then? Sending them flowers?

 

Hadrian didn’t waste time responding. He was facing almost directly backwards, leaving Seth to the tricky job of holding on. For a moment, Hadrian did nothing at all. Seth could feel his brother concentrating. One hand came up to point backwards with fingers spread wide.

 

A silver swallow darted closer, wings flexing and snapping like rubber sails. It didn’t seem to have any mouth, or eyes, nose, ears, or any other recognisable feature. Just the spike.

 

Hadrian’s concentration peaked as the devel lunged. Pukje dipped and swung to the left. The tip of the spike passed over Seth’s head with an audible hiss. Seth experienced the unforgettable sensation of part of himself disappearing — like a wisdom tooth being pulled, leaving a void behind — as a fine sparkling spray of filaments blossomed from Hadrian’s hand. The swallow shrieked in alarm and fell away with red lines lacing its blank features and tangling its sinuous wings.

 

Another darted closer. Hadrian sent another razor-wire net to greet it. That only sent the others into a fury, like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Their symphony of shrieks reached a new height, so loud it was almost physically painful. Hadrian fired two more nets into the vicious flock. Each one cost Seth more than he cared to think about.

 

It’s not enough, he told his brother. The shore’s too far away. We’re not going to make it.

 

A rain of hail came between Pukje and the swallows, accompanied by a surge in the Change. Highson had joined the fight, using his knowledge of air and water to bring a fall of ice from the clouds above. Each stone was as large as a tennis ball, and jagged with it. The swallows flinched and fell back under the heavy pummelling, their flanks scored and bruised. One lost the tip of its lethal spike and dropped away, spinning out of control into the writhing black sea below.

 

Still not enough. Seth could feel Highson flagging. It can’t end like this. It can’t!

 

Then a stroke of lightning lit the sky behind them, shooting out of Tower Aleph and up the inside of the column of steam. Energy spread in waves across the cloud ceiling above them, reflecting off the silver skin of their pursuers. Pukje shuddered beneath them, as though gripped by a sudden weakness, then steadied. Seth looked forward in concern, but the imp-dragon gave no reason for the interruption. When he looked back, the silver swallows had fallen back. They disappeared a moment later into the darkness.

 

‘What happened?’ he shouted over the wind. ‘What scared them away?’

 

The hail-fall petered out into normal weather. ‘Nothing I did,’ said Highson, looking as cautiously relieved as Seth felt.

 

‘It wasn’t,’ rumbled Pukje. ‘The devels’ role is to protect the Tomb. We’re far enough away now to appear less of a threat — especially when someone or something else might be attempting to get there another way.’

 

‘How did you know about that?’ asked Highson, startled. ‘That was Marmion who called before. The Ice Eaters are on their way.’

 

‘I didn’t know. I just guessed,’ the imp-dragon admitted. ‘The pyrotechnics gave it away. The Tomb isn’t a static, inert thing, you see. It retains the potential for the Flame and has links to the Third Realm. The colours we’re seeing in the clouds reflect what’s happening inside: orange for Gabra’il; green for the Holy Immortals. White is the flame. Something potent is happening or about to happen. It’s letting off steam.’

 

Pukje had gained altitude while talking in order to put him and his passengers well out of range of the black tentacles rising out of the water below.

 

‘We thought we were hidden from Yod,’ Hadrian said, ‘but the devels didn’t have any trouble spotting us.’

 

‘Always the egotist,’ Pukje said. ‘They didn’t see you. They saw Highson and me. Anyone strong in the Change will stand out like a beacon for kilometres around the towers. We know that now, at least.’

 

‘So how are we going to get back there?’ asked Highson.

 

‘Maybe we shouldn’t,’ said Hadrian.

 

‘Ask Marmion,’ Seth suggested. ‘If the Ice Eaters have a way, maybe we can use it.’

 

Highson nodded. ‘True. I’ll call him now.’ With that, the warden fell silent and inward-focussed.

 

Seth felt Hadrian’s relief through the essence of the Homunculus.

 

You can’t run from Ellis forever, Seth told him. I don’t understand why you’d want to.

 

What do I have to say to her? Thanks for volunteering us for a thousand years of solitary confinement? Thanks for leaving us to blunder like idiots through a world we know nothing about?

 

We don’t know that. Let’s at least hear her side of the story before passing judgement on her.

 

Hadrian was silent for a moment. Not that it’ll do me any good, either way. She’s probably been dead longer than most countries survive. What difference will it make to curse her corpse?

 

None at all, little brother, Seth told him. None at all.

 

* * * *

 

Sal slid through the closing gap with just millimetres to spare. Barely had he got his feet out of the way when the massive stone slabs slammed together, sending a deafening boom echoing through the space on the far side. Instantly he was plunged into foul-smelling darkness, spreadeagled in ice-cold, slippery mud. He rolled over and called on the Change to light the space near him.

 

Someone clutched him in the darkness. A man’s weight, smelling of leather and sweat, pressed him back down into the mud. Before he could resist, a leather band went around his throat and pulled tight. All sense of the Change evaporated.

 

‘Be still!’ hissed a voice in his ear. ‘Be still or they’ll hear us!’

 

Desperation in the man’s voice convinced him to obey. The order wasn’t a threat, but an entreaty. He forced his breathing to become slow and quiet like that of the man straddling him — deciding that he would learn who ‘they’ were before drawing attention to himself.

 

Hurried footsteps splashed closer. Two people, Sal counted. One of them grunted as though agonised every other step. They came to within a half-dozen metres of the shut door, then stopped for several breaths, listening so quietly that Sal began to wonder if they had disappeared. He understood immediately what they were doing: they were checking to see if anyone had followed them through the door. Sal willed all evidence of his presence elsewhere.

 

A bone knife slid back into its sheath with a silkily sinister sound. The two people turned and hurried back the way they had come, apparently satisfied. The man straddling Sal released a barely perceptible breath but didn’t let him move until the sound of footsteps had faded into the echoing distance.

 

A light flared far away, revealing the outlines of a long, sewer-like tunnel dripping with slime and mud, twice as tall as an average person. As soon as he could, Sal sat up to see better, but the source of the light was moving, taking the details with it. Before it faded entirely, Sal took stock of the man who had surprised him in the dark. He was an Ice Eater, dressed in clothes suitable for prolonged exposure to cold weather. His face had a hard look despite disproportionately large ears.

 

‘Who are you?’ the man asked him.

 

‘I was about to ask you the same question.’ Sal sat up and tugged at the collar around his neck. The Change returned in a welcome rush.

 

‘My name is Mannah,’ the man said. A tiny blue spark blossomed from a crystal he held in his right palm. ‘I intend to stop Treya from doing something stupid.’

 

‘I’m Sal. I’ve come for Shilly. Have the others harmed her?’

 

‘She’s not with the others..’

 

‘But they took her. I heard —’

 

‘They did not take her.’ Mannah’s voice was firm. Treya would have no use for a hostage now, and she certainly wouldn’t bring one to the Tomb. If Shilly had made it this far, she would be dead already.’

 

Sal struggled to come to accept Mannah’s news. ‘So she’s back through there?’ He crooked a thumb at the door, hoping he didn’t look as foolish as he felt. ‘Open it for me, then, and I’ll be out of your hair.’

 

‘I can’t open it,’ Mannah said. ‘I’m sorry. Treya has the only means.’

 

‘Then someone on the other side will have to break the charm.’

 

He reached out for Marmion through the Change and found the warden in an agitated, abrupt mood. It took only a handful of sentences to learn that Shilly was slightly injured and that the door wasn’t going to open any time soon.

 

‘The charms protecting it are old but very strong,’ the warden told him. ‘Banner is already at work on them. It’ll take a while.’

 

‘How long?’

 

‘Only Banner could answer that question, and I’ll not have you disturbing her.’ Marmion deflected his query with determined bluntness. I want you to follow Treya and the others. Warn them, if you can, that opening the door at the other end will put them in grave danger. You too, so be quick about it, and be careful.’

 

‘But—’

 

‘Don’t argue, Sal. You’re the only one able to do this. You act for all of us in there.’

 

That thought remained with Sal as Marmion broke off the connection.

 

‘Looks like I’m going with you,’ Sal told Mannah. He wiped the worst of the mud from his face and clambered to his feet. ‘Lead the way.’

 

‘There’s only one way.’ Mannah pointed along the downward-sloping tunnel.

 

‘Couldn’t be simpler, then.’ Before they could head off, however, Sal took the man’s arm. ‘Do I know you from somewhere?’

 

Mannah shook his head. ‘No. We’ve never met.’

 

Sal let the matter go. A strange sense of familiarity was the least of his concerns at that moment. ‘Go on, then.’

 

Mannah dimmed the crystal to the merest glimmer and began to walk down the tunnel. Sal followed, ignoring a twinge in his side from the rough landing. For a good while they barely talked, concentrating instead on looking for signs of their quarry. They didn’t want to run into them suddenly in the gloom, and they certainly didn’t want to encounter an ambush. Soon, however, it became apparent that Treya was moving with all possible haste for the far end of the tunnel, concentrating on speed rather than ultra-cautious rearguard actions.

 

Mannah and Sal changed from a walk to a jog. The ground underfoot was slippery and unreliable, but running was in some ways easier than walking. A gentle downward slope tugged at them, encouraging them to lengthen their strides anyway.

 

Sal found a steady rhythm and took some comfort from it. ‘What makes you think Treya is about to do something stupid?’ he asked. ‘We had her cornered back there. Why couldn’t she just be running for her life?’

 

Mannah glanced at him as though considering ignoring the question. ‘She’s not the running type. She only ever does what she thinks is right — and usually she is right. This time, however, I believe she’s being rash. If everything you people say is true and the Death awaits her at the Tomb, then all the efforts of my people will have been wasted. Only she can open the Tomb, just like only she can open the doors to this tunnel. She holds the secrets, as our other leaders have before her. To lose her would be to lose all purpose. I will save her and the rest of us from that fate.’

 

Sal thought that reason enough, but his thoughts had become stuck on an earlier point. ‘If she knows how to open the Tomb, why hasn’t she ever done it? Why hasn’t someone before her?’

 

‘Certain conditions must be met.’

 

‘What conditions?’

 

Again, Mannah hesitated. ‘I understand that one of your number is a seer. The boy Tom: he sees things in his dreams, correct?’

 

Sal confirmed that.

 

‘Well, we had seers of our own: subtle minds who probed the fissures of the ice for meaning. At dawn and dusk at certain times of the year, sunlight hit the ice at exactly the right angle, making it glow. In that glow lay revelations, we’re told, although all my life I doubted them. After all, if the Goddess herself didn’t tell us about the opening of the Tomb, why should I believe anyone else? But the signs are coming true, impossible though they once seemed: the melting of the lake, the extinguishing of the stars, the slaughter of our people, the coming of strangers. Only one remains, the most mysterious of all.’

 

‘And that is?’

 

‘The mirror that is not a mirror. So the seers say. The Tomb will open and our destiny will be complete when we step through the mirror that is not a mirror.’ Mannah glanced at Sal. ‘Do you know what that means?’

 

Sal shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea. I’m sorry. Perhaps one of the others will know. Sky Wardens use mirrors for all sorts of things.’

 

‘Perhaps.’ Mannah snorted. ‘How could you know? You didn’t even know we existed until a day or two ago. We are as far outside your experience as you are outside ours. We are only together now because we have to be.’

 

Sal was stung by the dismissal. ‘All my best friends were strangers once. Some I never expected to like at all. Allies come in all shapes and sizes.’

 

They ran in silence for an uncomfortable time. Then Mannah sighed. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t judge too hastily. That would make me as bad as Treya. I am simply… overwhelmed. Please forgive me.’

 

‘You’ve done nothing wrong.’ Familiarity still nagged at Sal. Somewhere he had seen Mannah before. But where?

 

Sal stumbled slightly as the floor of the tunnel levelled out, but quickly regained his rhythm. He had no way of estimating how far they had travelled or how much tunnel remained. Presumably it led to the centre of the lake, where the Tomb lay buried under Yod’s drowned towers, but Sal had no real perception of how far that was by foot. He had sailed many times in his years at Fundelry, after conquering his fear of the sea, but he had never travelled under a body of water before. Rather than talk, he decided to conserve his strength.

 

‘We’re arranging a distraction,’ said Marmion later in his strange subterranean journey. Treya seemed as far ahead as ever; the only sounds were their damp footfalls and heavy breathing.

 

‘How long?’ Sal sent back. The bedrock around him was making communications difficult, but he was strong enough to punch through the obstructions.

 

‘I was going to ask you the same question.’

 

‘We’ll probably give each other the same answer — that we’re going as fast as we can.’

 

‘Understood.’ Marmion’s mental voice carried an edge of unease. ‘We’re still working on the lock. Banner is making progress, but it could be half an hour before we can come after you.’

 

‘How’s Shilly?’ Sal asked, caring less at that moment about doors than the woman he loved.

 

‘Recovering. So are Kail and Tom. We were lucky not to have any more serious injuries than that.’

 

Sal nodded, grateful for that. He was still recovering from the news that Kail had survived the fall from Pukje’s back and had tracked Shilly and the others to the underground cavern. Without Kail, Shilly would most likely be dead at Treya’s hands, along with Tom and the Panic empyricist. Despite their past awkwardness, he now owed Lodo’s nephew more than he could possibly repay.

 

‘Where’s Highson?’ he asked Marmion.

 

‘On his way back to shore. He’s unharmed, but I gather it was close. The Tomb is guarded by devel creatures sensitive to the Change.’’

 

Sal didn’t try to hide his feelings at that news. Relief mingled with nervousness made his stomach flutter.

 

‘Tell Shilly —’ He stopped, uncomfortable with relaying anything intimate through the warden. ‘Tell her to get a move on. We’re going to pieces without her in charge.’

 

‘Tell me yourself.’ Her voice came through Marmion as clearly as the warden’s had. ‘And so I gather. I can’t leave you lot alone for a moment. I’ll never do it again.’

 

Warmth filled Sal. ‘That’s good to hear,’ he said, thinking it the understatement of the millennium. ‘Listen, I’m here with a guy called Mannah. Do you know him!’

 

‘Mannie? Of course I know him. He saved my life.’

 

‘But before that. Have you ever met him? He says he doesn’t know us, but I’m sure he’s wrong. It’s driving me crazy trying to work out who the guy is.’

 

She thought for a moment. ‘Someone from the Haunted City, perhaps? It was a long time ago, but that’s all I can think of.’

 

‘What would a Sky Warden be doing up here, masquerading as an Ice Eater?’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Perhaps the Weavers sent him to keep an eye on things?

 

‘That’s a theory. Maybe Highson will know.’

 

‘Wait.’’ Sal wrenched his attention away from the conversation. Mannah had slowed and was raising a hand for Sal to do the same. ‘Something’s happening. I’d better go. Take care.’

 

‘You too.’

 

‘What is it?’ Sal whispered to his companion.

 

Mannah waved for Sal to be silent and his footsteps became slow and wary. The crystal-light went out.

 

Sal froze in his tracks. A grunt of surprise came from further along the tunnel. Light flared anew. Sal saw Mannah holding another Ice Eater in a chokehold. Bright red blood glowed in the crystal-light, soaking through the small man’s heat-preserving robe and staining the wall behind him.

 

‘What are you doing?’ Sal hissed, hurrying closer. ‘We’re not here to kill people!’

 

‘He was like this already,’ said Mannah. ‘Wounded in the fight, I guess, and left behind when he couldn’t run any further. Is that right, Milo?’

 

Mannah released his hold so the small man could talk. ‘Goddess take me. I passed out. The pain…’ He shifted wincingly in Mannah’s grip to stare up at Sal. ‘Kill me now and be done with it!’

 

‘We’re not murderers,’ said Mannah, loosening him. ‘She left you behind because you were holding her up. Were you to signal her when you saw us?’

 

The man’s left hand opened. A small crystal sphere rolled into the mud. Sal had seen something similar during the trap Marmion had laid for Highson and the Homunculus on the edge of the Divide. Breaking the sphere would instantly signal its owner, no matter how far away he or she was.

 

‘I’ll take that,’ said Mannah, putting the sphere into a pocket. ‘We have to keep moving. I’m sorry, Milo, you deserve better treatment than this. But there will be people following before long. They have healers. They’ll look after you.’ Mannah glanced at Sal for confirmation.

 

Sal nodded, not liking the look of the man’s sallow skin. ‘Hang in there,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right.’

 

The man’s eyes fluttered. His lips moved but the words he spoke were too soft for Sal to make out.

 

‘What was that?’ Mannah leaned closer. ‘Say that again. I didn’t hear you.’

 

‘She’s going to open the Tomb,’ Milo said, his eyes focussing with difficulty. ‘She says — she says it’s the only way to know who’s telling the truth.’

 

Mannah patted the man’s shoulder. ‘Thank you, Milo. That helps. Now, you rest and wait for rescue.’

 

Sal stood and looked up the tunnel. There was no end in sight, and no light visible apart from that cast by the crystal Mannah held in his hand. He felt as though they might run forever and never leave this dank, foul-smelling place.

 

‘I guess we keep going,’ he said. His lungs had recovered but the muscles in his legs still burned.

 

Mannah gently leaned Milo against the tunnel wall and also rose. ‘I guess so.’

 

‘What are you planning to do with the crystal?’

 

‘I’ll smash it when we get closer. That way, Treya will believe we’re further away than we actually are.’

 

‘Good thinking.’ A dark kind of anger burned in Sal’s chest at the woman they were chasing. He understood determination and duty, and knew their worth, but to discard lives as though they meant nothing was heartless in the extreme. In its way, that was worse than threatening to kill Shilly. At least Shilly had been potentially dangerous, not like the poor dying man at his feet.

 

You’d better hope Yod gets to you first, Treya, he whispered in his mind as they started running again. I’m in a bad mood now.

 

* * * *

 

The Betrayal

 

 

‘A golem doesn’t hate; it loathes. A golem doesn’t

love; it craves. A golem doesn’t hope; it schemes.

A golem doesn’t live; it only kills, and kills again.’

 

THE ROSLIN CODEX

 

 

hy are you in such a bad mood?’ Chu asked. Skender bit his tongue on the truth. Because he had barely had time to recover from the battle in the cavern before Marmion had sent them on a damn-fool mission that meant climbing halfway up the side of the crater wall and possibly flying to his death. Because Chu had seemed more worried about the wing when the Ice Eaters had brought it to her than she had about him. Because even now, although she was talking to him and although they had kissed as soon as it was clear Treya and the others were gone and only friendly Ice Eaters remained in the cavern, it felt to him like she was holding something back, something she didn’t want him to know.

 

You’re crazy, he told himself. She’s just stressed out and short a really good sleep, like the rest of us.

 

‘Why am I in a bad mood? Because this thing is heavy,’ he said. Somehow he had ended up carrying the pack, even though, being at the rear of the wing, it meant he was already bearing more than his fair share of weight. And with an injured arm, too. Yes, Chu had to keep an eye on the path; and yes, she had to concentrate on finding a good place to launch from; but still it irritated him.

 

‘Poor baby,’ she said. ‘That’s what I love about you. So stoic; so noble. Where most men would whine and complain, you bear your burden in silence. There should be more like you, I reckon.’

 

He blushed. She loves me…?

 

‘I don’t think the world could cope with more than one Skender Van Haasteren the Tenth,’ he said.

 

‘Yes, good point. The one I’ve got is already something of a handful.’ She glanced over her shoulder. Her white teeth flashed in the night. ‘Maybe I could trade up to a model that hasn’t been banged around quite so much.’

 

‘Bruises add character.’

 

‘No, scars add character. Bruises are just ugly.’

 

‘I’ve got some scars I could show you, too, if that’s what you want.’

 

‘Actually, what I really want is a long hot bath, a stiff drink, and a bit of a lie down. That would be ideal. Would you join me?’

 

‘If I could get my battered old body moving, sure.’ And there it was again: in her banter, a sad note he couldn’t quite decipher. She hadn’t been like that the last time he’d seen her on the balloon — or after the defeat of the Ice Eaters in the cavern. It had emerged since the climb, or earlier, during the meeting and Marmion’s speech. Was it something the warden had said?

 

Skender sometimes regretted having an eidetic memory, but it was perfect for occasions when his mind had been wandering. While he had concentrated more on the feel of Chu’s hand in his and the earthy smell radiating from her, Marmion had been outlining the plan they would follow to distract Yod. Skender had got the gist of it, but some parts he had missed entirely. Looking back on it now, he didn’t seem to have missed terribly much that related to Chu — until it came to the crunch.

 

‘Pukje, Highson and the Homunculus couldn’t make it as far as the towers,’ Marmion had said. ‘They were detected and chased away by devels from the old world, winged creatures sensitive to the Change. If we’re going to get closer, we have to evade those creatures. The balloon is useless now, but we do have another means of flying. Chu’s wing is intact and in a safe place. I’ve already asked Orma to arrange its collection. He’ll be back here shortly.’

 

Chu had sat up straighter next to Skender, realising that she was the centre of attention. ‘What do you want me to do?’

 

‘Draw Yod’s attention away from the Tomb. We don’t have time to prepare anything too complicated. Luckily the Ice Eaters have plenty of devices they used to fish with — and by “fishing” they mean carving holes out of the ice in order to expose the creatures trapped within. These devices are explosive and dangerous if handled incorrectly, but until they are activated they can be transported safely over large distances.

 

‘Your mission will be to fly out to the towers, drop a bomb or two down the throat of the tower, then get well away. You’re not to do anything else. It’d be too risky. But you must at least do that. If you don’t, the lives of everyone in the tunnel — and us — will be at risk. Will you do it?’

 

‘Yes,’ she had said. ‘Anything’s better than sitting around here waiting for that door to open.’

 

‘Good.’

 

‘I’ll come with you,’ Skender had said.

 

She’d hesitated before saying in reply, ‘Of course you will. I need you to help me carry the wing, and these bomb things.’

 

‘And afterwards too. I’m not very strong in the Change. Maybe for once this will work to my advantage.’

 

Marmion had nodded. ‘Chu, I don’t mind who flies with you, just so long as it gets done. That’s the most important thing.’

 

‘I understand.’

 

Marmion had held her gaze for a breath. ‘Thank you. The crystals are on their way too. You shouldn’t have to wait long.’

 

Then all had been a flurry of movement and action, with no time to talk or think. Skender felt as though he had been lifted up and carried away by a willy-willy. Once riding those wild, swirling currents, there was no easy way to get off.

 

‘Up there,’ Chu said, letting go of the wing with one hand to point. A spur of rock jutted out, silhouetted against the sky. ‘See it?’

 

‘I see it.’ They changed direction slightly to reach the proposed launching point. They had looked at two others already, but neither had been suitable.

 

The first was too low, while the second-hadn’t been broad enough for them to kit up. Skender hoped this one would be all right.

 

‘I think it might be getting light,’ he said, taking in the cloudy sky. A faint smudge of colour had appeared in the east.

 

‘I think you might be right. Observant and stoic: the perfect combination.’

 

He ignored that comment as they struggled up the steepening slope. Soon they’d be in the air and everything would be all right. There was something about the wing and being weightless in the sky that negated all their differences — something akin to the weightless feeling in his stomach when he thought about her. He had never felt for anyone the emotions and desires Chu inspired in him.

 

Tell her, you idiot. Tell her you love her too.

 

That was the one thing he couldn’t say. If he’d misunderstood her earlier comment and she mocked him about it, he thought he might drop dead-on the spot.

 

Chu clambered up onto the spur and declared it suitable. There was no triumph in her voice. A long and dangerous mission lay ahead of them.

 

‘I can probably take it from here,’ she said as they unfolded the wing and untangled the leather straps of the double harness beneath. ‘Why don’t you stay behind? I’m sure Kelloman and Banner could use your help shifting the door.’

 

‘They’ve probably already opened it by now,’ he said.

 

‘Are you sure? It was pretty huge.’

 

‘I’m not letting you do this alone, Chu. What if something happens out there and you need me?’

 

‘It’d be good to have you along, I’ll admit, for purely selfish reasons.’

 

‘There’s nothing wrong with being selfish.’

 

‘But only when you agree with me.’

 

‘Right.’

 

Skender took off the pack containing the bombs and put it onto the stone. He would need both hands free to strap Chu then himself into the wing. Once they were in place, he would attach the pack to his front. The charms on the underside of the wings would easily provide enough lift for both of them plus that burden.

 

He stood up. Mid-stretch, Chu punched him hard in the jaw. Taken completely by surprise, he lost all control of his legs and crumpled. She caught him before he could strike his head against the stone.

 

He struggled in her tight embrace and fought a rising tide of deep black. ‘What the —?’

 

‘Oh, Goddess. Skender, I’m so sorry. That was supposed to knock you clean out. Who’d’ve thought you’d be thick-skulled as well as just thick?’

 

‘Wait!’ Her fist had pulled back to deliver another blow. He feebly raised a hand to stop her. The world wobbled and spun; he could barely see her, but she seemed to be weeping. ‘Why are you doing this?’

 

She knelt over him and held him to her chest. He breathed in the warm smell of her and fought the urge to cry too.

 

‘What do you think is going to happen out there? Yod doesn’t need the Change to see me, you idiot, not with the sun coming up. That’s why I’m not taking you with me. I was so worried about you when you went missing, but there was nothing I could do. Whether you love me back or not, I don’t want you to die now. And this I can do something about.’

 

‘Chu, I —’

 

‘Shut up, Skender. It’s hard enough as it is.’ She pulled away, too quickly for him to react, and hit him a second time. Stars exploded in his head and he fell back onto the stone, cold and silent under the dismal dawn.

 

* * * *

 

Shilly placed a hand against the nearest wall. The earth moved beneath her feet. If the quake got any worse nothing would prevent the ceiling from coming down around her ears. Kelloman couldn’t stop a whole mountain collapsing, no matter how powerful he was, and besides, he was busy opening the door that stood between her and Sal. She was alone with Tom and Kail, both out cold on stretchers, forgotten in all the fuss. Even Rosevear had more important work to do than look after three invalids. Until one of the other two woke up or worsened unexpectedly, she was on her own.

 

Her head ached. The Ice Eater who had hit her had come out of nowhere through the fog, and she hadn’t ducked in time. She blamed herself as much as him. There had been a desperate, despairing look in his eyes as he had swung at her. That look had held her for a moment, and it held her still. His world had been crumbling around him, just like hers might at any moment.

 

The smell of incense and stale old woman thickened in her nostrils.

 

‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t leave now. I’ve got to stay here, just in case they get the door open.’

 

The door? The voice wasn’t one she heard through her ears but in the depths of her mind. It was more intimate, more insidious than ordinary communication through the Change. This was, after all, coming from her own head. The door leading to the tunnel under the lake?

 

Shilly didn’t want to answer that question. The voice of her future self was too focussed, all of a sudden, too interested in what her reply would be. She knew entirely too much for Shilly’s liking.

 

‘Don’t tell me,’ Shilly said, hearing her voice echo faintly in the cavernous space. The sound of wardens and mages making slow headway seemed impossibly distant. ‘I’ve had enough bad news for one night.’

 

I’ve had enough for a lifetime, girl, her future self snapped. Do you think you’ve got it tough? I’ve lived with what happens next longer than you’ve been alive. I’ve relived it every time I’ve seen through your eyes or put up with you arguing and telling me I’m being too hard on you. You don’t know what hard is, Shilly of Gooron. You don’t know anything.

 

Shilly blinked back tears. Being told off by Marmion or Treya was one thing, but this was herself. ‘I tried to use the charm, but the Goddess stopped me.’

 

So? Of course she tried to stop you. In the world that we — you and I — were trying to bring into being the Flame wouldn’t burn and Ellis Quick wouldn’t be a Goddess any more. Who wants to be no one? But now it looks like that’s all we’ll ever be. Even with me supporting you, we’ve still failed. Sal still dies and the world dies with him. The end.

 

‘No, you’re wrong. Sal’s not dead. He’s going to stop Treya opening the Tomb and then we’re going to rescue him. He’ll be okay. You’ll see.’

 

Forgive me if I don’t believe you. I’ve been you; I’ve thought those thoughts; I’ve seen it all go wrong. It doesn’t take long — just like breaking our leg. It’ll be over in a second. But the pain will never stop. You’ll never be whole again, Shilly.

 

Her view of the cavern swum through tears and something else: her future self’s vision was creeping into her mind whether she wanted it to or not. She saw not the usual view of the workshop, but of the desert outside. Future-Shilly was walking across the hot sand, shuffling painfully on feet that ached and leaning most of her weight on her old stick — the one Sal had carved after the first was destroyed.

 

Marmion’s hand, she remembered: another wound that never had a chance to heal.

 

Shilly shook her head. That thought hadn’t been entirely hers. The boundary between the two of them was blurring.

 

‘Where are you going?’ she asked, fighting to separate herself from the memories and feelings that would soon follow if she wasn’t careful. Her future self was walking painfully but determinedly out into the heart of the desert. ‘The village is the other way.’

 

There’s no village. Nothing but bones there now.

 

‘There must be people out here you can get supplies from, then. Nomads or Clan caravans or someone like that.’

 

Not any more.

 

‘So what do you think you’re doing?’ A horrible realisation came to her then. Worry for her future self made all thoughts of her own predicament vanish. ‘No, you’re not. You can’t.’

 

I can do whatever I want, girl. There’s nothing for me back there. You have the charm, now, and whether you use it or not is up to you. Bartholomew is dead stone, like all the other man’kin. Yod’s goons hunted them down, you know, because they could tap into the Third Realm. With the Goddess and the twins gone, they were just about the only threat left. Yod couldn’t kill them itself, not when they lived in many world-lines at once, so the slaughter took a decade and required an army of bounty hunters and mercenary stonemasons and the like. But now they’re all gone in this world-line, just like I’ll soon be gone. And this world-line will wither like all the others, and you can go about your life without me bothering you any more. For what that’s worth.

 

Shilly wanted to reach out and shake herself across uncrossable gulfs of time and space. ‘You can’t just give up. I won’t let you.’

 

It’s my life. I get to say when it’s over, not you.

 

‘But I am you. And you’re me. You’ll be killing both of us.’

 

Don’t be melodramatic. You’re just upset, which I can understand. I’m not feeling so happy about things at the moment either. But the truth is that you’re not me at all. We come from different world-lines and what happened here might not necessarily happen there. Sal might not get caught in the crossfire and Yod might not take the people left completely off-guard. It could happen. Maybe I’m wrong in writing you off so completely. Every time you roll a dice, after all, it comes up a six in one place as well as a one somewhere else. The man’kin knew that better than anyone.

 

Shilly could see nothing at all of her cold world now. All around her was sand and shimmering heat-haze. Her mouth was dry and her head hurt. The urge to shake herself had passed. She wished now that she could put an arm around her future self and take some of her weight. She was so frail and old, and ache-filled in every possible way, inside and out. The chances were, though, that she would slap away any helping hand and insist on walking on her own — just as she would have as a young woman.

 

‘I can’t stop you,’ she said, hearing her voice break. ‘You know I can’t. So why are you here? Why are you showing me this?’

 

I didn’t come to you, Shilly. You came to me.

 

‘I did?’

 

You’re looking for answers to questions neither of us can put into words, although we try every day. Was there something else you could have done? Are you a bad person? Is any of this your fault? Did he feel any pain? It was her future self’s turn to falter, literally stumbling as she crossed the top of a dune and thrusting out her stick to stop herself falling down the other side. Curse these old bones. Enjoy your youth while you can, girl. It doesn’t last. Nothing ever does.

 

She started off down the dune, her sandals dragging in the powdery sand. From their elevated viewpoint, Shilly could see nothing but sand to the horizon. She felt like a fish on a frying pan.

 

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

 

Why? And why are you apologising to me? I don’t blame you for what went wrong in my world, just like you shouldn’t blame me for what will go wrong in yours. Her future self had regained her usual impatience, and seemed happier for it. This crazy plan of ours was always a long shot. Save one world-line from Yod, we thought, and at least somewhere life would thrive. The futures we knew could be rolled back and undone. But who were we kidding? Yod is stronger than we are. Maybe not smarter, but it doesn’t really have to be. An avalanche will kill you if you get in its way, for all that it’s just a pile of rocks with attitude. Water will drown you, and fire will burn you. Being smart makes it harder to accept. That’s all.

 

Shilly couldn’t stand the defeatism. In someone else, perhaps, but not herself. Was this really what she would become if she lost Sal?

 

‘I’m not going to give up,’ she told herself. ‘And I’m not going to stand here and watch you die. Starve to death in the desert if you want; shrivel up and crumble into dust, and vanish along with everything else you loved. But I’m still alive, and I can still fight. I’d rather go down with my friends beside me than alone and dead on the inside.’

 

Her future self chuckled. What do you mean, starve to death? I have no hope of living long enough to do that. She stopped and looked up. The ghastly, perverted sun hung directly overhead, burning down on her with all of Yod’s insatiable hunger. Dark tentacles writhed across the sky. And I’m not alone. I have you.

 

Before Shilly could respond, a woman’s cry alerted her to something happening in her world.

 

Her senses snapped back into life, revealing a very changed view to the one she had last seen. The giant stone doorway hung open, revealing a glistening, dripping maw that stunk of rotten fish. Lidia Delfine and Heuve were the only people left in the cavern, apart from Shilly and the invalids. It was Delfine who had cried out. Shilly followed her startled gaze to the thing thundering into the cavern from one of the side tunnels.

 

The Angel ran with its lumbering, three-legged gait, bearing the glast on its rounded shoulders like a strange, statuesque camel-rider. The glast acknowledged her with a half-wave, half-salute. In its hand it clutched something that looked uncannily like a human head.

 

Shilly gaped, unable to do more than that, as the strange procession went by. Dimly, she acknowledged Heuve and Lidia Delfine draw closer to her with their weapons out.

 

The Angel wasn’t heading for them, but for the open doorway, black and forbidding. As it passed under its slimy lintel, she thought she heard the glast’s unearthly hiss rise in challenge. And then it was gone, with only the booming echo of its footfalls fading slowly into the distance.

 

In its stunned wake, two voices spoke.

 

‘Was that what I think it was?’

 

What the Goddess was that?

 

The first belonged to Lidia Delfine. The second came from another time and place.

 

‘That was the Angel,’ Shilly said to both of them, ‘and the glast.’

 

I know the Angel. The other thing, I meant. That one with Mawson’s head in its hands.

 

She felt herself being sucked back into the future, and this time she didn’t fight it. Her older self had stopped dead in the desert, transfixed by the view she had received through the Change. A fitful wind had sprung up around her, raising sand in a yellow cloud.

 

‘Don’t you know?’

 

I know only that, around about now, you should be running. In a moment that damned fool Treya is going to open the door at the far end and Yod will kill everyone in the tunnel before coming out here and finishing off Kail and Tom. If you’re still standing there like a dummy, it’ll kill you too. Your only hope is to get the piece of the Caduceus out of Kail’s pouch and hang onto it. Skender’s mother will come looking for it eventually. She’ll take you away — not somewhere safe, but at least out of immediate danger. It’ll take Yod time to consolidate its ownership of the world. You can stay hidden for years, if you want to. The older Shilly looked up again at the sun. It had grown visibly larger. But I never saw that black glass thing before. What on Earth is going on there, Shilly? The wind grew stronger. Sand got in her eyes, making her squint. I guess you don’t know, otherwise you wouldn’t be gawping at it like a dummy too. It’s nice to know the universe can still surprise us every now and again.

 

Shilly remembered Banner once saying something similar to Tom. It seemed like everything since had been nothing but surprises, one after the other, some worse than others, but all of them leading her here, to this moment.

 

Yod will kill everyone in the tunnel, her future self had said, before coming out here and finishing off Kail and Tom. If you’re still standing there like a dummy, it’ll kill you too.

 

She didn’t move, even though Sal was in terrible danger. The world of her future self had darkened as though a cloud had passed overhead. A false dusk descended across the land. The heat of the desert drained away. The elder Shilly didn’t look up again. She didn’t need to.

 

May all your tomorrows be ones I never saw coming, she said. And if you see him again, tell him you never stopped loving him. In every possible world.

 

Blackness reached down from the sky and enveloped the future. Shilly cried out in both lives as, in an instant, one of them was snuffed out. All sense of her other self instantly vanished, and she found herself back in the cavern with tears streaming down her cheeks.

 

‘What is it?’ asked Lidia Delfine, standing with one hand outstretched, as though frightened to touch her. ‘What’s wrong? Who were you talking to?’

 

‘She can’t be dead. She can’t be!’ Shilly couldn’t stop the tears. She didn’t know what she was weeping for — that which had happened, or that which might yet happen. Time was a knot around her pulled so tight she could barely breathe. ‘We should either run or stay put. I don’t know which!’

 

An ill wind roared out of the tunnel mouth, moaning like a giant in pain. The cavern filled with foulness so pure and bitter that it closed Shilly’s throat. She staggered back with an arm flung up reflexively in front of her face, as if that could possibly do anything to protect her. Was this it? She wondered. Was this how the end would come for her and all she loved?

 

A hand clutched at her leg. She looked down and saw Lodo — no, Kail — blinking up at her. He looked so old and frail, almost unrecognisable compared to the strong, tall man she had met not so long ago. His cheeks were hollow; his brown skin had turned sickly yellow. He looked strangely insubstantial without his hat. The pouch he wore around his neck — containing, she now knew, a fragment of the ancient artefact the bandit Pirelius had unearthed near Laure — was visible through his loosened garments. It would be a simple matter to take it and go, as her future self had told her she should do.

 

But she couldn’t leave him to die like that. She just couldn’t. Even if it meant her own death too, she would stand at his side and do her best to protect him.

 

His eyes flickered shut and his hand fell away.

 

She stood and squared her shoulders. Then she turned to face the entrance of the tunnel, and waited.

 

* * * *

 

The roof of clouds turned fiery white as Pukje looked for somewhere safe to land. Hadrian glanced over his shoulder at the spectacle. The column of steam was burning again. This was the biggest eruption yet, bright enough to drown out the pale hint of dawn creeping across the sky.

 

‘What the hell was that?’ Seth asked.

 

‘The Tomb is opening.’ Pukje’s mighty wings flapped with a weary, strained rhythm. ‘I suspect so, anyway.’

 

‘No, I mean that.’ Hadrian’s brother pointed behind them, at a different patch of the sky. ‘It looks like someone flying into the clouds.’

 

Hadrian looked in the direction Seth indicated. So did Highson.

 

‘I can’t see anything,’ said the warden.

 

‘Nor me.’ Hadrian squinted but could make nothing out.

 

‘Maybe I imagined it.’ Seth sounded uncertain. ‘It’s gone now, anyway.’

 

Pukje grunted and turned towards a clear patch of the shore, where a lone, black-robed figure stood waving with both arms to get their attention. At the sight of her, Hadrian felt a surge of recognition rush through him like an electric shock.

 

* * * *

 

Mannah smashed the crystal as soon as they reached the end of the tunnel. The only change it provoked in Treya and the other Ice Eaters was to encourage them to work faster.

 

The tunnel terminated in a chamber almost identical to the one they had left behind. But in the same position occupied by the pump in the other cave was a cluster of pipes and inlet vents. The floor was thickly coated with mud, and water had already begun to pool in low-lying areas. Lank fronds dangled from the ceiling, dripping water that sounded like rain.

 

In the wall opposite the tunnel mouth was another door. Treya and the others were busy scraping centuries of accumulated slime away so they could access the charms. On either side of the wall stood two intimidating statues, each of a muscular, snake-headed creature with gold eyes and a mane of broad scales. Wicked-looking canines jutted from their half-open mouths. They looked likely to waken at any moment and attack the intruders.

 

‘They’re for show,’ Mannah whispered, watching from the sidelines with Sal and catching his concern. ‘Not man’kin. Just… dead.’

 

Sal nodded. Anger still fuelled his determination to stop Treya and her minions. During the last leg of their journey, a strange wordless song had echoed down the tunnel from the Ice Eater contingent. The ‘Song of Sorrow’, Mannah had called it. It sounded to Sal as though Treya had already given up.

 

‘I don’t think there’s any point trying to talk to her. You’ve tried and she didn’t listen. But that doesn’t mean I should come out blasting, either. If I can keep the doors closed while the others catch up, that would solve everything.’

 

‘Do you think that’ll be possible?’

 

‘I don’t know.’ Sal felt strong, undrained by his earlier exertions. The well of his talent was becoming deeper the closer he got to the Tomb — or to the end of the world. Either way, the effect was the same. ‘Let’s see exactly what I have in me, shall we?’

 

Lacking Shilly’s skill with charms or Marmion’s discipline, he could do little more than follow his instincts. Pressing his forehead against the damp, cold stone of the tunnel, he reached out with arcane senses for the flaw in the bedrock’s fabric that was the door on the far side of the cavern. It stood out like a burning brand, angular and laced with charms. He could see the way the charms naturally knotted together like the spring of a mousetrap: able to be positioned in such a way as to open and let people through, but naturally preferring to be closed. It would therefore take great skill to tease them open but little more than brute force to keep them shut.

 

Sal was ready. When Treya performed the sequence of charms that would ordinarily have swung the slabs apart, he applied an equal and opposite force to keep them together. Puzzled, she repeated the sequence. He maintained the pressure.

 

‘It’s jammed,’ he heard her say to the others. ‘We must’ve missed something. Go over all the seams. Don’t skip anything, no matter how small.’

 

The Ice Eaters went back to work. Sal allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction but no feeling of victory. He had won a battle, not the war.

 

‘How long until Chu gets, here?’ he asked Marmion.

 

The reply was weak, barely audible. ‘She should be there now. Haven’t you heard the charges going off?

 

‘Not at all.’

 

‘You may be too deep in the bedrock,’ said Marmion, not terribly convincingly. ‘Anyway, we’re moving at last. If you can hold on until we get there —’

 

‘We’ll do what we can.’ Sal cut Marmion off as Treya triggered the charms again, more forcibly this time. The wall groaned, caught uncomfortably between their opposing wills.

 

‘I think that’s the best she can do,’ Sal whispered to Mannah. ‘If so, we’ll definitely be able to hold —’

 

A sudden push from the other side of the wall cut Sal off. He frowned and returned his full concentration to the charms. Whatever was behind it possessed considerable strength and knew what it was doing. As hard as he could apply the pressure, it found a way to subvert it. Sal bent over double, waiting for the hum of the Void Beneath to warn him that he was taking too much. It didn’t come, so he kept reaching. Then it occurred to him that he wouldn’t hear the hum no matter how hard he pushed, because that had been Yod hoping to suck him in and drain his life away, and now Yod was not just in the real world but waiting on the far side of the door to eat him alive.

 

That realisation gave him strength to try even harder. You act for all of us in there. Not caring if the Ice Eaters saw him, he staggered from the tunnel and stood facing the door, hunched over like an old man. He clenched his fists and strained. Charms smoked and glowed a fitful red. The massive slabs of rock physically shook. A smell like an overstrained engine filled his nostrils.

 

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 ancestors, 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 Conjunction

 

 

‘The bud cannot know the tree as a whole.

But it can dream.’

 

SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

 

 

hilly 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.’

 

‘That’s the best plan I’ve heard all year.’

 

‘We can build a house and catch fish and have kids and —’ She could no longer hold the tears back, and she pressed her face into his shoulder to smother them. ‘Oh, Sal, I’m so afraid.’

 

‘Me too.’ He put his arms around her and rocked her gently. He stank of stale blood and sweat, and the bristles of his week-old beard prickled her neck, but she didn’t mind at all. ‘I’ve never been so scared in all my life.’

 

They stayed like that for a long time, not noticing what was going on around them until the sound of raised voices proved impossible to ignore.

 

Shilly pulled back and wiped her face. ‘Some things will never change.’

 

Kelloman and Marmion were shouting at each other on either side of the Angel. The glast looked down at them with a blank expression on its glassy face. Its features were Kemp’s yet at the same time they were not. Nothing remained of the person whose body it had once been.

 

‘It’s not your decision,’ Marmion was saying. ‘I have authority here.’

 

‘And you’re just going to take them back without a word of protest?’

 

‘I don’t care what they did. At this point in time, I don’t even care what it is. They saved us back there. That’s enough for me.’

 

‘You’re a trusting fool,’ Kelloman sneered.

 

‘Actually, I’m a suspicious son of a bitch. Just ask Sal and Shilly. They’ll tell you.’ Marmion walked to the Angel’s side and held up his hand to the glast. ‘We need all the allies we can get at the moment.’

 

Instead of shaking his hand in return, the glast raised Mawson’s head.

 

‘I may be unstuck in time,’ said the man’kin, ‘but I am not without eyes. I have seen Yod, and now I know it for what it is. The alien is not alone.’’

 

‘Clear as muck,’ said Kelloman. ‘I don’t trust you either — you and him and her and them ...’ The mage’s right index finger stabbed at Mawson, Vehofnehu, Shilly, the Angel and the glast in quick succession. ‘You’re all suspect in my book.’

 

‘We did go behind your back. There’s no denying that.’ The empyricist stepped forward, his posture even more stooped than usual. Griel watched from the entrance to the cavern with a sorrowful look. ‘But we were acting with the best intentions. All the information at our disposal suggested that this was the path to take.’

 

‘And so it was,’ said a woman’s voice from behind the far side of the cavern. ‘For a while.’

 

All heads turned to face the new arrival. Shilly rose to her feet without thinking, impelled by an emotion she couldn’t have defined. Not respect, for less than a day before the same woman had almost cracked her head open to stop her from using the charm; not surprise either, for she had suspected that she and the Goddess would meet again. It was hope, she decided.

 

The Goddess walked with an assured gait across the space where the shadow veil had once hung. She still wore her black robe with the hood down, only now it was looking considerably dirtier. Its cut and lines were similar to those worn by the Holy Immortals when they had gone down the tunnel, and Shilly wondered which was modelled on which. If the Goddess had truly given the Ice Eaters their strange duty a thousand years earlier, she supposed this was the original.

 

Only then did she realise that the Ice Eaters’ robes also reminded her of those worn by the Holy Immortals. And then, as though a series of dominoes had started falling, she remembered where she had heard the name ‘Mannah’ before.

 

There was no time to pursue that thought. Behind the Goddess walked the twins, their Homunculus body looking misshapen, almost stretched. Behind them came Highson Sparre, even leaner than he had been in Laure, and an odd-looking dwarf with a narrow face and restless gaze.

 

‘That’s Pukje,’ Sal whispered to Shilly. ‘Don’t underestimate him.’

 

She made a mental note not to.

 

The Goddess did not approach Marmion or Lidia Delfine or the glast, but went straight to Vehofnehu and went down on one knee before him.

 

‘My friend,’ she said.

 

The Panic empyricist’s face twisted in anger — perhaps even hatred. Shilly had never seen him look so savage. Even Griel looked at him in surprise.

 

‘You tricked them,’ he snarled. ‘You promised them a reward and gave them a curse. Is that how you repay their loyalty? Don’t you remember how they took you in and brought you to me, a thousand years ago? Is your memory so short?’

 

‘I have forgotten nothing,’ she said, still bent before him. Her black robe pooled behind her like tar. ‘For me, it has been just twenty-five years.’

 

‘Then — why?’ Anger turned to puzzlement and hurt. ‘Why was this evil deed necessary?’

 

She looked up at him, then. ‘Because all things must have a beginning. Because my destiny in this world-line and theirs are inextricably tangled. Because such things happen when you mess with the Flame. Because Treya and her ancestors accepted their fate willingly, even if they only saw a small part of it at the time. And because I have responsibilities that override personal concerns. You know that. Seth and Hadrian know that. If I was to emerge from the Tomb at the right time, they had to be there. And if they were there, this was always going to happen. I do not say I wish it weren’t otherwise, but at the same time I do not apologise. Great works require great sacrifice.’

 

‘You quote your own book at us,’ said Vehofnehu scornfully. ‘The words you put in the mind of that awestruck fool, Ron Synett. He made you a Goddess! You know that, don’t you? Your message did get across, in part. The old gods were forbidden and forgotten — and in the light of the new world, how could they not be? But your scribes set you up in the place of those gods, on their empty altars. That was his greatest sin. How do you hope to undo the damage? What is the path upon which you have so recklessly placed us?’

 

The Goddess sighed and rose to her feet. Her hazel eyes scanned the people gathered around her, all keeping a respectful but curious distance.

 

‘My friend here is right,’ she said. ‘I’m no Goddess. Outside Sheol I’m an ordinary woman with no more powers than any of you. But I do possess a certain perspective, and I will use that to ensure the survival of the world-line we inhabit. That’s what this has always been about: from my sisters and the twins to the present day. An apple tree may be rotten to the core, but so long as one fruit holds a viable seed, hope remains.’

 

Lidia Delfine was nodding before she finished. ‘We have that saying back home. My brother used to tell it to me as a child.’

 

‘Yes, and the analogy is particularly apt. The human world-tree is enormous and, at this point in time, almost entirely sickened by the depredations of Yod; a thousand years ago, it invaded the world-tree’s branches and almost brought about a Cataclysm. Only one branch survived, the one containing Seth and Hadrian in limbo — which split off from the main trunk when Sheol was destroyed — and that branch itself has been branching, until it has virtually become a world-tree in miniature, one far removed from its neighbours. Yod has emerged again and now the miniature world-tree, in its turn, is sickening and dying. Except for this branch, this here and this now, where we must concentrate our energies. If it dies, the entire human world-tree dies with it. With us.’

 

Her gaze tracked around to meet Shilly’s. ‘You’ve seen some of those endings,’ she said, with sympathy. ‘It isn’t any easier when you’ve seen them all.’

 

Shilly clenched her hands around the top of her cane, and nodded.

 

‘Why this particular world-line?’ asked Marmion, who had watched the exchange without interrupting. Shilly could practically hear the cogs turning in his head. ‘What makes it special?’

 

‘Because you’re all in it,’ the Goddess said. ‘You, me, Shilly of Gooron, Sal Hrvati, Seth and Hadrian Castillo, Highson Sparre, Mawson, Mage Kelloman, and the glast. Without this unique combination of individuals in exactly the right time and place, there would be no future. We might as well roll over and show Yod our bellies. But with us together a chance exists, one we will strive to see through in order to save this world.’

 

‘Don’t you already know how it’s going to turn out?’ asked Warden Banner from the sidelines. ‘Isn’t it a foregone conclusion?’

 

‘Unfortunately, no. At every moment, this world-line branches again and again. The past has led us here like a road through a forest, stretching behind us; from now on, the chance to get lost again returns. And as I’m no longer in the Tomb, I know only which path we should take, not which one we’re actually on. I’m as blind as you now I’m down in the trenches with you.’

 

‘So what do you suggest we do?’ asked Marmion with something like his usual tone. ‘Give us our orders and we’ll decide whether to follow them or not.’

 

‘You’ll follow them if you want to live.’ She smiled broadly, unfazed by his jockeying for ascendancy. ‘For now, all I suggest is that we get some rest. You’re exhausted, and Yod is a slow mover. That’s why it employs agents like Gabra’il and Upuaut to act for it. A day is an eyeblink to one so large. By the time it decides what to do next, we will be refreshed, and ready to counter it.’

 

‘But the tentacles —’ began Rosevear.

 

‘Reflexes,’ she cut him off. ‘They don’t need a mind to track and consume prey any more than the bacteria in your gut need a mind to break down food. As long as we avoid them, we’ll be okay.’

 

‘So the door will hold?’ asked Shilly.

 

‘It will hold long enough.’

 

‘And what about Gabra’il?’ asked Vehofnehu. ‘You know he’ll be looking for us already.’

 

‘Oh yes, and he’ll find us soon enough, too, but we’re easily a match for that overdressed git. You may not truly know it yet, but you are a force to be reckoned with. In fact, you hold in your hands the power to remake the world. How you choose to remake it is something that shouldn’t be decided on an empty stomach.’

 

The Goddess didn’t look at Shilly, but she felt that the words were aimed squarely at her. The charm she held in her mind promised to do exactly what she said: remake the world. Yet the Goddess had stopped her from using it once already. What had changed between now and then to make it all right?

 

That’s up to you, now, the Goddess had said as the balloon limped away from the towers. Just you, not the others.

 

Why me? Shilly wanted to yell. What have I done to deserve this?

 

You wanted it, she reproached herself. Vehofnehu had offered her a place at the centre of things, and she had eagerly taken it. She had no one to blame but herself now that things had turned out to be harder than she had expected. She wondered if it had been like this for Sal the whole time they’d been in the Haunted City, years earlier…

 

Kelloman and Marmion were already arguing again, this time about whether to set up camp where they were or to make for the Ice Eaters’ former headquarters. The four surviving indigenes were sitting to one side, looking shocked and stunned. One of them, the boy called Orma, seemed to be trying to decide which fate would be the worst: condemned as a Holy Immortal to travelling backwards in time forever, or left behind to live out an ordinary — and perhaps very brief — life.

 

The Goddess hadn’t listed Skender’s name among those needed to defeat Yod. That saddened her. Bad enough that Chu had been taken over by Upuaut, but if her old friend had fallen as well…

 

‘I’m staying here,’ she declared, dragging herself back to the present. ‘Tom and Kail aren’t going anywhere without a great deal of effort. We’ll need bedding and food and what weapons we can salvage. Some of you will have to go gather all that, and I’m keen to help any way I can. The sooner that gets underway, the sooner we all can rest. Okay?’

 

That was enough to stop the argument. Griel and the foresters volunteered to be on the foraging parties. Orma raised his hand also. None of the wardens were free to go, and Shilly wouldn’t let Sal leave her side, so Kelloman was forced to accompany the non-Change-workers, just in case something dangerous surprised them in the caves.

 

‘I suppose I have been lying down for much of the night,’ the mage said, flexing the arms of his borrowed body. ‘That’ll give me an edge you might need.’

 

As he and the other foragers set off up the tunnels, the Goddess came to where Shilly stood with Sal.

 

‘How’s the head?’

 

Shilly reached up to touch the bump. It was still tender. ‘On the mend.’

 

‘I’m sorry I hit you so hard.’

 

‘It’s okay,’ said Shilly, although she didn’t entirely mean it. ‘I’ve had worse.’

 

‘Really? I must be losing my touch.’ The Goddess raised her right fist and clenched it. ‘This broke the jaw off a man’kin, once,’ she said. ‘Back in the days just after the Cataclysm, they were a lot wilder than the ones you have here. They’d kill as soon as look at you, just for being human.’

 

‘I’ve met a few like that,’ said Sal dryly. ‘Things haven’t changed that much, really.’

 

‘No,’ she said, ‘I guess they haven’t.’

 

Shilly formally introduced him to the Goddess. Sal bowed graciously, but with an edge Shilly recognised as scepticism. She could understand that. Close to, the Goddess looked like nothing more than an ordinary woman. That jarred with the habitual veneration most people had accorded her in her absence.

 

The Goddess’s attention wandered to where the twins sat in their strange body. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I think the time has come for me to mend some bridges.’

 

The Goddess strolled off with her grey, brass-bound ponytail swinging from side to side down her back.

 

‘Is she really —?’

 

‘Yes,’ Shilly told him, ‘and she did hit me, if you’re going to ask that next. Clobbered me a beauty right behind my ear to stop me using the charm.’

 

‘What charm was that?’ he asked.

 

She took a deep breath, then took his hand. ‘Let’s go sit down somewhere and talk. This could take a while.’

 

* * * *

 

Seth stewed as Ellis talked to the others.

 

After hailing him and Hadrian from the shore as they returned with the others from the towers, she had stubbornly fobbed off all their questions, saying the time wasn’t right.

 

There was so much he wanted to ask her, if she would only let him start. Instead, she had hurried them along a series of tunnels to where she said the others were waiting, ignoring all attempts at talk from anyone, Highson and Pukje included.

 

Upon her arrival, the others had seemed to show as much surprise as Seth and Hadrian’s party had felt at seeing her on the beach. And that in itself puzzled Hadrian. They were only surprised…

 

‘They’re really taking it in their stride,’ Seth’s brother said, speaking aloud — as they had been since returning from their long flight, increasing the distance between them even further. ‘I mean, if Jesus Christ had turned up in the middle of the Gulf War, people would’ve had hysterics. And he probably wasn’t even real.’

 

‘No, he existed,’ said Pukje, who had joined them to watch the fireworks on the sidelines. The imp seemed tired again, but not yet ravenous. The knives had fallen out of his hide, and he had lost the rope around his neck. ‘He wasn’t a god. He was either lucky, or unlucky — depending on how you look at it — to have a message that various sides could exploit irrespective of the condition of the realms. It took a full-blown campaign by this remarkable woman — plus plenty of evidence that miracles had nothing to do with whatever faith you followed — for his influence to finally fade. And that’s the point here. Gods of old were sometimes irrelevant or short-lived; it was the institution of worship that prevailed. Here, there are no institutions, and magic is everywhere we look. So when the people who live here meet the so-called Goddess, they don’t bow and scrape.

 

They’re respectful, wary even, but forget talking in tongues or making sacrifices. They know that won’t get them anywhere with anyone, human or otherwise.’

 

Hadrian could accept that. Seth thought it irrelevant. He was more concerned with what Ellis meant to him. To them. The Book of Towers had referred to them as the ones the Goddess had loved — but both their memories and the Handsome King’s testimony suggested that parts of the text couldn’t be relied upon. Ron Synett had been an unreliable witness at best. If he had been better at chronicling the Goddess’s words, wouldn’t there have been clearer instructions waiting for them? Wouldn’t there have been at least an explanation of who the Goddess was?

 

‘You never met her,’ Seth said to Pukje, unable to hide a resentful tone.

 

‘That’s not true. The Book of Towers even mentions me, in passing. When Bardo collapsed and the realms merged, Ellis came to the mountains where I was waiting to find out what had happened.’

 

‘What was it like after the Cataclysm?’ Seth asked Pukje. ‘What did she do?’ How did she get so old? he wanted to ask.

 

‘It wasn’t a fun time for anyone,’ Pukje said. ‘Mot and Baal were on the rampage. The landscape was all mixed up and people didn’t know anyone any more. Language barriers dropped, and that caused more problems than it solved. Man’kin were walking and golems stirring; all manner of critters were waking up and wreaking havoc. And then there was the Change. No living human had ever used it, but everyone knew what it was; they hadn’t forgotten what magic could do. Some picked it up faster than others. Wars broke out that were just as bad as any that had been before. That’s when the Broken Lands were, well, broken. It was dismaying.

 

‘And that was when she stepped in.’ Pukje cocked his pointed chin at Ellis. ‘Sheol was in pieces, but the Flame still flickered. She could still access the new world-tree, and what she saw there formed the basis of a new way for the world to work. She founded the Weavers; she helped round up Mot and Baal; she scattered the Swarm to all corners of the Earth. And when she had done all that, she came back and told people how to live their lives. Don’t wait for the old gods to tell you what to do. Use your brains and the Change to make things happen for you. That’s what they’re there for, after all. Not for fighting each other.’

 

Hadrian listened to the story with fascination. Seth was more critical. ‘Ellis did this?’

 

‘She’s not just Ellis,’ said Pukje. ‘She’s also Nona, youngest of the Three Sisters. In less enlightened times she was revered as a goddess of justice and birth. Her priests demanded fiery sacrifices of the faithful — and your guess is as good as mine as to how she felt about that. Maybe she liked it, then. Maybe now she’s grown up and spent a little more time among the masses, she’s lost her taste for blood. Maybe she’d rather build than break. Either way, she has ways about her that you and I can barely imagine. Remember that.’

 

Seth was uncomfortably reminded that Ellis, in another incarnation, had also been Moyo, the lover of Xol and Quetzalcoatl, mirror twins who had brought about the last Cataclysm, in the sixth century AD. Xol had betrayed his own brother in order to have her for himself, and had paid penance for his crime in the Second Realm by helping those caught in the Underworld, like Seth.

 

She was the Jaguar, Xol had said of his former lover with reverence in his voice, whose reflection made mirrors smoke and then burst into flame.

 

Seth remembered feeling that way, once.

 

Pukje continued. ‘Ever since, the world has been poised perpetually on the brink of Cataclysm but not actually tipping over, thanks to your sacrifice. Eventually it found a new equilibrium and the Goddess decided that humanity could continue without her for a while, without anyone but themselves. It’s been a remarkably quiet time this last millennium, all things told: no Cataclysms, no religious wars, no messiahs. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been wars for other reasons, and humanity has more competitors, now, with their land shared by creatures originally from the Second Realm. The Weavers can only do so much to keep the peace, and only for so long. The world is a spring wound as tight as it can get. That tension has to go somewhere, some time. Here and now it is, boys. I hope you’re up to it.’

 

‘We’ll do whatever needs to be done,’ said Hadrian. ‘We haven’t come this far just to give up.’

 

Seth, again, was the voice of doubt. ‘How do your plans fit in, Pukje?’

 

Pukje’s grey eyes gleamed. ‘We’ll see what happens.’

 

‘I never found your brand of crisis management very convincing.’

 

‘There’s never a crisis if you’re prepared for everything.’

 

‘Quiet,’ said Hadrian. ‘Here she comes.’

 

Seth looked up and saw Ellis break off a conversation with Sal and Shilly and come walking towards them. Seth was struck again by the difference in her appearance: Ellis wasn’t old, but she wasn’t the woman in her early twenties that she had been. He could see the latter in the former clearly enough, but her face was lined in ways he hadn’t seen before, and her hands were all knuckle and sinew. And her hair…

 

He remembered standing with her and Hadrian in long-vanished Europe, staring up at a preserved Viking longboat and wondering about the woman it had once belonged to. Ellis had seemed like a goddess to him then, so obsessed had he been with her. Now she looked like a queen. A queen who had long been absent from her throne and whose subjects had allowed her memory to become a legend — but a queen all the same.

 

‘Thanks for being patient, boys,’ she said when she was in earshot. ‘No, stay where you are.’ She sat cross-legged on the ground in front of them and brushed long wisps of grey hair out of her face. ‘Pukje, take a hike. This is private.’

 

‘As you wish, milady.’

 

‘Cut that out, imp. I don’t trust you when you’re being polite.’

 

Pukje flashed a razor-edged smile and scurried off to talk to Highson.

 

‘Well,’ she said, wrapping her arms around her knees. ‘It’s been a long time. Longer for you than for me, of course, but you’ve aged well, I must say. Have you been working out?’

 

Seth was momentarily lost for words. Her voice was exactly the same as it had been. Her eyes moved restlessly from one side of the Homunculus’s head to the other. Seth wondered if their faces had materialised in the black depths of the artificial body. Could she really see them, and not just their new home? He wondered what she thought of them now. He and his brother were over a thousand years old, thanks to the Void Beneath, and the glimpses they’d received of their true faces showed that time had been even harder on them than her.

 

‘I’m sorry to fob you off, earlier,’ she went on before he could think of anything to say. ‘It didn’t seem right to air our dirty laundry in front of Highson and Pukje. There are things we need to talk about that the others shouldn’t overhear. Explanations, old scores — that kind of thing.’

 

‘I don’t know what to say.’ Hadrian’s voice was strained.

 

‘Ask me a question. You must have hundreds of those. Now’s your chance. Take it while it’s here.’

 

‘When will this be over?’ asked Seth. It blurted out of him without conscious thought.

 

Her gaze dropped. Some of the mask fell away. ‘You know, that’s a question I ask myself every day. Am I stuck in this role forever, or will I one day shrug it free? My sisters chose death, so they’re off the hook. But me? While the Flame exists, or could exist, someone has to tend it. That’s a law, like gravity. Without the Flame anchoring it the Third Realm would drift away and humans would be stuck in one world-line forever. If that happened, we’d be extinct within a generation. You’ve seen how fragile life is. You know first-hand the sort of predators there are between the realms. Of all the world-lines created since the Third Realm made humanity the wondrous, multifaceted race it is, this is the only one that might outlast Yod. That terrifies me. And that, ultimately, keeps me going. I owe it to everyone, not just myself, to reignite the Flame and create an entirely new world-tree. If, along the way, I can find a shred of happiness or satisfaction, I will count myself lucky.’

 

‘Not just a goddess then, El Alamein, but a martyr too, eh?’ Seth could see clearly in her familiar-unfamiliar face that his words stung her. Or maybe it was him reverting to the way he had addressed her a thousand years ago. ‘And because you’re such a saint, I suppose we should just roll over and take it as well, whatever’s coming. Right? Bullshit. We didn’t ask for this. We’re not slumming it in a human body while our sisters tinker with the future. We’re caught and we can’t get out. Where’s the hope in that? Where’s the higher purpose? We were on a holiday, for fuck’s sake. We can’t help that we were born this way.’

 

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, Seth, you can’t. But that doesn’t mean you’re powerless and have always been so. You chose to put yourself here when you were in Sheol; you took this life out of the many in your world-tree. You could’ve ended it a thousand years ago, if that was what you wanted. That may not seem like much of a choice now, but you’re not alone in that. Everyone’s haunted by death and loss and things we would’ve or could’ve or should’ve done if only the dice had fallen a particular way, if only we’d had just a little longer, if only things had been different. But wishing for what wasn’t is futile, in any world-line. You should know by now that the grass isn’t any greener on the Other Side.’

 

‘We’re not talking about grass.’ Seth struggled to keep his voice down. ‘We’re talking about people.’

 

‘Exactly. And there are more people in the world than you or I. They’re worth remembering when you’re feeling out of sorts. They have a right to a better fate than the one awaiting them if we just give up the game and go home. They want to be victims of Yod no more than you do. You were just the first, Seth, of billions. Maybe that makes you unlucky or hard done by, but it also puts you in a unique position. You can turn this around if you want to. You can save the people who remain and set yourself up as a hero. That seems like an easy choice to me.’

 

‘Don’t patronise me.’

 

‘If a Goddess can’t be patronising, who can?’

 

‘Take it easy, you two.’ Hadrian’s voice poured oil on their rising seas. ‘This isn’t what you’re angry about, Seth. Not really. You’ve been waiting a thousand years to get it off your chest. Don’t blow it.’

 

Seth’s ire retreated, but didn’t disappear. ‘Now you’re both patronising me.’

 

‘No.’ Ellis reached out and took his hand, somehow able to tell which one was his and not Hadrian’s. ‘That’s not what we’re doing.’

 

He pulled away. ‘You left us,’ he said. ‘You left us, and now you’re blaming me for being upset.’

 

‘I’m not blaming you for anything,’ she said. ‘And neither is Hadrian. But I did let you go. This is true.’ She sighed. Her hazel gaze dropped. ‘I did that because I had no choice. It wasn’t just because the fate of the world was at stake. I think I made it clear, at the time, why I was leaving.’

 

‘I think you did.’

 

‘Well, I’m still upset about it. At least you’ve had time to get over it.’

 

‘What do you mean?’

 

‘You’ve had nothing else to think about for a thousand years, right? It must’ve got a little boring, stewing over old mistakes.’

 

Seth acknowledged that with a nod, but he didn’t entirely agree. It struck him as sad and rather pointless that the hurt still hadn’t faded.

 

‘So what now?’ he asked her. ‘What do you have planned for us?’

 

‘Well. That’s the tricky part.’

 

‘Tricky how?’ asked Hadrian.

 

‘There are two schools of thought in play at the moment, as perhaps you know. One says that you should be permanently bonded, to the Flame in order to awaken the powers of the Old Ones. They think they can repel Yod that way and create a new golden age with the gods in charge again. That’s what Pukje wants too.’

 

‘Ah.’ Hadrian nodded. ‘So that’s what the imp has been stopping Highson from telling us.’

 

‘I would think so. He’d assume that you want to be separated, not joined together forever.’

 

‘What about the second plan?’ asked Seth.

 

‘The other faction wants you separated — but not just from each other. From the Flame too, forever, in the hope of stopping Yod’s spread through the world-tree. This method would effectively kill the Change and restrict any creature that feeds on will, like Yod, to just the former Second Realm.’

 

Seth’s head was spinning. Both plans sounded dangerously apocalyptic to him — and he felt no wonder that Highson too had been so cagey about telling them anything. Everyone with a stake in either conspiracy would be looking to Highson as creator of the Homunculus to know how best to break or bind it forever. He was probably as freaked as the twins were.

 

‘Which do you favour?’ Hadrian asked.

 

‘Both have their merits. I can see that clearly enough, although I don’t like some of the methods either group has used. Each group is vulnerable to small factors outside its control. And neither plan, ultimately, cares what you two want. Remember that when I explain what I have in mind.’

 

Seth briefly considered asking her not to bother, but knew he was only being petulant. ‘Go on. Get it over with. Tell us what you want us to do.’

 

‘You won’t like it.’

 

‘So?’

 

‘So it’s still your choice, Seth. Yours and Hadrian’s. Don’t ever mistake that. No one can force you to do something you’re not willing to. And I say “willing” in every sense of the word. I’m not Yod; I don’t devour lives to further my own ends. If I was, I wouldn’t be here to explain it to you. I’d just do it, and to hell with you. Hell, or worse.’

 

‘Just tell us,’ said Hadrian. ‘How are we going to kill Yod and get on with our lives?’

 

‘You don’t,’ she said. ‘You don’t do either of those things — and that’s the part you won’t want to hear.’

 

Seth felt as though a bubble had formed at the back of his head, a void of thought and feeling that threatened to consume his brain if he let it grow any larger.

 

‘You’re right about that much,’ he heard Hadrian say. ‘Now, give us the rest. If we’re not supposed to kill Yod, then why the fuck are we here?’

 

Ellis Quick, the Goddess of the new world, laced her fingers together in front of her, and began to explain.

 

* * * *

 

The Bones

 

 

‘The truth is: dreams have no purpose, like many

things in life. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use

them. They are glimpses of the world-tree,

snatched from the Third Realm while our minds

come unstuck during sleep. Adrift on a sea of

possibilities, we return with half-remembered

visions of worlds that might have been — and are

very real indeed, somewhere else.’

 

SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

 

 

kender woke squinting and, for one awful moment, unable to remember how he had come to be lying in the open with solid stone at his back. There was a cliff to his right and an open expanse of water to his left. Above were only clouds, grey and thick yet too bright for his eyes. His injured arm and head ached, and more than that: his face ached. When he raised a hand to touch it, his fingers came away brown with half-dried blood.

 

Then he remembered, and that was even worse.

 

‘Chu?’ He managed to get upright even though his head spun and his muscles felt as limp as week-old noodles. ‘Chu!’ Her name echoed off the crater wall but prompted no response.

 

Her wing was gone. She was gone. The sun was obscured by the clouds, so he couldn’t tell how long it was since she had left on her crazy solo mission. She could have been dead for hours.

 

The world swayed and tipped, and he dropped to his knees, afraid that he might accidentally stagger the wrong way and tumble to the bottom. He threw up instead. The pain in his gut and head was more than he could take. He wept as though the bottom had fallen out of the world, and the only thing he had left were tears.

 

Whether you love me back or not…

 

He could have wept forever. The only thing that stopped him were three sharp retorts, carried across the lake from the tallest tower, which was barely visible even in daylight through the column of steam. The sounds were too sharp and well defined to be natural. They were undoubtedly explosions.

 

The lake convulsed. Black fronds swayed under the surface like deadly seaweed. The water level swelled and then shrank as though the lake itself was breathing. Skender stared at it, shocked out of his grief by a sight too alarming to be natural.

 

The convulsions died down. There were no more explosions, even though four crystals had gone into the backpack that Chu carried. He peered at the towers across the lake, but saw no sign of her wing.

 

‘Selfish,’ he told himself, noting the tears flowing again but neither completely giving in to them nor stopping them. ‘You had your chance to tell her, and you didn’t take it. You blew it.’

 

He stood, and this time managed to stay upright. A new feeling began to burn in his gut. Not sorrow or guilt or regret, or even irritation that she hadn’t let him fly with her. It was anger.

 

‘I’ll make them pay, Chu,’ he told the lake and crater and sky, and the remains of the Ice Eater villages and towers and the unnatural clouds. They would be his witness, now she wasn’t there. ‘I’ll make those bastards pay.’

 

Then he turned and began the long, careful climb back down the slope to the cave mouth far below.

 

* * * *

 

A vibration on his breastbone woke Kail from a dreamless sleep. He reached up with one hand to cup the leather pouch resting there. The Caduceus fragment was twitching like a baby mouse. Clutching it tight, he fell back asleep and dreamed of being buried alive in the belly of a giant man’kin.

 

The second time he opened his eyes, he found Sal sitting next to his stretcher on a heavily stuffed pack. The crystal-lights of the cavern had been turned down. People lay stretched out on bedrolls, sleeping or talking in low voices. The Caduceus was quiet.

 

‘What time is it?’ Kail croaked through a voice as dry as summer.

 

Sal turned. ‘Midday.’ He produced a flask of water and handed it to Kail. ‘Rosevear told me to tell you to drink. You’ll feel better afterwards.’

 

‘Thank you.’ Kail swigged gently, wary of overloading his stomach. The water was icy cold and hurt his teeth. He felt as though the man’kin in his dream had chewed him up and spat him out, then trodden on him for good measure.

 

‘I honestly didn’t expect to see you again, old man. When you fell off Pukje, we thought you were dead for sure.’

 

‘So did I, Sal. So did I.’ Kail shifted himself into a more comfortable position. His back still sang like an over-plucked wire. ‘I guess I got lucky.’

 

‘I guess you did. Or someone was unlucky.’ Sal’s smile dropped away. ‘I’ve been thinking about how you fell. It strikes me as odd that you, who argued most with the Old Ones, were the only one whose safety line broke that night. Just like it was odd that the avalanche blocked our path.’

 

‘You think Pukje was responsible for both?’

 

Sal nodded. ‘I worry about what he might do next.’

 

‘To who?’

 

‘To Shilly.’

 

‘Why her?’

 

‘Because she wants the opposite of what the Old Ones want.’ Sal sighed and related to Kail an abbreviated version of everything Shilly had told him that morning.

 

Kail could hardly believe his ears. Here at last was the reason why Shilly had run off with the man’kin during the crisis in Milang. And not just the man’kin, but the Holy Immortals, Tom, the glast, and every other seer in the vicinity. That they had intended to make their own future was bold enough; that Shilly was an intimate part of their planning, thanks to the many versions of herself working together in different iterations of the world, struck Kail as so strange as to be utterly convincing.

 

He sat up on his elbows and looked around the cavern. She was recognisable only by her wavy, sun-streaked hair, which poked out of a sleeping bag not far from where he lay. A blood-matted clump at the base of her neck indicated that she too was going through the wars.

 

‘She’s remarkable,’ Kail said. ‘I’d like the chance to get to know her better.’

 

‘I think that too, sometimes. If Pukje comes anywhere near her, I’m going to take his head clean off.’

 

The imp was sitting in a meditative pose on the far side of the cavern. His eyes were closed.

 

‘I think it’d be wise to keep them apart, for now,’ Kail said. ‘And to remember that Pukje can’t change while someone is looking.’

 

‘Between the two of us, I’m sure we can keep an eye on him.’

 

Kail nodded. He felt alert enough. Only the aches and pains reminded him of the rigours his body had been through in recent days.

 

‘It must feel good to have her back,’ he said, thinking of Vania and his occasional pang for what might have been. A lonely man, the Old Ones had called him. Loveless.

 

‘You’d better believe it.’

 

‘No matter what happens, at least you’ve got that.’ He looked around the room, considering his companions one by one. The expedition had changed all of them in their own unique ways. ‘I wonder what I’ve gained from all this?’

 

Sal patted him on the shoulder. ‘The chance to give someone a family.’ He stood. ‘If you let her down, I’ll take your head off too.’

 

Kail watched him walk away, smiling. The Caduceus began to vibrate, and he cupped it as he would a captive cicada.

 

If you want it so badly, Abi Van Haasteren, he thought to himself, you’ll have to come get it. We’re a little busy right now.

 

* * * *

 

Sal fought the urge, powerful though it was, to join Shilly in the sleeping-bag. His eyes were hot with fatigue and the world seemed to shift underfoot every time he took a step. There was, however, someone he wanted to talk to before giving in to sleep. He felt Mage Kelloman’s eyes tracking him as he walked by Marmion and Banner, snoring gently side by side, and Lidia Delfine, curled in a ball near the sole remaining Ice Eaters. Her bodyguard, Heuve, nodded from where he watched over her. The Goddess and the twins whispered furiously in a corner, oblivious to everyone around them. Rosevear was tending the injured, but he was the only other person moving around.

 

It wasn’t a person Sal intended to talk to. The glast looked up from its contemplation of Mawson’s head as he approached. Although its features were in every detail the same as Kemp’s, Sal could not mistake the creature for the young man Sal had first met in Fundelry. The glast’s smoky black skin had nothing of human flesh about it; Kemp’s tattoos, now white, drifted slowly up and down his arms and back. His pupils were pure ivory in a sea of grey.

 

Sal almost baulked in the face of that alien gaze, but he kept coming. The Angel, looming over the alien creature like the back of a strange chair, raised its head.

 

‘The Angel acknowledges you,’ said Mawson.

 

‘That’s nice, but I’m here to talk to the glast. Do you speak for it?’

 

‘No.’

 

Sal was unfazed. He reached into a pocket and tossed a handful of small bone tiles onto the floor, at the strange creature’s feet. ‘Shilly told me about these. The Holy Immortals used them to communicate with the Panic back in the cloud forests. I thought maybe you’d find them helpful.’

 

The glast put Mawson to one side and reached down to touch the tiles. Some had letters printed on them; some had numbers or other symbols. Emitting a soft hissing noise, the glast moved two together to form part of a word, then looked up at Sal.

 

Sal tipped the rest of the tiles onto the floor. He had lifted them from the empyricist’s pack while the old Panic slept. He felt guilty about that small deception, but figured it paled in comparison to what Vehofnehu had done to him and Shilly. And if the attempt to communicate was successful, everything, he hoped, would be justified.

 

Smoky glass fingers moved quickly, forming the words: ALL THINGS.

 

The glast looked up at Sal. He nodded encouragingly. Its hands moved again, spelling out: KILL TO LIVE. When it was certain he had absorbed that fragment, it moved on again, spelling out what it could before running out of certain letters and moving on.

 

I UNDERSTAND YOUR ENEMY’S NATURE BETTER THAN I CARE TO ADMIT. I KILLED YOUR FRIEND, AND I DO NOT APOLOGISE FOR IT. I KILLED THE SNAKE TOO, AND MANY OTHER LIVING THINGS. THEY ARE ALL INSIDE ME NOW, ALL PART OF ME. THEY ANCHOR ME HERE.

 

‘And who are you, exactly?’ Sal asked. ‘What do you want?’

 

I AM A TRAVELLER. I WANT TO EXPERIENCE YOUR WORLD.

 

‘By eating the things that live in it?’

 

I HAVE BEEN AN INSECT BORING ITS WAY THROUGH A TREE. THE BORER CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT HARMING THE TREE, YET THE TREE LIVES ON. I SAY THAT WITH SOME CERTAINTY. I WAS THE TREE, TOO, FOR A WHILE.

 

‘What else have you been?’

 

MANY THINGS IN MANY WORLDS.

 

‘Why here? Why now?’

 

WHY ARE YOU HERE? WHY ARE YOU NOW? THERE IS NO PLAN. THERE IS NO DIRECTION.

 

‘I’m here with you because you killed my friend. Vehofnehu told Shilly that you attacked the boneship because you wanted to communicate with us. I could accept Kemp dying for that, perhaps, but not for no reason at all.’

 

The glast’s expression betrayed no human emotion. I WAS A SNAKE FROZEN IN THE DEPTHS OF AN ICY LAKE FOR NIGH ON A MILLENNIUM. WHEN IT MELTED, I WAS REVIVED. I GLIMPSED YOUR ENEMY’S RETURN TO THE WORLD IN THE CHURNING OF THE FLOOD, BUT I WAS SWEPT AWAY BEFORE I COULD DO MORE. WHEN I ENCOUNTERED YOU HEADING UPSTREAM, I DETERMINED TO BECOME ONE OF YOU, IN ORDER FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND. YOUR ENEMY IS LIKE ME, YET NOT LIKE ME. IT DOES NOT KNOW RESTRAINT. IT WILL DESTROY THIS WORLD BEFORE I HAVE FULLY EXPERIENCED IT. THAT WOULD BE WRONG.

 

‘You want to help us?’

 

I WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND, it repeated. ALL THINGS KILL TO LIVE.

 

Sal frowned, sensing something important coming together in his subconscious. He had had ideas this way before, where seemingly separate pieces began to combine without his conscious knowledge and only announced their conclusion when the whole had formed. It could be maddening, waiting for the final result to appear, because there was no way he had found to hurry the process along. All he could do was wait.

 

‘Yod is afraid of you,’ he said. ‘At least, it doesn’t want to get too close to you. Do you know how to hurt it?’

 

IN ITS PRESENT FORM, NO. I MUST OCCUPY THE BODY AFTER I HAVE DEVOURED THE MIND. THAT IS THE CURSE I BRING TO THOSE WHO FALL PREY TO ME.

 

Sal nodded his understanding. The black tentacles were as insubstantial as smoke — hardly a body by any stretch of the imagination. Poking a sword into one would be pointless, and would probably get the wielder killed. The same applied to any other form of attack Sal could think of. The only other thing he knew about Yod was that its ghostly flesh could neither pass through stone nor fly through the air. Water didn’t impede it at all.

 

He had one more question to ask the glast before giving in to exhaustion. ‘How long can you stay in Kemp’s body? How long until you have to kill again?’

 

DO NOT FEAR FOR YOURSELF OR YOUR FRIENDS, it spelled out via the tiles. I VISIT EACH SPECIES ONLY ONCE. I COLLECT EXPERIENCE THE SAME WAY SHILLY USED TO COLLECT MOTH PUPAE WHEN SHE WAS A CHILD.

 

Sal frowned. ‘How could you possibly know about that?’

 

KEMP KNEW.

 

Sal suppressed a shudder. ‘Uh, okay. Thanks, I think.’

 

He went to move off, but the rapid shifting of tiles on the stone ground pulled him back.

 

I WILL HELP YOU, the glast said, IF YOU ASK.

 

The creature’s strange gaze caught his again, and he had to physically turn his head away.

 

‘Keep the tiles,’ he said. ‘Marmion will want to talk to you, I’m sure.’

 

In his peripheral vision he saw the glast shake its head. With a rattle of bone against glass, it gathered up the tiles and proffered them to him.

 

Sal took them and hurried away to slip them back into Vehofnehu’s pack. If the glast didn’t want them, that conveyed a message as clearly as words.

 

Halfway back to Shilly he remembered that he had wanted to know about Mawson’s head. Later, he promised himself. He needed sleep more than answers at that moment. His brain had enough to work on already.

 

As he slipped into the sleeping-bag, Shilly half-awoke and rolled against him, bringing her warmth with her. He slipped his arms around her and lay close.

 

‘What have you been talking about?’ she asked with her eyes still shut.

 

‘Your old pupae collection,’ he said.

 

‘What? I threw that out years ago.’

 

‘I know. Go back to sleep. Everything’s okay.’

 

Shilly shifted into a comfortable position and they said nothing more.

 

* * * *

 

The Holy Immortals and the Ice Eaters were arguing with each other about who opened the Tomb. So Shilly dreamed, watching the confrontation as a disembodied observer. The Ice Eaters thought the Holy Immortals had closed the Tomb, not opened it, while the Holy Immortals argued the exact opposite. Shilly could see no logical flaw in either argument, no matter how she tried to find one. They couldn’t both be right, she told herself. Could they?

 

Then she was back on the prow of the boneship with Marmion, watching the glowing green waterfall come into view. Its roar was absent — for some reason, dozens of high-pitched bells were ringing instead — but otherwise the scene was exactly as she remembered it. Below, trapped by boulders under the crystal-clear water, struggled the man’kin that had been swept down the Divide by the flood. An anomalous shape caught her eye by the waterfall, just as it had the first time she had seen it. A glowing green figure was standing on the rocks, waving at her. Waving in greeting she had thought. Now she knew better. The figure was a Holy Immortal travelling backwards in time; her past was the Holy Immortal’s future. She wondered if she actually recognised the figure on the rocks, with the benefit of hindsight. Could it be Treya, waving farewell?

 

The guilt will haunt you forever, the empyricist had told Treya when the Ice Eaters’ leader had threatened to kill Shilly and the others. You will never escape it. That hadn’t stopped Treya then. A few days and a deeper understanding of her fate could make a huge difference.

 

Shilly remembered the woman tearing out her hair, backwards in time, near the top of the mountains. She heard the Holy Immortals singing their sorrowful song as they approached the crater with her and the man’kin — another farewell, she realised now. She saw the shock on the faces of Elomia and Tarnava, royal caretakers of the Holy Immortals, upon discovering that their charges had suddenly departed; an arrival, this time, from the point of view of the Ice Eaters, banished forever into their own past. Vehofnehu had brought them to the Panic city in the knowledge that they would be safe there, that he himself, in founding the city, had created a space in which they could live and perhaps be useful by auguring events in the near future, their past. Perhaps they had told him to do that, in his past, when from his point of view they had met for the first time. Or perhaps it had just happened to work out that way in this world-line, entwined as it was with the lives of the Ice Eaters and the Holy Immortals as their destinies came steadily into collision.

 

She woke tangled in Sal’s legs and with a numbness up her right thigh. Shifting position to restore circulation brought a wave of pins and needles that had her twitching and disturbing his sleep. She slid carefully out of the sleeping-bag and hopped shivering on one leg, noting while she did who was awake and who asleep during this rare moment of rest.

 

Most were asleep, including the Goddess, who had found an empty bedroll and lay on her side with her mouth open. The twins sat in a tense, uncomfortable pose with four legs and four arms in wildly different positions, as though on the brink of explosion. Griel paced in front of the exit to the cavern, keeping watch with Lidia Delfine to make sure nothing sneaked into the chamber. One of the younger Ice Eaters was going through the supplies gathered by Kelloman and the others earlier that morning, his posture and expression dispirited.

 

Shilly felt eyes on her in turn, and found Marmion watching her as she struggled with her leg. She limped over to where he sat on one of the pump’s thick pipes.

 

‘How are you faring?’ she asked softly so as not to disturb anyone. ‘You’ve hardly said a word since our new friend arrived.’

 

‘There’s a reason for that,’ he replied, just as softly. ‘There’s not much I can say until she tells us her plan. If I react now, before she gives me anything, I look like a fool. Not that I can’t be one, sometimes,’ he said, raising his truncated arm to cut off her jibe before it could leave her lips, ‘but getting some rest first was a good idea. I’m prepared to listen now to find out what comes next.’

 

She nodded and sat next to him, taking the weight off her lame leg. The pins and needles had faded to a dull throb.

 

‘Still,’ she said, ‘I’m impressed. She had to practically knock me out to get me in line.’ She rubbed the back of her head where a tender bump had formed. ‘Punched by a Goddess. Not many people can claim that.’

 

He smiled and Shilly thought that for every new wrinkle his smile created, at least five stress-related lines vanished.

 

‘You should do that more often,’ she told him.

 

‘When this is over, perhaps I will,’ he said. The smile slipped away. ‘I’ve called the Alcaide and asked for help. To be frank, I don’t think he believed half of what I told him.’

 

‘It does sound a little unlikely.’ Glasts, goddesses, and golems were just the tip of a preposterous iceberg. ‘What help were you looking for?’

 

‘I’m not sure exactly. Advice, at the very least. He said he would consult with the Conclave and get back to me. Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to happen quickly enough.’

 

‘Somehow, I think you’re right. And that’s not the worst of it.’ Shilly decided then, on instinct, to share with him the broad details of her conversation with Sal. ‘We’re caught between two competing factions. The seers want to separate the realms and destroy the Flame so that there’s no chance of creating a new world-tree infected with Yod. Pukje’s side wants the realms reunited so the old gods can come back and help us kick Yod’s arse. I’m not sure I like either option, but I’ve yet to think of a third one. Until we do, we’re going to stay stuck.’

 

‘But we have to decide soon.’ Marmion nodded. ‘And I don’t feel particularly qualified to make that decision.’

 

‘Would you defer to her,’ Shilly asked, nodding at the recumbent Goddess, ‘if you had to?’

 

‘If I had to, of course.’ He sighed. ‘Just like you did with Vehofnehu. I honestly don’t blame you for running off with him. I don’t even blame him for stranding us up here. Sometimes it’s best not to wonder what will happen after.’ There was a wealth of expression in his simple shrug.

 

She nodded, thinking of her future self and what might have been had Sal died in the tunnel. She had been rescued from that fate by the glast but exposed to all manner of uncertainties now. What did it mean that the future-Shilly hadn’t known what the glast was? Where would that particular detail lead her?

 

Such thoughts reminded her of her dream of the Holy Immortals. It had been a relief to ponder something else, for a change, during her sleep. A different situation, but a similar kind of grief…

 

‘I have a horrible feeling,’ she said, ‘that, whatever happens, not all of us will be going home.’

 

He surprised her by reaching out and taking her right hand. ‘Whatever happens, as you put it, you have my word that your sentence will be lifted. You and Sal will be free to live as you please, anywhere in the Strand. I don’t care what it takes or whose arm I have to twist. I don’t care if I have to come back from the dead and haunt someone until they make the right decision. You’ve earned that right, and I will ensure it happens.’

 

Shilly surprised herself in turn. ‘Well, you’ll always be welcome in Fundelry, should you ever want to visit. Sal and I will show you the sights, what few there are. We can talk about old times.’ She blinked back an unexpected sorrow. ‘I can’t promise to bake a cake, but —’

 

She stopped suddenly, realising exactly how Marmion was holding her hand. She could feel his fingers around hers, warm and comforting and definitely ten in number. Yet there were only five visible. His left arm ended in a puckered stump that had yet to completely heal.

 

‘It’s still there?’ she asked in a whisper, fighting the urge to pull away in revulsion.

 

He nodded. ‘It’s going to make a wonderful party trick when I get home.’

 

The thought of Marmion going to a party was as shocking as the revelation that he still had a piece of the Swarm inside him. ‘Why have you kept it a secret?’

 

‘Only you and Kail know. I don’t want to frighten or worry people. But I’ve been thinking about what the Goddess said. If we’re all here for a reason, then maybe everything’s happened for a reason.’

 

‘Like losing your hand?’

 

‘And gaining a new one.’

 

‘Is that a comfort?’

 

‘Which? The new hand or the knowledge that it might be needed?’

 

Her head was beginning to hurt. ‘I don’t know. Both.’

 

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘to both.’

 

‘Well, that’s something.’ She pulled her hand away, not able to maintain that eerie contact any longer. The ghost hand he had stolen from the Swarm felt as solid as a real one. It was even warm to the touch. ‘Can you —’ She faltered, then ploughed on. ‘Can you reach through walls or into closed boxes with it?’

 

‘No. Although I’ve tried, when no one was looking. It works the same way as an ordinary hand.’

 

‘It’s hard to see how it could be useful then.’

 

‘It’s already come in handy once,’ he said. ‘It stopped a lightning bolt from killing me. And I’ll never have to worry about frostbite — or burns for that matter.’

 

‘The indestructible hand.’ She found a glimmer of humour in the situation, then. ‘You sound like one of those old legends. You know: Spider-Man, the Silver Surfer and all that. Perhaps you should get a fancy outfit too.’

 

He smiled. ‘Perhaps I will.’

 

A rattle of stone distracted both of them. Shilly turned in time to see a shower of dust fall in a curtain from a point high above. Marmion was on his feet in an instant, snapping his fingers to bring the crystals to full brightness. In the suddenly blinding light, Shilly saw a strange, bone-white shape scuttle into a hole in the ceiling.

 

‘Ware!’ the warden cried to the sleepers and those on guard. To the shape in the ceiling he called, ‘Who goes there?’

 

There came no response, and Shilly saw no repeat of the movement. Neither she nor Marmion raised the possibility that they might have imagined it.

 

Concerned people began to gather around them, in various stages of alertness.

 

‘What’s going on?’ asked Lidia Delfine. ‘Have we been found?’

 

‘Safest to assume so,’ said Marmion. ‘Either way, we’re moving. Pack enough food for one day. Leave the bedrolls. Rosevear, bring everything you have. Spread the load. Assign stretcher bearers for Tom. We’re not leaving him behind. Quickly, everyone! Move!’

 

The gathering dispersed and went hurriedly about their tasks, moving as rapidly as fatigue and surprise allowed. A call too high-pitched for a human throat echoed through the cavern, setting the hair on Shilly’s neck upright, and encouraging people to move faster. She eyed each indentation in the ceiling with nervous attention, ready for anything at all to burst into view.

 

Sal had their packs half-full by the time she hobbled over. She stuffed her notes and sketches into hers even though the paper was heavy and she would be hard-pressed to keep up as it was. It had to be useful for something.

 

Another cry went up, then a third from the far side of the cavern. All eyes turned to the ceiling in wary expectation. Something moved in the corner of her eye, but it was only the twins, clinging to the cavern’s rough walls with all their extra limbs and artificial strength. The overlapping heads turned, seeking the source of the sound. As they moved crablike from handhold to handhold, she held her breath, almost afraid to know what they might find.

 

A white shape dropped out of a crack near the wounded, unfolding as it fell. Shilly had a fleeting glimpse of something very much like a human skeleton with black eyes and grinning teeth and limbs like sticks before it vanished behind Lidia Delfine and Heuve. Their swords flashed in the crystal-light. The alien cry sounded again, in defiance and pain. Three more shapes followed in three different places, and Shilly raised her stick in readiness to fight.

 

* * * *

 

The Devels

 

 

‘Bravery is not the opposite of cowardice.

Bravery cannot exist without cowardice.

A warrior who fights with certainty on her side

has already fallen.’

 

THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 4:13

 

 

adrian could sense the wrongness in the air. He could feel it in the skin of the Homunculus; he could practically taste it in his mouth. As he and Seth climbed the wall and then the ceiling of the cavern, seeking the source of the wrongness, he thought about nothing else. Don’t worry about what comes next, he told himself. That’s a responsibility you don’t want. Concentrate on what’s happening right now instead.

 

Even so, part of him was still sitting on the floor of the cavern, listening as Ellis counted off the points of her plan, one by terrible one.

 

‘First, we go back down the tunnel to the Tomb. All of us. No one gets out alive this time if things don’t go right.’

 

Something as pale as a maggot and as gangly as a Halloween skeleton dropped out of a hole in the ceiling, too far from the twins for them to intercept. Hadrian tensed to jump, even though the foresters were already dealing with the attacker, when three more dropped from elsewhere in the ceiling. One landed almost directly under them.

 

‘Devels!’ Pukje cried.

 

With a cry of anger, the twins kicked off the ceiling and dropped onto the creature below them. It had snatched at Warden Banner with long white claws and was preparing to bite her throat. Four fists converged on a point inside the devel’s skull. With a horrible cracking sound, its head burst open, spraying them and Banner with pink and black flesh.

 

‘Second, I set the Flame burning again. I know that’s dangerous, because if it gets into Yod’s hands that’s the end of everything, but if I don’t do it then you’ll have to die. Both of you. And I don’t want that any more than you do.’

 

Hadrian swallowed nausea as he and his brother let the twitching body drop to the ground. He could hear Ellis shouting over the racket and they forced their way to her side. Flashes of the Change thrilled through them, making their artificial body tingle. Fleeting forms flashed in and out of existence, moulded by Change-users from air, light, mist, anything available, cutting, slicing or clubbing the devels as they moved in.

 

More of the white shapes dropped from the ceiling, targeting the weak and the defenceless. The strong fought back, filling the air with cries of triumph and pain. The Angel stamped at the devels that tried to mount it. Pink blood mingled with red. A devel jumped on the twins from behind. They brought their gore-slicked hands around and threw it into the cave wall.

 

It occurred to Hadrian that for the first time everyone was fighting on the same side. There was no squabbling or bickering about who had the right to lead or whose needs took precedence. Warden, Mage, forester, Panic, Ice Eater and man’kin all worked together to repel the devels.

 

The only ones standing apart were the glast, riding high on the Angel’s sturdy back, and Pukje, who had taken a perch on the glast’s broad right shoulder. Both watched the scene from their elevated, dispassionate perspectives and kept their own counsel.

 

‘Third, Highson Sparre frees you from the Homunculus. He created the damned thing; he can do that if anyone can.’

 

Devel after devel fell in brutal defeat. Barely had Hadrian begun to wonder at the point of it all when a new cry went up.

 

‘THE DOOR!’ Kelloman’s voice came clearly over the sounds of battle, amplified by the stone walls of the cavern. ‘THE DOOR IS OPENING!’

 

Hadrian and Seth craned their heads to see. Sure enough, the stones were shifting where Kelloman and Marmion had so carefully laid them back into place. A baleful orange light filtered through the cracks.

 

‘Gabra’il!’ Seth hissed.

 

‘None other,’ said Ellis, sidling closer to them and clubbing at a devel with the blunt end of a hook Griel had tossed her. ‘Watch Sal. This is his moment.’

 

Hadrian reached out with both hands and stopped the devel’s heart. Then he did as Ellis had suggested and found the young wild talent walking forward through the crowd, hands held wide above his head.

 

‘Fourth, we lure Yod into a trap. That means stepping outside the glast’s protection, and that will be very dangerous. Mage Kelloman will be crucial here, since he’s least vulnerable.’

 

With a deafening crash, the wall burst asunder. The fiery orange giant that had been Yod’s chief minister in the Second Realm stepped easily over the rubble. His armour glowed like molten metal poured over coals, fading to black at the joints and throat. The edge of his tapering crystal sword sparkled fitfully along its length, as though slicing atoms apart as it moved through the air. He towered over Sal, who had stopped directly in front of the giant. Gabra’il’s head almost brushed the ceiling as he looked down at the young man in front of him. The sword, hissing, swept back and then forward with awful, unstoppable momentum to slice Sal in two.

 

‘No,’ said Sal.

 

The sword stopped.

 

‘Fifth, we spring the trap. Marmion and the others should have the strength to pull this off. If they don’t, well, we’re all screwed.’

 

The sword stopped, and shattered into hundreds of dagger-sharp fragments. Gabra’il staggered, taken off-balance by the blocking of the blow. His face was barely visible behind his orange helm, but Hadrian could feel the shock radiating from him. It might have been a very long time since someone had successfully stood up to him.

 

Sal looked a little surprised too, but not for long. As Gabra’il straightened and hooked his giant fingers into claws — each one as long as a sword — and lunged at his much tinier opponent. Sal ducked and pressed his hand against the ground. The Change-flows Hadrian had detected before were nothing to those that swept through the room then. He felt as though a psychic plug had been pulled, exposing a very deep well leading into the earth. Strange energies tugged at him, at every living thing in the cavern, and made the air vibrate.

 

Gabra’il went to snatch at Sal again, but missed and flailed uselessly in mid-air. Not because Sal had moved, but because the ground had shifted beneath him. The stone turned to dust that parted with a slithery hissing noise, sucking him down to his knees. The giant roared in anger, but there was nothing it could do against gravity and the suddenly infirm floor.

 

‘Six, we kill Yod.’

 

Sal ignored the swinging hands of his opponent. Gabra’il’s golden glow flared brighter and brighter as he sank up to his waist and kept sinking. Only when the stone came up to his chest did it start to fade, first crimson, then a muddy ochre, then, gradually, to an angry hot black. As though the cold earth was sucking all the hateful life out of him, he was almost completely dark by the time his head slipped below the surface.

 

‘Master!’ he cried.

 

One massive hand clutched uselessly at the air when the rest of him had gone, then even that vanished. The Change thrilled again, and the stone became solid. Sal raised his head.

 

‘Seven, Shilly uses her charm and Sal’s wild talent to freeze the realms into the shape of their choosing.’

 

‘Why didn’t that drain him?’ whispered Seth to Ellis. ‘Shouldn’t he have been sucked into the Void Beneath for pushing too hard?’

 

‘Not now,’ said Ellis. ‘We’re too close to a potential Cataclysm. That’s where he draws the power from, you see, like an earthquake gaining strength the more two continental plates push against each other. The closer he gets, the more powerful he’s becoming. He’ll stay that way while the geometry of the world is unsettled.’

 

It’s all about geometry, Pukje had told Hadrian an age ago. And it still was, it seemed. Not just the shape of things in the world, but the shape of the world itself.

 

‘The world doesn’t have continental sheets any more,’ said Seth.

 

‘No, but they still have earthquakes. And you’re looking at one in the making.’

 

‘Eight, I save your life the only way I know how.’

 

Shilly limped to Sal and put a concerned arm around him, but he stood without her help. He looked like someone walking away from an aeroplane crash, unable to quite believe what had just happened. He crossed to the point where Gabra’il’s hand had last been visible and touched the stone.

 

‘It’s hot,’ he said with wonder in his voice.

 

That broke the stunned silence which had formed around him. The devels had pulled back in shock, temporarily, and they moved in again hoping to take the humans and their allies by surprise. The fight had gone out of them, however, and their remaining number were soon killed or driven away. Within minutes of Gabra’il’s fall, the cavern was silent apart from the sheathing of weapons and the soothing of the injured. Few were unscathed, but only one, a skinny Ice Eater who had leapt into the fray too readily, had died.

 

Marmion had a similar expression to Sal’s on his face as he moved from person to person, checking their wellbeing. The victory took a while to truly sink in, and Hadrian could see the new energy it brought to those who had previously been half awake. They had prevailed where they should have failed. Their spirits lifted.

 

‘Nine, we leave the world to manage itself — until the next Cataclysm or until the next invader comes along.’

 

‘Chalk one up for the good guys,’ said Seth, responding to the charged atmosphere. ‘We should keep moving while we have the advantage.’

 

‘We will,’ said Ellis. ‘We have to before Yod finds out what has happened and the next wave of creatures comes along. The list of things to do isn’t getting any shorter.’

 

‘Is there a number ten on your list?’ asked Hadrian as the survivors gathered around Marmion to plan their next move.

 

‘Of course.’ Ellis smiled without humour. ‘We die. We all do, eventually.’

 

Without waiting for a response, she forced her way to the centre of the crowd and raised her hands for silence.

 

‘Okay, it’s time. Listen closely because I only want to explain this once. There are now devels all through these mountains, and some of them are a lot worse than Culsu’s bad boys here.’ She gestured at the stinking corpses. ‘I’m afraid we don’t have time for an argument. You’re either with me or you’re staying behind. Is that understood?’

 

‘I understand,’ said Marmion, ‘that uncertainty is a luxury we can’t afford at the moment. But I won’t make a choice until I’ve heard everything you have to say. You can’t expect us to follow you blindly — especially if you are who you say you are.’

 

The Ice Eaters looked shocked, but Ellis just smiled.

 

‘Ah, yes: my message about not following gods without question,’ she said. ‘Well, you’re spot on there, and it’s my own fault if I’ve backed myself into a corner. But I think we can come to an agreement. The pieces of the plan are all around you. If you’d had the perspective I had in the Tomb, you would’ve seen it too.

 

‘First,’ she said, explaining to the others what the twins already knew, ‘we return to what’s left of the Tomb, all the way back down there.’ One short-nailed finger stabbed at the gaping doorway. ‘No exceptions. We’ve had two strikes already. One more and no one’s ever going home again…’

 

* * * *

 

Skender waited until the last of the bug-eyed creatures scuttled past before coming out of his hiding place. The tunnels were swarming with devels of all shapes and sizes, some passably human but others so improbable they barely looked alive. A couple of mixed-species gangs had spotted him but had kept moving rather than take him on. They were massing together, it seemed, not far from his own destination, for their numbers grew the closer he came to the Ice Eaters’ secret cavern. He was becoming increasingly nervous about what lay ahead. Only his determination to avenge Chu’s death kept him going.

 

Barely had he taken a single step from his nook when a Shockwave thrilled through the Change, sending a chorus of angry chitters, howls and whispers echoing along the rough stone passageways. He didn’t know what had happened to stir the devels up, but he determined to take advantage of it. Putting his head down, he hurried as fast as he could to the next junction and followed his memory of the route he and Chu had taken in reverse.

 

He made it a surprising distance before encountering resistance. A clot of snake-tentacled, upright bugs blocked the way ahead when he was just three junctions from the cavern. He cursed and hastily backtracked. He didn’t know how they saw him — since, as far as he could tell, they didn’t have any eyes — but they emitted a series of squeals so high-pitched he could barely hear them and followed him with tentacles waving.

 

The clicking of their chitinous feet pursued him as he ran back the way he had come, wishing he had Sal’s wild talent or Kelloman’s skills with the Change. What small potential he had would be of no use against even one of the devels chasing him, and he wasn’t going to waste that until he thought of a particularly clever way to use it — or until he had absolutely no choice.

 

He took a different turn to the one he had followed earlier, hoping it might reveal another way to the cavern, but instead found himself running towards another clutch of devels. With scissor-hands ahead of him and cockroach-tentacles behind, he skidded to a halt and told himself to think fast.

 

A hand reached out of the wall behind him and pulled him into a crack he hadn’t seen.

 

‘Quickly,’ said Orma. ‘Come with me. They haven’t found this passage yet.’

 

Skender followed the young Ice Eater along a circuitous — and sometimes uncomfortably tight — route through the naked stone. The way hadn’t been fashioned by hand; it was a natural feature linking narrow cracks and chimneys that doglegged so often Skender’s sense of direction was soon completely scrambled. He didn’t waste time or stale air asking questions, though. He just thanked the Goddess for good luck and Orma’s excellent timing.

 

‘I was dead back there,’ he told his guide when they stopped to catch their breath in a relatively large chamber. There was just enough room to sit face to face. ‘Thank you for saving me.’

 

Orma shifted uncomfortably. ‘I thought about leaving you. If those things had followed us, we’d both be dead.’

 

‘You did the right thing, and I hate to ask you for anything else, but I need you to take me to the others. Are they in the cavern? I can’t get a fix on them in here. There’s too much weird interference on top of all the stone.’

 

Again, the Ice Eater looked uncomfortable.

 

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Skender, feeling suddenly colder than ice. ‘They’re still alive, aren’t they?’

 

Orma nodded. ‘Yes, but — I ran. That’s what I’m doing out here. I ran like a coward and hid while the others fought. I’m afraid of the Death.’

 

Skender put a hand on Orma’s shoulder. ‘You should be afraid. There’s nothing wrong with that. And you wouldn’t be the first person to run from something scary. I’ve done it myself.’ Images of the Swarm in the trees of Milang came unbidden. He pushed them down with an effort. ‘But I’m not going to be a coward this time and I need you to help me. You don’t have to fight. You can just take me where I need to go, and then you’ll be free to run. I promise you. Will you do that for me?’

 

Orma hung his head. ‘All right. I know how to get there. The way should still be clear.’

 

They crawled through cracks that looked too small for a rat, let alone two teenagers. The background levels of the Change continued to fluctuate as though the very essence of the world was uneasy. Skender had never felt anything like it before, and he tried not to think too much about it now. It was tricky enough finding toe- and finger-holds with digits that had lost all feeling. Were he to get stuck in the ground just as he had under Milang that would do no one any good.

 

Images of Chu’s face from their first encounter, four long weeks ago, goaded him on when all other motivations ebbed.

 

Then he was suddenly, miraculously, sliding into a much wider space and could hear voices in the near distance. Orma had brought them to a chamber below the main level of the cavern. As Skender and his guide clambered up the last few natural steps, he listened to what the others were saying.

 

‘— works like this.’ A woman’s voice, one he didn’t recognise, speaking in firm, certain tones. ‘We’re near a critical juncture in this world-line. All possibilities exist side by side, as the man’kin will attest, so neighbours can influence each other. In one world-line, the realms are severed and the Change disappears; in another, where the realms are joined, everyone has the Change. Sal is drawing on this latter version of the future. That’s why he’s a wild talent in the first place. If this critical juncture couldn’t possibly exist anywhere, he would be the same as anyone else.’

 

‘But why me?’ came Sal’s voice. ‘What did I do to deserve this?’

 

‘Why is a crooked letter, Sal. Your parents were gifted in particular ways, and that was important. But there were other wild talents born at the same time. It could be one of them standing here, instead of you, if they hadn’t burned out or died before their time. And perhaps there could be someone else in Shilly’s place, too. It’s entirely likely that in a world-line one or two over, I’m standing with a completely different group of people, pleading exactly the same case.’

 

‘Except for us,’ said one of the twins. Hadrian, Skender thought. ‘We’re always the same.’

 

‘And you,’ said Seth. ‘Ellis, I’m all for the universe-next-door speech if it’ll help us kill Yod. But can’t we move on and get this done?’

 

‘Sal needs to understand what’s going on. Shilly’s all too aware, I think. She’s here now because of a great deal of effort on the part of many other people — many other versions of her, in fact. She knows she doesn’t stand alone.’

 

‘This is what Tom talked about,’ Shilly said, ‘when he said that we’d argue about the end of the world. To break the realms apart or to join them together. That’s the question.’

 

‘But how is the glast going to come between us?’ Sal sounded impatient and exasperated. ‘When I talked to it earlier, it didn’t say anything about this.’

 

‘Did you ask it?’

 

‘No, but —’

 

‘It seems simple to me,’ said Skender, clambering out of a hole in the ground near the edge of the cavern. Heads turned to face him, and he wondered what sort of impression he was making, filthy and black-eyed from where Chu had punched him. ‘Unite the realms,’ he said, ‘and let’s blast this fucker back where it came from.’

 

Shilly was the first to move. She limped towards him, relying heavily on her cane. Her eyes were full of sympathy and relief. ‘Skender, I wondered if I’d ever see you again.’

 

He waved her words away and also the hand she put on his shoulder. ‘That’s not important. It’s what we do next that matters. We’ve got to make it count. We might not get another shot.’

 

‘That exactly what I’ve been saying.’ The owner of the unfamiliar voice wasn’t a tall woman but she had tremendous presence. Ellis, Skender remembered one of the twins saying. Ellis Quick, he presumed. The Goddess. ‘Nice to meet you, Skender,’ she said with a knowledgeable smile. ‘Now you’re here, the fun really starts.’ She turned back to the others. ‘Did you hear what he said? Let’s stop arguing and do this.’

 

‘There’s another reason to get a wriggle on,’ Skender said as Kelloman shook his hand, looking absurdly pleased. The bilby scampered up his arm and bit his ear. ‘There are devels everywhere out there. It looks like they’re gathering for a big push.’

 

‘We’ve already seen some of that action,’ said Seth, pointing one of the Homunculus’s arms at a pile of pale bodies on the far side of the cavern.

 

‘That’s just a welcoming committee compared to what’s coming.’ Skender performed a quick double-take as a long, lined face appeared in the Homunculus’s usually black features, then retreated. He forced himself to ignore it. A babble of voices had risen up around him, and he had trouble keeping track. He looked around for Orma, but the Ice Eater had gone to stand with the other indigenous survivors. He looked pale and afraid. Slender hoped he hadn’t condemned Orma to a horrible death by bringing him back.

 

Don’t be stupid, he told himself. He’ll die anyway if Yod gets past us. Better with hope now than without hope later.

 

He wondered if that was how Chu had died, with that thought in mind.

 

Sal came up next to him. ‘There’s something you need to know.’

 

‘I don’t care about the details of the plan,’ Skender said. ‘If you really can make us all wild talents, I’m all for it. You should be too. Don’t you want Shilly to have what you have?’

 

‘That wasn’t —’ Sal interrupted himself, and looked down at the ground. Shilly watched both of them closely. ‘It’s not that simple. The Old Ones are part of the package. We can’t have one without the other.’

 

‘Are you saying you’d give up your talent just because you’re afraid of the old gods?’ Skender felt a wild urgency rising up in him, driven by his need to take vengeance on Yod. Throwing away the only weapon that he could see before them just didn’t make any sense. ‘You’d be crazy to consider that.’

 

Sal put a hand on his arm. ‘Actually, I want to talk to you about Chu.’

 

Skender felt his face freeze. ‘I don’t want to talk about Chu.’

 

‘You need to know what happened to her.’

 

‘She didn’t come back. I heard the crystals blow, but she didn’t reappear. I can work it out.’

 

‘Again, it’s not that simple.’

 

The effort of keeping his face neutral was costing Skender more than he expected. He couldn’t tell what would happen if he let his muscles relax. He might burst into tears or scream, or both. ‘What are you talking about?’

 

Sal guided him away from the rest and, in a voice as leaden as a funeral slab, told him the truth.

 

* * * *

 

Kail watched Skender’s expression turn from disbelief to shock and then to horror in quick succession. He didn’t need to hear Sal’s words to know that he was telling the young mage about the golem. Although he hadn’t been there when Upuaut had stepped forward in Chu’s body, he had heard about it in chilling detail. The question was open as to how the creature had got into someone not known for any ability with the Change. Perhaps she had had some latent talent passed down from her forester ancestors; perhaps the golem was simply taking advantage of the rules flexing so close to a potential Cataclysm. What mattered most was the one thing anyone knew for certain about golems.

 

The only way to kill them was to kill the body they inhabited.

 

Kail couldn’t watch Skender’s developing dismay. It was clear he had thought that his lover had died in her flight out to the tower. It was also clear how he had ended up being left behind. His right eye was almost completely shut, thanks to a purple bruise spreading down from his temple. Chu’s betrayal and sacrifice had had meaning while she had actually been dead. Now she was host to a creature whose last plaything had been a sadist Kail would only reluctantly call human.

 

‘This is pointless,’ he muttered.

 

‘What is?’ asked Marmion.

 

Kail glanced up. ‘This,’ he said, indicating the milling group. The discussion had been thrown into disarray by Skender’s arrival. Not even the news that the devels were gathering had galvanised them into action. ‘We should be fighting, not standing around talking.’

 

‘As a matter of fact, I agree completely.’ The bald warden whistled piercingly. ‘That’s it! We haven’t been attacked again while we’ve stayed here. I take that to mean Yod wants us to go down the tunnel, towards it. Let’s find out why. If anyone strongly disagrees, this is your last chance to say.’

 

Kail watched Highson closely. Sal’s father looked sceptical when told of his part in the plan.

 

‘It’s not my decision,’ Highson said with a shrug. ‘If Seth and Hadrian agree, I’ll go along with it.’

 

Attention shifted to the twins.

 

‘Why would we say no?’ said Hadrian, his face floating to the surface of the Homunculus’s body like a corpse rising from a riverbed. ‘If we don’t do this, then we’ve lived all this time for nothing.’

 

‘Yes, and what would be the point without at least trying to get revenge?’ Seth’s face joined his brother’s, identical in every respect except reflected as though in a mirror. ‘I’m tired of waiting. Let’s get it over with.’

 

‘That’s my boys.’ The Goddess smiled in satisfaction. ‘And so we shall. Warden, it’s your show from here. Tell us what to do.’

 

Marmion received her offer of authority with surprise. ‘I thought you —’

 

‘What? Wanted to order everyone around and make an arse of myself? Not likely.’

 

Marmion’s lips pursed — hiding a smile, Kail suspected. Gathering his dignity, he said, ‘We’re packed and ready. I see no reason to delay.’

 

Marmion waved the glast forward. The Angel obliged, thudding over Gabra’il’s resting place without breaking its step. Pukje rode behind the glast, his narrow face unreadable. Marmion went next, walking alongside the Goddess, his jaw tightly set. The rest of the party followed in bunches: Banner, Vehofnehu and Kelloman; Sal, Shilly and Highson; the twins and Rosevear, each holding one end of Tom’s stretcher; Griel, with , Skender and the three Ice Eaters; Kail walked with Lidia Delfine and Heuve at the rear.

 

As the tunnel swallowed them, Kail glanced over his shoulder at the cavern they left behind. Devels in their dozens were already issuing from the walls to cut off any chance of retreat — or to drive the Goddess and her allies headlong into the Death. He debated telling the others, but decided they had enough to worry about. Getting out alive would be a bonus, if they got the job done.

 

Heuve and Lidia Delfine had noticed. They stayed quiet as well. As they walked, both kept their hands near their weapons.

 

‘Do you regret coming?’ Kail asked them in a soft voice.

 

Heuve deferred to his fiancée and mistress. She took her time answering.

 

‘When I was young, I asked my mother what lay outside the forest. Nothing, she said. Nothing but cloud and trees forever. I didn’t believe her. There had to be more. Even as a child I knew that the further down the mountain you went, the thinner the cloud became. I’d heard stories of places where the air was totally clear and one could see forever. There were even places, some said, where trees didn’t grow at all. I didn’t believe those stories, of course; if there weren’t trees, how could anything live? The world would be nothing but naked earth and stone, and that would just be silly.’

 

She laughed without much humour.

 

‘Your home is beautiful,’ said Kail, ‘but so is mine, and the rest of the world too.’

 

‘Is it?’ she asked. ‘All I’ve seen outside the forest is stone and ice — and monsters and death and evil on a scale I can barely conceive. Part of me wants to run home and smother myself in the clouds. If I ignore everything outside, it won’t notice me. Right? It won’t notice my family and friends and all the people of the forest. They can go about their lives pretending everything’s just like the stories. It’s safe in the forest, where you can’t see very far. Sometimes that’s not such a bad thing.’

 

The crystalline glow from the cavern faded as devels crowded into the tunnel after them.

 

‘I want to tell my mother that she was wrong,’ said Lidia Delfine, ‘and that I was too. The world may be like this everywhere, for all I can tell, but life still exists. There’s still beauty, and hope, and love. We take it with us, everywhere we go. The Ice Eaters lived here for a thousand years, and they never lost their humanity. Nor should we, even when all is dark before us and the world seems a cold and barren place.

 

‘So, no,’ she concluded, ‘I don’t regret coming. I won’t regret losing my life or Heuve’s in pursuit of the world’s endurance. I will regret only our failure, should it come to that.’

 

Kail acknowledged the sentiment with a nod and a smile. He had nothing to add that wouldn’t sound trite or pessimistic. He didn’t doubt that some of them were going to die in the hours ahead, and no matter what anyone said about world-trees and alternative lives, death was death and there was precious little comfort in knowing that someone had missed out on victory by happenstance or ill design.

 

They walked on in silence, keeping a careful watch on the devels matching their pace behind them. The slumped body of an Ice Eater, stiffened but not yet putrefying in the cold air, came and went. Someone had placed a woven grave-shawl around the man’s neck and folded his hands peacefully in his lap.

 

Kail hoped someone would remain to pay him the same respect, when his turn came.

 

* * * *

 

Sal held Shilly’s free hand as they walked the long slippery tunnel. They conserved their strength rather than talking about the choice awaiting them. So he told himself, anyway. The real reason, he knew, was because they were afraid of the argument they were supposed to have. They had only just found each other again, and the hours they had spent together since had been too few. If these were to be their last moments on Earth, best to savour them, not fill them with any more angst than was absolutely necessary.

 

Whispers filled the foul-smelling air with a soft background susurrus, like the wind through trees at night. Highson walked beside them with head angled downward, deep in thought. His question surprised Sal, coming as it did out of nowhere.

 

‘Tell me about your mother. Not everything. Just what you think I need to hear and we’ll leave it at that.’

 

Sal didn’t know what to say. He had no memories of his mother, only the stories his adopted father and Lodo had told him. Those stories had been incomplete, filtered by necessity and rumour. Highson himself had been the source of other details, carrying, as he had, a book and a letter she had left for Sal before her death. To relay that information to her former husband, who had known her better than her own family, struck Sal as bizarre. Perhaps even perverse.

 

Shilly came to Sal’s rescue. ‘Yours was a political marriage,’ she said. ‘She left the Haunted City with another man before Sal was born.’

 

Highson nodded. ‘Is that all? Was I angry with her for leaving me? Is that why I made the Homunculus — to get revenge?’

 

‘No. You were trying to save her. She got herself lost in the Void Beneath.’

 

Highson’s thick brows knitted together. ‘I don’t understand why I would’ve gone to such lengths for someone I hadn’t seen in years and who I only wed out of convenience.’

 

‘You felt guilty for her being lost,’ said Sal, unable to let Shilly assume all of his burden. ‘And, well, you loved her. Perhaps you should know that too, although I can’t see how it’ll make you feel any better.’

 

Highson nodded understanding, then. ‘Yes. It makes sense if I loved her. Otherwise it would’ve been crazy.’

 

‘It was crazy anyway, Highson,’ said Shilly. ‘Noble but crazy.’

 

‘Don’t tell me that you wouldn’t do it too,’ Highson said to her, ‘if Sal was trapped in the Void and you needed to get him out.’

 

‘Actually,’ said Sal, ‘I was in the Void for a while. Do you remember that?’

 

‘I do. That’s where Skender first met the twins.’

 

‘And he was helped by someone he thought was my mother. That’s what first sent you on this journey.’

 

Highson shook his head. ‘I don’t remember that part. How strange.’

 

‘I would,’ said Shilly suddenly. ‘I would definitely do it for Sal. I’d build a Homunculus to bring him back. I’d cross whole worlds to give him a fighting chance at living again.’ There were tears in her eyes, sparkling in the mirrorlight reflected from ahead. ‘I’ve seen exactly what I’d do. And it was crazy, too.’

 

‘Is it crazy to love someone?’

 

‘Only if there’s no hope,’ she said. ‘Love isn’t about what was. It’s about what’s to come. Without hope, you’re just loving a memory, or a ghost. And that’s dangerous.’

 

Highson glanced behind them at Skender plodding along beside the Ice Eaters. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I can see how it might be that.’

 

Skender’s resolution to reunite the realms so he could avenge Chu’s supposed death hadn’t changed now he knew that Chu had in fact been possessed by Upuaut. In fact, it had only made it worse. If Sal gave Skender access to wild talent, there would be no end to the revenge he would pursue.

 

Sal remembered all too clearly how it had felt to destroy Gabra’il. The energy available to him had been vast and terrifying. He could sense it within himself now, kept barely in check by his will. That dangerous feeling was one he hadn’t known since his days in the Haunted City — as though at any moment he might explode.

 

‘Was she beautiful?’ Highson asked Shilly.

 

‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘she was. We have a picture in Fundelry that your mother gave Sal, if you’d like to see it one day.’

 

‘Maybe I will’

 

The silence returned, broken only by wet footfalls and soft voices from further back. As the tunnel levelled out, Sal experienced a terrible feeling of déjà vu. A mere handful of hours had passed since he had come this way in pursuit of Treya and her band of doomed Ice Eaters. This time, however, he was with friends, and they had something approaching a plan.

 

That, he told himself, had to make a difference.

 

* * * *

 

The Bait

 

 

‘Who has beheld a golem’s true face?

No one, for they have none. If they did,

what they showed would ever be false,

though their words would never lie.’

 

THE ROSLIN CODEX

 

 

t the end of the tunnel, they found the lower cavern full of half-submerged rubble, with only a rough path left from Gabra’il’s passing through. Marmion and Banner took stock of the situation and decided it was negotiable, or would be with some help from the man’kin. Shilly stood well back as the Angel, having deposited its passengers safely to one side, shouldered through the rubble, widening the path and taking the brunt of any unexpected rockfalls.

 

Icy water dripped incessantly from the ceiling and licked at Shilly’s ankles; were it not for Sal warming her with regular doses of the Change, she was sure her toes would have fallen off long ago. Lidia Delfine had outfitted her with some of Milang’s finest thermal gear, but still the ice crept in. It was as relentless as sleep.

 

‘Getting cold feet?’ she asked a nervous-looking Highson.

 

He winced at the poor joke. ‘I know I can do it, if that’s what you’re asking.’

 

It hadn’t been, but if he wanted to talk about it she would let him. ‘Is it a complex procedure?’

 

‘Not terribly. The trickiest part was making the Homunculus. Once that was done, I had only to put the mind inside it and make sure it stayed there. Mind and matter don’t naturally meld when one hasn’t grown around the other; you have to force it to happen. Going the other way around, as I will be with the twins, won’t be difficult. Break the bonds and they’ll be free again.’

 

‘Bodiless,’ said Shilly.

 

‘Yes. But the Goddess said she’ll look after that.’

 

‘Once we’re at the Tomb.’

 

Highson nodded. Shilly wondered what he was thinking. Did he try to imagine what it must be like to be in the twins’ shoes? Murdered and hunted in a world she couldn’t comprehend; then trapped in the Void Beneath unnoticed for a thousand years, cheek by jowl with their great enemy; then given the chance to emerge and save humanity from a threat that would never go away — only to be told that, ultimately, their role had already been played out.

 

It would be galling, without a doubt.

 

Marmion followed the Angel through the hole at a cautious distance, his mirror held high. The glast walked beside him, gleaming smokily in the flickering light. Kelloman went next, his slight host body dwarfed by the weight of stone poised around him. When both men called to say the way was clear, the rest of the group followed. Shilly splashed nervously through the water, dreading what lay ahead. The manner in which Kail and the two foresters kept looking behind them made her nervous too. Thoughts of a trap wouldn’t leave her mind for a moment.

 

The bottom of the tower was much as she remembered it, except for the lack of pyrotechnics. The walls were still and dead, to all appearances ordinary stone. The floor remained rough underfoot, and crunched when she stepped on fragments of the Tomb. They sparkled in the light like salt crystals.

 

‘Where is it?’ asked Skender. ‘Where’s Yod?’

 

‘You’re too late,’ said a voice from the shadows. ‘It’s gone.’

 

‘Chu?’

 

The throaty laugh of the golem answered him. ‘What do you think, rabbit?’

 

Skender stiffened as the body of his girlfriend stepped into view. He wasn’t the only one to react. Shilly suppressed a gasp at the girl’s distorted features. Her face was stretched forward into a snout; sharp-tipped teeth glinted between moist pink lips; black fur covered her cheeks and elongated ears. Her posture was even more hunched than a Panic’s. Hunger shone from her dark slitted eyes.

 

‘Leave her, Upuaut,’ said Hadrian, speaking loudly and clearly from the Homunculus. ‘She’s not yours to take.’

 

‘By whose authority do you speak?’ the golem snarled. ‘That of your mistress, you pussy-whipped fool? She has no dominion here — and never has had, these last thousand years. The world has a dei again. Her time is over.’

 

Ellis Quick didn’t respond to the gibe. As Upuaut talked, she stepped onto the dais and brought her hands together in front of her. Her eyes closed.

 

‘Leave that body,’ Hadrian repeated. The twins walked forward with arms bent, ready to attack. ‘Now.’

 

The golem crowed with laughter. ‘Sacrifice this young life if you will, but you’ll earn yourself disfavour among your new friends. I would enjoy watching that — just as I enjoy watching you suffer, rabbit.’ Upuaut turned back to Skender. ‘She is an uncomfortable fit, I’ll admit. A young Change-worker would do much better. Would you give your life for hers?’

 

‘Yes,’ he said without hesitation.

 

‘No!’ Sal stepped in front of Skender.

 

A strange light played across the floor of the tower, distracting them. Shilly looked down in wonder. Every piece of the Tomb, no matter how small, had come to brilliant life, glowing bright blue.

 

With a gentle sigh, they began to move, converging on the kneeling figure of the Goddess as though drawn to her by gravity.

 

‘Enough talking,’ snarled the golem in Chu’s body. ‘I’ve played with you too long as it is.’

 

The golem pointed at the tunnel. The ceiling collapsed a second time, thundering down on a handful of devels who had gathered to watch. The thundering continued even when the stones had tumbled to a halt. The ground shook beneath Shilly’s feet.

 

Marmion ran to Sal’s side just as three separate jets of water shot out between the fallen stones, fuelled by the weight of the lake above. One knocked Banner flying. Kail retrieved her, splashing through water that was already rising up his shins.

 

‘Quickly, Ellis!’ shouted Seth over the roar, but it was clear to Shilly that the restoration of the Tomb was going to take too long. Evanescent petals were forming around the Goddess, but the water brushed them aside as though made of snow.

 

Marmion’s flesh-and-blood hand gripped Shilly’s and pulled her up onto the dais. She felt a tingle as their minds connected. A charm fell into her head, intricate and thick-boned. With one practised glance, she assessed its form and function and made two small improvements. Then Marmion reached out for Sal and, using all of his wild talent, put the charm into powerful effect.

 

A bubble formed around the three of them, pushing the water down from her knees to the floor. Marmion pushed again, and the bubble widened to cover nearly everyone in the party. Kail passed through the bubble wall, spluttering, with Banner draped over his shoulder.

 

‘Where’s Chu?’ Skender shouted over the noise. The air inside the bubble might have been dry, but the sound of the rising torrent was unabated. ‘Where is she?’

 

Kelloman took Skender’s arm as he went to leave the bubble. The water was chest-high and rising fast.

 

Shilly could feel the stress on Sal and Marmion rising with the water. The walls of the bubble shrank as the pressure swiftly mounted. Furious currents raged outside, sending broad bulges sweeping back and forth. Shilly found herself pressed against Lidia Delfine and Vehofnehu.

 

An idea struck her. She pulled away from Marmion and forced the bodies around her to part, looking for the glast. It stood to one side with Pukje on its shoulders, just inside the bubble. The imp watched curiously as she took Mawson’s head from the glast’s right hand and held it up to her eye level. It was surprisingly heavy.

 

‘We’re on a new world-tree,’ she shouted over the roaring of the water. ‘There are numerous possible “nows”. I remember Shorn Behenna playing dice with you in Laure. You could choose particular outcomes, ones that relied on small moments of chance. That’s what I want you to do. Give her a chance. We’ll do the rest.’

 

The man’kin stared at her long and hard. For a moment she thought he was going to ignore her.

 

‘That will not be necessary,’ he eventually said. ‘Look to your right.’

 

A large shadow loomed out of the water. She recoiled. The Angel, unconcerned by either the flood or her reaction, pushed forward through the bubble with Chu draped across its snout. Shilly grabbed at her and eased her to the ground. She was completely human in form again, although mottled with bruises and very cold to the touch. She didn’t appear to be breathing.

 

All other concerns faded into the background as Shilly worked at the young woman’s clothing and tipped her onto her side. Foul water gushed from her mouth and nose. Shilly cleared her airways and rolled her onto her back. Her lips were cold as Shilly blew warm air into her lungs.

 

Chu coughed. Her body jackknifed, catching Shilly across the temple with the bridge of her nose. Hands clutched at both of them, took Shilly’s weight as stars filled her vision. Voices asked if she was all right. She blinked up at Highson. Behind him, she saw only water. The bubble was completely enclosed, and still shrinking.

 

Highson pulled her to her feet. She glimpsed Chu caught tight between Skender and Rosevear. Blood streamed from Chu’s nostrils. She was unnaturally pale and unconscious. There was no sign of the golem’s presence inside her. Shilly reached for her but was pulled away by the people around her.

 

Light flashed. The bubble flexed. Waves of the Change flowed through her as the Tomb took shape, growing out from the Goddess like an ethereal blue flower. It passed through the bodies of those around it as it expanded, revealing their skeletons and possessions in eerie cross-section. A small object in the pouch around Kail’s neck briefly flashed a brilliant ruby-red.

 

The Goddess rose to her feet. ‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘Just a moment longer.’

 

Shilly closed her eyes as the walls of the Tomb swept over her. She could see right through her eyelids, just for a second, by that brilliant blue light. The twins stood out clearly as separate entities, standing side by side in the umbra of the Homunculus; the Goddess had three shadows; Vehofnehu was as young and vital as she had seen him once in a vision; Pukje appeared in the winged form that Sal had described to her; Kelloman was a large corpulent man with numerous chins; the glast loomed above them all, lacking any obvious form or colouring.

 

Then the walls of the Tomb closed over her and darkness returned. She opened her eyes, and found that both water and bubble had vanished. She and the others were standing in a complex, many-walled space that shone baby blue. The air was suddenly still and warm, the ground beneath her feet smooth and steady.

 

They were inside the Tomb — dripping wet and battered, but very much alive. Even from across the wide space, Shilly felt Sal gratefully relax his grip on the bubble charm.

 

‘Thank you,’ Marmion said to the Goddess. ‘That wasn’t going to hold forever.’

 

The Goddess didn’t reply. Her expression was one of furious concentration. A sound of rushing wind, distant at first but growing rapidly louder, filled the Tomb. A tiny point of light began to burn in the exact centre of the glowing space, between the Goddess’s outstretched hands. It flickered, steadied, and the rushing sound faded into silence.

 

‘The Flame,’ breathed the twins.

 

‘I’ve never seen it with my own eyes,’ said Pukje, peering excitedly from the glast’s shoulders. ‘It hasn’t burned in a thousand years.’

 

‘Don’t get too sentimental about it,’ said the Goddess, straightening and flicking her long ponytail back behind her. ‘It’s just a door.’

 

‘Not every door can stop time,’ said Vehofnehu, ‘and change the fate of worlds.’

 

The Goddess smiled. ‘Time doesn’t stop, just like the Flame never really goes out. It always burns somewhere; time always flows for someone. Here, in the Tomb, we see the process more clearly. Through the door, we can glimpse the world-tree.’ She looked around with excited eyes at the faces before her. ‘All you need to know for now is that time is stopped outside. That gives us an edge, for the moment. But we can’t stay here forever. We’ve got to get a move on.’

 

‘All right.’ Marmion stepped forward, dripping with water and fouled with slime from the tunnel, but dignified and determined all the same. ‘Highson, it’s over to you now. Do you need any help?’

 

Sal’s father shook his head. ‘I think I can manage.’

 

Marmion turned to the twins. ‘Are you two ready?’

 

The Homunculus shivered and hugged itself with all four arms. ‘As ready as we’ll ever be.’

 

‘Then I suggest we do it.’

 

Marmion stepped back and allowed Highson and the twins to come together in the centre of the Tomb, near the speck of light. Sal’s father wore a frown of concentration as he raised a hand to touch the Homunculus’s broad chest. The twins retreated from him, then came back and held their ground. Gently, almost lovingly, Highson ran his fingers across their unnatural skin.

 

‘Be careful,’ said Hadrian weakly. ‘I’m tickl— ah!’

 

The twins flinched as Highson’s right hand suddenly plunged deep into their chest, exactly as though exploring a hole in the side of a tree trunk.

 

The twins’ faces, wide-eyed with alarm, came and went; their limbs contorted into strange shapes. Highson groped through the Homunculus’s chest cavity, searching for something, then moved lower, into the gut.

 

‘Ah,’ he said in satisfaction. His arm stopped moving. His muscles bunched.

 

He closed his eyes in concentration, then pulled. His hand encountered resistance of some kind and didn’t emerge. He pulled a second time, provoking a startled ‘Hey!’ from the twins. His jaw clenched, and he pulled a third time.

 

His hand came free. Shilly had expected the Homunculus to collapse instantly into whatever shape it naturally possessed, but although it briefly trembled on the brink of dissolution, it ultimately stood firm. Highson stepped back, clutching something tightly in his fist. Gently, almost reverently, he opened his fingers.

 

In his palm lay a piece of black parchment folded into a tight square. With his left hand, he unfurled it. Strange silver patterns crawled across the paper much as Kemp’s tattoos crawled across the glast’s glassy skin. Shilly’s eyes watered as she tried to read them.

 

‘This is where it all started,’ said Highson, staring fixedly at the patterns. ‘If I hadn’t made this, the twins wouldn’t have come out of the Void, and Yod wouldn’t have followed.’

 

‘It started long before that,’ said Sal. ‘If my mother hadn’t become lost in the Void, you wouldn’t have tried to rescue her.’

 

‘And if she hadn’t left you,’ Shilly added, ‘she wouldn’t have got lost.’

 

‘It all comes back to her.’ Highson sighed. ‘If Sal hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t even know her name. Seirian, I’m sorry.’

 

The combined voice of the twins came from the Homunculus as though from a great distance away. ‘The Lost Mind who saved Skender, Sal and Kemp in the Void wasn’t called Seirian.’

 

‘She wasn’t?’ A frown flickered across Sal’s face. He looked at Skender, who was holding Chu in his arms. She hadn’t stirred since being abandoned by the golem. Presumably she had been left to die the moment her usefulness had expired.

 

The young mage nodded, red-eyed. ‘People are known by their heart-names in the Void, so she wouldn’t have been called Seirian there.’

 

‘What was that woman’s name?’ Sal asked.

 

‘Eda,’ said the twins.

 

A wave of gooseflesh rolled down Shilly’s arms. She remembered a moment two weeks earlier when Tom had hidden on the boneship and she and Sal had gone to find him. As they had coaxed him back to the others, Shilly had complained that they deserved bad luck for sailing on a ship with no name.

 

‘It does have a name, you know,’ he had told them. ‘It’s called the Eda.’

 

‘Really?’ Sal had asked. ‘Where does that come from?’

 

‘I don’t know, but that’s what it’s called.’

 

And there the matter had been left: another of Tom’s mysterious portents, perhaps never to be verified.

 

‘Eda is Seirian,’ Shilly said. All eyes turned to her. ‘Don’t ask me how I know. I just do. Get on with it, Highson. Finish the job.’

 

Highson nodded. He pressed the parchment flat on his right hand and closed his eyes. His left hand passed slowly over the parchment again, as though smoothing it down.

 

The symbols vanished. The Homunculus collapsed into a golden ball a hand’s-breadth across. With a noise very much like a sigh, the twins were released.

 

Any relief Shilly felt on their behalf was soon expelled as a cry of protest, fear and betrayal filled the crystalline space.

 

* * * *

 

Seth felt the force of Highson’s will relentlessly dismantling the charm that bound them to the Homunculus. He closed his eyes, fearing what he might see as their body unravelled. Would they be flung back into the nothingness of the Void, lacking all connection to the world? Or would they become bodiless spirits like the golem, condemned to wander forever? Perhaps, he thought with a keen sense of dread, they would simply cease to be.

 

He had pondered these possibilities before and come to the conclusion that none were likely, since the Goddess and everyone else needed him and his brother together to keep the Change working, at least until they had finished off Yod — but that did nothing to assuage the irrational fear that filled him. He was powerless. His fate was in Highson’s hands.

 

You want to save the world, don’t you?

 

A rushing sensation swept through him. He remembered the moment when he and Hadrian had accepted their fate and chosen to be locked in the Void. His mind — his being, his soul — had snagged on the Flame and been pared back to one world-line, one fate. He had felt the alternate lives sloughing away like dead skin. That he felt it again now, stronger and more insistent than the time before, only worsened his fear.

 

He opened his eyes. All was blue, not black. He raised his hands and saw skin and bone, not the black of the Void as embodied by the Homunculus. They were his hands, recognisable after a thousand years’ absence even though they were wrinkled and spotted with middle age. He turned them over, marvelling at the nails, the lines, the joints, the reality of them.

 

Then he looked past them, at a collection of blurry shadows visible in the near distance, and realised where he was, and what, exactly, that meant.

 

‘No!’ he cried, running forward on legs as familiar-yet-unfamiliar as his hands. The shadows were further away than they had seemed. Some he recognised — Pukje, the Angel, Ellis — but others were indistinguishable, their features smeared into anonymity. As he ran, they came slowly into focus.

 

‘Seth?’ Hadrian’s voice came from the far side of the group. ‘Where are you?’

 

Seth ignored him. He concentrated solely on joining the others, running with all his strength through air that had become as thick and resistant as honey. ‘Ellis!’ he cried, pushing futilely against unforgiving ground. ‘What the fuck have you done to us?’

 

In reply, she sadly repeated what she had said earlier. ‘I said I’d save you, boys, and this is the only way I know how.’

 

Seth gave up. He could get no closer. Sagging, bending over with his hands on his knees — not out of physical, but, rather, mental and emotional exhaustion — he forced himself to accept the reality of their situation.

 

The words of Ellis’s taller sister, the broad-shouldered, white-haired Meg, came to him from the last hours of his pre-Void life: We can also, on a whim or in service of the realms, take from someone the ability to choose, so they are trapped along the branches of destiny that brought them here. Such people are unable to change what awaits them; the equivalent of souls without flesh in the First Realm or will in the Second. They are ghosts, confined forever to one path.

 

The smaller, wild-haired Ana had picked up the story. They wait here for the end of time to come, when the barriers between all the realms will fall and the doors of their prison are opened.

 

Seth remembered the empty eyes of the ghosts he had seen in Sheol that day. There had been thousands of them, of all races, ages and shapes. Some may have chosen willingly to be trapped; others may have had their fate thrust upon them. Either way, they had been as hopeless as the Lost Minds in the Void. Their world-trees had withered back to a single fruitless stick. The only thing they had left was the chance of oblivion.

 

The weight of their expectation had been awful: that he would be the one to set them free from their unnatural prison.

 

Seth bit down on another cry of dismay. He didn’t want to spend a thousand years locked in the walls of his former lover’s Tomb.

 

An indistinct figure appeared around the curve of his new prison. Not one of the others, it was a man, running.

 

‘Seth?’

 

Hadrian was drawn in strange, incomplete brush strokes. Parts of him were rendered in perfect detail — hands, arms, genitals — but others were indistinct, as though drawn from hazy memory. His neck was a simple tube. His feet were as amorphous as fuzzy slippers. His face, although recognisable, had the quality of an impressionist painting.

 

When Hadrian came close to Seth, Hadrian’s features stabilised into the mirror image of his older self.

 

He’s seeing me, Seth understood. We’re reinforcing our memories, helping us rebuild each other in our own minds.

 

‘What happened?’ Kail asked Ellis from the space between the Tomb’s curving walls, from the real world. ‘What did you do to them?’

 

‘She turned us into ghosts,’ Seth told him, doing his best to ignore Hadrian and the feelings of terror and entrapment welling within him. ‘We’re trapped in here, just like we were in the Void.’

 

‘At least you’re alive,’ Ellis insisted. ‘That’s something, isn’t it?’

 

‘For now,’ Seth said. ‘But you’d better think of something else, or it’s not going to last long.’ He could see the stress and fear on his brother’s wrinkled face, perfectly mirroring his own. Choosing imprisonment in a Void was one thing; being confined against their will was another entirely.

 

‘I’m sorry,’ said Ellis. ‘Hang in there. We still need you to keep the realms together.’

 

‘What about you?’ Hadrian asked her. ‘Do you still need us?’

 

She didn’t reply.

 

‘So now what do we do?’ asked Lidia Delfine. ‘We’ve got the Homunculus, but we don’t have Yod. The golem said it had gone. Where? And how are we going to find it?’

 

The twins watched impotently as Ellis turned her mind to more immediate concerns. Seth kept a restless lid on his churning emotions as, beside him, his brother reached out and took his hand.

 

* * * *

 

Skender stared at the forlorn figures of the twins with a feeling of helpless despair. They were separated at last, but still trapped together. Perhaps they always would be, cursed by fate or some unseen design to be linked in a way he could never understand. Embedded in the icy blue walls of the Tomb as they were, their features were partially obscured, but he could tell how similar they were. He recognised the faces he had glimpsed in the Homunculus, long and lined from hundreds of anxious years in the Void.

 

What, he wondered, if they were all similarly cursed? Was Highson always going to lose the woman he had loved? Was Marmion always going to have authority snatched away from him in times of crisis? Was Skender Van Haasteren the Tenth always going to be lonely?

 

He crouched on the floor of the Tomb cradling Chu in his arms. She hadn’t moved since Shilly had got her breathing again. Her flyer’s uniform was wet and heavy; her skin was cold to the touch. He tried to warm her with his body, holding her as close as he could and rocking her gently. With what little strength he had, he willed her to get well, hoping against hope that if her flesh was strong her mind would return. The bilby sat with him, sensing Skender’s distress. Every few breaths, it licked at Chu’s cheek as though trying to get a response.

 

Skender’s memory haunted him with images of her in the clutches of Upuaut, filled with a dark malevolence that was as alien to her as manners. Its casual discarding of her body, once it had finished with it, was surely only the last in a series of insults and injuries inflicted upon her. Black bruises mottled her throat and cheeks, as though she had been brutally beaten.

 

If she didn’t get well, her flesh might linger in a passive state forever — like the body Kelloman inhabited — and Skender swore that he would do everything in his power to spare her that awful fate.

 

‘Yod won’t have gone far,’ said the Goddess. ‘Since the topography of the Second Realm in its present form has no centre, the Tomb is free to move from place to place. Given a bit of a nudge, it should be able to — yes, here we go.’

 

Skender felt the floor move beneath him as the Tomb lifted from its stony resting place. He put out a hand to steady himself. The crystalline walls dimmed in brightness, allowing a glimpse of the waters, frozen in mid-churn outside. The twins stood silhouetted against the murky backdrop, momentarily distracted from their situation by the new development.

 

‘What shape is the world?’ Hadrian asked the Goddess.

 

‘Flat and curved at the same time,’ she said. ‘It’ll hurt your mind trying to picture it.’

 

‘Try me.’

 

‘Well, if you walk in a straight line in any random direction, you’ll eventually end up back where you started. But there’s no horizon like there was in the old First Realm and you can’t see across to the other side of the world like you could in the old Second Realm, so that means the world is also flat. The curvature occurs in another dimension, one we can’t see or measure. We can only see its effects on a world we think is flat.’

 

‘But the sun and the moon —’

 

‘Very different phenomena from the ones you knew. And the stars in the sky aren’t real stars, either. They’re echoes of the world below. If the realms were fully joined, what you saw in the sky and what happened in the world would be intimately connected. Now, things aren’t quite so clear. So neither astronomy nor astrology work. It’s much more complicated.’

 

‘To this,’ said Vehofnehu, ‘I can attest. Things were simpler when the worlds were separate.’

 

‘Simple is boring,’ said Pukje, standing up on the glast’s shoulder so he towered over the Panic empyricist. ‘Simple is machines and modernism and mass media and marketing. There’s no magic. There are no miracles. Do you really want to go back to those terrible days?’

 

‘Yes, if gods and sacrifices and holy wars are the alternative.’ Vehofnehu’s expressive face twisted into a bitter sneer. ‘What you propose is madness.’

 

Shilly raised a hand. ‘Let’s not do this now.’

 

‘Yes,’ Sal agreed. ‘We’ve got a lot of work to do before we have to make that decision.’

 

‘Do you really think you’re up to it?’ Skender asked Highson, unable to repress a measure of scepticism. ‘Sticking the equivalent of a god inside the Homunculus sounds impossible to me.’

 

‘Any more impossible than sticking two twins into one body?’ Highson shrugged. ‘In principle, it couldn’t be simpler. The Homunculus takes the shape of the mind inside it, regardless of the mind. The tricky part comes from getting it in the right place. The charms I used on the twins were first devised by a mage called Roslin of Geheb. They’re old but effective, designed to trap golems, anchor loose spirits, that sort of thing, by locking mind and vessel together.’ Highson indicated the golden sphere floating weightlessly before them all. ‘The Homunculus needs to be in contact with the mind it’s intended to house. With Yod, I guess that will mean those black tentacles we saw coming out of the lake — although how we’re going to bring the two together, I don’t know.’

 

‘There’s a way,’ said the Goddess, ‘but we’ll talk about that in a moment. What about the parchment?’

 

‘That fixes the charm in place. It needs to go in there too, as the Homunculus takes its shape.’

 

‘Can we do both at the same time?’

 

Highson nodded. ‘There’s no reason why not.’

 

‘We could attack from two sides at once,’ said Kail. ‘I’ll volunteer to be the second person.’

 

‘No.’ Marmion stared down the tall tracker. ‘It’ll be me and Mage Kelloman.’

 

‘What?’ The mage looked as startled as if Marmion had goosed him. The bilby twitched at the alarm in his voice. Skender absently reassured it with a pat.

 

‘You’re less at risk from Yod,’ the warden explained. ‘You can return to your real body in an instant, should something go wrong.’

 

Kelloman scowled, but didn’t argue. ‘All right. But why you? What do you have that the others don’t?’

 

‘I have… means.’ Marmion’s truncated arm shifted awkwardly.

 

‘It should be me,’ said Highson. ‘I know how.’

 

‘Exactly. That makes you indispensable. If we fail and you die, no one will know. We have to be prepared for a second attempt.’

 

Highson looked as though he was about to argue, but the sudden emergence of the Tomb from the waters distracted him from the subject.

 

Soundlessly and without any apparent effort at all, their crystalline vessel levitated into clear air. They were still inside the tower, but had risen above the water that rushed in to fill it up. Directly above, Skender could see the black and grey of frozen storm clouds covering the sky, or so it looked to him at first. As the Tomb continued to rise, floating past the oddly striated interior walls of the cylindrical tower, the view above came into focus.

 

‘Goddess,’ breathed Shilly. Then she realised what she had said. ‘Sorry.’

 

‘It’s all right,’ said Ellis Quick. ‘I understand completely. I’ve seen this in the world-tree before, and it frightens me too.’

 

The Tomb bobbed out of the top of the tower as gently as a soap bubble and drifted to rest on the nearest edge. Skender barely noticed. He was looking at the ghastly black shape stretched across the sky like an enormous, hundred-legged spider hugging the underside of the clouds. It was frozen in place, as were the clouds themselves and the waters of the lake below, but he could see motion implied in every curve of every limb. The creature wasn’t resting after having leapt out of the subterranean den where it had been patiently gathering strength for its big push. It was intent on embarking on that big push with all its will and hunger. It was on the move.

 

‘That’s Yod?’ asked Hadrian.

 

‘It took the shape of a pyramid in the Second Realm,’ said Seth. Both twins, imprisoned in the walls of the Tomb, were craning upwards at the sight. ‘But the tentacles are the same.’

 

‘It takes many shapes,’ the Goddess said, ‘depending on circumstance and desire.’

 

‘What will it look like when we put it in the Homunculus?’

 

‘Your guess is as good as mine. First we have to lure it down here. That means rejoining the world-line and, for some of us at least, leaving the Tomb. Marmion, Highson and Kelloman — you’ll be among them. Not you Skender, or Sal and Shilly, or me. We need to stay in here.’

 

The mention of Skender’s name surprised him. ‘Why not me?’

 

‘I have a purpose for you later,’ said the Goddess. ‘Those outside will be bait.’

 

‘In so many words.’ Kail didn’t flinch from the truth.

 

‘This isn’t a time for niceties. The glast will wait in here until we get a clear response. Remember, the tentacles work by reflex not conscious will, so they will home in on life but shy away from anything threatening. The timing is going to be critical.’

 

‘Can we trust that thing?’ asked Heuve, scowling in the glast’s direction. ‘I haven’t exactly heard it volunteering to help us.’

 

‘I trust it,’ said Sal. ‘If we ask it, it’ll help.’

 

‘Would you stake your life on that?’

 

‘Yes. If I was allowed to.’

 

‘Now, don’t be grumpy about that, Sal’, said the Goddess. ‘You’ve been a hero once already today.’

 

The lake’s surface began to move and Yod stirred into hideous life. Its tentacles undulated across the sky like long black pennants. A strange groaning noise came from the air.

 

‘Tell Marmion and Kelloman what they need to know,’ the Goddess told Highson. ‘Then we’ll set the trap.’

 

Sal’s father nodded. ‘All right.’ He put a hand on each of Marmion’s and Kelloman’s shoulders. Their eyes took on a look of distant focus. ‘Here’s the charm. You apply it like this.’

 

‘That seems rather crude,’ said Kelloman disdainfully. ‘Shouldn’t it be like this?’

 

‘The Roslin Codex specifically states that that won’t work. You have to do it the hard way in order to make it stick. However, there does exist a short cut, one I found in a later text…’

 

While the three men conferred via the Change over the subtleties of forcing Yod into the Homunculus, Skender shifted Chu to a comfortable position and silently wished there was something more he could do. He felt impotent and left out, and had felt so ever since Chu had knocked him unconscious to keep him from joining her on her suicide mission. Things might have been much worse had she not done that — certainly one of them would have ended up dead, for the golem only needed a single body — but that was little comfort.

 

He almost jumped as the Goddess herself squatted down next to him and whispered in his ear, ‘Keep an eye on things for me, Skender. Someone needs to do that. Let me know if you see anything unusual.’

 

‘Okay.’ Skender didn’t know how to feel about being directly addressed by a woman worshipped in absentia for a thousand years. ‘I’ll do that.’

 

‘Thank you.’

 

She stood and waved a hand at a section of the blue crystal wall. It folded back on itself in a complicated geometrical fashion, letting in bitterly cold air and a smell of rotting fish. The groaning noise became louder.

 

Marmion, Highson and Kelloman finished their conference. The one-handed warden stepped into the exit, holding the piece of black parchment between his fingers.

 

‘Who’s coming with us?’ Marmion called behind him. ‘No blame to anyone who wishes to stay here. This is one order I won’t issue.’

 

Lidia Delfine stepped forward, shrugging her bodyguard’s hand off her arm. ‘I’ll do my part,’ she said. ‘Heuve, you don’t have to.’

 

‘My place is beside you, Eminence.’

 

Griel also volunteered, his leather armour creaking.

 

‘I’ll not let a human stand in the path of danger while a Panic falls behind,’ he said with good spirits.

 

Kail joined them, along with the Ice Eater called Orma. Marmion ordered Rosevear back when he tried to stand with them.

 

‘The injured will need you more than we will,’ Marmion said. ‘Thank you,’ he told those who had gathered by the door. ‘I’ll feel safer with you behind me.’

 

The glast came forward, issuing a soft hiss from its fleshless mouth.

 

‘Not yet,’ said Marmion, waving his one good hand at it. ‘Wait until I call. Will you do that for us? Will you come when I call?’ He spoke loudly, as though to someone hard of hearing.

 

The glast nodded once.

 

‘Thank you too.’ Marmion smoothed the front of his robe. Without any further ceremony, he stepped outside.

 

Kelloman followed, his host body pale and tight-lipped, the golden Homunculus gripped tightly in one hand. The rest came in ones and twos, forming a small, lost-looking group on the top of the tower wall. With thudding footsteps, the Angel joined them, but still they looked helpless against the vast creature floating high in the sky above.

 

The people remaining inside the Tomb exchanged glances. Sal looked frustrated and worried, a younger version of his father.

 

‘I should be out there with them,’ he said. ‘I might be able to help.’

 

‘No.’ The Goddess stood firm. ‘You can’t fight Yod using the Change — not in its present form, anyway — and there’s no protection you can offer the others, no matter how badly they might need it.’

 

Shilly took his hand, but he wouldn’t be soothed. Skender sympathised. Watching the group outside take a position a few metres from the Tomb, with Kelloman and Marmion a little further away, was like watching a man on a trapdoor with a noose around his neck. Marmion, with his one remaining hand, tugged the sock off his stump and waved the truncated limb as though returning circulation to the missing fingers.

 

‘Here it comes,’ said Seth from his position inside the Tomb wall.

 

Skender looked up, feeling guilty that he hadn’t been as vigilant as the Goddess had asked him to be. He didn’t see what Seth was referring to until it came between the Tomb and the glowing patch of cloud the sun was hiding behind.

 

A single elongated streamer of black curled away from the rest and with unhurried deadly grace stretched down to investigate.

 

* * * *

 

The curving lip of the tower’s uppermost edge was broad and level enough for six people to stand with arms outstretched. It had seemed much thinner from a distance. Stepping out onto it, Kail shivered, wondering what on Earth had made him volunteer to attract the attention of a vastly hungry god. He possessed nothing but the clothes on his back and the pouch around his neck — and his wits, he supposed, although he had come to think that they might have been scrambled, either by the fall from Pukje’s neck, or perhaps even earlier. For the first time in his life, he wondered if he might have a death wish. In the past, he had noticed a certain bitterness in his temperament or an occasional unwillingness to live as others did — but that, surely, wasn’t the same thing. To die was a definite act. To go on living, whether one was happy about it or not, required only that one did nothing definite at all.

 

He reached for the pouch as he had many times in the previous days, holding it for luck or comfort. Through his gloves he felt the same tiny vibration he had noted before.

 

The fragment of the Caduceus was buzzing for attention. That was how it seemed to him, at that moment — as if a tiny creature was trapped inside the pouch and doing all it could to attract his notice. Absurd, of course, but a seductive thought, once he’d acknowledged it.

 

The note from Vania that he had carried for years was the first thing he saw when he opened the pouch. He didn’t need to read it; the words were burned in his mind. This could have been your home. It wasn’t signed, for she had known that he would recognise her writing. He had found it tucked into his bedroll the night after he had left her village, and part of him, unjustly, had been angry at her for interfering with his kit. More angry at that than at the rebuke in the note, or at himself for leaving her, and he had almost turned back to confront her. Within a day the scales had tipped the opposite way; his dreamed-of return would have been to apologise and ask her forgiveness. But he had kept to the road, plodding ever forward to the next destination, the next person or thing to be tracked. He followed; that was his job. It wasn’t up to him to take the lead.

 

And here he was, hoping to save the world and perhaps himself as well.

 

How did dying fit into that plan, he wondered. What possible redemption had he planned for himself in this life, if the Goddess and the twins and their strange talk of Third Realms and world-trees and the like were to be believed?

 

He didn’t know, but as he took off his gloves and reached into the pouch to take out the letter, his fingers brushed the fragment wrapped within, and a chimerical shock ran down his entire body.

 

‘Kail? Kail! Is that you?’

 

The voice exploded through him, one he had only overheard in a dusty ruin half a world away but recognised instantly.

 

‘You’ve rumbled me, Abi Van Haasteren,’ he replied, sending his message through the Caduceus fragment, finding it easier than he had expected. The Surveyor must have been seeking the missing piece with considerable will to open such a clear link from such a great distance, ‘but I’m afraid this isn’t a good time to give my confession.’

 

‘It’s not a confession I’m after, you fool,’ she snapped. ‘It’s your senses. Now, clear your mind. I know you can do this because you let Sal in Laure.’

 

‘Wait —’ His protest was completely subsumed by the force of the woman’s directive. Not just hers, he sensed, even as he was tossed helplessly into the sudden unfamiliarity of his own skull. There were others Taking behind her, in a vast network the like of which he had never experienced before. He felt dozens of Stone Mages watching through her and in turn through him. And behind them were Sky Wardens and bloodletters and foresters, and people with no clearly recognisable discipline. Somewhere — perhaps everywhere, all across the Earth — a vast crowd had gathered to see the unfolding events through his eyes.

 

‘That’s it.’ Abi Van Haasteren’s tone didn’t lose an iota of its urgency, but she at least attempted to reassure him. ‘I’m sorry to be so rough. We’ve been trying to get your attention for days now.’

 

Even as he felt his eyes tugged upwards, to a thread of blackness descending to kill him, he couldn’t repress the need to know ‘Why?’

 

‘The seers have gone blind. All of them. The only vision they’re receiving now is of the mountains, where you just happen to be. We know you’re there because Marmion and Kelloman have both asked for help in the last day. No one believed them, thinking the problem’s source had to lie closer to home. We didn’t realise then that everyone had the same problem, not just wardens and mages. Marmion and Kelloman stopped asking, but people remembered once the news started to spread. And then the seers started seeing again. The mountains. The end of our world. A new Cataclysm, or something just as bad. We need to know what’s going on.’

 

‘Well, now you see.’ He couldn’t help sounding churlish. ‘You’re just in time to watch us die.’

 

‘That thing up in the sky — what is it?’

 

‘The thing that’s going to kill us. Now get out of my head and let me get out of its way.’

 

The surveyor retreated, and the mob behind her went as well. He found himself back in control of his body and in full possession of his senses. Noises hit him first — the sound of shouting and the strange complaint of the sky as it bore the presence of Yod. The black tentacle had been joined by two more. All three angled in from different directions and would strike at different times.

 

He withdrew his hand from the pouch and let himself be jostled into a group with the others. There was nothing else he could do. To his right loomed the glowing shape of the Goddess’s Tomb. Inside he glimpsed the indistinct shapes of those who had remained behind, either by choice or at the Goddess’s instructions. Marmion stood on his left, gripping Highson’s parchment with his hands, both real and ghostly. Further along the wall waited Kelloman, one fist clutching the raw golden Homunculus, his incongruously young head turned up to the sky.

 

The first tentacle would arrive in seconds, and it was headed right for Kail and the others. Lidia Delfine and Heuve reached for each other’s hands and clasped tight. Griel growled low and wordlessly. A sharp smell of urine came from Orma, but the young Ice Eater held his ground. Kail took his shoulder in one hand.

 

Then suddenly the glast was among them, its glassy darkness reflecting the half-light of the cloudy day. Yod’s deadly tentacle changed course in an instant, curling around them to pass over Marmion’s head. The bald warden ducked automatically, taken off-guard, and Kelloman tensed, ready to run, but the ‘head’ of the tentacle swept harmlessly down the side of the tower. Its tail licked half-heartedly at the huddle protected by the glast, but did no more than threaten.

 

‘This one!’ called Marmion to Kelloman, pointing at the next tentacle on its way. His words barely carried through the thin, cold air. ‘Stand fast and do as Highson told us. It should pass by us both!’

 

A cry of alarm came from the Tomb as the men acting as bait readied themselves. Kail glanced away to see a small shape scurrying across the tower wall with ears and slender tail upraised.

 

‘Catch it!’ Skender cried. ‘Don’t let it go to him!’

 

Kail realised then what had happened. The bilby had escaped from the Tomb and was running to its master. Kail lunged at it as it went by him, but it easily evaded his clumsy grab. Marmion missed it, too.

 

‘Wretched thing,’ Kelloman cursed as both the bilby and the tentacle converged on him.

 

‘Ignore it,’ Marmion warned him. ‘Ignore it!’

 

The tentacle came along the top of the tower wall, flying a metre above the naked stone. It would pass by Kelloman first, then Marmion, then be turned away by the glast before it reached Kail and the others.

 

Kelloman scooped up the bilby when it reached him, and looked torn. Kail could see the dilemma written clearly across his face. To stand and do his job regardless, and kill the bilby in the process — for it, unlike him, couldn’t mentally leap away to safety — or to find some way to save the creature. Which would he choose?

 

For a moment he stood firm, holding the golden orb before him like a talisman in one hand and clutching the bilby to his chest in the other. The tentacle was a heartbeat away. Then, in desperation, he turned and threw the bilby towards Marmion. The warden reached awkwardly to catch it, and dropped the parchment in the process.

 

Two things happened simultaneously. Kelloman collapsed to the stone as the tentacle engulfed him and the golden orb, and the wind tugged the parchment towards the edge of the wall.

 

There was no time to think. A gust of wind pulled the parchment further out of Marmion’s grasp but closer to Kail. Kail’s feet were moving before he’d considered his final destination. The bilby chirruped in the warden’s tight grip. Kail lunged at the parchment just as it reached the edge. He went sprawling over the cold, hard stone. Pain flared in his ribs and back. His outstretched hand caught the parchment just before it disappeared and pulled it back from the brink.

 

Marmion threw the bilby to the cluster of people protected by the glast. Kail held up the parchment and felt it snatched out of his grasp by Marmion’s invisible fingers. The old wound in his chest stung, but he ignored it as the Death bore down on them both.

 

He stayed low, hoping it would pass overhead. Marmion dropped likewise, keeping his invisible hand firmly upraised, clutching the parchment. The black tentacle made no sound as it passed above them, but Kail distinctly felt Marmion shudder as it swept through the ghostly flesh of his hand. His arm came back down. The parchment was gone. The tail of the tentacle swept harmlessly by.

 

Somehow, against all odds, they were still alive.

 

‘It’s done?’ he asked Marmion, who had collapsed next to him, breathing heavily.

 

‘All that can be,’ the bald warden said, rubbing worriedly at the stump of his injured arm. ‘It’s gone. The Death took it.’

 

‘That’s the least of our worries. What about Yod? What’s going to happen now?’

 

‘Your guess, my friend, is as good as mine.’

 

Marmion struggled to his feet, looking anxiously up at the sky. Kail did likewise. A screaming sound, as of the sky tearing open, was building above. The tentacles were visibly retracting into the core body, leaving the third that had menaced them a threat no longer. The light changed from the weak grey of a rainy day to a sickly purple, as though a thunderstorm was about to break.

 

‘Kelloman,’ he said, nodding to where the mage’s body lay on its side further along the wall. ‘We can’t leave him there.’

 

‘It’s not him,’ Marmion said. ‘It was just a host body.’

 

‘Regardless. For the bilby’s sake.’

 

‘Oh, all right.’ With poor grace, Marmion hurried with him to check the girl’s body for signs of life. Kail found a weak pulse in the girl’s wrist. That was enough. Kail took her feet and Marmion her shoulders. Together they carried her to where the others waited.

 

‘Do you think Mage Kelloman made it out in time?’ asked Lidia Delfine, clutching the wriggling bilby tight in her grasp.

 

‘We’ll find out later, I guess.’ Marmion hurried them towards the Tomb.

 

‘It’s getting bigger,’ said Heuve, looking up.

 

‘Not bigger,’ said Marmion. ‘Closer.’

 

Kail followed the direction of their gaze. It was true. Yod’s central portion did seem to be getting larger, but that was an illusion. Instead of a bodiless form floating effortlessly in the sky, it was now a corporeal being, with a new shape and, most importantly, mass.

 

‘Hurry!’ he urged those ahead of him. The purple sky was becoming darker as Yod’s shadow deepened. Eerie groaning became a deep wailing — of air complaining, Kail thought, at the unnatural stresses placed upon it by the falling body. Yod was as large as a mountain and no doubt as heavy. Everyone stood to be crushed to oblivion if they didn’t move fast.

 

Highson appeared at the entrance to the Tomb, arms reaching to help. Marmion gave him the shoulders of Kelloman’s host body and began urging people ahead of him. Kail transferred the body’s legs to Sal. Before he could follow, a stiff wind whipped across the lake, pulling him backwards. The noise had become painful.

 

Kail, Marmion and the Angel were the only stragglers remaining outside when the first of Yod’s falling tentacles hit the tower. A shockwave rushed through the stone, throwing both men off their feet. Marmion clutched at the entrance of the Tomb with the stump of his missing hand, but there was nothing left to grip with since the ghost limb had been devoured by Yod.

 

Kail ignored the way the stone bucked beneath his knees and hands. Putting his shoulder into Marmion’s armpit, he shoved the bald warden bodily closer to the Tomb. Hands clutched at them both. Voices calling encouragement went unheard under the booming of falling masonry. Kail felt the world drop out from beneath him as Marmion was lifted to safety. He snatched at Marmion’s robe, but it whisked out of his grasp.

 

Then all was shadow and noise. The pouch in his left hand buzzed for his attention. When he had reached for Marmion’s robe with his right hand, he had wanted to throw the Caduceus fragment into the Tomb with his left, seeing the Goddess’s face amongst the people inside and hearing her voice tell him from the previous night: I know what you carry around your neck. You mustn’t lose it, no matter what happens. He might fall — weightless, for the second time in two days — but the pouch should not.

 

He had been too slow. There was no time for regret. With the letter clutched tight in his fist, weightless, he thought only of home.

 

* * * *

 

The Stand

 

 

‘All things have a beginning, just as all things

have an end. Some gods were born in fire, others

in the womb of the Void. Some died alone while

others were buoyed into oblivion by the prayers

of millions. In that, as in so many ways, they

were no different at all to us.’

 

THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 12:45

 

 

al staggered backwards as Kail disappeared in a roar of noise. The Tomb bucked underfoot, sending everyone flying. He went down in a tangle of limbs, unable to keep hold of Kelloman’s host body. He put his hands over his head and hoped not to land on anyone too hard.

 

Then suddenly, all was silent and still outside the Tomb. Caught in time between Yod and the tower, the Goddess was giving them a moment to find purchase on the floor or each other. Sal found himself sprawled awkwardly across Vehofnehu and Tom. He helped the empyricist up and made sure Tom wasn’t harmed in any visible way. The young seer slept on, impervious to the chaos around him.

 

‘What about Kail?’ Shilly was asking. ‘What about him?’

 

‘He’s gone,’ said Marmion. ‘He was behind me when the tower fell. He helped me to safety, then he fell too.’

 

‘With the Angel,’ said Sal. He had clearly seen the giant man’kin tumble away. He looked around, seeking the glast. Mawson’s head still hung safely in its tight grasp. Sal forced his way into the head’s line of sight. ‘You exist outside of time. So does the Angel. Can you still talk to it? Do you know where it is?’

 

‘I can lead you there,’ Mawson said.

 

‘You don’t think —’ Shilly began, hope beginning to shine through the horror in her eyes.

 

‘I’m not thinking anything,’ he said, ‘except that we should try.’

 

She nodded and reached for his hand. ‘Yes.’ Of the Goddess, she asked, ‘Can we?’

 

‘We can if the way is clear. Guide me, Mawson. You’re my only eyes through this mess.’

 

Sal kept Shilly close by his side as the Tomb sought a path through the frozen tangle of Yod’s tentacles and an avalanche of boulders. The deeper they went the darker it became, until the only light came from the Tomb itself.

 

Time dragged, inside as well as out. Sal left Shilly’s side to check on Kelloman’s host body. Rosevear pronounced it in reasonable fitness, despite its passage through one of Yod’s tentacles, but couldn’t say whether Kelloman himself had survived.

 

‘Until he returns or we hear from him,’ said the healer, ‘it’s impossible to tell.’

 

Sal nodded. The bilby shivered in the crook of the host body’s arm, entirely unaware of the chaos it had caused.

 

‘It’s my fault,’ said Skender. ‘I should have stopped it faster.’

 

‘Maybe you should’ve,’ said Sal, ‘but it’s not your fault.’

 

Skender looked close to tears. ‘What if he’s dead because of my mistake? What will that mean? I can’t understand what she could want with someone like me.’

 

He was talking about the Goddess, Sal realised. ‘Don’t worry about it now,’ Sal told him. ‘There’s nothing you can do. Beating yourself up about it doesn’t help anyone.’

 

‘I know, but —’

 

‘Concentrate on Chu. She’s someone you can help.’

 

Skender nodded, eyes downcast, and went to the unconscious flyer.

 

‘What about you?’ asked Highson softly. ‘Do you need anything?’

 

Sal looked up at his father, who sat near Kelloman’s host body. Highson was rubbing his wrist, sprained in the chaos.

 

‘Me? I’ve got nothing to worry about.’

 

Highson nodded at Shilly, who was staring with liquid eyes through the crystalline walls of the Tomb. Visible in a clump of debris was the Angel, missing its tail and one of its three legs.

 

‘The Angel says to leave it be,’ Mawson intoned. ‘Rescue is not required.’

 

‘But we could pull it inside,’ Shilly protested. ‘All we have to do is open a door and —’

 

‘The Angel will not die, even if its life here ends. Its life resonates through all possible moments. This is just one of them.’

 

Shilly nodded. ‘All right. What about Kail, then? Does the Angel know where he is?’

 

Mawson didn’t reply.

 

‘I suggest we look up,’ the Goddess said. ‘He fell a second or so after the Angel, so he wouldn’t have come this far.’

 

Sal kneaded Shilly’s shoulders as the Tomb nudged its way through clots of boulders and tentacles. Yod’s flesh was caught in mid-transformation, losing its cloudy translucency and adopting a denser, more leathery texture. The width of its tentacles was increasing, too, just as their length decreased. Sal was reminded of a many-limbed sea creature retracting into itself when touched.

 

It was still huge, however. Lurking ever-present at the side of Sal’s thoughts was the question: And we’re to kill this?

 

‘There,’ said Marmion, pointing up and to the right. ‘I think I see something.’

 

The Goddess edged the Tomb in the direction indicated, and Sal saw what had caught the warden’s eye: a hand sticking out of a cloud of rubble. A hand clutching a leather pouch.

 

‘That’s him,’ said Shilly. ‘Can we go closer?’

 

The Tomb came right up next to him. A hole opened in its side, allowing some of the debris into the charmed ambience within. Stones and dirt rattled to the floor, followed by Kail’s arm. Highson and Marmion eased him free of the time-frozen rubble, centimetre by centimetre. Sal watched as the leather pouch slipped from Kail’s limp fingers, and wasn’t surprised when he saw blood on the tracker’s clothing.

 

Shilly didn’t turn away, but she didn’t come any closer, either. At the sight of his staved-in chest and twisted arm, she reached up and clutched Sal’s arm. He didn’t complain. Kail had come so close to death in the previous weeks that he had come to seem immortal: first the infected wound inflicted on him by the Swarm; then the avalanche; and then falling from Pukje’s back. Now his luck had run out, and there was little else to say.

 

‘I’m sorry,’ Sal whispered into her ear. ‘He was a good man, and a good friend.’

 

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I wish I could have known him better.’

 

The echo of Kail’s comment about her — almost exactly the same, word for word — made Sal want to weep for what she would now never have.

 

The Goddess stooped to pick up the pouch and gave it to Shilly. ‘We can grieve now or later,’ she said. ‘I think he’d want us to keep fighting.’

 

‘If there is a later,’ Shilly said, ‘we’ll have to commit his ashes to the water somewhere. That’s what Sky Wardens do.’ Her voice was flat, with all emotion carefully buried. ‘But not the lake. I don’t think he’d like being here forever.’

 

Marmion nodded and said, ‘Actually, I’m not sure water suits him at all.’

 

‘No, you’re right. He was different from the rest of you, just like —’ She couldn’t finish the sentence, but Sal knew what she had wanted to say. Like Lodo.

 

At a gesture from the Goddess, the Tomb backed out of the clump of rubble and headed for clear air.

 

* * * *

 

They re-entered the world-line as soon as they cleared the last of the debris. Shilly watched with fingernails digging into her palms as time started up again outside the Tomb. The grotesque black shape hanging half-in, half-out of the sky recommenced its precipitous descent. From a distance, its fall looked almost tranquil, conducted through a gentle mist rising up from the lake’s surface, as though in welcome. The raging noise and violence of that rubble-filled boundary still filled her head, however, and Kail’s crushed body lay as a brutal reminder, should she ever forget.

 

Have we killed you? she wondered as Yod came crashing downward. Will the fall break and burst you, as you deserve?

 

In Yod’s wake, storm clouds roiled and thundered. Lightning arced between sky and water, or into Yod itself. Its body covered an area the size of a small city. The towers were gone, now buried under their architect’s gargantuan mass, with the Angel. Waves surged outwards from the first point of impact, racing the Tomb to the shore.

 

In Kail’s pouch, which she still clutched tightly in her left hand, something moved.

 

‘That’s part of the Caduceus,’ said Sal, catching sight of the knuckle-sized, opalescent fragment when Shilly brought it out into the open. ‘Kail had it all the time.’

 

It was beautiful, as many-coloured as oil on water. The Change radiated from it in powerful waves as she held it up to look at it more closely.

 

The buzzing grew more insistent, and a voice whispered in her ear, a voice from far, far away.

 

‘Hey,’ she said, giving it to Sal. The Goddess watched her closely from the other side of the Flame, as though she knew something but didn’t want to say. That annoyed Shilly; it reminded her of her older self. ‘See if you can work out what it’s doing.’

 

The moment Sal touched the tiny fossilised bone, his fingers tightened around it and drew it to his chest. His head tilted back and his eyes closed. Alarmed, Shilly reached out and took his arm, just in case he lost his balance and fell.

 

‘Sal Hrvati?’ she heard a voice say. ‘And, yes, Shilly of Gooron. You would naturally be together. When Surveyor Van Haasteren told me that she had uncovered a strange situation in the hinterlands of the world, I didn’t for a moment consider it would be this strange.’

 

Shilly took a moment to place the voice. Not just the voice, but the personality behind it: gruff and arrogant, but not in the same way as Mage Kelloman. This man wielded real power, not imaginary. This man knew his place in the world.

 

‘Alcaide Braham,’ Sal said with bitterness in his voice. Adversary was too strong a word for what the Alcaide had been to them. If Sal had really had an adversary, it was the Alcaide’s chief administrator Syndic Zanshin, who, as Highson Sparre’s aunt, had played a critically destructive role in Sal’s life. However, the Alcaide had begrudged helping him when the full weight of all the Weavers had urged him to. ‘Were you expecting Habryn Kail or Eisak Marmion?’

 

‘Either, or anyone, really, other than you. When did you join the expedition?’

 

‘Weeks ago. Didn’t Marmion tell you?’

 

‘No, I —’ The Alcaide did a double-take. ‘Of course! He knew I would never have permitted it, so naturally I wasn’t told. Is he in league with your father as well, or has that situation at least been contained?’

 

‘You’re asking me?’

 

‘Ah, yes. Quite right. Is Marmion there? Hand the Caduceus over and let me talk to him.’

 

Marmion had been quizzically watching the exchange. Shilly mouthed the name of his superior and Sal offered him the crystalline fragment. Marmion nodded and didn’t shirk from the confrontation. But instead of just taking the crystal, he folded his one hand over Sal’s in order to include them in the conversation. Behind the audible exchange, Shilly felt the combined attention of dozens, maybe hundreds, of observers.

 

‘I’m relieved to be talking to you, Alcaide Braham,’ he began. ‘We’re in a difficult position here, one that I fear threatens the Strand and all its inhabitants’

 

‘So you tried to tell me yesterday.’ came the instant reply. ‘Or is there something else you have failed to report, like consorting with fugitives and necromancers?’

 

‘With respect, sir, the past is irrelevant. We are fighting for our future.’ Marmion looked pained, but his mental voice was level. ‘The task exceeds us. I am asking for your aid — and more than that. The time for recriminations is over. In the name of the Goddess I am calling for the aid of all Change-workers, irrespective of allegiance or discipline. We must fight together. Side by side we will save our world. Apart we will all die. That is the challenge before us, Alcaide Braham. Are you up to it?’

 

‘Am I —!’ The Alcaide mentally choked on the words. ‘I’ll see you stripped of your torc, Marmion, for speaking to me that way. How dare you?

 

Marmion didn’t even blink, and in that moment Shilly saw his true strength.

 

‘I dare, sir, because the times call for action not politics. Punish me later if you wish. For now, just act — all of you listening in. Heed the words of a man who has never found insubordination or disloyalty easy, and stop arguing amongst yourselves. By the time someone has won the argument, we’ll all have lost.’

 

Shilly felt the observers becoming restless, wanting to intrude on the conversation between Alcaide Braham and his man on the inside. The Alcaide, however, wasn’t relinquishing control so easily. His blustering become louder and more strident until eventually Marmion simply gave up. He took his hand off Sal’s and walked away.

 

‘Uh, I’m afraid you’re talking to just us now, Alcaide Braham,’ Sal said, cutting forcefully across the man’s tirade. ‘And I fear I will be unsuccessful too if I try to take up the argument. Is there no way we can convince you?’

 

‘Of course there is,’ put in Shilly. Her mood was hard and brooked no disagreement. ‘Alcaide Braham, look through Sal’s senses and you’ll see what we face up here.’

 

‘We have already seen through Habryn Kail’s —’

 

‘And that wasn’t enough? Then you’ve half the brains I thought you had. Or half the spine. Which is it?

 

‘I’m not half as gullible as you’d like me to be, that’s for sure. A shape in the sky; a muttered threat. Do you expect me to hand over my authority so easily? I’ve bent the rules enough for you already, Shilly of Gooron. They can only be bent so far.’

 

‘Like people.’ Shilly nudged Sal and nodded at Kail’s body. ‘Look at this, Alcaide. Look long and hard, and think about what it means.’

 

Shilly sent Sal a charm that would take everything he saw, heard and felt and ram it down the Caduceus link to those at the other end.

 

‘Kail?’ said the Alcaide in disbelief when he saw the body laid out on the far side of the room. ‘Is he —?’

 

‘Yes. If we’re all conspirators in some grand scheme, why would we have killed him?’

 

‘An accident, perhaps, or a mishap. Or he betrayed you like his uncle betrayed the Strand before him.’

 

‘Kail was an honourable man, and a strong one. You can’t tarnish his memory. That’s beyond your power. What is in your power is the means of stopping other good people from dying. Will you exercise that power or let pride get in the way?’

 

A long silence answered her, but not an empty one. Shilly sensed a furious exchange of words taking place just below the limits of her perception.

 

‘Where are you?’ the Alcaide eventually asked. ‘I don’t mean whereabouts on Earth, but in what sort of place.’

 

‘We’re in the Tomb of the Goddess,’ Sal replied.

 

‘Nonsense. That’s a legend.’

 

‘No more than she is.’ Sal stared pointedly at the woman herself, who endured his scrutiny patiently, as though knowing exactly what was going on behind his eyes. She probably did, Shilly thought. ‘I’d advise against telling her she doesn’t exist. I don’t think she’d like it.’

 

‘This is too much,’ the Alcaide spluttered. ‘It simply cannot be as you say.’

 

‘Can you afford to take the chance that it isn’t?’ Shilly asked in a softer tone, hiding her frustration and anger behind a mask of reasonableness.

 

‘No,’ the Alcaide admitted. ‘No, I can’t, the Void take you.’

 

‘Does that mean you’re going to do something about it?’

 

‘Perhaps. Give me a landmark.’

 

‘A what?’

 

‘A clear sensory image that we can latch onto. You’ll have your answer within the hour.’

 

‘In what form?’

 

‘I can’t tell you that right now. Don’t push your luck.’ The Alcaide was bitter in defeat, but not vindictive. ‘About that landmark…?’

 

The first that came to Shilly’s mind was the silhouette of an old man visible in the cliffs near the ruins of the crashed balloon. She sent as focussed an image of it as she could through Sal to the Alcaide, who accepted it without comment.

 

Then a new voice joined them. ‘Is Skender there?’

 

Shilly recognised Skender’s mother, last seen in Laure before Marmion’s expedition had left for the Hanging Mountains.

 

‘Yes,’ Sal said, seeking out a glimpse of his friend among the others in the Tomb. Skender was sitting beside Chu, long-faced and bruised.

 

‘I don’t have time to talk right now. Just tell me: is he all right?’

 

‘He’ll survive.’

 

‘And Chu?’

 

‘Unconscious’ Sal didn’t elaborate on the young woman’s possession by the golem or speculate on the damage that might have been done. Shilly was glad for that. ‘It’s not been an easy time for any of us, I fear. We really do need help.’

 

Abi Van Haasteren sighed. ‘Don’t worry about the Alcaide. I got him this far, didn’t I?’

 

With that, the Caduceus fell still. Sal held it awkwardly, unsure what to do with it for a moment, then he gave it back to Shilly.

 

‘I think you should look after it,’ he said. ‘Anyone who can stand up to the Alcaide the way you just did has earned the right twice over, I reckon.’

 

She slipped it into Kail’s pouch and bit her lip in a sudden wave of sorrow. Grieve later, she reminded herself sternly. Don’t fall apart now. People need you. Sal put his arms around her and held her tight.

 

* * * *

 

‘Take us to the balloon crash site,’ Sal told Ellis over Shilly’s shoulder. ‘We make a stand there.’

 

The Goddess nodded, and the Tomb changed course for the lake shore.

 

‘What does that mean, exactly? What sort of stand?’ Hadrian whispered to Seth.

 

Seth shook his head, not knowing. No one was paying any attention to them or their doubts. Just because Yod had been put into a body didn’t mean that it wasn’t still dangerous. Its fall had sent tsunamis high up the shore, sweeping away the empty Ice Eater villages, and more were on their way as the giant creature assumed its final form. What that would be was hard to tell. Behind clouds of spray, only a broad black back was visible, ridged as though flayed with a whip, and as long as a skyscraper tipped on its side. It was patently still moving, and not dead as they had hoped.

 

Seth paced around the interior of the Tomb, following the curving crystal wall and dividing his attention between inside and out. The return of an individual body — his body, discomforting in its new unfamiliarity — made him restless, as it did his brother, following Seth a pace or two behind as though tied to him by a string. Seth didn’t know whether to push him away or hold him close. His insides churned with uncertain, conflicting emotions.

 

Kail was dead. Any one of the people who had willingly put themselves in harm’s way to draw Yod into the trap could have died, but it had been Habryn Kail, the lonely, sometimes severe man who had helped the twins when they had most needed it. He had been their first true ally in the new world, certainly the first who had tried to explain how the world worked and where they might fit into it. Their exchanges might have been confusing and fraught with misconceptions, but they had been honest. They had helped Seth and Hadrian connect.

 

Now there was nothing for them to connect with. Their new body was gone. Kail was gone. All purpose had ended.

 

In this world-line, the Homunculus was the important thing. It was the means by which Yod could be embodied and therefore made vulnerable. The twins may have mattered back in their day, when the Cataclysm needed stopping, but they had since outlived their usefulness. If their continuing presence wasn’t still required to keep the realms together, Seth wasn’t sure that anyone would have cared if it had been him and his brother who had died, not Kail.

 

Hang in there, Ellis had said. We still need you.

 

Bullshit, he thought. Pure and utter bullshit.

 

‘What’s wrong?’ Hadrian asked him, still following like a puppy on a lead. ‘Why are you so angry? We’re free now. We’re separated. We’re with Ellis. What more do you want?’

 

That was the question. What more did he want? To kill Yod? To be a hero?

 

He stopped and turned on Hadrian. ‘We’re not free.’ His finger stabbed at his brother’s chest, sending him backwards in full retreat. They might be ghosts to everyone else, but to each other they were perfectly solid. ‘You’re an idiot if that’s what you really think we are.’

 

‘I’m not an idiot.’

 

‘We’ve never been free, not since the day we were born.’

 

‘Is anyone, Seth?’ Hadrian knocked his hand away and stopped so suddenly they almost collided. ‘You say you want to be free, but what would you do if you were? I don’t see you wishing for anything specific. You have no grand plans of your own. You have no dreams. All you do is react.’

 

‘And what’s wrong with that?’

 

‘You tell me. What are you missing out on? What exactly?’

 

Seth turned away. He couldn’t answer that question. There was no answer. All he had when he tried to find one was a raw, aching hole where something had been ripped out of him. Perhaps that was Hadrian. Or perhaps the hole had never been there and the wound was really an integral part of his psyche, rubbed raw by his sudden return to his old body.

 

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I’ve lost or what I want. I don’t know anything. But don’t act so smug and self-righteous as though you have all the answers. You’re as much in the dark as I am. I do know that much.’

 

Hadrian surprised him then. Instead of arguing, he put his arms around Seth from behind and hugged him. Instantly Seth’s anger evaporated, and a new and equally powerful emotion — grief — rushed in to take its place.

 

‘Your problem,’ Hadrian said, ‘is that you think we’re the same as everyone else. We’re not. We’re mirror twins. That sets us apart, just as if we were incredibly tall or congenitally blind. There’s no point fighting it. We can only adapt and live in our own way.’

 

‘You would call this life?’ Seth waved to encompass their Tomb-wall environment.

 

‘Well, it’s not death, and it might not be permanent. Don’t rattle the cage until we know it is a cage. That’s all I’m suggesting.’

 

Seth nodded, feeling exhausted from the emotional roller coaster. More than anything, he just wanted to sleep. Being back in an illusion of his body brought back memories of hostel beds in Europe: stale-smelling and lumpy, but as luxurious as anything he could imagine at the moment. He could barely remember a time before that: at home in Australia with their mother, in a normal life, a normal world.

 

Not normal, he corrected himself. Hadrian was right. They had never been normal. The Castillo twins had always stood apart — and not just because society saw them differently. They were different right down to the bone.

 

Perhaps the idea of ‘normal’ was fundamentally invalid, anyway. The face of the entire world had changed many times. Change was the only constant.

 

‘Look,’ said Hadrian, pointing outside the Tomb, back the way they had come, where the mist was settling and Yod’s final form was becoming clearer.

 

In shape it looked something like a sea urchin, one with thousands of spines clustered in five broad patches at each corner of its black body. The knobbly carapace undulated like a manta ray’s, and was at least a hundred metres across. Every movement kicked up powerful waves, making it difficult to see exactly how it held itself up, but it seemed to Seth that its underside was spined as well.

 

‘Jesus,’ he breathed. He could see no eyes or mouths — indeed no obvious front or back at all. And the shape was still changing: five slender limbs, reminiscent of shark-fins, were rising up between the stalk-clusters and curving inwards like teeth. ‘What’s it doing?’

 

‘Growing,’ said Hadrian. ‘Becoming.’

 

‘Becoming what?’

 

‘I don’t know. Whatever it wants to be, perhaps. It wasn’t like us. It never had a real body, so it’s building a form that suits its needs, evolving right in front of our eyes.’

 

‘It needs to stay alive,’ said Seth, trying to put himself in the position of the alien invader. ‘That means not being crushed as it fell, hence the shell. Then it wouldn’t want to drown, and the stilts help with that. They’d also give it a way to move.’

 

‘Which I think it’s trying to do.’

 

Seth could hear the concern in his brother’s voice. ‘Move where?’

 

‘One guess.’

 

‘After us?’

 

‘We put it in the Homunculus. If anyone can get it out, it’s us. Maybe it just wants to stop us before we do any more damage. Or maybe it wants revenge.’

 

‘It took us ages to get used to things after we got our new body,’ Seth said.

 

‘We might be able to use that to our advantage. And the ankh. The Tomb will be harder for Yod to find while we’re inside.’

 

Hadrian waved his hands to attract Ellis’s attention. She came over and stood before them, gliding through the others as though they didn’t notice her.

 

‘I don’t know what you guys have planned next,’ said Seth, comfortable being the spokesman, ‘but I suggest you get a move on. That thing isn’t sitting on its hands — or whatever it uses for hands.’

 

Ellis nodded. ‘I know, and the solution is temporarily out of my hands, now. The board is set; the pieces are in play. I’m just one of those pieces, as you have been. We can but sit back and watch the conclusion.’

 

‘Nonsense. You’re the Goddess. You can tell them what to do.’

 

‘Should I do that, Seth? Should I take over the world as someone like Yod or Tatenen would and solve every problem for the people who live here? Or should I just solve the important ones, and leave everyone to squabble over unimportant things? I don’t think that sounds terribly satisfying for any of us, even if it were possible, and I don’t think they’d truly want it. I brought them where they needed to be, and now I take them elsewhere. The rest they can work out for themselves, or else they won’t be worth saving.’

 

Hadrian reeled. ‘That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?’

 

‘You say that in the face of Yod, who would eat everyone alive if given the chance? I can’t do anything more. Accept that, and let’s move on.’

 

‘Hadrian and I aren’t going anywhere,’ said Seth, feeling his anger stirring again. ‘Thanks to you.’

 

She sighed and lowered her head. Weathered hands rubbed at her temples. ‘One way or another,’ she said, ‘I promise to resolve your situation.’ Her hazel eyes came up and looked at both of them in turn. ‘When this crisis is past,’ she added. ‘Should our friends here lose, the matter will be somewhat academic’

 

‘Yod will get the Flame?’ asked Hadrian.

 

‘And you really will be ghosts.’ Called by one of the others, she went to turn away, but stopped and added, ‘And by that, I mean dead. But I suppose that might still count as a resolution. What do you think, Seth?’

 

She had moved off before he could come up with something to say.

 

I think someone at least owes us an apology. But he kept that to himself, knowing he was being petulant. The universe didn’t have to apologise for what happened to him. And ultimately it had been his choice — his and Hadrian’s — to follow the path they had taken the last time they had seen the Flame.

 

I know what I want to do, he had told her then. But he couldn’t apologise to himself. That was just ridiculous.

 

There’s no point fighting who you are. That’s the one battle you will always lose. So the captain of Hantu Penyardin had told him an aeon and a lifetime ago. If he couldn’t fight and he couldn’t apologise, what was he supposed to do?

 

‘Acceptance sounds to me like letting people walk all over you,’ he told his brother.

 

‘I don’t think you’ve ever done that.’ Hadrian looked sad and frustrated. ‘But it happened, anyway.’

 

* * * *

 

Skender felt the Tomb change course and looked away from Chu’s sleeping form to see a cliff face approaching on his right. Somehow they had travelled from the centre of the lake without him being aware of it. There had been a moment when he had sensed Sal and Shilly talking about him through the Change, but beyond that he had been totally focussed on trying with the small amount of the Change he possessed to bring Chu back.

 

He cursed his inattentiveness to the world around him. The Goddess had asked him to keep an eye on things. She must have done so for a reason. She never did anything without a reason.

 

If she had arrived in time, he thought, before Marmion had sent Chu and Skender on their mission to distract Yod, perhaps Chu would be well now…

 

Stop it, he told himself. Things could be worse. Chu could be dead. The plan to embody Yod could have failed. It could be coming to eat us all right now.

 

When he looked back the way they had come and saw the giant spiny monster rising out of the deep, he quashed any further reassurances along those lines. Flocks of flying devels, tiny in the distance, circled the vast carapace like seagulls over a fishing catch.

 

Easing Chu into a supine position, he stood. His knees were stiff and sore from crouching for so long. Among the shocked faces and earnest discussions, he saw Warden Banner sitting alone, rubbing the leg that had been broken in Milang.

 

‘Are you feeling all right? I can call Rosevear for you, if you want.’

 

She shook her head. ‘I’m just strengthening the binding charm on the break. It’s been knocked around a little in recent times and I don’t want it to give out on me now.’ Her smile was genuine but weary, just like the curls in her hair. ‘Fat lot of good I’m going to be in a fight, either way.’

 

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ll hold your own.’

 

‘I’m not a warrior. People train for years to do stuff like that. I was just along to fix the engines.’

 

She indicated the Tomb with a wave of one hand. ‘If this thing even has engines…’

 

He understood her feelings of uselessness all too well, but wouldn’t let her indulge them. ‘You’re an Engineer. I haven’t even passed my final examination.’

 

‘Titles don’t mean anything. It’s what’s inside that matters.’

 

‘When something like that is coming after you,’ he said, jerking a thumb at the ungainly behemoth following them across the lake, shape visibly changing as it came, ‘I don’t think what’s inside me is going to do anyone much good.’

 

‘To the contrary, you might be exactly what we need. Look at that stone shelf, where the shore is narrowest. See how the shelf is leaning out slightly from the crater wall? It’s balanced quite delicately. If we could find a way to break that balance and send it crashing down into the lake, we could trigger a wave big enough to give that thing reason to pause.’

 

‘Really?’

 

‘Yes, really. Don’t underestimate the power of water. Get it moving en masse, and nothing will stand in its way.’

 

Skender studied the rock formation near the one identifying the resting place of the crashed balloon, but lacked the skills required to see the subtle interplay between mass and gravity that kept the slab in place. ‘How would we break the balance?’

 

‘You tell me. I don’t know anything about the properties of living stone.’

 

He studied the cliff face, thinking hard, and came up with several complex charms that might do the trick, if Sal was behind them.

 

‘There’s only one catch,’ he said. ‘We’d need to be in contact with the stone to make it work.’

 

‘That’s all right. I’m sure we could get out of the way in time.’

 

‘That’s not what I mean. Look down there.’

 

She looked where he pointed to the lake shore below. A contingent of earthbound devels was following the Tomb’s progress.

 

‘That’s not fair,’ she said. ‘Can’t we get a single break?’

 

‘It would seem not.’

 

The devels had been seen by others in the Tomb. Marmion emitted one of his ear-splitting whistles.

 

‘That’s the last time I’ll do that, I promise you,’ he said, trying for humour. ‘We’ve come to the end of the road. This is where we’re going to put our foot down and say “enough”. The job’s not yet finished, and I for one won’t be leaving until it is.’ His dark eyes scanned the weary group gathered before him, looking for signs of dissent. He received none, not even from Pukje. ‘Now, we’ve had word from the outside world, and we may receive some help, but I think it’s best to assume we won’t get it. We do possess resources we haven’t fully drawn on yet. I have some thoughts, and from what I overheard Skender and Banner talking about, they do too. Don’t be afraid to suggest or try something — anything — that might buy us some time.’

 

‘How long do we have to hold?’ asked Lidia Delfine.

 

‘An hour or less,’ the Alcaide said. Sal stood with his arms folded next to Shilly. Their expressions were identically dispirited.

 

‘That’s not so long,’ said Highson. ‘We can easily manage it after everything else we’ve done.’

 

The look on Lidia Delfine’s face told Skender that she disagreed, but she kept her mouth shut — as did Griel and all the other seasoned fighters in the group. Skender understood why. He had read enough history to know that wars could be won or lost in seconds, and that half an hour could be half a lifetime on a battlefield.

 

‘I want the Tomb near the base of the crater wall to act as a last-ditch defence and a shelter for the injured,’ Marmion said. ‘The rest of us will stand before it. Everyone who can fight will, or they must leave what little protection we offer. The time for fence-sitting is past.’ At this he looked specifically at Pukje, who saluted mockingly. ‘Finally, remember that Yod isn’t an animal, and it isn’t stupid; it’s big and it’s slow, but it might have things in its favour that we can’t begin to imagine. Don’t underestimate it. That mistake could be our last.’

 

He looked at Sal and Shilly, as though checking to see if they had anything to add. They didn’t. The Goddess stood to one side, flanked by the ghostly twins in their crystal prison. She had nothing to say either. Skender tried to read her mood, but failed.

 

‘We came here with a common purpose,’ said Griel. The Panic soldier’s leather armour was scuffed and scratched, but he stood proudly at the centre of attention. ‘I’m not leaving until I see it done.’

 

‘For everyone in the forest,’ agreed Lidia Delfine.

 

‘For everyone everywhere,’ said Rosevear.

 

‘For everyone we’ve lost,’ said Orma, the young Ice Eater.

 

‘And for those we can still save,’ added Skender, feeling his face flush. Embarrassment didn’t stop him from saying what he knew to be true. If he had to stand over Chu and fight off the devels with his bare hands, he would do it.

 

‘Thank you,’ said Marmion. The bald warden was visibly moved beneath his usual bluster. There might even have been tears in his eyes. ‘Bring us down, Ellis. There’s no point delaying any longer.’

 

The Goddess nodded and the Tomb began to descend. The slab of stone loomed over them like the prow of a giant ship, its sides worn smooth by time and the elements. The thought that this might be the last thing he ever saw made Skender feel sick.

 

The Tomb settled on a shelf of stone by the chin of the old man’s silhouette. A hole opened in its side, letting in bitterly cold air and the cries of approaching devels. A distant booming, like surf crashing to shore but with a more rapid, syncopated rhythm, could only be Yod, Skender realised. It hurried towards them, making surprising speed on its hundreds of stilt-like legs. Tall antennae waved and probed the air, seeking them through senses unknown.

 

Marmion led the way outside, flanked by Lidia Delfine and Griel. Skender came in the middle of the group, holding a long-bladed knife Heuve had given him. The devels were downslope, roughly fifty in number and of all shapes and colours. He tried not to think about them any more than he had to. Sword and hook and the warden’s skills would keep them at bay for a while. He and Banner had more important work to do.

 

The natural flows of the Change flexed and tied themselves in knots. Marmion and Sal were already at work. A stiff wind sprang up; dark clouds gathered overhead, further dimming the sun. Skender cut across the jagged scree, looking for a spur of bedrock. Banner followed, limping and taking great care with every step.

 

‘Perfect.’ A lump of pure gabbro bulged from the side of the crater wall, darker and rougher than the surrounding granite. Skender put both hands against it, wishing Kelloman was there to assist him. He’d never done anything like this before. Mages had died in avalanches from pushing too hard or in the wrong place.

 

Banner wasn’t a Stone Mage, but she was an Engineer. ‘Where’s the weak point?’ he asked her when she caught up with him. ‘Where do we focus our effort?’

 

She studied the cliff face, breathing heavily. A quick and piercingly cold squall flattened her hair and turned the dirt on her face to mud. ‘Here, I think.’ She guided his vision to a complicated intersection between weight-bearing slabs and the tonnes of rock they supported. ‘Nudge that — or break it, even — and you’ll start a chain reaction. The whole lot should come down after that, and the slope should channel the force into the water. We should be safe here.’

 

He took her at her word, even though a lot of them were ‘should’. There was no point doubting her now. ‘Sal!’ Skender let go of the rock to call for his friend. They would need him to supply the big push. ‘Sal, we need you over here!’

 

Marmion and the others had their hands full fighting the devels. Strange silhouettes leapt and screamed as they tested the defences of the knot of humans and Panic guarding the Tomb from direct assault. Blood in a variety of colours splashed on the icy ground. Screams from all manner of throats shocked the air. Skender gripped his knife more tightly and hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.

 

Sal was visible in the middle of the throng, reaching up with one hand as though to catch the sky. Lightning flashed down, blowing a cluster of devels apart and leaving a vivid purple line across Skender’s vision. The crack of thunder was loud enough to hurt. Into its ringing wake, a tube of fiercely spinning wind descended. With a throaty roar it snatched screaming devels up into the air and threw them far away.

 

The last phenomenon was Marmion’s work. Skender recognised the charm as similar to the one the warden had used on the Swarm in Milang. The man’s focus and energy were formidable. Sweat dripped from his bald head as he wielded the necessary concentration.

 

Skender’s gaze was drawn to Yod, now more than twice as close to the shore as it had been earlier. The flying devels he had noticed were leaving their giant master behind and swarming for his location.

 

‘Sal!’ Skender shouted with as much volume as he could muster. ‘Here — quickly!’

 

Sal heard him. His head came up, brown hair flying loose. He saw Skender and nodded. Taking strong, measured steps he hurried up the slope to where they stood. He quickly absorbed the situation, and nodded at their request. As the battle continued below, he closed his eyes and put his hands on Skender’s shoulders.

 

Skender shivered, feeling the full force of Sal’s wild talent rush into him. It wasn’t the first time they had joined forces in this way, but even though he had prepared himself it still took him by surprise. Sal’s reserves had grown dramatically as the end of the world approached. With such strength behind him, Skender felt that he could not only move mountains, but make them from scratch.

 

‘Be careful,’ Sal told him through the Change. ‘It’s dangerous. We don’t want to wreck the landmark too.’

 

Skender nodded. ‘Just a tap,’ he replied. ‘Just one perfect tap.’

 

His mind, linked with Banner’s, swept along the bedrock into the shelf before them. The weak point hung before him, a tangle of forces poised to spring free. He slipped mental fingers into the knot and began undoing it, using charms he had never dreamed of employing before. Nothing stood between him and his goal; while Sal remained connected to him, his will was absolute.

 

‘Good,’ breathed Banner. ‘That’s it. Keep going. You’re doing well.’

 

It took longer than Skender had expected. Not one tap, but many, all at precise intervals, as the sounds of battle grew louder around him. Yod’s rhythmic chuffing grew. He could feel the knot unravelling, centimetre by centimetre. Piercing cries from above reminded him of the dart-like flying devels, and he urged himself to hurry.

 

A resounding crack, as loud as thunder but very different in quality, came out of the earth. He pressed on, taking that as a sign of progress. Another came, then a third, each higher in pitch, communicated to his ears through his feet rather than the air. Then a deep, drawn-out groan rose up, so low as to be almost inaudible.

 

All resistance fell away. The knot hung loose. Stones shifted freely, lowing like giant cattle released from a crowded pen. Jostling, impatient, steadily building up momentum, subterranean boulders began to move.

 

Skender opened his eyes. Nothing had changed on the surface, but that wouldn’t last long. The noise was deafening. A cloud of dust rose from the base of the shelf. He was, momentarily, appalled by the audacity of Banner’s plan. At their instigation, an amount of rock heavier than most cities was about to fall into the lake, creating a wave large enough to knock down a hundred buildings. That just one warden, one not-quite mage and a single wild talent had dared so much terrified him. That they might succeed was even worse.

 

Finally, in slow motion, the shelf began to slide. At first it moved in one piece, driven by processes taking place out of sight. Then the subterranean forces became too much for it. The shelf began to break up into sections, which then themselves fragmented. The view was almost instantly obscured but Skender could still read the movements of the stone through the bedrock. He followed its evolution from a single, discrete mass to a flood of smaller pieces in a matter of seconds. He observed the short-lived journey of the avalanche down the crater wall and into the water. He felt the shockwave rippling out across the lakebed, stirring up sediments from their long rest.

 

And he felt Banner reach into Sal, through him, to add extra impetus to the pressure building in the water. As incomprehensible tonnes of stone slid heavily into the lake, a shelf of water spread towards Yod.

 

Sal took his hands away, radiating a surprise that echoed Skender’s own. They had changed the face of the crater forever. And with any luck they would crush their enemy with one powerful stroke.

 

Don’t underestimate the power of water, Banner had said. Or stone, Skender added to himself. Together, they were unstoppable.

 

All heads had turned to watch the spectacle. The devels fell back, waving their misshapen limbs in confusion, as the seemingly innocuous bulge reached the giant creature making its way towards shore. It was close now, close enough to see the joints at the base of the antennae, no different to the joints of the legs below. If it was flipped over, Skender thought, it might look exactly the same. Its crab-like carapace was white around the edges and jagged, like a rough-toothed saw. When the leading edge of the wave reached the stilt-legs, it snapped them cleanly off at the joints and tipped the body’s forward edge down into the water. A curtain of spray rose up, and an instant later the roaring noise it made followed. Splitting sounds heralded the cracking of the carapace itself. Antennae tipped and fell like trees under the axe. A deafening shriek added to the cacophony.

 

Skender put his hands tightly over his ears. Could this be it? he wondered. Could they really have killed the embodied Yod with one decisive stroke? The wave rolled on, breaking over the splintered carapace as he had seen the ocean break over a reef protecting the Haunted City, years earlier. Great slabs of shell rose up on their end, revealing dark grey flesh on their underside. He thought of crabblers with their exoskeletons broken, and remembered being teased in Milang by the forester called Navi. If Yod’s flesh was edible, there would be enough to feed scavengers for years.

 

Then he noticed isolated fragments dissolving in the weak sunlight, vanishing into nothing as their connection to the central charm of the Homunculus was severed. There would be no scraps left for anyone once Yod was dead.

 

The shriek reached a new height. The wave swept on across the lake, carrying with it a tide of alien detritus. Skender strained to penetrate the mist and spray enveloping the mighty corpse. It had sunk lower in the water and appeared to be drifting, rocking slowly back and forth like some grotesque, unmoored island. Shards of carapace still stood upright, perhaps held there by lingering muscular reflexes.

 

The last of the disturbed rock rattled down the side of the crater. A raw new scar marred the ancient crater wall, testimony to the defiant forces Yod had woken as it attempted to invade the world. Skender began to feel a sense of relief even as those closer to the Tomb absorbed what had happened.

 

Heuve had his sword in the air, waving it in triumph. Orma was jumping up and down, cheering. Sal clapped one hand on Skender’s back.

 

‘It can’t be that easy,’ Skender said, even while he considered just how hard it had been: people dead and wounded; whole communities wiped out; futures uncertain for those left behind. If it had been much harder, they might not have made it at all.

 

But it still felt wrong, that Yod should fall before so simple a thing as a wave…

 

A splintering sound came from the floating corpse, carrying clearly across the quietening water. One of the upright portions of shell tilted over onto its side, then another, accompanied by a second brittle crack. The body might be disintegrating, Skender told himself, even as his heart quickened and his gut told him that it wasn’t over yet, not by a long reach.

 

More upraised sections fell, raising a mist of blood and water. The body appeared to be shrinking, sloughing off antennae and stilt-legs as an old man shed hair. A conical mound formed in the centre, coated with overlapping sections of the broken shell. Skender had seen pictures of ancient plate armour and was reminded immediately of them. The carapace would be more flexible this way, and stronger. If struck by another wave, it would flex and ride out the impact rather than break, just like the wall around Laure.

 

Sal clutched him more tightly, and Skender understood the sentiment.

 

Yod was evolving again.

 

‘Can you repeat that trick?’ Sal asked him. ‘Before it finishes?’

 

Skender glanced at Banner, who looked terrified. She shook her head.

 

‘Not to the same effect,’ she said. ‘That was a fortuitous arrangement. If we could lure it to another section of the shore —’

 

‘Not an option,’ said Sal, watching with eyes narrowed as Yod extended numerous fins made of recycled carapace. At the same time, the devels had begun hooting and pressing forward, emboldened by the survival of their master. And in the sky above, dark shapes were massing.

 

‘We had our break,’ Banner said. ‘I suppose we should be grateful for that, even if it didn’t work.’

 

With a roar louder than any avalanche, Yod surged forward on a direct path to where they stood.

 

* * * *

 

The Way

 

 

‘The alien casts a new light on ourselves

because that light comes from somewhere else.

It shines into places the old light

leaves in shadow.

What we see may cause us discomfort,

even pain, but it is always better to look

with eyes open than closed.’

 

SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

 

 

al left Skender’s side and hurried downslope to where Marmion stood. Yod’s speed was formidable. It would reach the shore in a matter of minutes. That left them very little time to put Sal’s back-up plan into action.

 

‘I’ve seen those things before,’ his father said, pointing up at the darting shapes above as Sal went by. ‘The twins knew how to kill them, but I don’t.’

 

‘Do what you can to keep them at bay.’ Sal had no more advice than that. ‘I just need a moment.’

 

He skidded to a halt next to Marmion and took the warden’s arm for more than just balance. Storm clouds still hung low in the sky above. It was a relatively simple matter to revive their inherent wildness and call down more lightning: all Sal had to do was keep them inflamed and create the potentials required in the right places. Yod’s earlier machinations had screwed up the weather sufficiently so that a release of energy such as this was welcomed by the natural order of things. Sal fought as though the world fought with him, and was buoyed by that sensation.

 

But he had two fronts to fight on now: Yod, and the flying creatures if they got past the foresters and Griel. Marmion Took from him in order to ease some of the pressure. He had plenty of strength, but only one set of eyes and ears. They worked well together. Lightning bolts struck repeatedly into the lake while flickering sheets of energy danced among the flying things, scattering them.

 

Yod convulsed. Vivid scorch-marks and deep craters marked where the lightning struck. Its fins flailed without any sense of rhythm or direction. Thunderclaps drowned out any cries it might be making.

 

The flying devels retreated to where Yod floundered offshore. Pursuing them, Sal focussed all his efforts on the giant creature, encouraging the clouds to hold nothing back. Marmion supported him, drawing on all his wild talent to push against the invader and send it, beaten, out into the lake. Strange light gleamed off the bald warden’s smooth scalp.

 

A new stalk, thicker than the others and curved like a bow, appeared on the top of the blistered carapace. Before Sal could target it, it bent back then flicked forward. A single dark speck catapulted through the air, out of range of the lightning and aimed directly for Sal and Marmion.

 

Sal froze, hypnotised by its graceful arc. Marmion broke the spell by pushing Sal bodily away and throwing himself in the opposite direction. The black speck hit the ground with all the force of one of the Ice Eaters’ exploding crystals, throwing shattered stone in all directions. Hot air scalded the battlefield. Sal felt a piercing pain in his right shoulder and another in his hip, and knew that he had been wounded. When he reached behind him to touch his shoulder, his hand came back red.

 

But he could still fight. With head ringing and senses dazed, he clambered to his feet. Distantly he could hear Shilly calling his name from the entrance to the Tomb, and he raised a hand to indicate that he was all right. His first priority was to locate Marmion and recommence the attack. The warden, however, was nowhere to be found. For a moment, his worry about that one man consumed all his attention.

 

Skender appeared at Sal’s side and put an arm around him just as another explosion blew them both off their feet. Someone screamed. Sal couldn’t identify who. He lay on his back and distantly noted dark shapes wheeling across the sky. He told himself to move but couldn’t, even as one of the specks stopped wheeling and grew larger and larger, with claws extended.

 

A green-grey blur swept across his vision from right to left, dragging the clawed shape with it. Pukje, he thought. His gratitude was remote but genuine. Forces outside his body seemed to make his limbs move, urging him upright. He had to fight for everyone’s sake, not just Marmion’s or his own.

 

Yod had changed again. Its skin was dotted with spikes into which residual lightning bolts discharged harmlessly. More of the catapults were extending, ready to hurl explosions into the defenders’ midst. Sal was unsure of many things at that moment, but he knew he couldn’t allow that. Forgetting the target he made and temporarily giving up on finding Marmion, he reached deep into himself for a charm, any charm, and sent it out into the world with all his strength behind it.

 

The Change was neither good nor bad. That was what Lodo had taught him, years ago. There was no right or wrong when it came to sources or methods of using it, because the Change simply didn’t care. It wasn’t human, didn’t have values, and couldn’t care less whether it was used for good or ill. It simply was.

 

So one simple charm could kill or cure in equal measure, depending entirely on how it was applied, and with how much force. He had used that principle against the glast-snake on the flooded Divide and the Swarm in the Hanging Mountains. It had never failed him in the past.

 

A rime of frost formed over Yod’s jagged shell. In the cold air, it was easy to encourage water to change from liquid to ice. Rime became a coating as thick in places as the armour beneath. Yod’s lightning rods and catapults froze, immobile. Its fins were caught in mid-transformation while mutating into limbs more suitable for walking on land.

 

Sal didn’t stop there. He poured still more effort into the charm. The glast-snake had broken free in the Divide because the ice hadn’t been thick enough. If he let up too soon, Yod might break out before people had had a chance to recover their strength.

 

Indeed, the monster soon demonstrated its capacity to fight back. Its icy restraints cracked open as sharp spikes burst outward from within. Sal drew more and more water under the aegis of the charm, trying to plug holes as quickly as they could form. But Yod was relentless and as desperate as he was. Even as Sal fought the spikes, new organs formed and radiated an unnatural, alien heat that illuminated the ice from below with a flickering purple light.

 

Sal dropped to his knees, feeling as though he was being pulled inside-out. He had done everything he could and it wasn’t going to be enough. Even he had limits. Yod was going to wear him down and then march out of the lake and kill him and everyone he loved, if something or someone didn’t come to his aid soon.

 

A shadow fell over him. From it, a familiar voice spoke: ‘I don’t think even you are strong enough to freeze an entire lake on your own. Let go and allow your betters to take over.’

 

His betters? Sal looked up, blinking, into the bluff, burned face of the Alcaide.

 

For a heartbeat he was certain that he had snapped his mind. He had to be hallucinating.

 

‘Didn’t you hear me, boy? You’re wounded, and we’re here to finish the job. Let go before you find you never can.’

 

Sal sagged back onto his haunches. The Change left him like tension from an overstressed muscle, and he fell over onto one side. When he looked across the shattered field of battle into Marmion’s vacant, dead stare, he could neither move nor feel anything but the most distant emotion. His only thought, which cycled around and around his stunned mind, was, Another gone — and how many yet to fall?

 

* * * *

 

Shilly watched in impotent frustration as the battle raged outside. Skender, Banner and Sal’s attempt to smash Yod into pieces with a giant wave hadn’t succeeded but their tactic had been as inspired as it was daring. Lightning stabbed down into Yod’s cracked shell. She felt awe at every flash. This was war on a scale she had never seen before. This, she thought, was wild talent unleashed.

 

The Goddess came to stand next to her. Occasionally, devels or one of Yod’s missiles menaced the Tomb, but it was for the most part ignored, thanks to the twins and their protection. The glast stood outside with Mawson’s head dangling from one hand. The knowledge that it could repel Yod at a word was no comfort at all. Repelling Yod wasn’t the objective. Killing it was.

 

They watched in silence for a moment. At Shilly’s gasp on seeing Sal shoved to safety by Marmion a bare eye-blink before an explosion rent the stone between them, the Goddess reached out and took her hand.

 

‘I can offer you few reassurances,’ the Goddess said, ‘but I can tell you this: you’re seeing something few alive today have witnessed. I’m talking, of course, about the Cataclysm. When the boundaries between realms are in flux, as they are now and were a thousand years ago, talents such as Sal’s blossom. And where there is power, there is always conflict.’

 

Shilly tore her eyes away from the sight of her lover struggling to his feet, bleeding from shoulder and hip, and stared into the Goddess’s cool hazel eyes.

 

‘This kind of power is what the Old Ones want,’ she said. ‘Are you saying I shouldn’t give it to them?’

 

‘I’m saying nothing of the sort. Life has survived such conjunctions before, many times. The transition would be difficult for your world, but not insurmountable. You have an appreciation of the Change already, unlike those of Seth and Hadrian’s world. That’s why it was so chaotic, last time. Now, you would be better prepared. You might be able to weather it.’

 

‘The world would still be very different,’ Shilly said, turning back to the conflict outside. Flying devels stabbed at the foresters and the Panic. Vehofnehu wasn’t a career soldier like Griel, but he demonstrated a surprising ability to dodge and stab with the others. Two devels had already fallen under his hand. Another dropped twitching to the stone as she watched. ‘This would be permanent, not temporary.’

 

Skender had Sal now, but not for long. Another of Yod’s explosive projectiles landed directly in front of them. Shilly cried out in sympathetic pain and pressed her right palm against the crystalline wall of the Tomb.

 

‘Wars will always happen,’ said the Goddess. ‘Only the means of killing change.’

 

‘That’s true,’ said one of the twins. Shilly didn’t turn her head to find out which one. ‘Our world didn’t have anything like this but our wars were the worst ever seen.’

 

I don’t care about your world, Shilly wanted to tell them. I just care about Sal and my friends.

 

‘Now you know how I felt,’ the Goddess said to her, “when I defied my sisters and took a human body. Watching is an empty pastime. To live one must act. And one cannot act without risk. You have seen the consequences of risk, as have I. To live one’s life alone, in mourning, is not a pretty fate.’

 

Shilly thought of her future self, killed by Yod after a long, fruitless labour conducted under the constant shadow of her loss. If Sal died today, how would she feel about having stood by and letting it happen. But what could she do to stop it that Marmion or Highson could not? She would be devel-fodder out there, and her vulnerability would only distract Sal from the work he had to do.

 

She knew that, but she didn’t have to like it. Her moment was still to come.

 

‘Behind you,’ said the twins at the same time. ‘Ellis, quickly!’

 

Shilly and the Goddess turned to see Chu sitting up with a knife at Tom’s throat.

 

‘Open the Tomb,’ Chu said in the ghastly, leaden tones of the golem.

 

‘Why?’ asked the Goddess.

 

‘Don’t ask questions. Just do it or I’ll spill this one and the one I’m inhabiting. Do you want that on your conscience?’

 

Shilly looked at the Goddess. She made no visible move to open the Tomb. She made no move at all, except to fold her hands patiently in front of her.

 

‘I feel sorry for you,’ the Goddess said. ‘Do you think Yod will reward you for giving it the Flame? Do you think you will be spared? I know you came here with the intention of spying on us, lying low in this young woman’s body and listening to everything we said. But you couldn’t get out, could you? You’re trapped here unless I permit your exit. By coming here, you’ve sealed your own fate.’

 

‘Don’t worry about me,’ the golem hissed, pressing the knife close to Tom’s skin to draw blood. ‘Worry about him.’

 

Shilly raised a hand, once again able only to watch the conflict play out.

 

‘You’re frightened,’ the Goddess said. ‘I understand that. You’re desperate, too. You can see your death ahead of you, and you take the steps you think necessary to ensure your survival. You’re not so different from us, really. That’s exactly what we’re doing, but we know there’s no bargaining with Yod. All deals will be dishonoured. Shilly has seen that, and so have I. You’re wrong if you think that this is a way to live.’

 

‘Why should I believe you?’

 

‘Because I’m offering you a deal. Changing sides is not anathema to you; you’ve done it enough times in recent weeks for me to be sure of that. Join us, or at least stop fighting us, and you will survive. I will free you when Yod is dead. You have my word on that. What’s Yod offering you? To take Gabra’il’s place? That deal might not look so attractive in a few minutes.’

 

‘What good is your word if you’re dead?’

 

‘What good is Yod’s if it’s defeated? Trust us, Upuaut. I offer you life and freedom in exchange for just one thing.’

 

‘And that is?’ the golem sneered.

 

‘You leave the girl’s body and enter one more appropriate. You’ll damage her if you remain inside much longer. Take the mage’s former vessel instead. That’s my condition. Accept it or there’s no deal at all, and you’ll stay in here forever.’

 

The golem glared at her through Chu’s almond-shaped, bruise-rimmed eyes. Every line of her face was filled with hatred and despair, but despite itself Shilly could sense the creature’s resolve wavering. It would change its mind; she was sure of it, and that would save Tom and Chu’s lives. But what would happen afterwards? She knew first-hand how perilous it was making deals with golems.

 

Before it could answer, its gaze slid past her and the Goddess to the world itself. It straightened, and the knife came down. Puzzled, she turned to see what was going on.

 

A hole had opened in the world next to the new scar in the crater wall. Through that hole Shilly could see tall glass buildings and a sky of blue. Air from a warmer, damper clime issued through the hole and turned instantly to fog. Out of that fog walked figures robed and armoured in blue with shining torcs around their throats.

 

‘Who —?’ she began.

 

‘The cavalry has arrived,’ said the Goddess matter-of-factly. ‘And not a moment too soon.’

 

* * * *

 

Chu’s body slumped across the unconscious seer. With a clatter of steel on crystal, the knife fell from her grasp and dropped to the floor. Hadrian watched the body that Mage Kelloman had formerly occupied, looking for signs that it had been taken over. He might be unable to play an active role in the events unfolding, but he could at least watch Ellis’s back.

 

The young girl twitched and sat up. Her stare was dark and malignant, but the golem made no move for the knife or the people lying unconscious nearby. The deal, it seemed, was holding — for the moment. Hadrian could fully understand the power of the threat of imprisonment.

 

Hadrian turned his attention outside. Out of the hole in front of the raw stone scar poured a river of fog and, no less impressive, a small army of Sky Wardens. Freshly provisioned and clean-robed, but already partially spent from opening the space-bending Way to the battlefield at the top of the world, the shock of what they saw before them was naked on their dark-skinned faces.

 

Yod was coated in white except for where spikes had broken through the icy crust in a bid to free itself. Fully a third of the defenders were on the ground, dead or injured, but twice as many winged black shapes lay crumpled among them. Lightning bolts still stabbed from out of the leaden clouds, but they landed at random, striking the lake’s surface or the tops of the crater wall.

 

The new arrivals rallied quickly. One in particular stood out — an imposing man in his late sixties, with grey hair and square jaw, and a broad brown scar covering much of his temples and scalp. He pointed and shouted orders, and stooped to help Sal upright with one strong motion.

 

‘Alcaide Braham,’ whispered Shilly. Louder, to the Goddess, she said, ‘I never thought he’d come himself. Not for us.’

 

‘Don’t underestimate yourself,’ Ellis said. ‘And remember: this isn’t about you. It’s about the world and everyone in it. Sometimes even the most myopic of people see beyond their horizons.’

 

‘I wish I was out there,’ said Seth, hovering at Hadrian’s side. His clenched fists rested impotently against the Tomb’s crystal walls. ‘It’s not fair that we’re in here, watching everyone else fight.’

 

‘Fight — and sometimes die.’ Hadrian’s gaze was drawn to the bodies sprawled on the cold ground.

 

‘That’d be a better way to go than trapped in here forever.’ Seth turned his head to look at him. ‘Isn’t that why we came here — to finish it once and for all?’

 

‘That’s not the same thing as finishing us.’

 

Seth sighed. ‘Maybe you’re right. But I’m tired, Hadrian, and I don’t see us ever having much of a life in here.’

 

Outside, the hole closed; another opened not far away from which issued figures in red, marching in clearly defined ranks across the broken ground. Stone Mages, Hadrian thought, the first they had truly seen. Skender hadn’t graduated and Kelloman wasn’t in his real body. These were much lighter in colour than the Sky Wardens — some of them were fair enough to have passed for Swedes from the old world — and all, even the eldest, were adorned with tattoos. Again, one taller man caught Hadrian’s eye. Dark-haired and severe, with deep wrinkles, a triangular nose and prominent cheekbones, he didn’t call out orders, but set to searching among the people of Marmion’s party, as though looking for someone.

 

Skender, a gangly shape in a black robe, came up to the man from behind and tapped his shoulder. The man turned and, after a visible double take, embraced Skender tightly with both arms.

 

Behind them, the second hole winked shut. The sound of devels screaming rose up as wardens and mages carved bright-edged lines through their numbers.

 

‘They’ll never be enough,’ said Upuaut, unable to swallow the sneer in his throat.

 

‘On their own? No.’

 

A third hole opened in the sky, a dozen metres above the top of the stone scar. From it issued a flotilla of nine Panic blimps, heavily laden with soldiers dressed in the uniforms of both forest nations. The change in conditions caused them to rock and bank, and some of them came under immediate fire from the surviving flying devels. Swift reactions and the occasional explosive release of chimerical energy drove the devels steadily back.

 

At the fore of the lead blimp’s open gondola stood a third large man, corpulent and bald. Hadrian was certain he had never seen him before, but something about his bearing looked hauntingly familiar.

 

‘That’s not Mage Kelloman, is it?’ asked Shilly.

 

‘I think it might very well be,’ replied the Goddess.

 

‘Who’s behind all this?’ asked Seth with grudging admiration in his voice. ‘Who organised all this at such short notice?’

 

‘I can tell you that,’ said Shilly. ‘Skender’s mother said that yesterday, when the Tomb was opened, seers on both sides of the Divide stopped seeing the future. The wardens and the mages were ready to move just as soon as they found the source of the problem. A long time ago, they probably would’ve blamed each other for what was happening to them. The Weavers can be thanked for avoiding that.’

 

A fourth hole opened just as the third closed. In the same position as the first, it was smaller than any of the others and admitted only a dozen people onto the battlefield. Hadrian recognised none of them, but Shilly knew two.

 

‘Abi Van Haasteren,’ she said, pointing, ‘and the Magister of Laure. Surely she can’t have been a Weaver all this time!’

 

The Goddess shook her head. ‘Newly inducted, I suspect. The Weavers are all about making ties with isolated communities. This crisis is probably just what they needed to rein in that particular outpost.’

 

‘It’s like being a spectator at a grand final,’ said Seth unhappily. ‘But if this is the corporate box, where’s the champagne?’

 

‘No champagne yet, boys,’ Ellis scolded them. ‘It’s not over.’

 

‘Right. And ghosts don’t drink.’

 

‘Only spirits.’ She winked at him. ‘Watch, now. It’s important.’

 

The Weavers, the Alcaide and a stately woman in red had formed a cluster around Sal. Words flew between them at a rapid pace. Not long into the conversation, all four turned to look at the Tomb.

 

Hadrian resisted the impulse to wave like a fool.

 

The flying devels were circling Yod like crows. The giant body below had changed shape yet again, growing elegantly curved buttresses enabling a thicker, taller abdomen to rise a greater height out of the water. Hadrian was in awe, despite himself, of the way it quickly turned its Homunculus prison into a weapon. Oval in cross-section and looking like a very large football, it was now studded with new catapults, all of them pulling back to gain tension.

 

The Weavers broke apart and shouted orders to the gathered throng. Wardens linked hands and traced strange shapes in the air. Mages drew symbols in the dirt with their toes and gathered in rings around particular boulders. Above, in air growing deeper and denser with the Change, the Panic blimps stopped circling and converged over Yod.

 

Devels screeched and attacked. Those of Yod’s catapults that were ready to fire did so, sending a dozen missiles hurtling into the sky and across the land. One would have landed in the heart of the Weavers but for the swift action of a group of nearby mages, who fired a missile in return that knocked it off course. The resulting explosion lit up the ominous day and sent glowing fragments in all directions.

 

Hadrian looked away, even though he had no physical sight to protect. His eyes were ghostly, like the rest of him — a mirage trapped in the fragile-looking shell of the Tomb.

 

‘Diplomatic immunity,’ Hadrian whispered to Seth. ‘That’s how I see it. We’ve played our role and now we’re privileged observers.’

 

‘Diplomats?’ Seth snorted. ‘Representing whom? Mirror twins? Australia? The entire old world?’

 

‘Just us: us against the world and everyone in it.’

 

‘Now you’re starting to sound like me.’

 

‘Not at all. That doesn’t make the world our enemy. We’re just… apart.’

 

‘You’re fools,’ said the golem, ‘if you think that makes you different from anyone else.’

 

‘Sure,’ said Hadrian, ‘but at least we have company.’

 

Ellis looked up at that and nodded slightly.

 

* * * *

 

Skender stayed close to his father even though the presence of Skender Van Haasteren the Ninth made him feel uneasy on almost every level. His father was, essentially, a schoolteacher. He didn’t frequent battlefields at the top of the world. Yet here he was, striding dourly past bodies and craters, helping his fellows deflect further missiles and applying a tight pressure bandage to a wound on his son’s wrist.

 

That he had hugged Skender was the biggest shock of all.

 

A series of almost melodic whistles heralded the arrival of more projectiles. They hurried for the relative shelter of a rocky outcrop protected by four high-ranking mages. From there they could watch the wardens taking Sal’s initial attempt to freeze Yod to its logical conclusion. Waves of the Change had already stilled the water for twenty metres around the giant body. Although it struggled to free itself and rise bodily out of the lake, it could not. For all its bellowing and twisting, it remained stuck fast.

 

The Panic and forester contingents stepped up their harassment from above. Explosions pockmarked Yod’s already cratered skin. The purple glow under the waterline faded. What few devels remained had long since fled, with Pukje shouting abuse at their retreating backs. Their former master stood alone, and would fall alone if the forces arrayed against it had their way.

 

But Yod was far from beaten. In the face of such a concerted attack, its outer shell simply disintegrated. From the pieces within swarmed a hundred camel-sized black fragments, each individually armoured and armed with claws and spike-tipped legs. Slender antennae dragged in their wakes like strange tresses. A chorus of oddly musical cries rang out across the ice.

 

The wardens instantly changed their tactics, reversing their freezing charm in an attempt to ditch the crab-like forms into the water. The mages joined in, sending waves of heat through the frigid air. It was, however, going to take too long to undo the work they had already done, and the wave of creatures was only metres from the shore. If the devels reached the ranks of mages and wardens, which they easily outnumbered, it would be a bloodbath.

 

Skender thought furiously. Yod’s new incarnation wasn’t an army of individuals; it was still just one being, so the crab-things had to be linked somehow.

 

‘The antennae!’ he shouted. ‘Target the antennae!’

 

His father relayed his suggestion through the Change. The mages changed their tactics again and employed simple fire-starting charms to set the trailing antennae ablaze. The effect was instantaneous. Once a crab-thing lost its link to the others, it became a mindless lump, either dropping limp or losing all control of its movements before dwindling away to nothing, disconnected from the charm of the Homunculus and Yod’s will. One by one they fell, and the remainder contracted around each other, forcing their way through the bodies and onto the land.

 

There the battle raged in earnest. The steadfast ranks of wardens and mages broke up in the face of the rampaging monsters. The Change rose and broke in chaotic surges. Bright lights flashed in all colours of the rainbow, and beyond. One particularly potent charm left Skender sunburnt all down one side. His ears were full of screams and cries, both human and inhuman.

 

He tried to lie low, but there was no avoiding the black crab-things. They leapt like ticks from outcrop to outcrop on their powerful legs. One landed above him and his father and raised its spiked forelimbs menacingly. Skender lunged and scored a hit with his knife on its soft underbelly. It screeched and jumped away, taking the knife with it and knocking Skender to the ground. His hand was sticky with thick silver blood.

 

A whistle from his father brought a clump of mages to their aid. The next crab-thing to land on the crag lost its antennae and most of its legs in one flash of flame. The body fell smoking down the crater wall and disintegrated with a crack and a flash of light.

 

‘Stand clear!’ The Alcaide’s voice rang out clearly over the sounds of battle. ‘Stand clear!’

 

Wardens and mages alike fell back. A shadow passed over Skender and he looked up at Panic blimps converging overhead. Two dozen crab-things fought against a ring of defenders holding the creatures in place. They were unable to break free before a rain of explosive missiles blew them to pieces.

 

Pieces of fragmented Homunculus rained down on the battlefield, crackling loudly as they evaporated. The stench the pieces gave off was acrid, even over the smell of devels’ gore. Skender fought the urge to gag as he took stock of the situation. The crab-things had wounded mages and wardens, but many still remained, and their lines of defence were re-forming.

 

Two leaping crab-things collided in mid-air. Locking legs, they landed with shells facing outwards, forming a tumbling armoured ball that rolled rapidly downhill. One mage was flattened, unable to leap out of the way in time. Explosions blossomed around it, but the ball was too quick. It vanished into the water, leaving a trail of bubbles in its wake.

 

‘It’s running!’ called the Alcaide. ‘Don’t let it get away. Stop it at all costs!’

 

Mages and wardens changed their tactics as fast as Yod. Three more armoured balls formed, but only two made it to the water. The rest were torn apart before the armour could completely seal. All other attempts to form the balls were foiled in mid-leap, while a contingent of wardens tracked the two that had made it away. Ice-making charms brought them bobbing back to the surface, embedded in rime.

 

The number of crab-things on the loose dropped steadily, until only a handful remained, then two, then none. Skender walked out of his shelter, feet crunching on the jointed legs and fragments of devel that formed a grisly carpet across the battlefield. He could scarcely think that it might be over. A strange calm fell over the assembled ranks of wardens and mages and the other combatants: forester and Panic, blood-worker and more. Pukje landed with a scrabbling of claws and folded his ragged wings. Skender looked for Orma but couldn’t see him amongst the assembled faces.

 

The Alcaide opened his mouth to say something, but a sharp crack of ice stopped short any speech he might have wanted to make. All eyes turned to the first of the icy balls to rise from the lake. It had come to rest against the shore, and split open like an egg as the creature within struggled free. Strong limbs kicked and muscular sides flexed, widening the gap. With a flurry of claws and antennae, it wriggled free and dropped to the ground.

 

‘Wait,’ said Sal, stepping forward. ‘Let’s see what it’ll do next.’

 

‘Why?’ asked the Alcaide as the second ice-ball began to rock and crack.

 

‘It’s lost. There’s only one thing it can do now — and I fail to see how that can hurt us.’

 

‘You can’t be serious.’

 

‘I’m not the joking type.’

 

‘No. But… this?’

 

Sal ignored the Alcaide’s protest and walked downhill to where the two sole remaining fragments of Yod were combining into one new shape. Skender went to do the same, but stopped at the sound of footsteps from further up the slope. The Tomb had opened, allowing Shilly egress. She flicked devel remains out of her way with the tip of her cane. Behind her, the glast had descended from its elevated position and was rapidly catching up, Mawson’s head balanced adroitly in one hand.

 

Skender stayed where he was, sensing that this was their moment, not his. The Alcaide, too, hung back, looking puzzled and annoyed at being so publicly defied.

 

A hideous cracking and creaking came from Yod’s evolving form. Knobbly carapace bubbled and ran like thick mud; insectile limbs melted and merged to form larger, thicker shapes. It grew taller, twice as high as a person, and formed a distinct trunk. A sphere took shape at its summit. Its base divided in two; a pair of distinct limbs sprouted from the base of the sphere.

 

‘Goddess,’ Skender breathed, understanding at last what was going on. It was taking human form. Giant, but definitely human.

 

Sal stopped five metres from the evolving shape. Once the broad outlines were complete, finer details began to appear: fingers, shoulders, knees, a neck. The head took on features that were accurate in every anatomical detail — nostrils, lips, eyelids, hair — but looked as lifeless as a man’kin. The eyes didn’t track to look at Sal or the others. Its hair didn’t move in the breeze. It was a fake on every level, from textureless black skin to its heart, and Skender shuddered to look upon it.

 

‘This is the end,’ Sal said, ‘and you know it. Will you surrender to us?’

 

Yod didn’t respond. Its empty gaze remained locked on a distant point, far beyond the crater wall.

 

‘You should talk to us, otherwise we’re just going to kill you,’ Sal persisted. ‘I know that’d be the right thing to do, but isn’t there another way? Could you leave, or coexist with us in peace?’

 

The artificial form shivered as though mice were crawling under its skin, but still it said nothing.

 

Shilly joined Sal and leaned on her walking stick next to him. The glast stood on her other side. She looked up at the expressionless visage with her eyes narrowed.

 

‘What do you want?’ she asked it.

 

Instead of responding in words, a feeling radiated from it, a dense wave of emotion that spread like honey from person to person, hitting Skender with such force that he almost cried out. The feeling wasn’t loneliness, exactly, but aloneness, more complete and irrefutable than any feeling Skender had ever had before. He was unique in all the universe. There was nothing and no one quite like him anywhere.

 

With that feeling came a thought, a certainty, that life was the only material that mattered to the universe. Everything else was detritus, a by-product of life’s creation. He was the eye of the universe turned inward on its many realms, a spark of intelligence that illuminated what might otherwise have been an empty void.

 

To be the pinnacle of creation was one thing, and a very important thing indeed, but to be at all required direction, movement, purpose. It required something to push against. As he swam through the universe, he encountered resistance, and the resistance, once overcome, made him stronger. As his strength grew, so did his hunger and his need to move. He rode an avalanche of needs and urges that led him from realm to realm in search of new worlds, new pastures, new feeding grounds.

 

To see and to eat were the same thing. Appetite and appreciation were inseparable. The all-seeing eye of the universe was simultaneously the all-devouring mouth, and that was right. That was good. That was the way things worked.

 

To be one of a kind was just fine, as long as there was plenty to see and eat. And where will resisted him in force, he knew his feasting would be finest…

 

Skender understood it all in a flash. He raised his eyes and gazed on the visage of Yod, which now seemed not aloof and alien at all but resolute and worthy of awe. Who was he to question the motives and morals of a being so far beyond him that to it he was little more than a speck? A morsel to be swallowed and forgotten. Humans didn’t ask wheat if it was bothered by its imminent consumption. Why would Yod? Its perceptions of the universe were so far superior to humanity’s that Skender seemed barely alive in comparison. It saw so much; it was so much. And it must continue to be. Would Skender hesitate to take the last piece of fruit from a tree in order to save a starving man’s life?

 

No, Skender thought. He wouldn’t.

 

As though tugged by a string, his right hand came up to offer himself to Yod in order that the eye of the universe would never close.

 

The glast got there first. Stepping in front of Sal and Shilly, who were staring with rapturous adoration at the figure towering over them, the glast took hold of one of Yod’s hands and bit down on it, hard. Yod flinched away, too late, and in a wild, sudden rush, lost its human form. The glast dropped lifeless to the ground with the sound of glass shattering as Yod’s Homunculus body ballooned in an explosion of strange growths. Mawson’s head rolled helplessly away.

 

The hypnotic suggestion holding Skender in its thrall evaporated in a rush. He blinked, confused. Shilly dropped to the ground, and Sal crouched over her with one hand upraised to ward off the creature expanding at a furious rate above him. Skender could see no sense to the manifold forms it assumed one after another in an insane progression. Parts of it were sinuous, others angular; furred skin replaced feathers, which had previously been scales. All vanished from view as fast as they appeared, reabsorbed and turned into yet another shape and colour. The air was full of a terrible sound, like a thousand butchers working at once.

 

Something very much like the crown of a tree appeared, then an immense clawed foot, easily ten metres long. Tentacles waved in another quadrant. The expanding thing already blotted out half the sky, yet floated in the air as weightlessly as a balloon. Skender quailed as its shadow fell over him, fearing what would happen if it became heavy again.

 

A long coiled shape with a spiky head caught his eye as it wiggled into being then was gone again. He recognised that instantly: the water-snake that had killed Kemp. From that realisation, the truth emerged and combined with his thought about balloons.

 

Skender picked up a knife left lying on the battlefield and ran with its point upraised towards the base of the thing. Sal and Shilly were barely visible beneath the Homunculus’s expanding boundary. As Skender grew closer, he saw the constant transformations occurring on small scale as well as large. Every square centimetre of the unnatural skin shifted through all possible textures. A knothole that looked disturbingly like a mouth unfolded into a dense flower of butterfly wings, which in turn became a single crystalline eye, blinking myopically at him. He wondered how far the transformations went, and if by looking closely enough, he would see pores opening and closing like tiny mouths.

 

When he was within arm’s reach of the ballooning mass, he reached up with his blade and cut into it.

 

It didn’t explode or suck him into its empty depths. A rustling sound spread out from where his knife had slashed the skin. It sounded to Skender as though a flock of birds was alighting around him, brushing him with their wings. The furious expansion ceased and the rustling sound grew louder. Within a single heartbeat it was deafening. Skender backed away with his hands over his ears, abandoning the knife in the process. The surface of the thing undulated like the sea, rising and falling at the whim of forces he didn’t have a hope of understanding. The rip widened, exposing nothing within but darkness. There was no blood.

 

It began to shrink. Still the transformations continued, but with less urgency, than before. Common themes came and went: whole patches of striped fur that lasted a full second; a field of regularly spaced teeth; three perfectly formed sets of mandibles that looked big enough to bite Skender’s head in two, but which did nothing more threatening than clatter in imperfect synchrony.

 

What is it? Sal asked through the Change when Skender bent down to help him and Shilly to their feet.

 

The glast! he shouted back. There was no time to explain properly, although Sal should have guessed by now. He had told Skender about his conversation with the glast in the Ice Eaters’ secret chamber. The glast had bitten the Homunculus in order to kill Yod and take over that body, just as the snake-glast had taken over Kemp. But the Homunculus was no ordinary body. It gave the mind within a home representative of that mind’s self-image. What image would a glast have of itself, given that it had inhabited thousands of creatures in its long lifespan? And what would happen if it tried to assume all those images at once?

 

Skender didn’t know what might have happened had that chain reaction been allowed to continue unchecked. Each one had been literally no more than skin-deep, but even so the Homunculus might not have been able to expand quickly enough to keep pace. Perhaps it would have popped of its own accord, or else grown so thin all over that it would have evaporated into nothing.

 

The rustling sound began to ebb. The shadow retreated. Skender looked back over his shoulder and found that the glast was already half its former bloated size. He stopped, and so did Sal and Shilly. They stared in awe as the Homunculus shrank down to the height of Yod before the glast had killed it; then it shrank even further.

 

A human shape resolved out of the chaos. Skender recognised the features immediately. It was Kemp. Not the glassy white-on-black being that the glast had turned him into, but Kemp exactly as he had been before his death: white-skinned, tattooed, and as naked as the day he had been born. Even before the transformation finished, the imitation Kemp looked around and flexed its hands, arms and shoulders as though testing their strength. Its eyes were the only aspect that looked different: they were as black as the Void Beneath.

 

One last wave of non-human textures rippled across the glast’s new body, then the process ceased. The calm left in its wake was broken only by the sound of Panic combat blimps coming in to land. The glast knelt down on one knee before Sal, Shilly and Skender and lowered its head.

 

‘Thank you,’ it said in a voice that matched Kemp’s perfectly in terms of timbre and pitch but was utterly unlike Kemp’s in qualities more difficult to measure.

 

‘What for?’ asked Skender.

 

‘We should be thanking you,’ said Shilly, shakily. ‘You killed Yod.’

 

‘Is it dead?’ asked Sal with a frown. ‘You told me that everything you’ve ever killed was still inside you. Is that the case now too?’

 

The glast stood, unconscious or unashamed of its nakedness. The cold didn’t seem to bother it either.

 

‘I thank you because you have released me from my curse. I kill to live, yes, and have grown rich in experience for it. But each body was imperfect in its own way; each was insufficient to my long-term needs. This body, however, can be all the things I have ever known.’ In a series of startling transformations, the glast became a giant eagle, a horse, a monstrous crabbier, and a translucent blob Skender could not identify. Then it was Kemp again, exactly as it had been a moment earlier. ‘I can communicate with you. I can walk among you as one of you. I am truly of the world, now.’ It bent down and picked up the head of the man’kin, Mawson. ‘Can you see my future, man’kin? Do you know my new fate?’

 

‘The future remains clouded,’ replied Mawson with no sign of rancour at the way he was being treated. I am still disconnected.’

 

The glast nodded in understanding, not satisfaction, and to Sal it said, ‘Yes. The one you called Yod is inside me now. But you need have no fear of it, or of me. It is dead, and I have no interest in conquest. My appetites are very different.’

 

‘What do you want?’ asked Shilly.

 

‘I fear,’ said the glast, ‘that you would not understand.’

 

‘Try us,’ said Skender as the survivors gathered around them to see what manner of creature the glast had become.

 

* * * *

 

 

The alien regarded the crowd with curious eyes. The conflict was over. It had survived. It had, in fact, snatched total victory from its rival, assuming not only effective control over the territory in dispute but also everything its rival had held dear: its memories, its personality, its self. Had the creature the humans and their allies called Yod suspected that its defeat would be so complete? The alien believed so. Yod had been more than just cautious. It had been frightened. The alien saw it in its mind, in the memories it had absorbed from the fallen creature. In all the world-lines Yod had infected, there had been just this one visited by another alien, another creature unique in all the universe, whose power exceeded Yod’s.

 

And in the end, Yod had had no defences. It had capitulated just as surely as everything else consumed by the alien — which refused to feel shame or regret for its actions. It had, after all, only taken one life. When members of a species numbered thousands or millions, that was no great loss. When a species consisted of just one, extinction was inevitable, but Yod was guilty of genocide on uncounted worlds. Looked at from a particular perspective, its fate might even appear to be just.

 

The alien had no desire to mete out justice. Its motivations were purely selfish. Yod had threatened the world it had found, the world that it would make its home. It didn’t want to be protector or ruler or god, but it would take action when its contentment was threatened.

 

It reached into the life of the one called Kemp and found words that went some way towards explaining how it felt.

 

‘I want to explore,’ it told the beings waiting patiently for an explanation. ‘To experience. While this body lasts, I can roam as I will, in whatever form I choose, without taking a single life. Until now I have been a parasite, feeding off this world in a way different only in scale to that which Yod planned. Now, I can be a symbiont. We hold the potential for each other’s mutual destruction as an unspoken truth, and we will proceed to live unfettered.’

 

A light blossomed at the base of the scar in the crater wall. The alien directed its attention to the source of the light, and found the singularity called the Flame exposed for all to see. The arcane walls that had previously protected it melted away now the threat of Yod was eradicated.

 

The being the humans called Goddess stood before it, radiant in the glow of the entrance to the Third Realm. A young male human with no hair blinked and sat up beside her, as though waking from a deep sleep. Another human, a female inhabited by a parasite — clearly visible to the alien’s senses as a swirling, many-tentacled mass clumping in knots around the young woman’s braincase — backed nervously away. One of the three young humans standing before the alien hurried uphill to check the condition of his mate, who remained unconscious on the floor of the Tomb.

 

Two ghosts flickered like mirages in the grey daylight, barely visible even to the Homunculus’s superior eyesight.

 

The alien looked down at Mawson; it had rescued the man’kin’s head from the wreck of the balloon in order that it could act as a barometer of the world’s connection to the Third Realm. ‘Is your vision clearing now?’ it asked the head. ‘Are you coming unstuck?’

 

‘I perceive… potential,’ was the reply.

 

Better than nothing, the alien decided. Turning back to the two remaining humans standing directly before it, the alien told them, ‘You stand at the dawn of a new age in this world’s long history. The seed of a revitalised world-tree has been planted. All it requires is the impetus to grow — the permission, if you will, and the direction. In times past, such was granted by those you would have called gods. Here and now, the moment is entirely in your possession. You are your own gods.’

 

The faces of the two humans in front of the alien changed in ways expressing dismay and alarm. Behind them, an animated murmuring rose up. Exactly what the newcomers had expected, it certainly wasn’t this. The end of the world, perhaps, but not the chance to literally build a new one.

 

‘If you are gods,’ it told the two, ‘the time has come to act as such.’

 

* * * *

 

The Decision

 

 

‘A crooked mirror casts a crooked reflection.

So too in all things. We reflect the architecture

of the world-tree — and we, in turn,

are its architects.’

 

SKENDER VAN HAASTEREN X

 

 

al resisted the impulse to turn and run. He had known this moment was coming ever since Shilly had started walking down the hill. Tom’s awakening only confirmed it. The seers were seeing again. The time that he had been dreading for two weeks had finally arrived.

 

Kemp is the only thing who stands between you and Shilly when the end comes, Tom had said when Kemp had been killed by the glast. On that day, the path of their particular world-line had been decided. Whoever wins gets to choose the way the world ends.

 

Sal could tell without looking at her that Shilly was worrying about exactly the same thing.

 

All around them, wardens and mages were talking excitedly. Relieved by the defeat of Yod, their interest was aroused by so many new apparitions: the Homunculus, the glast, the Goddess, Pukje. They could babble on forever, he knew. An argument had already sprung up between the Alcaide and Skender’s father, which Abi Van Haasteren was moving in to resolve.

 

He saw Highson standing with Rosevear over one of the bodies at the centre of the former battlefield. The healer wore a haggard, haunted expression that Highson’s face echoed perfectly. Sal wondered who they were looking at.

 

Feeling Shilly’s gaze on him, he turned back to her. Perhaps, he thought, it was time to trust his instincts.

 

‘We need to get out of here,’ he said to her in a voice too soft for anyone to overhear. ‘Do you remember how to open a Way?’

 

‘What?’ She frowned. ‘I don’t know. We’d need a familiar destination, somewhere we can picture in our minds.’

 

‘I know. Like last time.’

 

He saw understanding dawn on her face.

 

It seemed an eon ago, their flight from the Haunted City with a dying Lodo in their arms, but the memory was burned into his mind. He would never forget that bittersweet farewell, the realisation that he was both gaining and losing something incredibly precious.

 

Freedom was a tricky thing. He knew that now. It carried a heavy price and could be lost in a moment, like love and respect, and safety, and happiness. He had been happy in Fundelry, and safe, but to be in such a situation had meant turning his back on Skender and his real father, on the ability to roam and on the chance of a proper education.

 

And it had, ultimately, led to this moment, where he stood on the shore of an ice-rimed lake preparing to make the greatest decision of his life. And all he could hear was the arguing of the very people he had been hiding from for five years.

 

‘Let’s go,’ he said, and took Shilly’s hand in his.

 

* * * *

 

Shilly felt as though the world was about to drop out from beneath her. Did Sal know what he was asking of her? To reach back five years and put into effect one of the most complicated charms any Change-worker could employ was inspired madness — but it was exactly the kind of madness she had been asked to perform by the Goddess, by the glast, by her other selves in innumerable doomed worlds.

 

So… why not?

 

She squeezed his fingers as she searched through the mental images required. What she didn’t remember precisely she could patch together well enough. Visualising their destination was the least of her worries — as was the concern that they might be followed. Of all the people in the world, they were the only ones who could go where they were going, just as they were the only ones who could decide what needed to be decided.

 

The pressure was intense. Part of her wanted to disappear completely, as she and Sal had done once before, and leave the decision-making to others. But that was not even remotely possible now. Everything had to be taken into account. She needed, more than anything else, time to think.

 

When the charm was ready, she signalled to Sal by squeezing his hand again. He took her in his arms and held her for a moment with her head against his chest and his nose in her hair. They breathed together, twice, then stepped apart. Their hands remained tightly clenched, and she could feel his palms beginning to sweat. Nervous, my love? she wanted to ask him. You should be. One slip and we’ll end up in the middle of a mountain.

 

The charm turned in her mind like the world’s most precious jewel. A floodgate opened between them, and all Sal’s strength flowed into her. She was a spark whirling up into the hot air above a bonfire. Stars turned around her. Every thought was exhilarating.

 

I could have this, she thought as the Way opened before them. I could have this forever, for my very own.

 

Then the smell of the sea struck her nostrils and all doubt vanished.

 

* * * *

 

Sal saw the circular hole open up in the world before them, peeling away the view of the lake and the gutted remains of Yod’s servants and replacing it with a dark, close space illuminated only by the small amount of light coming down a chimney on the far side of the room. Little was visible, but he knew the outlines of the room exactly. His heart hammered on seeing it.

 

Behind him, gasps of surprise rose up as others saw the Way. He heard Highson calling his name. Sal turned and raised his right hand with palm outward. The warning was obvious. Come no closer. The Alcaide’s face turned a familiar red behind the vivid outrage of his scar. Eluded again.

 

Shilly tugged his left hand, and he let her hurry him down the Way to where their home waited. A familiar stuffiness greeted him at the end of the short, circular passage. The smell of it, even after so long shut and empty, made him want to drop to the ground and kiss the dusty floor.

 

At the other end, grey daylight made the battlefield look almost too real to accept. Had they really been there just a second ago? The hubbub grew louder, more urgent. Two wardens went to follow. Highson put himself between the crowd and the entrance with arms held wide.

 

Sal took that as his cue and broke the charm. The Way collapsed like a tornado blowing itself out. In an instant the tunnel shrank to nothing with a sound like a hundred hands clapping. Facing him in the gloom was nothing but a wall-hanging Sal had woven from thick dyed threads.

 

‘We did it,’ Shilly said. ‘We really did it.’

 

‘We sure did.’ He didn’t find the fact hard to accept, but the reasoning behind it was more difficult. Had he really jumped halfway around the world in order to get a little peace and quiet? How much simpler could their trip have been, when they had first set off, if they had been able to visualise their destination so easily!

 

The thought of what had to come next was heavy in his mind. Whoever wins… He didn’t want to argue with Shilly. They had argued enough in their time together. He just wanted to hold her, to waken the lights in their home and to find something to eat. He wanted to revisit their old life, just for a breath or two, before the new one came crashing in. This might be the last moment of stillness they ever found. For so long Fundelry had been their refuge. There was a freedom in hiding which was very different to the freedom of an official pardon. Broader horizons meant greater responsibilities. Greater responsibilities were heavier burdens. As it was he felt bent over with the accumulated weight of his life. More baggage he didn’t need!

 

He resisted letting her go, clutching her more tightly than ever. She pulled him to her as though afraid he might slip from her grasp and vanish into the darkness. The smell of her was rich and powerful, even through the accumulated stinks of fear and blood and exhaustion. Their lips met with a sensory rush that seemed to light up the room. He experienced one moment of pure, unalloyed gratitude, then all thought fled.

 

* * * *

 

Afterwards, they lay in the furs of their old bed, holding each other, relishing sensations and desires ignored for far too long. Shilly felt scars on her lover’s body, and her own, that hadn’t been there just a few weeks earlier. His freshest wounds still wept blood in bright red drops. It seemed an eternity since the last time she had held him like this. She hadn’t realised just how much she had needed it. Needed him.

 

‘I need a bath,’ he said, smelling under his armpit.

 

She was glad he hadn’t sniffed hers. ‘I have a better idea.’

 

Still without lighting the glowstones, they gathered up some lighter clothes and left the workshop. Outside, the dunes were warm from the day’s sun. The sky was beginning to fade to red in the west. They followed a well-worn route to the beach and dived into the surging sea. Clean salt water washed away the dirt of travel and the sweat of their lovemaking. Weightless, her lame leg was no disadvantage, and for once the ache of it was absent. She dived under and shook the dirt from her tangled hair. At some point she would need to brush out the matted curls or cut it right back. At some point…

 

She caught herself thinking about the future and knew that there was no use delaying the inevitable any longer. No use, and every danger. Who knew what was taking place on that far-off lake shore, as mages argued with wardens, Panic with forester, golem with Goddess, and everyone tried to find out where she and Sal had got to? Who knew how little time they had?

 

The sun disappeared into the west with an explosion of oranges and reds. They dried and dressed and headed through the dunes for home. With every step she took she encountered something familiar: birdsong, bushes she had planted herself to protect the dunes, the feel of sand between her toes. It was all so real and vivid. Before she was even halfway home, she was overwhelmed with the need to weep, and she stopped, clutching her walking stick, and breathed deeply.

 

Sal walked on a couple of steps before noticing. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, looking back over his shoulder.

 

‘Did we even leave?’ she asked him.

 

‘What?’

 

‘Did I dream it? Did it really happen?’ A wave of dizziness rolled through her, and that was as frightening as the tears welling up in her eyes. What was happening to her? Why was she only now falling to pieces? The thought of Kail lying dead on the floor of the Goddess’s Tomb now seemed utterly unbearable — along with the Holy Immortals trapped in their terrible loop of time; the twins and the Homunculus; Highson and Marmion’s ghost hand; Kemp and the glast; Chu’s possession by the golem and Vehofnehu’s failed plan. All of it seemed entirely too fantastical to be true. Too fantastical and too awful.

 

And now this, the moment she had been dreading.

 

‘It really happened,’ said Sal, coming to stand close to her, without touching. ‘It’s still happening.’

 

‘It’ll never end,’ she said, feeling a wail at the back of her throat aching to be set free. ‘We can’t stay here. We have to go back. We’re trapped.’

 

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ She felt his gaze moving across her face as keenly as if he was stroking her with his fingertips. ‘You know, I was thinking while we were swimming that maybe this is why we’ve always been able to feel each other, ever since we first met. That connection we have probably comes from this moment, here and now, at the end of the world. If that connection exists because of the decision we have to make, then I think we’ve come out ahead.’

 

She was unable to keep it in any longer. The tears started coming and she couldn’t stop them. Finally he held her, resting his cheek against her damp hair and letting her cry into his shoulder.

 

It seemed to take forever to get herself under control and she loved him for not saying anything, not trying to soothe her or tell her everything was going to be all right. If this was the moment that had brought them together, echoing backwards in time like Sal’s wild talent and the path of the Holy Immortals, who was to say what might lie beyond it? They could fail to agree on what was best for the world, and the argument could tear them apart.

 

She held him tightly until her sobs subsided, then went to let him go. But he didn’t release her, and she realised only then that he was shaking too and needed to be held just as much as she did. So she held him as the night descended softly over the dunes and the sounds of darkness closed in around them.

 

* * * *

 

At the entrance to the workshop, buried under sand and unnoticed on their earlier exit, they found a letter addressed to them from Thess. Shilly’s friend had left it a week earlier for them to find when they returned. It wasn’t long, little more than a note outlining the latest developments in Thess’s relationship with a local fisherman and making the point repeatedly that Sal and Shilly were greatly missed. It was a welcome dose of normality, and a reminder that there were other concerns in the world than theirs.

 

But theirs, Sal thought, would be the world’s concerns soon, especially if they made the wrong decision.

 

Shilly read the note twice before folding it up and putting it into the pocket of a clean dress she had donned on getting back to the workshop. ‘I miss them,’ she said. ‘Not just Thess. Everyone here. They’re so important.’ She looked for a moment as though she might cry again, but she didn’t.

 

Sal had found some edible provisions in one of the cupboards and he continued chopping and dicing to make impromptu soup while she gathered herself together. A saucepan of clean water was already bubbling over red-hot glowstones that stank of burned dust. He thought of Pukje telling him that Tatenen — the prison of the Old Ones — was his proper home, and he repressed a smile of bafflement.

 

‘You know I think about family a lot,’ Shilly went on. ‘We both do, even if you won’t admit it.’ Her smile had watery highlights but she ploughed on. ‘I remember when I thought Marmion was Lodo’s nephew. That showed me just how much it meant to be able to connect with someone that way. It’s not about feelings, Sal, and it’s not just about blood, since Kail was related to Lodo, not me. It’s about roots, the knowledge that you’re more than just floating over the world. You’re in it and part of it, and you’ll be missed when you die.’

 

‘That certainly sounds like us,’ Sal said, tipping the ingredients into the pot and giving it a stir. He wondered if she knew about Marmion’s death, and decided that just then might not be a good time to tell her if she didn’t.

 

‘It is us,’ she said, nodding. ‘I think I realise that now. Stuck out here, it’s been easy to forget that the world hasn’t forgotten. There’s Highson and Skender and Alcaide Braham and now all these other people we’ve met. They won’t forget us any more than we’ll forget them. I get that now.’

 

He added a generous pinch of spice to the mix and breathed deeply of the aromatic steam. ‘You’re going somewhere with this,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you?’

 

She nodded. ‘Not very far, I’m afraid. How can we make a decision like this, on everyone’s behalf, without consulting them? That’s what I ask myself. But we could spend a lifetime asking for advice and still not come to any conclusions. Some will want the realms united, some divided, and both camps will have good arguments.’

 

‘What do you think?’ Sal cut in. ‘Honestly. Right now. Don’t think about it. Just tell me.’

 

‘If it was just you and me, I’d say let’s join the realms. I could never take your wild talent away.’

 

‘And I’d want to give it to you,’ he said. ‘You deserve it.’

 

‘Do I?’ She didn’t look relieved that they had agreed. ‘What makes you say that?’

 

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe just that you’d be so much better at it than me.’

 

‘But maybe that’s why I shouldn’t have it. There’s such a thing as being too good at something.’ She busied herself finding bowls and spoons and wiping them clean. ‘Anyway, it’s not just us. It’s everyone, and the old gods, and all the chaos that would ensue. I don’t think I could live in that world. I don’t think many people could.’

 

‘And we don’t need wild talent at all, now Yod is dead.’

 

She nodded. ‘So we can safely break the realms apart, like all my other selves originally wanted.’

 

‘Is that what your head says, not your heart?’

 

‘Maybe. Can you imagine life without the Change? Without Sky Wardens and Stone Mages and weather-workers and Weavers?’

 

‘And no golems, either.’

 

‘Well, that’s one thing in its favour.’

 

He stirred the pot in silence for a while. ‘Do we really need to do anything at all, now? I mean, Yod is gone so it really doesn’t matter.’

 

‘The twins,’ she said. ‘They’re not in the Homunculus any more, and they’re not in the Void. The Goddess has them safe and together right now, but that might not last. If they go their separate ways, if they die, there’s nothing left to hold our world together.’

 

Sal tasted the soup, mindful of burning his tongue. ‘Yes, I’d forgotten about them.’

 

‘I think we need to make this decision, not them. It’s our world now. That’s what the glast meant, I think. That’s why this moment is so important.’

 

He added one last dash of salt to the pot. ‘It’s done.’

 

She smiled a lopsided smile and handed him her bowl. ‘Our last meal in the old world. It’d better be good.’

 

‘You know the odds on that. Could we change the world into one where my cooking is good?’

 

Her smile broadened. ‘No charm’s that powerful.’

 

* * * *

 

Halfway through the meal, Shilly saw Sal’s face twitch. He covered it up by taking a mouthful, but his expression remained wooden.

 

‘They’re calling you, aren’t they?’

 

He nodded. ‘They want to know where we are, how long we’ll be — all that.’

 

‘What are you saying in response?’

 

‘Nothing.’

 

‘You should let them know we’re okay.’ She swallowed a spoonful of the soup — which, in spite of their jokes and the scarcity of provisions, was the best meal she’d had in many weeks — and thought some more on the subject. ‘You can also tell them to be patient and stop bothering us.’

 

‘They’re just worried.’

 

‘Well, they’ll have to stop worrying. We’ll decide in our own time, thanks very much.’ She felt a twinge of guilt at being so brusque. The others were, after all, waiting on a Cataclysm that would, either way, destroy the world they knew. But the decision wasn’t theirs to make, and they had no right to rush her. Would they rather she tossed a coin?

 

That reminded her of Mawson influencing the roll of a dice, and she shivered, wondering how far the man’kin would go to preserve their own futures.

 

But then she thought of the Angel trapped in the rubble and the way it had protested that it didn’t want to be rescued. The Angel will not die, Mawson had said, even if its life here ends.

 

How nice, she thought, to be so sanguine about the possibility of death, of ending… of change.

 

‘What are we going to do?’ she asked Sal, feeling suddenly bone-weary of the situation. The thought of tossing a coin was perversely tempting. ‘How are we going to resolve this?’

 

‘I don’t know,’ he said, pushing his soup away unfinished. He looked pale in the light of the glowstones. They had both lost colour in the mountains, although her skin remained much darker than his. ‘But we can’t just sit here forever. We have to do something.’

 

‘Give me a suggestion and I’ll happily consider it.’

 

‘I’m not the one with the brains,’ he said with sudden irritability. ‘I’m just the grunt, remember?’

 

‘Great. You’re giving up — just like that.’

 

‘What do you mean, “just like that”? I’ve been thinking about this as hard as you have been.’

 

‘Really? I don’t see any other versions of you weighing in with anything useful. At least mine were trying to help.’

 

‘And a fat lot of good they were too, unless you count nightmares and obsessive visions as useful contributions.’

 

‘They died trying to save us.’ Her throat locked up, and the anger that had been rising to a crescendo suddenly collapsed into grief. ‘They died, all of them. And so did you, Sal. So did you.’

 

‘Hey, I’m sorry.’ He came around the table, his face a picture of worry, and put his arms around her. ‘I’m sorry. Don’t cry.’

 

She wasn’t going to cry. All her tears were gone. But she pressed her face into him anyway and breathed deeply of his smell: salty and masculine and everything she imagined when she thought of home.

 

The light of the glowstones changed colour from a warm yellow to a cold, crystal blue.

 

She looked up, blinking with surprise, and saw four people standing in the workshop where there had been none before. Three, she corrected herself. One wasn’t a person at all.

 

‘I knew you were here,’ said the Goddess. The bright spark of the Flame hung weightlessly in the air, between her and the glast. The twins stood to her right and behind her, side by side like watchful uncles. ‘I also knew you’d be finding this difficult. We’ve come to offer our advice.’

 

‘To make the decision for us, you mean,’ said Shilly with a flash of irritation.

 

‘No. I’ve already decided my future, and it makes no difference to me what you do with yours.’ The short woman with the hazel eyes and long, brown-grey hair tilted her head and smiled. ‘I mean that in a purely pragmatic sense. Of course it does matter to me what you do, or I wouldn’t be here now. But I’m not going to force you into anything. I can’t, anyway.’

 

‘What about you?’ Shilly asked the glast, which still looked exactly — and unnervingly — like the old Kemp but had at least donned a robe to cover its nakedness. ‘What’s your agenda?’

 

‘I wish to convey a possibility,’ it said, ‘and I wish to tell you why I have stayed in this world when I could easily find another to live in, somewhere else in the universe.’

 

‘Could you really do that?’ asked Sal.

 

‘At any time.’ The glast stated the fact bluntly, without smugness, and Shilly found herself believing it without question. ‘Like Yod, I was born between worlds and am constrained to none. I live where I choose.’

 

‘Tell us, then,’ she said. ‘What makes us so lucky?’

 

‘Because I like it here.’ The glast ignored her dig and answered her question matter-of-factly. ‘This world is rich and complex. The interplay between its fundamental forces is benign to life, but not too benign, either. A struggle remains within and between species that ensures one does not dominate too much. Yod would have upset that balance, and that is why I intervened. I intervene again because I fear that it is about to be disturbed once more, even if for the best of reasons. I will not stop you from making a decision I do not think is right, but I will leave if it doesn’t suit me. I would rather not. As I said, I like it here.’

 

‘So what’s your point?’ Shilly pressed. ‘Say what you’re going to say and leave us to it.’

 

‘I like it here,’ the glast repeated for the third time, ‘just the way it is.’

 

Those five words hit Shilly with the force of a physical blow. She felt her spine straighten and her eyes widen. Her hands gripped the table.

 

‘No,’ she said. Wrenching her gaze from the glast to the Goddess, she asked, ‘Could we do that?’

 

‘It’s your charm,’ said the Goddess. ‘You can do whatever you want with it.’

 

‘Do what?’ asked Sal. He stood stiffly at her side, radiating confusion. ‘What are you talking about?’

 

‘The third option,’ said one of the twins. Hadrian, Shilly guessed. ‘There’s always a third option, if you look hard enough.’

 

‘It’s the magic number,’ said the other twin, with more bitterness in his voice. ‘Three, not two.’

 

Now Shilly felt like she was missing out on something, but she shrugged that aside for the moment.

 

‘Don’t you see, Sal?’ she said, looking up at him. ‘We’re not limited to one or the other. There’s a middle ground, one we didn’t see because it’s right under our noses. We don’t change anything. We keep it exactly as it is. But we don’t let it stay that way just because that’s the way the twins made it. We make it stay that way. We take what happened by accident and make it permanent.’

 

‘Our improvisation,’ said Hadrian.

 

‘Your decision,’ said the Goddess.

 

‘Just the way I like it,’ added the glast.

 

* * * *

 

Sal felt his face turning red as understanding dawned. It was an interesting solution to the problem. He could see that now he could see it. He simply wished he’d thought of it earlier and saved them the agony of indecision.

 

But would it really save them anything? Did having a third option make things easier or harder still?

 

‘By uniting or separating the realms,’ the glast said, ‘you are in effect levelling the playing field. This is Kemp’s metaphor. But life doesn’t care about fairness. It thrives on randomness, variations, uncertainty. That’s why this world is so rich with possibilities. That’s why I believe it should remain unchanged — in order to maintain its mutability, as revealed by the process you call the Change.’

 

‘You’re saying,’ Sal said, ‘that we should use Shilly’s charm to keep the realms just the way they are. Side by side; neither completely joined nor completely separate.’

 

‘Could, not should,’ said the Goddess with a nod. ‘The realms are like soap bubbles. They can float separately through the air. They can meet and become one bigger bubble. Sometimes they simply touch. Such conjunctions are rare —’ The glast nodded at this. ‘— but they do occur. And sometimes the worlds within are stronger for it. Have you heard of hybrid vigour? It’s where two species are bred together to create a new one containing all the strengths of its parents. That’s what this world could be like, permanently. If you so wish.’

 

‘I could do it,’ said Shilly. ‘I can see how the charm could be remade to maintain the world as it is. It’d be tricky, but I could do it.’

 

‘Is this what you want?’ asked Sal, feeling dizzy at the sudden turn of events.

 

‘It’s not just up to me, Sal. We have to agree, whatever we decide to do.’

 

‘Do we?’

 

‘Yes. I need you to put the charm into effect.’

 

Sal ran a hand across his face. He didn’t know why he was resisting what seemed on the surface to be a perfect solution. Maybe because it was too perfect. Maybe because Shilly should have thought of it first. The Goddess claimed not to care what they decided, but he couldn’t believe it was that simple. At least the glast was upfront about what it wanted.

 

‘Nothing would change,’ he mused aloud. ‘Nothing at all?’

 

‘There would still be Stone Mages and Sky Wardens and man’kin — and golems, yes, and all that lot. Everything would keep going just as it has for the last thousand years. There’d be no Cataclysm. No lives would be lost.’ She looked up at him with shining eyes. ‘Don’t you see how simple it is?’

 

‘Yes, I see that.’ But there was something missing, something nibbling at his unconscious. He thought aloud: ‘You told me,’ he said to the Goddess, ‘that I have my wild talent because of this critical juncture. In the world-line next door, you said, the realms are joined. Some of that has leaked over into this world-line, into me, and that’s why I got stronger the closer to this moment we came, when all the various world-lines are closest together. But if we don’t join the realms, and this world-line drifts away from the others, what’ll happen then? The juncture will be behind us. Behind me.’

 

‘You will lose your talent, yes,’ the Goddess said. ‘I won’t hide that from you. It’ll take time. Years, probably — as many years as you’ve had the talent already, at least — but the end result will be the same. It will be gone, and all that’ll remain is your natural ability.’

 

‘Do I have any?’ he asked her, conscious of Shilly watching him closely.

 

‘I don’t know, Sal. Only time will tell.’

 

He nodded, feeling better for having worked out what was bothering him, but worse for the knowledge. They now had three options, and in two of them he would lose the only thing that had ever made him special.

 

Then he felt bad for worrying about that. Did he have the right to choose his own fate ahead of that of the entire world?

 

‘I know you’ve been pressured to do one or the other by various parties,’ said the Goddess. ‘I don’t want to apply any more pressure. I just want you to be aware that there’s always another choice. Maybe there’s a fourth that no one here has thought of. Maybe a fifth, a sixth…’ She shrugged. ‘At some point, though, you have to stop looking and settle on one.’

 

He nodded. There is only one path, the Old Ones had told him. ‘Want to give us a moment?’

 

‘Of course.’ The Goddess didn’t look surprised at his request. ‘Take as long as you need. You can get back on your own, I presume.’

 

‘Yes. Might as well use my talent while I’ve got it.’

 

Shilly took his hand as the light of the Tomb began to dim. The blue tinge left the air and the four figures faded away like smoke.

 

* * * *

 

‘Handy trick, that,’ Shilly said. ‘Beats the crap out of flying.’

 

‘Is there anything she can’t do?’ Sal let go of Shilly’s hand and rummaged in a cupboard on the far side of the room. His voice came to her over the clinking of glassware. ‘Why doesn’t she just make the decision herself rather than lumber us with it?’

 

‘I don’t think she can make it, Sal. It takes the right sort of mind and the right sort of talent. We have that, you and I, not her. She has her own mind and her own abilities, and I’m sure they’ll be needed too, just as they were a thousand years ago.’

 

He returned holding two glasses and a bottle of sweet golden wine.

 

‘Are we celebrating?’ she asked.

 

‘Not necessarily.’ He smiled wearily and poured them a measure each. ‘What do you think?’

 

‘I think I’ll be glad when we’ve decided, whichever way we’re going to go.’

 

‘Agreed.’

 

They clinked glasses and sipped. To Shilly the wine tasted slightly off, but she drank it anyway.

 

‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if it’d be lazy or cowardly to keep things the way they are.’

 

‘Would we be taking the easy way out, do you mean?’

 

He nodded.

 

‘What’s wrong with that?’

 

‘I don’t know.’ He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

 

‘There’s nothing wrong with wanting things to be simple for once. It’s about time life dealt us some decent cards.’ She put down her wine glass. ‘Making a decision to keep things unchanged is as much a decision as one to turn everything upside down. Every day we stayed here in Fundelry instead of coming out of hiding was a decision like that — and it hasn’t always been an easy one to keep making. It wasn’t just habit, and neither is this. We’d be making a conscious effort to stop the world from falling apart, either way. We’d be sending a message to everyone who lived in the world before the Cataclysm, before Yod was imprisoned, saying that things aren’t ever going back the way they were, so get used to it. The twins, Upuaut, the Old Ones, Vehofnehu — that’s all they go on about. Winding back the clock to a version of the world that they used to like. Well, maybe we don’t want that. That’s our decision, not theirs. All the different versions of me never worked that out, but here, in this world, I have.’

 

‘You feel so passionately about it?’ Sal hadn’t interrupted her long speech, and even when she had finished he waited a second or two before saying anything. ‘Are you certain it’s the right thing to do?’

 

‘I guess…’ She hesitated. ‘I guess I do.’ Nervousness replaced the certainty that had crept over her while thinking aloud. ‘What about you? Do you disagree?’

 

‘No.’ He reached across the table and took her hands in his. ‘I guess I don’t. You know me: I always want something to blow up or I don’t feel like the job’s been done right.’

 

She smiled with relief. ‘What are you talking about? You got to blow up plenty, this time.’

 

‘Yeah, but…’ He dismissed her rebuttal with a roll of his eyes. ‘Screwing up the whole world with one decision? I’d never top that.’

 

She leaned over their glasses and kissed him. That eased the tightness around his eyes.

 

‘I’ll always love you,’ she said, ‘whether you have your wild talent or not.’

 

He looked slightly startled, then smiled. ‘The same goes for me. I’ll always love you whether I have my wild talent or not.’

 

‘Then it’s decided.’ Her stomach felt empty, even though they had just eaten. ‘Should we go back and give them the news right away?’

 

‘Not just yet. I’m sure there’s still a lot we need to think through. Is it just a matter of waving your hands and making it so? Do we need a permanent record of the charm in order to make the effects permanent? How will we stop someone like the Old Ones coming along and undoing all our good work? They’re still out there, along with everyone else who’ll disagree with us. Just because we’ve got rid of one enemy doesn’t mean others won’t arise.’

 

‘Yes. You’re right.’ Shilly eased back into her seat and rubbed her aching thigh. ‘I’m sure the rest can look after themselves for a little while longer.’

 

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said with a smile. ‘In this world, you usually are.’

 

* * * *

 

The Sacrifice

 

 

‘Broken then remade, like this sinner’s weak

flesh, Sheol awaits in the guise of a tomb.

The body within is untouched by the fire of time;

to ash and dust it has never returned.’

 

THE BOOK OF TOWERS, FRAGMENT 37

 

 

s it over?’ asked Seth as they left Sal and Shilly’s strange underground home. ‘Are we done now?’

 

‘Not quite,’ said the Goddess. ‘We’ve got to take this good fellow back to the summit. She indicated the glast, who stood with an uncanny absence of body language not far from the Flame. Both of them seemed to glow in the light of the entrance to the Third Realm. Neither Seth nor Hadrian was touched by its light. As ghosts, they were immune.

 

Seth remembered the first time he had seen the Flame. Meg, one of Ellis’s two sisters, had touched the singularity while touching him, and he had felt a profoundly unnerving sensation.

 

You feel the tug of fate, Ellis’s other sister, Ana, had said, the one fate we can ever be sure of, which is that we will die. Eventually our sojourn in the realms comes to an end, and we dissipate into the void from which we sprang. That is the fate awaiting all — even us — and the Flame reminds us of this, even as it reminds us that the route taken to that end is infinitely variable.

 

Two of the Sisters of the Flame had met their ends in or shortly after the Cataclysm Yod had tried to wreak upon the world. Only Ellis remained. The fate of him and his brother therefore rested entirely in her hands.

 

‘Are we your prisoners, El Salvador?’ he asked.

 

‘No. Now, quiet. Do you think doing this is easy?’

 

Seth couldn’t tell. To all appearances she wasn’t doing anything at all. But the walls of the Tomb had replaced the view of Sal and Shilly’s home. Strange lights and shadows played around him, making him shiver. He sensed an odd kind of motion as though the world, rather than him, was moving. He tried not to think too hard about that. If he did, it made him queasy.

 

Eventually the crystal veil parted, revealing the view across the lake once more. The clouds had blown away, replaced by brilliant stars and a sliver of a moon. It looked cold out there, and he saw more than a few wardens and mages shivering as they went about the clean-up operations. Huge black-smoking bonfires burned the remains of the devels. Occasional flashes of light came from the hunt for stragglers in the labyrinthine crater walls. Two blimps still circled the area, but the rest had landed and swayed against their moorings.

 

Panic and forester soldiers roamed everywhere, assisting as ordered by Abi Van Haasteren. The Panic leader, Oriel, strutted self-importantly around the scene of the final battle, accompanied by the Sky Wardens’ Alcaide. They appeared to be identifying the dead and according them a measure of dignity, depending on individual customs.

 

Seth had overheard Skender talking with Chu days ago about burial rites. Few in the new world had a belief in the afterlife, but disposal of the dead was still a serious business. Stone Mages were cremated and their ashes set adrift on any one of several significant desert winds. Sky Wardens were interred in the sea. Chu had explained that the bodies of Laurean citizens were drained of blood before being turned into fertiliser. The blood, in turn, was leached of every last drop of water, leaving the family with dust to dispose of or to keep if they wanted. Others had joined in the conversation, including Lidia Delfine and Griel. Foresters, it turned out, were buried in the root systems of special trees so the vital essences of their bodies could be reabsorbed by the forest. Mourners carved the names of their loved ones into the bark of the burial trees; some such trees were hundreds of years old, and carried the names of the long-lost dead ever higher into the canopy.

 

Of all the people in the expedition, only the non-human Panic seemed unfussed about what happened to a body after the person within had departed. Some were mummified, others simply bound in cloth. All were dropped into the mist from the underside of the floating city. The only concession made to dignity was a temporary cessation of sewage and garbage disposal while a funeral took place.

 

Skender had looked to Seth and Hadrian for insight into their world’s traditions. The best Seth could come up with — thinking of coffins, vultures, cannibalisation, embalming and more — was to say, ‘It varied’. He had always joked that he wanted his ashes put in a rocket and fired into the sun. Instead, his body had been burned in pieces in a hospital furnace. Had it made a difference? Maybe not, except to Hadrian who had been magically healed by one of Seth’s finger bones. Still, he thought as he watched the natives of the new world lay out their dead, it would’ve been nice to have some sort of ceremony. He should be grateful, he supposed, that he hadn’t been eaten by Upuaut and Lascowicz for lunch.

 

Seth thought of Kail and a similar conversation in the mist forests, and grieved.

 

The strangest thing he saw on the killing fields was Kelloman bumping into his former host. The hefty mage had put the bilby in a cage immediately on hearing what now inhabited the young woman’s body. Staring into a face that had for two years been his own, he seemed momentarily nonplussed.

 

‘If you harm her —’ the mage had started to say, but the golem had simply pushed by, its laughter cruel.

 

The Tomb descended to ground level and the crystal walls faded to nothing. The walls were still there; they just couldn’t be seen. On the first occasion this had happened, Seth had made a fool of himself by trying to run to freedom. No matter how he had run, he remained as trapped as ever.

 

‘Seeya, big fella,’ Ellis said as the glast stepped outside. It headed towards Griel and the others, offering nothing in response.

 

Seth suddenly remembered the glast’s original body. Not the first body it had entered this world through, but the one on which it had modelled its final form. Seth wasn’t certain of the young man’s name; Kemp, perhaps. Kemp’s body, transformed so as to be almost unrecognisable, would be among those waiting to be disposed of. The glast now had the Homunculus and that was all it needed.

 

So many dead — and so much body-swapping, too. It was difficult sometimes to keep up. At least now, he told himself, the slaughter perpetuated by Yod’s rule would stop. That was something.

 

He felt no pride at all. They hadn’t done anything, it seemed to him, except be couriers to deliver the glast’s new body. Was that what Ellis had seen in the future for them? Was that why she had condemned them to a thousand years of the Void with no one but each other for company?

 

End it now, he wanted to tell her. Put us out of our misery. Lay us down with the other old men in their rows and pieces, and call time for the Castillo twins. Last drinks. Last dance. Last call. The very fucking end.

 

But the words never left his lips, and all he could do was wait.

 

* * * *

 

Hadrian watched his brother pacing the edges of their prison and wondered with no small amount of impatience what was bothering him this time. Why was he always the oil on Seth’s stormy water? Maybe it was time for him to raise some weather too.

 

‘Are you keeping us here for a reason?’ he asked Ellis. ‘Beyond acting as sticky tape for the realms until Sal and Shilly get their shit together, I mean.’

 

‘A reason? Of course I have a reason,’ she said. ‘Be patient.’

 

She was alone with the Flame and her ghosts, Hadrian realised, for the first time. Something went out of her as the walls closed in around her. A pretence, an illusion. She literally sagged and looked in an instant ten years older.

 

The world disappeared. The Tomb moved again.

 

‘Where are we going now?’ he asked her in a gentler tone, already regretting his snappy question.

 

She turned to look at him. ‘To the base of Tower Aleph. There’s something you’ve forgotten. Something important.’

 

‘What?’ asked Seth, stopping in mid-circuit opposite Hadrian. ‘What did we forget?’

 

‘You left something behind,’ she told Hadrian. ‘Not you, Seth; just Hadrian. But the three of us are going to get it together. Then I’ll tell you what I have planned.’

 

‘Why not tell us now?’

 

‘No,’ she said, shooting him a look with some of her usual spark. ‘Just hang on, will you? I promise you’ll understand when it’s in front of you.’

 

Hadrian waited out the short journey with apprehension barely in check. He couldn’t think of anything he had taken through the underground tunnel to the Tomb’s original resting place. He hadn’t been carrying anything at all. The only possession he and his brother truly had in this world was the Homunculus, and that had already been taken from them.

 

‘All this moving around is tiring, you know,’ Ellis said. ‘It’s tricky, especially if I have to go underground, like now. But that’s not necessarily a problem. I can freeze time and catch my breath while the rest of the world is still. That’s how I got so much done after the Cataclysm. I could, be everywhere I wanted, whenever I wanted, pretty much. About the only thing I can’t do is be in two places at once — and you can fake that if you’re careful. Do you see now why they call me the Goddess?’ She half-smiled. ‘But it all comes at a cost. The more time you freeze, the older you get compared to the rest of the world. I spent twenty-five years of my life settling things down after you two entered the Void. Outside, just fifteen years passed. I was glad when it was over and I could sleep.’

 

‘Did you actually sleep,’ Seth asked, ‘while you were in the Tomb?’

 

‘One full night,’ she replied, ‘that lasted a thousand years.’

 

The blue glow of the crystal walls began to fade. Hadrian peered outside to see where they were, but discerned only darkness at first. Then the faint outlines of a blocky stone chamber became visible. The space was much smaller than Sal and Shilly’s workshop had been. It was, in fact, barely large enough to contain Ellis and a squat brick structure in its centre. Seth and Hadrian both moved closer as the stone walls took substance and shape around them, shining damply with the light of the Flame.

 

The central brick structure was about the same size and shape as a barbecue the twins had had in their backyard while growing up. It wasn’t red, however, but a dark slate-grey colour. The lid consisted of a solid slab of black volcanic stone. It was the most ominous chunk of rock that Hadrian had ever seen.

 

Ellis regarded it balefully. ‘This is it,’ she said.

 

Hadrian frowned. ‘I left this here?’

 

‘No. I made sure it was interred properly, right at the base of Tower Aleph. This chamber is charmed against intrusion, and watertight. The air in here won’t last forever, but that won’t bother you, I suppose.’ She wrinkled up her nose. ‘It might be bad already. We shouldn’t stay long.’

 

She rolled up the sleeves of her black robe and began shifting the slab away. Hadrian wished he could do more than watch, but as a ghost there was no way he could help. A strong sense of dread was rising in him. Whatever lay under that slab, he was more and more certain that he didn’t want to see it.

 

Ellis turned red in the face but didn’t let up, even though the slab probably weighed more than she did. The grinding noise it made filled the cramped space around them. When it had moved a full hand’s-breadth, the edge of a hollow within came into view. Hadrian moved around to the far side and hugged his spectral flesh. The cavity opened wider with every heave and push from the straining Goddess until it overbalanced and tipped with a crash to the floor, shattering into two uneven pieces.

 

Ellis fell back, gasping and wiping her hands clean. Dust left broad streaks on the front of her robe.

 

‘There,’ she said. ‘Recognise it?’

 

The light from the Flame wasn’t at the right angle to fully illuminate what lay inside. All Hadrian could make out was a rounded shape swaddled in grey cloths, filling the small space within.

 

He shook his head.

 

‘I’m not surprised,’ she said. ‘It’s been down here ever since the Cataclysm.’

 

Seth was looking from him to the sinister shape with a look of deep concern. ‘What is this place?’

 

‘It’s a tomb,’ she said. ‘It’s the Tomb, if you really want to know, the real purpose for me being where I was. Back in the old days, this wasn’t a lake. It was the depression left in the landscape after Yod failed to make the leap. It’s also where I emerged when Sheol broke up, so it seemed the obvious place to return when my work was over. By then I’d already found it.’ She indicated the object with a wave of her right hand. Her left was around her chest, keeping her warm. ‘Xol helped me build this enclosure, and I parked myself on top. Nothing could bother it while I was there. That seemed the least I could do.’

 

Hadrian nodded, finally picturing where they were. At the bottom of Tower Aleph’s hollow core had been a square dais on which Ellis’s tomb had sat. They were inside the dais itself, under a mountain of rubble, no doubt, and many dozens of metres of water.

 

The rest of her words were slowly sinking in. If the Tomb hadn’t actually been for the Goddess, he asked himself, then who or what lay within it?

 

The rounded shape couldn’t threaten him. It didn’t move. He couldn’t even smell it. But he was filled with an urge to get as far away from it as he could, and to never stop running.

 

You left something behind, she had told him.

 

‘It’s me, isn’t it?’ he said.

 

She nodded.

 

‘When I went to the Second Realm to meet Seth, I never came back to my body. Are you telling me it was just left… here?’

 

Another nod.

 

He pictured his original body lying where it had dropped, exposed to the elements and to all of nature’s predators. ‘I’m going to wring Pukje’s neck,’ he said. The imp had been there, urging him to make the leap to Seth and to do the right thing. The expectation, obviously, hadn’t gone both ways. ‘I can’t believe he just left me to die.’

 

‘He didn’t exactly do that,’ Ellis said, reaching into the cavity to pull back the dusty cloth.

 

Hadrian flinched, expecting to see scraps of skin and bones bearing no resemblance to the person he had once been. But what he saw was entirely more shocking. The body — he couldn’t think of it as him — was thin and hairless, and its skin was deathly pale, but it looked like that of someone who had died that very day. Sitting upright in a foetal position, with its head tilted to one side and resting on bony knees, its eyes were gently shut as though sleeping. Its mouth hung slightly open. There was no sign of decay anywhere.

 

‘Impossible,’ he managed.

 

‘Didn’t you ever hear of those monks or priests who died but didn’t rot?’ Ellis asked them. ‘This is exactly the same thing. When people transubstantiated directly from the First to the Second Realm, they occasionally failed to cut the cords connecting them to their old body. Their flesh, although empty, remained vital or in stasis for centuries, waiting for the missing mind to return. Sometimes devels or other creatures would get inside, but most of the time the bodies just lay there, unchanging. Some people called them “body-statues”. I think of them — of yours in particular — as anchors.’

 

Seth looked up at that. ‘That’s why we drew the realms together even when Hadrian was in Sheol with me. His body was still in the First Realm, connected to him all that time. Even when we were in the Void, it’s been sitting here, waiting.’

 

‘It’s not anything, really,’ Ellis said. ‘It’s just tissue — meat kept alive by an echo of your will, Hadrian.’

 

‘Why didn’t you bring me here sooner?’ He felt oddly betrayed, and worse, disappointed for a reason he couldn’t immediately define. ‘Or even tell me?’

 

‘The time wasn’t right. We were fighting a war, remember?’ Ellis met his accusing stare without flinching. ‘Besides, you and Seth were safely in the Homunculus, and separating you prematurely would have been dangerous for everyone. The world needed a controlled Cataclysm, or none at all.’

 

‘But now…?’ Hadrian had trouble finishing the sentence.

 

‘It all depends on what Sal and Shilly decide,’ she said, ‘but whichever way they go, you’ll be free of that responsibility. And that presents us with a number of options.’

 

Hadrian felt Seth staring at him. Not angrily or hatefully, but with a new, uncertain anxiety.

 

‘If Hadrian goes back into his body, what’ll happen to him?’ Seth asked Ellis. ‘Will he die?’

 

‘No, but he’ll probably be quite weak for a bit. And he’ll be vulnerable to all the usual things: injuries, sickness — and death, of course.’

 

‘But he’ll be alive.’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘And I’ll be stuck in here.’

 

‘With me. Doesn’t that make you feel any better?’

 

‘Not really.’

 

‘Well, thanks.’ She shot him a humourless smile. ‘That’s not the only option, you know. You can both go into the body, just like you were in the Homunculus. But it won’t be the same. You’ll have to share the connection with it. You’ll be closer and more reliant on each other than ever before. Does that sound more attractive to you?’

 

Seth glanced at Hadrian, then away. ‘No. What else?’

 

‘You could take the body and Hadrian could stay here. That’s possible, although more difficult.’

 

‘And creepy.’ Seth shivered. ‘Any more?’

 

‘We permanently sever Hadrian’s connection to his corpse and remove the last anchor holding you to the First Realm.’

 

‘Kill me?’ asked Hadrian, feeling slightly shocked by the suggestion.

 

‘Not you. Just your old body. You’d miss it as much as you miss the Homunculus.’

 

Hadrian didn’t want to say it, but he did miss the artificial body that had been their home for over a month. He missed its strength and reliability. And despite himself he missed the closeness he had shared with Seth. For all their bickering and disagreements, he had become very used to being with his brother. He felt unbalanced now without that constant, ready intimacy.

 

But he wasn’t certain about the idea of being crammed with Seth into one all-too-human body. That sounded like a recipe for extreme disaster.

 

‘I suppose we should look at this as a positive development,’ he told Seth. ‘For a while there, I didn’t think we’d have a choice — beyond death or this.’’ He tapped his chest to indicate their current status as ghosts in the tiny space of the Tomb.

 

‘You have a choice,’ Seth grated. ‘I can only go along with what you decide.’

 

‘Do you think I won’t make you part of the decision? Do you really think that?’ A sudden, hot anger coursed through him. After all they had been through, did his brother not know him at all? ‘Damn you, Seth. Take the body, if it means that much to you. It’s yours. Do whatever you want with it, whatever will make you happy — finally. Take it and get out of here. Go on.’ Hadrian circled the close confines of the stone chamber, following the invisible curves of the Tomb. When he came within range of Seth, he physically lashed out, pushing his brother with both hands. Seth was taken totally by surprise and staggered backwards, losing his balance and tripping over his feet. ‘Get the hell out,’ hissed Hadrian, standing over his fallen brother. ‘We don’t want you.’

 

A strange thing happened. Seth burst into tears. The first sob exploded out of him like a sneeze, and then it was as though he couldn’t stop. He hid his face behind one arm and rolled away. ‘Don’t,’ he stammered. ‘Don’t say that.’

 

Hadrian was as shocked as though Seth had vomited. His anger evaporated in an instant, replaced by contrition and shame. He went to help his brother up, but Seth pushed him away. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

 

‘You did mean it,’ Seth said, his words muffled by his arm. ‘Neither of you want me here. Both of us are useless, but I’m the most useless of all. No one — and nobody —’

 

Hadrian forced his way through Seth’s guard and took hold of him as though they were wrestling. He didn’t need to hear the rest of the sentence to know what his brother was feeling, even if he couldn’t say it.

 

Nobody wants me.

 

‘It’s not true,’ he said as firmly as he could. ‘It’s not true. Or if it is, it’s only because you act like you don’t want us.’

 

Seth’s hands gripped Hadrian’s arms, but instead of pushing him away they pulled him closer. That said more than words, and in an instant all their differences were forgotten.

 

‘I don’t mean to rush you,’ said Ellis after an unknowable length of time, ‘but could you make a decision before I freeze to death?’

 

Hadrian felt Seth’s hands loosen, and he sat back, wiping his eyes. He almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation. Who knew ghosts could cry? Even if the tears were just illusions, they felt as real as the emotions that prompted them.

 

‘Right,’ he said, facing Ellis as Seth got himself together. It didn’t take long. Seth’s hand came down on Hadrian’s shoulder, but he remained sitting on the floor.

 

‘Is it still my decision?’ Seth asked.

 

Hadrian nodded. ‘Go ahead.’

 

‘We kill it,’ he said. ‘We let it die. We break the connection. However you want to put it. This —’ He waved a hand dismissively at the squat barbecue-shaped structure and the body inside it. ‘— hasn’t been part of us for a thousand years. It might look like us after a bath and maybe a good feed, but neither of us gave it a second thought for a thousand years. Why should we start now? It would be hypocritical of us to pretend it meant anything.’

 

‘Does it matter to you, Hadrian?’

 

He shook his head, knowing in his heart that that was the only honest answer he could give. It mattered in the same way as a photo of an old girlfriend mattered, or a pair of lost shoes. He felt a connection with it from the past, but it wasn’t him. It wasn’t who he was now.

 

‘I think it’s time,’ he said, ‘to put that part of my life behind me.’

 

‘Even if the alternative is to stay here, with me?’

 

‘Sure. Taking no steps forward is better than taking one backward. Don’t you think?’

 

Ellis looked immensely relieved. ‘What about a step sideways? How would that sound?’

 

‘It’s a little hard to answer that,’ Seth said, ‘when I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

 

Her smile widened as she raised her hands in front of her, one on either side of the Flame and brought them together with a single loud clap.

 

 

Seth blinked. At first it seemed that nothing had changed. They were still in the sealed space where Ellis had hidden Hadrian’s body for all the years they had been in the Void. The dark, damp-stained walls still closed in around him like the walls of a coffin. Hadrian sat next to him, close but feeling light-years away. And Ellis —

 

That was when he saw the difference. It wasn’t that the Flame cast its light on her in a new way, but that he was seeing her as she really was: stretching across all the world-lines at once, like a reflection trapped between two mirrors, repeated over and over again. The Goddess revealed. He had only seen her look like that once before, when he and Hadrian had stood before her and her sisters in Sheol, before trapping Yod in Bardo. Then, as now, he had felt overawed by her strange power, and unnerved by the evidence of her innate inhumanity.

 

She has ways about her that you and I can barely imagine, Pukje had said.

 

‘I said that I would save you,’ she told them, her voice coming at them from multiple branches of the world-tree at once. ‘I wasn’t talking only about making you ghosts and keeping you here. That saved you, temporarily — but not from yourselves. The same with sticking you into that body. It’d be a disaster, as you both quickly realised. I need to save your lives, not just keep you living longer.’

 

‘What, then?’ asked Hadrian, climbing to his feet and holding out a hand to help Seth do the same. They stood side by side before her, two united against her multiplicity. ‘What else do you have in mind?’

 

‘Well, this.’ She held out her hands. All the versions of her did the same, in more or less perfect unison.

 

‘Welcome to the new world-tree. Once Sal and Shilly have picked the branch that’s right for their future, possibilities will begin to expand exponentially. Like any tree, the world-tree needs to be tended. That’s what the Sisters of the Flame were for, you know. Not so much for helping individuals negotiate their fates, although we did do a measure of that, but for weeding out unnecessary duplications, tying off severed world-lines, grafting disjointed fragments together — all the tasks needed to create a work of art out of what would have been, left to its own devices, a complicated tangle. When I embrace this form, I can see the great work my sisters and I performed, before I became Ellis Quick and met you. I can see the necessity of it, and the problems caused by my absence this last thousand years.

 

‘Take Shilly, for instance, and the way she used different versions of herself to make this world-line the one that survived. That’s not so different from the sort of work we used to do. Taking from one and giving to another; overlapping lives to create a new, tougher hybrid. In legends we were sometimes weavers, snipping and tying fates as we willed. But we were more like gardeners in my mind, letting nature do most of the work. The delicate art of the nudge is a difficult one to learn, and we were mistresses of it, achieving maximum effect from minimum intervention.’

 

She came around the squat stone structure, half walking to the left and half to the right. When she coalesced on the far side, she faced both the twins all at once.

 

‘Shilly’s hard work, although essential, was clumsy and dangerous. It wouldn’t have been allowed in my sisters’ time. The connections between her and her other selves would have been severed before they ever existed. The purity of the world-lines would have been protected at all costs. But if that had happened, she would never have devised the charm. The rules needed to be broken in order to save anything — and that’s why I went away for so long. My sisters opted for oblivion rather than be part of my plan; I placed myself in stasis for a thousand years, until the Ice Eaters woke me, letting me know that the time had come for the Flame to burn again, for its one remaining guardian to take control.

 

‘So, now Shilly has what she needs, normality can resume. I’ll return to keeping the world-tree in shape, and Shilly can stop playing hard and fast with causality. But that doesn’t solve everything. This won’t be the first time I’ve done this kind of work on my own, and I know two things about it with great certainty: it’s hard and it’s lonely. My sisters carried the load while I was gone well enough, but even they found it tough. That’s how Yod managed to get a toehold in the First Realm, when otherwise they might not have allowed it. Even they would have taken action rather than risk the destruction of the entire world-tree. That’s the worst possible outcome.

 

‘No, it’s like you said, Seth: three is the magic number. Not two or one. Three. Do you understand me?’

 

Seth glanced at Hadrian, who looked as though he was hypnotised. ‘What are you saying?’ he asked.

 

‘What exactly?’ Seth echoed. ‘Stop beating about the bush.’

 

‘I want you to join me here, in the Tomb, and help me do my job. As equals, not subordinates, in an alchemical marriage between the twins and the Three — Siblings of the Flame, if you will.’ She flashed a quick smile, one that echoed down every world-line at once. Then it was gone. ‘Or a triumvirate. I’m not joking, just in case you’re wondering. I don’t want to rebuild Sheol, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a tomb of any kind. I want to find a new way of doing my job. You can help me do this, and I can make it happen. You’re already in all the branches of this world-tree, like me. All you have to do is decide,’

 

‘But — why?’ asked Seth. ‘Why us?’

 

‘Because you deserve a chance to prove yourselves. All your lives you’ve been pushed around, on the back foot. You’re quite right in feeling that you don’t matter, that it’s what you are that counts. So here’s an opportunity to show that you do matter, after all.’

 

‘And?’ asked Hadrian.

 

‘And, well…’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘And we get to finish what we started all those years ago.’

 

‘In Europe?’

 

‘In Europe. Yes, I know it’s not going to be easy. It could, in fact, be a disaster. But what’s new? Life is all about taking risks and stumbling from one fuck-up to another. At least here we’ll be outside the world-tree — off the permanent record, if you like. There’s a lot to explore when we’re not busy, and if it doesn’t work out there are plenty of places to slot you back in, together or apart. I’m not saying this will fix everything,’ she concluded, ‘but it’s the only way I can think of that gives you the choice you badly need. What do you think? Do you want to take it?’

 

Seth and Hadrian exchanged glances.

 

Seth wondered what his brother was thinking. He was thinking about travelling back along the world-line to see their parents, and the world as it once was. He couldn’t change anything, but he could at least visit what had been lost. He could remember. A thousand years in the Void Beneath had scoured so much away. He had forgotten almost everything that didn’t come back, ultimately, to Hadrian and Yod.

 

And as for Ellis — he had forgotten a lot of that, too. He remembered the anguish and jealousy of juggling her and his brother while on holidays somewhere. Would it be any better now they were older and given a new purpose? He didn’t know. Older wasn’t necessarily wiser.

 

An alchemical marriage… Maybe it wouldn’t work. Maybe age hadn’t made them any smarter. Maybe old jealousies and fears would rear their familiar slimy heads. But was it better than nothing? Better than death?

 

Yes. That, he knew with certainty. It had to be. The world was beginning again, and so might he too. Time to stop merely living and find himself a life. He had only himself to answer to — himself, in all possible worlds — if he failed to do that.

 

Hadrian leaned in close and whispered to his brother, ‘I bet you like the idea of being a legend one day.’

 

‘I hadn’t even thought of it that way. But, hey, that’s a good point. When they write the next edition of The Book of Towers, we’d get a starring role for certain.’

 

‘Who’d be mad enough to take on that job?’

 

‘Someone madder than Ron Synett?’

 

‘As if.’

 

‘Well, boys?’ asked Ellis. ‘Stop whispering and make a decision.’

 

‘I think it’s worth a try,’ said Hadrian.

 

Seth nodded. ‘Me too.’

 

She didn’t hide her relief. ‘Good. I’m more glad than I can properly convey.’

 

‘When do we start?’

 

‘Not immediately. There’s a fairly complex procedure we’ll have to undergo to introduce you properly to the Flame. Not just anyone can do this job, you know. And then there’s Shilly’s charm. That’ll have to be properly in place before you go anywhere.’

 

Seth reined in a slight disappointment. He was keen to get moving. But he recognised that feeling as a desire to run away from his problems rather than to a solution.

 

‘Shall we go back to the others, then?’ he asked. ‘Maybe Shilly’s already starting. We wouldn’t know down here.’

 

‘I’d know,’ Ellis said. But she nodded. ‘All right. It’s done.’

 

She indicated the body, which had already lost all sense of connection to Hadrian, symbolic or otherwise. It was just another corpse, lifeless and empty. Like St Elmo’s Fire, a faint blue glow rose up around them. Then the stone walls began to buckle and crack under the weight of the water above. Cold rushed through them. The body vanished under a tide of bubbling darkness and disappeared forever.

 

* * * *

 

The Rescue

 

 

‘Who survives and who dies is determined

as much by chance as by will,

on the battlefield and off.’

 

THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 4:15

 

 

fter hours of waiting, everything seemed to happen at once. First the Goddess and the twins returned, blurring into view at the base of the scar in the crater wall where they could best observe the clean-up operation. Skender noted their reappearance from his own vantage point not far away, under a makeshift shelter in which the injured were being cared for. The interior of the shelter was warm thanks to the efforts of Kelloman and the other mages, and wardens had set up an extensive system of mirrorlights by which the former battlefield was easily visible. As he sat with Chu’s head in his lap, stroking her hair with one hand and the bilby with the other, he had plenty of time to observe what was going on. Despite his injured arm, black eye and strange sunburn, he didn’t regard himself as one of those needing care.

 

The Goddess made no move to intervene in the clean-up and no one went to her for advice or to ask where she’d been. A line had been drawn, it seemed, without anyone speaking of it. The Goddess had her business to attend to; everyone else had theirs. For a while their aims had been identical, but now the crisis was over all allegiances were negotiable.

 

Then the Way opened from Fundelry, and Sal and Shilly emerged from it looking weary but resolved. Their voices didn’t carry to where Skender sat, and he made no move to get closer. He knew he should care more about what would happen next, but he was tired of world-shattering decisions, and he suspected both Sal and Shilly felt the same. As people gathered around them, he could see the stiffness in Sal’s posture and the way Shilly clutched the top of her walking stick. Their work was probably just beginning, Skender thought. He wished them luck with it.

 

Whatever they had decided, a whole new flurry of activity sprang up around them. Orders radiated throughout the camp. Dozens of people stirred into motion, dropping their former duties and setting off on new ones. Skender was reminded of ant nests in the greater deserts, roused by a single dropped pebble. The Magister of Laure moved among the others like a praying mantis, stooped and predatory. He looked away.

 

Griel had taken a devel spike through his arm and been sent to the healing tent. His dark eyes moved back and forth, taking everything in. Skender could practically hear the turning of the wheels of his mind.

 

‘Oriel’s taken a lot of credit for turning up at the last minute, don’t you think?’ Skender said as Oriel consulted with the Alcaide over the repairs to one of the larger blimps. Now that compasses were working again, the Panic didn’t plan to stick around long. ‘That’d bother me, if I were you.’

 

Griel’s attentive eyes flicked to him, then back to the scene before them. ‘No. This is war. You need people like him.’

 

‘But the war is over now, and you’ll be stuck with him.’

 

‘For a while, yes. Not forever.’ Griel emitted a whuffing noise that might have been a laugh. ‘My guess is he already had the flotilla on its way when Kelloman tracked him down, probably following us to make sure we didn’t get up to no good. Covering his bets. How else could he have got here so quickly?’

 

Skender hadn’t thought of that. It had taken Marmion’s expedition days to make the difficult ascent to the top of the mountains. Oriel had appeared within an hour or two of Sal and Shilly calling for help. He could never have assembled such an armada in time had it not already been on the way.

 

‘He’s lucky,’ Skender said. ‘Does that make for a good leader?’

 

‘Absolutely!’ Griel’s eyebrows went up as though Skender had said something amusing. ‘That’s the best trait a wartime leader can have.’

 

Skender felt himself flush. ‘I think I’ll go for a walk,’ he said. ‘My leg’s going numb. Will you call me—?’

 

‘I’d call you if you’re on the other side of the world,’ Griel promised with no trace of irony. ‘Go. You deserve a break.’

 

Skender eased Chu to one side and stood on wobbly knees. The bilby chattered at him through the bars of its makeshift cage, and he sympathised.

 

‘Okay,’ he told it, opening the stays. ‘You can come too. But no running off this time, all right?’

 

It crawled onto his shoulder and bit his earlobe as though daring him to change his mind. He had no intention of changing his mind, unless Upuaut in the body of Kelloman’s former host put in an appearance. The golem had been missing since nightfall, as had Pukje and the glast. The absences were probably nothing to worry about, he told himself, but he knew he wasn’t the only one concerned.

 

He walked downslope past a smoky bonfire, not heading for Sal and Shilly and the others, just moving his legs. Piles of devel flesh crackled and popped in the intense flames. The stench was unbearable. He did his best to stay upwind. Idly, he looked for his parents, but they were nowhere to be seen.

 

Further down, where the land began to level out, lay the dead in two rows. Skender walked along the aisle between them, feeling terribly sober. Wardens and mages rested together with wounds gaping or no visible wounds at all. Even in its final extremities, Yod had been able to extract the will from its victims with a single touch. Many had died that way, alongside those who had been stabbed or crushed or dropped from a falling blimp. Skender saw Orma and another Ice Eater, then a third, and he realised with a sinking feeling that the entire community which had lived on the shore of the lake at the top of the world was gone. Not one had survived to rebuild and repopulate their homes. That saddened him and made him feel guilty — he had, after all, convinced Orma to return to the secret cavern with him instead of running away — even as he wondered what sort of life they would have had, now that most of them were receding into the past as the Holy Immortals and the mission given to them by the Goddess was null and void. There was no reason to stay behind, except out of sentimentality.

 

Kail and Marmion were at the very end of the upper row. Marmion’s half-lidded eyes gleamed in the mirrorlight, as though he might open them at any moment and sit up to bark an order at someone. Skender realised that, against all the odds, he would miss the bald warden. He had been a unifying force at the end, knowing when to stay quiet and when to speak up — unlike the Alcaide, who seemed to revel in getting, and keeping, people offside. Kail was someone Skender had barely known but he had liked him well enough. The double loss had left the Sky Warden survivors — Banner and Rosevear, the only two out of those who had set off in pursuit of Highson Sparre weeks ago — in a sombre mood. Banner in particular found consolation hard to come by.

 

‘It’s a black day,’ said an unfamiliar voice with very familiar tones. ‘I daresay no one feels terribly much like celebrating.’

 

Skender looked up and saw Mage Kelloman standing not far away, looking exactly as Skender had imagined but still jarringly unfamiliar in his own body. Despite two years of inactivity, it retained its bulk and ruddy cheeks. Whoever Kelloman had paid to look after it had done a good job.

 

‘I daresay not,’ Skender said with a sigh. The bilby twitched in his arms. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked it. ‘Are you hungry?’

 

The twitch became a squirm as Kelloman came closer. The mage looked down at it with an expression Skender didn’t immediately recognise, then reached out with one meaty hand. Skender let go of the animal and watched in amazement as it jumped the short gap across to Kelloman and burrowed into his robe.

 

‘It recognises you,’ he said in open surprise.

 

Kelloman didn’t respond immediately. Only then did Skender realise that the mage was moved by the bilby’s acceptance of him. His expression was one of fondness.

 

‘It appears I made one friend while I was in the forest,’ he said.

 

Skender took the large man’s upper right arm in one hand. ‘You earned more than that tonight.’

 

‘You’re too kind, boy.’ The mage blinked and looked around, at the bodies and the bonfires, and the work continuing elsewhere. ‘Your parents probably wouldn’t like you wandering around like this.’

 

Skender almost laughed. ‘It’s a little too late for that.’

 

‘I mean —’

 

‘I take your meaning, Mage Kelloman. It’s okay. I’ll find them and put that worry from their mind.’

 

He caught sight of his father’s high forehead moving through a throng of Sky Wardens, but his mother was still absent. ‘What about you? Do you think your exile will be over now?’

 

‘Goddess, I hope so.’ The mage managed a brave face. ‘I may be no beauty, but it’s nice to be back in my flesh again.’ He patted his belly. ‘I’ve missed the taste of real food.’

 

‘Come to the Keep,’ Skender said. ‘We set a pretty good table, for a school.’

 

‘That’s your destination?’

 

‘For a time. I think that’s wise, at least until I graduate.’ He wasn’t thinking about the long-term at all. ‘You could come for that, at least.’

 

The grimace softened. ‘Thank you,’ the mage said again. ‘I’ll bring this little fellow along too, if it doesn’t get tired of me.’

 

Skender held out his hand, and they shook. ‘Got a name for it?’ he asked as he headed off.

 

‘A name?’ Kelloman held up the bilby and looked it in the face. ‘Well, her name was Leanda. Perhaps that would be suitable.’

 

‘Whose…? Oh, I get it. Do you think she’d like her pet being named after her?’

 

Kelloman looked impatient and annoyed at himself. ‘Emu’s armpits, I hadn’t considered that. I’ll give it some more thought.’

 

Skender stuck his hands deep into his robes and walked down to stare into the restless, cold water.

 

* * * *

 

A Panic scout had been sent an hour earlier to investigate the remains of the three towers. She reported that the top of only one had survived Yod’s fall from the sky; it protruded like a broken fingernail from the dark lake, barely visible from the shore. Nothing stirred on the shattered walls or in its hollow core, but the ruin would be treated with extreme caution for a while yet. No one knew how many devels had flocked in support of Yod’s big push, or where they might be hiding now.

 

Waves licked at the shore with a syncopated, uneasy rhythm, as though the lake was still perturbed by the creature that had briefly inhabited it. Skender soon tired of the view and retreated to higher ground. He wasn’t ready to return to the tent where Chu lay unconscious. Being away from her accentuated how dead inside he felt from passively sitting and waiting. She had given no sign that she would ever awake; he had nothing, yet everything, to hope for. The situation was wearing him down.

 

Instead he found a vantage point well away from the main action and sat there, holding himself to keep his body heat in and tugging his beanie down over his ears. He felt as though he was waiting for something, but he wasn’t sure what it might be, or if he would even know it when it came.

 

‘Why am I here?’ asked a voice out of the darkness behind him.

 

He turned so fast he almost slipped and fell down the slope. Ever since the golem had threatened him in the forest, he had been wary of unexpected voices in the night.

 

It was only Highson Sparre. Skender had mistaken him for a rock.

 

‘Scaring the crap out of me wasn’t your intention, then?’

 

‘No. I’m sorry.’ Highson unfurled his arms from the blanket he held around himself and scuttled closer without standing up. ‘I meant: why am I still alive? Why aren’t I one of the ones down there?’ He pointed at the lines of bodies. ‘Like Kail, or Marmion, or —’

 

‘Stop it. Are you saying you deserve to die?’

 

‘No. I’m just not sure I deserve to live.’

 

‘Since when has being alive depended on that?’

 

They sat in silence for a long while, Skender thinking about the possibility of Chu never coming back — but definitely deserving to, in his opinion — and Highson maybe thinking about the wife he had forgotten. Skender wondered how he would feel if Chu died and the Old Ones took his memory of her away. How could he grieve for someone he had no memory of knowing? How would he know if he felt better for not knowing?

 

Either way, he decided, there would be a gap in his life that would be difficult to fill. Or heal.

 

‘I just don’t know what I’m going to do now,’ Sal’s father said. ‘My whole life feels up in the air. I have no purpose, no plan. I must’ve had one at some point, since I worked so hard to make the Homunculus and everything, but what it was I can’t remember. Or did I never think about what came after Seirian was free? Did I never really expect to succeed?’

 

Skender shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Highson. You must have plenty of options, though.’

 

‘I can’t see any.’

 

‘Well, you have skills few others have. You haven’t forgotten them, have you? Master Warden Atilde might let you teach.’

 

‘Only if the Alcaide approves.’ Highson looked gloomy at that prospect.

 

‘Or you could become a golem hunter. I remember looking at the Roslin Codex once, back at the Keep. You’ve got all the right skills to do what he did. And there’s at least one rogue golem on the loose now.’

 

‘Upuaut?’ Highson’s aspect became more thoughtful at that suggestion. ‘That’s true. But golems are notoriously hard to track. Without some sort of connection or clue…’

 

His voice trailed off. Skender watched him, wondering what ideas were turning through the mind of the man who had, ultimately, made it possible for Yod to die. Without the Homunculus at hand, the world would have been battling an untouchable ghost.

 

A shiver of shame went through him. Skender remembered all too well his willingness to give up everything in order to serve Yod, in any capacity — even as a food source. It had been a close call for him and everyone touched by that terrible, alien charisma. For the first time he had understood why beings of power such as Gabra’il and Upuaut could be drawn in, even though the only possible reward in the end would surely be death. He almost felt sorry for them.

 

Then he thought of Chu’s bruised face and neck, and all thought of pity evaporated.

 

‘Come on.’ Highson stood without warning and reached down for Skender’s arm. ‘You’ve given me an idea.’

 

Skender let himself be hauled to his feet and dragged uphill. He knew better than to protest.

 

Highson’s jaw was set in a way that reminded him distinctly of Sal. Nothing would deflect either of them when they settled on a particular course of action. All Skender could do was go along for the ride.

 

When they came to the healing tent, Highson pulled back the heavy fabric and ducked his head to enter. Skender followed, blinking at the impact of warm air and intimate human smells. Rosevear looked up and nodded in welcome. The healer was weary. There was even more dried blood on the front of his robe than there had been earlier in the evening.

 

‘Where’s Chu?’ asked Highson.

 

Both Rosevear and Skender pointed at the same time, indicating the stretcher in the corner where the unconscious flyer lay. Skender’s heart lurched at the sight of her sallow skin and her sunken eyes. Her condition had not changed in the slightest.

 

‘Can you help her?’ he asked Highson as the warden crouched beside her and took one of her hands in his.

 

‘If we’re lucky, I can help both of us. Come here.’ He waved Skender over. ‘Upuaut is very old and cunning, even for a golem. It has tricks we can’t imagine. But because Chu wasn’t a Change-worker, taking her over must have been very difficult. I don’t believe Upuaut could have achieved it while she was conscious, not without killing her, and she’s patently not dead. Her personality is too strong. It must’ve waited until something knocked her out before moving in, then stopped her from regaining control once it had its way. She was under its thrall for several hours, in which time her mind, denied its proper seat, could have gone anywhere.

 

‘Our job,’ Highson concluded, ‘is to find her and bring her back.’

 

Skender nodded. So far Highson hadn’t told him anything he hadn’t already guessed. ‘And how does that help you?’

 

‘She of all of us is closest to the golem. It’s touched her in a way we will never know. I won’t pretend that living with that scar will be easy; no one emerges unscathed from such an experience. But it gives her an edge, too. She knows Upuaut, now. She’ll recognise it, no matter what form it takes. She might even be able to track it.’

 

Skender could see where he was going. Bring Chu back and he could use her to hunt the golem and bring its depredations to an end. But would she want to? Would it be asking too much of someone who had once been its victim, one of the very few who had survived?

 

He told himself not to put the caravan before the camels. They had to bring her back, first. ‘How can I help?’

 

‘Guide me in finding her, just like she’ll guide me in finding the golem. You know her best.’

 

Highson waved him closer. Skender knelt next to the stretcher and made himself comfortable on the hard ground. Highson took one of his hands and placed it on Chu’s forehead. Skender’s other hand Highson himself took, forming a circuit between the three of them. Already, Skender could feel a ripple of the Change flowing through him: in through his right hand and across his chest, then out through his left.

 

Chu didn’t react in any way to the subtle invasion. Her chest rose and fell with a gentle, steady rhythm. Rosevear was observing closely, making sure they did nothing to hurt his patient. He didn’t interfere, though. Skender knew that he had tried everything in his power to bring her back. All he could do now was watch and hope.

 

‘Hold on tight,’ said Highson. ‘If you get lost, wait for me to find you. I won’t be far away.’

 

‘All right,’ he said. ‘But —’

 

He didn’t finish the sentence: Where exactly are we going? Suddenly, as though a wave of tar had crashed over them, the world went black. The bottom dropped out of Skender’s stomach and he fell down through it into nothingness, and kept falling, weightless and disoriented, until he thought he might never stop.

 

The touch of Highson’s mind steadied him. Do you know where we are?

 

It feels like the Void. He remembered the talk he’d heard after Highson rescued the twins from the Void Beneath. The hum every Change-worker feared when they pushed themselves too hard was gone forever. Rosevear’s already looked in here for Chu and didn’t find her.

 

He doesn’t have the experience I have. And he doesn’t have you to help. Highson’s mind roamed ever deeper into the endless dark. What’s your heart-name? Mine is Guin if you ever need to call me.

 

Galeus, Skender replied without hesitation, even as he cursed the fact that yet another person had learned his secret.

 

What about Chu? Does she have one?

 

At this Skender did hesitate. What right had he to divulge that information to someone who barely knew her? She had only relented and given it to him a second time after days of argument and tension.

 

But this was different, he told himself. This was about more than privacy and identity. This was life versus death. If they couldn’t call her she might never come back to her body, and in the Void Beneath the only way to call someone was with their heart-name.

 

It’s Hana, he said.

 

Thank you. I promise not to betray her trust in you.

 

Then Highson was moving again, moving in a way not dissimilar to the Goddess’s Tomb, in no detectable direction but with great velocity, leaving Skender disoriented and wholly dependent on his guide’s expertise. The last time he’d been in the Void, it had been Sal’s connection with Shilly that had led them to freedom. Now, only Highson knew the trick of it. If they became separated, Skender might end up in exactly the same situation as Chu.

 

Try calling her, Highson said. It can’t hurt. There’s no one else to hear down here now.

 

All right. Skender focussed his concentration and hurled his mental voice out into the emptiness. Hana? Hana? Can you hear me? Are you out there somewhere? It’s me, Galeus. I’ve come to take you back. It’s safe now. The golem has gone. Answer me, Hana. Just call my name and we’ll come get you.

 

The silence of the Void was unbroken.

 

Keep trying, Highson told him. I’ll keep us moving. If she’s here, we’ll find her.

 

You mean she might not he here?

 

There’s another place we can look. But don’t give up on the Void too soon. It’s not the infinite space it used to be, apparently, but it’s still large enough to become lost in.

 

Skender hardened his resolve. Together, he and Highson crisscrossed the empty Void for what felt like hours, taking turns calling Chu’s heart-name. Sometimes strange echoes returned to them, bouncing off otherwise invisible warps in the structure of the Void. At every one, Skender’s heart raced, but always it turned out to be nothing.

 

Hana? Hana!

 

His resolve began to crack. It was easy to give up hope in the face of such relentless discouragement. If he’d been using his throat, it would have long ago gone hoarse.

 

It looks like Rosevear was right, Highson finally admitted. She can’t be here — or if she is, she doesn’t want to answer.

 

Why wouldn’t she? Skender responded angrily. She has no reason to hide from me.

 

Maybe she doesn’t realise it’s you…

 

Skender didn’t push him to explain that comment. He could feel Highson concentrating on a new charm, one he had never seen before and couldn’t unpick in the way Shilly might have. Again the Void moved around him. This time he seemed to be rising, faster and faster, towards an invisible surface.

 

When they reached it, he felt them cross a subtle boundary, like surfacing from a bath in a pitch-black room. He knew they were no longer in the Void Beneath, but he could see and hear as little as he could before. They had switched from one Void to another.

 

Where are we?

 

Wait and see. Try calling her now.

 

He did so, hearing a multitude of new echoes in response. This new Void was clearly not as empty as the last, wherever it was. He called again, feeling like a bat probing the darkness for prey. Some quarters returned his call more strongly than others, and Highson moved them in one of those directions, following an instinct Skender couldn’t fathom. As his mind adjusted to the strange process, he came to think of the regions with stronger echoes as ‘bright’, and those that remained resolutely silent as ‘dark’.

 

Hana? Are you in here?

 

His voice became more and more plaintive as Highson led them from bright spot to bright spot, never finding more than just echoes. Skender began to wonder if Highson was humouring him, making him feel like they were doing something useful to find Chu when in fact there was no hope at all. He wanted to challenge Sal’s father and force the truth out of him, but he was too afraid to. If it was true, where would that leave him? It would be very difficult to accept the reality of Chu’s absence when, to all of his senses, she lay in front of him, apparently sleeping off another big night.

 

Then, just as he was on the verge of giving up hope, a particularly bright echo came back at them. Highson turned to it, urging Skender to call again. He did so, and Chu’s heart-name returned with the force of an urgent whisper. They moved closer, calling as they went, and the echo became louder and more intense, as though bouncing off a small object hanging in the Void.

 

When it seemed that the object was directly in front of them, Highson brought them to a halt. Skender went to reach out, but Highson held him back.

 

That’s her, Sal’s father said.

 

What? How do you know?

 

I just do. This is where she came when she woke up to find that the golem had taken her over. Not the Void at all. I was wrong about that. I’m sorry.

 

Skender waved away the apology. But where are we? And how did you know she’d be here?

 

We’re inside her. This is her mind. It’s empty now the golem has left, but she hasn’t returned to fill it. She’s been badly frightened. If we can convince her it’s safe now, she can come out and be herself again.

 

How do we do that?

 

Talk to her, of course. No more shouting. I think that’s only scaring her even more.

 

Highson let him go. Skender felt a nudge on his mental shoulder, pushing him forward. He tried to concentrate on the task before him, even as he struggled to accept the reality of his situation. He was inside Chu’s mind, but she wasn’t in control of it. Nothing was in control. This was exactly what Kelloman’s host’s mind had been like when he hadn’t been inside it. Emptiness. Hollowness. Absence. Like a cave sealed up deep in the Earth and never visited again. Or an open grave…

 

Hana, it’s me, Galeus. He spoke softly, hearing his words echo back as sibilant whispers. Guin and I have come to rescue you. The golem has gone.

 

You’re perfectly safe. There’s no reason to keep hiding.

 

The brightness of the object contracted, as though Chu had curled tighter around herself.

 

Take a look around, he persisted. There’s nothing here but you and us, I swear. The fighting’s over. Yod lost and we won. Come out and you can take a holiday. Sleep in as long as you like. I’ll even find you some araq, if you want. My treat. He didn’t want to mention her ruined wing, but he did try a different tack in the hope of getting a response. You can even get revenge. Highson is going after the thing that did this to you. He’s going to make it pay and stop it from hurting anyone else. Would you like that? You can help him, if you want.

 

Still nothing more than a determined shrinking, as if she was trying to vanish into herself forever. A moment of true fear greeted that thought. In her own mind, obeying her own rules, she might very well succeed.

 

Please, Hana, come out and talk to me. I’m worried about you. You know how anxious I get about stupid things. Well, this time it’s not stupid at all. You’ve been hurt and I want to make sure you get better. You need to get better. You need to come back to me. I miss you.

 

He felt a slight loosening of the knot she had tied around herself. Galeus? whispered a faint voice beneath the relentless echoes. No — I’m —

 

Good, said Highson. Keep her talking.

 

Yes, Hana, it’s me, Galeus. Please listen to me. You have to come out. For my sake if not for yours. How am I going to survive without you?

 

Who’s going to take me flying? I can’t live without you.

 

I hit you. The knot tightened again.

 

Yes, you did, and my eye’s still sore. I understand why you did it; I know you were just trying to protect me. I might have done the same as you, if I’d thought of it first. It’s all okay now. I promise. It’s all forgiven.

 

Do you —? Her voice was weak and faltering, very different than it was in real life. It made him weep to hear it. Do you still —?

 

Do I what, Hana?

 

Do you love —?

 

He thought his heart might break, even as he hit on the best way to get her to respond. Love was important, but it wouldn’t be enough. Yes, Hana. Definitely yes. I love you, still and always. But I’m not going to sit here and watch you vanish up your own arse. If you really love me, come out and tell me in person. None of this ‘love me back’ stuff. That’s not how I want to hear it. All right?

 

A shocked silence was her only response.

 

Come on, Highson, Skender said. Let’s get out of here.

 

Are you sure? Highson resisted Skender’s efforts to move.

 

Yes, I’m sure. Get us moving, fast. I can’t stay here any longer.

 

Galeus? Chu’s voice came from behind them, as plaintive as a child’s. Galeus, don’t leave me, please.

 

Come and get me, Hana. I’m a heartbeat away.

 

But —

 

No buts. Just do it!

 

He sped through the darkness of her - empty mind, trailing Highson closely and feeling as though he was leaving a large chunk of himself behind with her. If it didn’t work, he would have left her in the dark, scared and feeling even more abandoned than before. If it didn’t work, he might not deserve the feelings he hoped for in return. If it didn’t work, what reason did he have to keep going?

 

Behind them, a star blossomed in the Void. A tremendous rushing noise broke the silence. He had an uncanny impression of something very small blowing up very quickly into something very large, much as the glast had on the shores of the lake, only larger and faster still. Highson put on a burst of speed as the boundary of the thing swept towards them.

 

Galeus!

 

Swirling turbulence rose up like a tidal wave behind them. The Void exploded into fragmentary impressions — sights, sounds, tastes, touches, and smells — all jumbled together and engulfing them with one wild rush. Skender felt himself disappear into that sensory onslaught. He might have screamed, but he couldn’t hear his own voice. He was lifted up and squeezed out, flattened like a leaf between two hands, and shot violently out of the chaos —

 

— back into his body, which jerked as though pricked by a pin. Highson reeled back with a cry, breaking contact with Skender’s and Chu’s hands. A wave of dizziness made Skender worry that he might be violently ill. Rosevear steadied him and the feeling began to fade. He sat down and saw that Chu’s eyelids were opening. She blinked, and tears streamed down her cheeks. Her eyes rolled as though not seeing anything, then focussed on him.

 

‘I hate you,’ she said. Her hands came up to grip the front of his robe and pull him closer. ‘I hate you!’

 

Then she was kissing him, messily but with feeling, and all Skender’s worries evaporated.

 

* * * *

 

Later, after she had fallen into a natural sleep and Rosevear insisted he go away so the healer could examine her, Skender braved eating for the first time in as long as he could remember. He hadn’t realised just how hungry he was until the food was in front him. It wasn’t much — some dried provisions brought by the Panic flotilla on their long journey — but it tasted like heaven. And the cup of tea that came with it was better than any wine. Most of the wardens and mages were sleeping off altitude sickness, or trying to, and nearly all the devel corpses had been cleared away, so the camp was almost peaceful. With stars twinkling in the sky above and even the lake quiet at last, it was difficult to believe just how close he had come that day to watching the end of the world. He still didn’t know what decision Sal and Shilly had made and how it would be implemented, and he still hadn’t had a chance to talk to his parents, but everything was bearable now Chu was back.

 

Rosevear said that although her reflexes were impaired they should return to normal with time and rest. Her mind seemed as sharp to him as it ever had.

 

‘You’re an idiot,’ he had told her when the excitement of her awakening had died down. Highson and Rosevear had given them some privacy, for which Skender had been profoundly grateful. It was all he could do to stop kissing her. ‘You can’t even throw a punch right.’

 

‘And you’re a pain. Follow me anywhere, you will, no matter how many hints I give.’ She patted his face, right on the bruise, and smiled at his wince. The gash down her right side, sustained when her wing had fallen in the turbulence inside Tower Aleph, didn’t seem to hurt her at all. ‘Does Highson really think I could be a golem hunter?’

 

‘He seemed serious enough about it.’

 

‘Well, that puts us in a bit of a pickle, doesn’t it? Worse even than your parents: a teacher and a Surveyor are only marginally better off than a teacher and a golem hunter.’

 

‘I’m sure we’ll find a way around it.’

 

‘It’s good you’re so confident.’

 

‘Aren’t you?’

 

‘Let’s just see what happens, eh?’ She had gripped his hand very tightly. ‘It’s been a tough couple of weeks.’

 

‘I know.’

 

‘But we’ll talk about it soon, I promise. If it helps, I want the same thing you do.’

 

He had left it there, telling himself to be glad she was back and at least considering a future together. After everything that had happened, that seemed more than he could possibly have hoped for. Barring a natural disaster, there was little he now had to worry about. They had all the time in the world to work things out.

 

However long that was going to be…

 

 

Sal was rinsing a bowl in the communal sink when Skender came to wash his dishes. For a moment. they didn’t say anything. Then Sal shook his bowl free of drops, laid it on a towel to dry, and took Skender in a tight bear hug. Skender was so startled he almost dropped his own dishes, but he held onto them, and Sal too after a moment’s embarrassment.

 

‘We made it,’ said Sal, pulling away. His long dark hair smelt of woodsmoke and salt. The injuries he had sustained during the fight didn’t seem to bother him. ‘I can’t quite believe it. Can you?’

 

Skender shook his head and turned to wash his dishes. The hug had made him feel surprisingly better. ‘It’s not over yet. We’ve got a new world to build, haven’t we?’

 

‘No. We’re keeping things as they are. That seemed simplest — even though it’s turned out to be anything but. The charm needs to be permanently etched into the world or else it’ll eventually wear out. Or it’ll just stop when Shilly dies, since she’s the one with it in her head. So we’re working on a way to get her off the hook. She doesn’t want to grow old staring at that thing. Not again.’

 

‘So no Cataclysm after all?’

 

No, thank the Goddess.’ Sal glanced up at the Flame, where Ellis Quick slept, watched over by her two ghostly attendants. ‘Nothing’s going to change, for a change.’

 

‘Well, that’s something.’ Skender didn’t hide his relief. He hadn’t been looking forward to a world without Stone Mages or Sky Wardens. His talent might not have been great, but at least he knew where he fitted in. He had read enough of The Book of Towers to know what happened when that order was disturbed.

 

‘Come on.’ Sal took him by the shoulder when he had finished cleaning up. ‘We’re going to put the charm into effect at sunrise, physical form or not. I’d like to clear my head before then. Let’s go check the wreckage of the balloon to see if there’s anything left behind.’

 

Skender agreed readily enough. Chu was in safe hands; Rosevear or Highson would call him through the Change if she woke and wanted him. As he and Sal headed off in search of the ravine, he explained how things had ended up with her, and Sal seemed impressed.

 

‘Highson, a golem hunter? That’s not a bad idea at all’

 

‘You could start a father-and-son business. Golems Our Speciality. No Mind Too Evil.’

 

Sal smiled. ‘I don’t think so. Fundelry is looking pretty good right now.’

 

‘Doesn’t it seem weird to you that you and Shilly, who could change the world in an instant, might end up forgotten in some dusty old town?’

 

‘Actually, to me it seems perfectly appropriate. As long as the lesson is learned by everyone else.’

 

They found the ravine entrance — a vertical slice through the crater wall with an irregular, snow-strewn floor — and made their way to where the expedition’s blimp had crashed. By dim starlight, it looked like the bleached-white skeleton of some strange ancient beast half-emerging from the rock. It was cold and dead, with all residual potential absorbed by the surrounding stone. They picked through the wreckage, but there was nothing of importance left behind. Either the Ice Eaters or the devels had stripped it in the previous day and a half.

 

Under a sheet of stiff cloth they found Mawson’s headless torso.

 

‘What do we do with this?’ Skender asked Sal. ‘Bury it?’

 

‘I don’t think Mawson would care much either way, wherever his head is.’

 

‘Didn’t he go with the glast?’

 

‘Well, he’s nowhere around here, so I guess so. They make a weird pair, those two, but Mawson’s always enjoyed distinctive companions.’

 

Skender leaned against a sturdy-looking strut that bent slightly under his weight, provoking a shower of snow from the rest of the wreck. Sal found a rock and sat on it.

 

‘Speaking of being forgotten,’ Sal said, ‘and making sure people learn their lessons, I reckon someone should write all this down.’

 

‘What do you mean?’

 

‘Well, half the problems we had stemmed from not knowing what happened in the old days. The Book of Towers is mostly wrong, and even when it’s right it doesn’t tell us anything terribly useful. It’ll be no different in a hundred years if we don’t create a permanent record of what really happened here. It’s not as if any of us know the full story, after all, and if we drift apart and start to forget, we’ll end up in the same position as before the next time something like this happens.’

 

‘You think it will happen again?’

 

‘Well, sure. It’s not nature’s way to stay still for long.’ Sal sighed. ‘No. What we need is a comprehensive account, so no one will ever forget.’

 

‘That sounds like a long and tedious job,’ he said. ‘Who’d be mad enough to take that on?’

 

‘Someone with lots of time on their hands. And mad, yes.’

 

‘Completely mad, I reckon.’

 

Then it hit him. The moment in the Tomb when the Goddess had forbidden him from taking part in baiting Yod. I have a purpose for you, she had said, but had refused to elaborate. Just keep an eye on things, she had told him. Someone needs to do that.

 

Someone with a perfect memory and plenty of time on his hands, until his father retired…

 

‘Did she send you here?’ he asked Sal.

 

‘Who?’

 

‘The Goddess. Is that why we’re having this conversation?’

 

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Skender. It just occurred to me then. Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’

 

It is a bloody good idea, Skender wanted to say, but admitting it aloud was halfway to volunteering for the job.

 

Two can play at that game, he thought.

 

‘I guess we don’t really need her now,’ he said. ‘The Goddess, I mean. She helped after the Cataclysm, and she came back to help us now, but with Yod gone there’s not much left for her to do. Once Shilly finishes that charm, everything will be settled. In fact, if you look at it one way, Shilly is the Goddess now. Isn’t that a strange thought?’

 

Sal didn’t say anything for several breaths, just stared at Skender with a speculative look on his face. Skender felt his cheeks begin to grow warm, despite the bitter chill in the mountain air. Then Sal laughed, and the tension was broken.

 

‘You’re right,’ Sal said. ‘It’s not going to be the same world. The twins won’t be holding it together; Yod won’t be waiting in the Void Beneath to eat the Lost Minds; there won’t be any more wild talents. There’ll be new problems, new challenges, and we’ll have to find new ways of dealing with them. And that goes for us, just like everyone. If Shilly and I can get that pardon Marmion promised us, we’ll finally be able to live and work in the open. We can travel; people can visit. No more hiding for us. That changes everything.’ He stood and came around to face Skender and put a hand on each of his shoulders. ‘I have a good feeling about the future. Don’t you?’

 

‘A good feeling?’ Skender didn’t have to look far to find the answer to that question, not now that Chu was awake. Everything else, including the Goddess’s plans for him, was secondary. ‘I guess I do. It’s not a bad feeling, anyway. And at least we have a future now.’

 

Sal smiled. ‘Indeed.’ He patted Skender once on the left shoulder and stood back, letting his gloved hands fall to his sides. ‘Shall we go see to it, then? It doesn’t look like there’s anything for us here.’

 

Skender stood, sending a second, much smaller shower of snow to the ground. ‘Sure. But just let me make this clear before we go back: I may think Shilly is a goddess, but that doesn’t make you a god. Not even close.’

 

‘Oh, really?’ Sal bent down and scooped up a handful of snow. ‘And what if I were to say that you being the new scribe would be a fitting job for the biggest nerd I know.’

 

‘I knew it!’ The snowball whizzed by Skender’s ear and exploded amidst the wreckage. ‘I knew she’d got to you!’

 

He threw a snowball in return that Sal easily dodged. That prompted a flurry of insults and snowballs back and forth. Their laughter echoed from the hard stone walls of the ravine, making it sound like the mountains were laughing with them. Skender chased Sal back to where the others waited, wearing a grin on his face as though it was a medal.

 

* * * *

 

The Goddess

 

 

‘What of the future?

It will come whether we want it to or not.

That you can be sure of, if nothing else.’

 

A SCRIBE’S BOOK OF QUESTIONS

 

 

One month later

 

hilly squatted to inspect Vehofnehu’s work and found it perfect. The ancient empyricist was much slower than Bartholomew had been in her other self’s life, but he was painstakingly methodical. She never had to correct any of his angles or proportions, almost as though he knew before she told him what had to be done.

 

Maybe he does, she thought, but forgot that question as someone clumsily skidded to a halt behind her and almost knocked her over. Her right hand thrust her stick down into the ice to anchor her while her left went around her waist.

 

‘Shilly, I’m sorry. I slipped. Are you all right?’ She steadied herself, and turned. ‘Fine, Tom. Is everything okay?’

 

The gangly Engineer shook his head. His hair was slowly growing back, spotted with premature grey. ‘I have a message from the Eminent Delfine. Workers in the south-east sector spotted Pukje an hour ago.’

 

‘Not devels?’

 

‘Not this time.’

 

‘Well, that’s good, but — so?’

 

‘So —’ He was momentarily at a loss for words. ‘So the Eminent Delfine thought you ought to know.’

 

Shilly bit her lip on an irritated Why on Earth would she think that? Lidia Delfine was in charge of the south-east sector; if Pukje was bothering them, she could handle him herself. It wasn’t as if a single imp could do much damage to anyone or anything now.

 

But that wasn’t the point, and Shilly knew it. Lidia Delfine was telling Shilly because people felt better for knowing that Shilly knew. They looked up to her, Sal said. And that mattered.

 

She sighed. Representatives of every known culture were contributing to the project, far more than just those who had been involved in the final battle against Yod. As word had spread about what they were attempting at the top of the world, more and more people came to be part of it, travelling by Way, balloon or other means to the lake. She wasn’t ungrateful. As the ice thickened, allowing the carvers more and more safe surface to work on, and as the moss-farmers from the forest grew spores by the vat-load, hands were desperately needed. But the ever-increasing number of volunteers created its own problems. She was glad she had Sal to lean on when the going got tough. All she wanted to do was get the charm finished and go home. And sleep for a week.

 

‘Give the Eminent Delfine my thanks,’ she told Tom. ‘I’ll alert the other sectors.’

 

Tom nodded and went to leave.

 

She grabbed his right arm and pulled him back, mindful not to topple both of them. ‘Any dreams?’ she asked him.

 

He shook his head, then nodded. ‘Yes. Not as many as before, but they’re becoming more frequent.’

 

‘Good,’ she said, even though that wasn’t the answer she wanted. It was in fact the answer to a very different question, one she couldn’t bring herself to ask. ‘Anything I should know?’

 

He shook his head, sending long black curls dancing, and hurried off.

 

Maybe I’m imagining it, she thought. Maybe it’s all in my head.

 

She put both hands on the top of her stick as a faint wave of disorientation swept through her.

 

No. There it is again. That feeling.

 

Someone was trying to reach her from the future. From a future. She didn’t know whether to fight or to welcome it. What if the communication brought bad news? What if the Old Ones and their jailer, glimpsed briefly heading for rugged mountainous territories in the north, were coming back in force to undo her decision? What if she learned that all her hard work had been for nothing?

 

Her gaze drifted upwards to where a stronghold was nearing completion on the site of the stubby remnant of Tower Gimel, less than a hundred

 

metres away. Griel had accepted the position of First Maintainer, and Oriel had allowed it, more, she suspected, to get his old rival out of the Panic city than out of respect. Like the Alcaide and Skender’s father, Oriel had returned his efforts to governance of his realm once the crisis had passed. Attention was officially drifting elsewhere, even as everyday people responded to the greater challenge at the top of the world.

 

Although the possibility existed, she couldn’t imagine Griel letting anyone damage the charm without a considerable fight. However, if there was anything she could do to minimise that possibility, she had to do it now rather than later.

 

Okay, talk to me, she said to the origin of that distant feeling. But whoever or whatever it was had gone for the moment. She had no doubt the feeling would return, like Tom’s dreams and Vehofnehu’s wandering stars. The future was as relentless as an avalanche, and as frustrating as watching water freeze.

 

Cold sunlight reflected off something on the shore, something that hadn’t been there before. Reaching for a spyglass — no sleds were allowed on the lake now the charm was so near completion, and there was no way she was going to walk all that way to satisfy idle curiosity — she peered through the polished lenses to see what was going on. The Flame was burning on the hillside where Marmion had died, not far from the monument erected in the honour of those who had fallen. She scanned the area around the monument, but detected no sign of the Goddess or the twins. They hadn’t been seen since Shilly had put the charm into effect. Only the Flame, popping up every now and again.

 

Shilly had noticed that the Flame’s reappearances roughly corresponded with her nagging feelings from the future. She suspected the two were connected. If she could only work out how or why that might be, then either or both might stop bothering her. Perhaps the feeling was a side effect of the Flame’s presence; or perhaps the Flame was stopping the feeling becoming more than that, performing some sort of protective function on the new world’s causal pathway. Part of what had rendered the seers blind, she had realised, was the presence of her future selves where they weren’t supposed to be. The knot had been too hard for even the very talented to untangle. So the Flame could simply be stopping another knot from forming.

 

By the crisp afternoon light, the charm looked magnificent, even foreshortened as it was by her position on its surface. From the air, it took her breath away. Two days earlier, Griel had taken her for a ride in one of the three combat blimps that would be permanently stationed at the stronghold. The complex tangle of lines and shapes that she had once despaired of ever grasping stood out in crystal clarity through the thin layer of ice protecting it from the elements. Ink-black moss provided by the foresters’ gardens was ‘planted’ in furrows cut a hand’s-length deep into the ice, where it continued to grow strongly and steadily, despite the ice that formed naturally over the top. In even those most unlikely futures where the Maintainers had somehow failed and let the great work stand untended, the moss would grow to plug any gap that formed. The living, self-repairing charm would only ever completely fail if the lake melted — and recovered Ice Eater records indicated that not once in the previous thousand years had such ever come to pass — so it would, most likely, outlast her by many, many centuries.

 

Vehofnehu touched her arm. ‘Is everything all right?’

 

She lowered the spyglass. ‘I think so. But I’d like to send a runner to Sal and Highson, just to make sure.’ Father and son were jointly responsible for the devel watch, for the time being. Even though Sal’s wild talent had dropped back to its usual level, it hadn’t retreated any further yet, and the pair made formidable opponents. Individual devels had learned not to harass the carvers and planters on the ice, but there were still occasional groups, willing to take the risk in order to disrupt their work and bring about a Cataclysm, either way.

 

‘I’ll organise it immediately.’ The empyricist downed his tools and hopped nimbly across the charm to where a cluster of workers had gathered around one of Shilly’s detailed diagrams.

 

She watched him go, wondering at how comfortable he seemed on the ice. He had traded a climbing hook for clawed boots much more easily than anyone else she knew. Perhaps it came with extreme age, this incredible ability to adapt. One either changed with the changes or died.

 

A sudden twinge in her gut made her hiss through her teeth. She leaned forward, placing her left hand over her midriff. This wasn’t the first time she’d felt unwell in recent days, like cramps but without the usual bleeding. Her period was in fact three weeks late, a detail she had noticed with the distant concern of someone who didn’t want it to be a problem, but was afraid to confront it directly just in case it was. She hadn’t been sick, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. There had been a few women in Fundelry blessed with easy pregnancies. Perhaps she would be like them, if her suspicions proved correct.

 

As she waited for the discomfort to pass, a new wave of disorientation hit her, one that had nothing to do with her gut. The world spun, and the Flame flared up like a landbound star. She eased herself down onto her knees, not wanting to fall and not caring what people thought. Voices called her name in the distance, but she barely heard them.

 

A strong mixture of grief and yearning flooded her, feelings she had indulged only once since she and Sal had returned from Fundelry. There had been no holding it in then, and time was only slowly making it easier: on seeing Marmion and Kail laid out together she had wept for what felt like days, mourning the family she had never had. She had valued her relationship with both of them; they had come to feel like family, even if they weren’t. And Marmion had saved Sal’s life just as Kail had saved Marmion’s. Now they were both gone. There was just her and Sal, and a nebulous possibility that she was too afraid to test, just in case it didn’t turn out to be true.

 

The feeling became stronger. She closed her eyes, gasping. What was this? She hadn’t felt anything so severe during her time with the seers. The visions from her future selves had been clear in their intentions, even if they had confused her at first. This felt unfocussed, forced. The Flame’s interference, if such it was, was making the sender’s job even more difficult than it must already have been.

 

She wondered which future this message was coming from. Was she trying to warn herself, or offer reassurance, perhaps advice? Was something coming she had to know about immediately? Was a crisis looming just as the charm neared completion? What had they missed?

 

The disorientation increased, and a strange familiarity crept over her. She knew the person at the other end, trying desperately to make the connection. It wasn’t her, though. There were enough differences to make the distinction absolute.

 

Who are you?

 

Her mental voice parted the veils between her and the sender, just for a moment. She glimpsed a youthful, vigorous mind with considerable raw talent behind it. A girl.

 

Mummy? Is that you?

 

Shilly didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

 

What’s your mother’s name? she asked the girl, not wanting to jump to a wrong conclusion. Where is she now? Why isn’t she keeping an eye on you?

 

The girl giggled. Pukky told me you’d be angry. I told him not to be scared of you. You only really get angry at Daddy when he doesn’t do the dishes. The rest of the time you’re just pretending.

 

I’m — what? Tears welled in her eyes, but at the same time she felt powerfully like laughing. A joy as pure as any she had ever experienced rose up inside her. Okay, I’m not angry at you. Not right now. But you shouldn’t be here. It’s probably dangerous.

 

No, it’s not. Pukky showed me how. It’s really not that hard, not for someone smart like me.

 

I bet you are smart. And I bet I know who this cursed Pukky is, Shilly wanted to say, but didn’t.

 

Is Pukje there? she asked instead. Could I talk to him?

 

No. He flew away when Daddy shouted at him.

 

Did he tell you to come here?

 

No. I wanted to. It was my idea.

 

Really? Are you sure he didn’t suggest it to you first?

 

Yes, really. Don’t you believe me?

 

The girl sounded resentful enough to confirm Shilly’s guess. You have to go now. This is a bad thing you’re doing. Pukky wants to hurt Mummy and Daddy’s work, and he’s using you to do it. I’m not angry at you, but I want you to stop: And I want you to stop listening to Pukky. He’s not your friend. Do you understand?

 

Is Daddy there? the girl asked.

 

No, Shilly said firmly. He’s busy.

 

You’re mean. I just wanted to say hello.

 

Well, I’ll tell him you said hello. I’m sure he’d want to say hello back. Neither of them said anything for a moment. Do you really think I’m mean?

 

No. I love you, Mummy. Look after me in your tummy, and don’t be afraid. It’ll all be okay. That’s what you tell me, and it makes me feel better.

 

It does make me feel better. Thank you, Shilly said, weeping again. I love you too.

 

Goodbye.

 

Goodbye, for now.

 

The girl was gone before Shilly could ask her name. The disorientation passed, and she was suddenly and acutely aware that her knees were cold and damp and that a crowd of people was pressing in all around her.

 

‘I’m fine. Really, I’m fine. Give me some air.’ She brushed their hands away and clambered without help to her feet. Tom and Vehofnehu remained firmly in her face, and she pushed past them to see the Flame. A small crowd had gathered around it too, alarmed by its sudden activity. The intensity of its light was already fading. Within two breaths it had gone out completely.

 

The absence of the Flame and the future it tried to keep out ached in her chest like a wound. But there was no pain. Only happiness. Shilly wanted to down tools and run to Sal, to tell him everything. But she restrained herself. Time would reveal all. There was no point rushing things. When she was certain of her condition — certain that the voice out of the future wasn’t a phantom from another world-line, something she would never see realised in hers — she would tell him that much, and let the rest unfold naturally. Let him be as surprised as she had been.

 

They would have a daughter. She would love her parents as did any ordinary child. She would be rich with the Change even at such a young age, and Pukje would teach her things she shouldn’t know. But her daughter’s childhood friend would do little more than cause minor mischief. Of that she would make absolutely certain.

 

It’ll all be okay, the girl had said.

 

Better than okay, Shilly thought. Barring unforeseeable disasters, soon she would, at last, have a family of her own.

 

‘Perhaps I’ll take a bit of a break,’ she told Vehofnehu. ‘Then I’d like to head back to shore. Can someone call Rosevear and ask him to see me when I arrive?’

 

‘I’ll make sure it’s done,’ said Vehofnehu. He didn’t ask what was wrong, and he didn’t proffer any reassurances. He simply loped off on his errand, leaving her in Tom’s clumsy hands.

 

You sly dog, she thought. How much do you know?

 

But she didn’t call him back. She tipped her head back so the cool, untainted sunlight caressed her tear-stained cheeks, and resolved to wait.

 

* * * *

 

Epilogue

 

 

 

he tree surprised everyone, a skinny sapling reaching for the sky where the previous day there had been none at all. Once noticed, however, few gave it a second thought. Strange things were second nature to the people patrolling these parts.

 

The sapling went undisturbed and was allowed to grow tall and strong, immeasurably broadening a hair-thin crack in the stonework into a hole wide enough to pass a trunk wider across than a pair of outstretched arms. Human, Panic and man’kin enjoyed its shade without considering its origins.

 

Every Senior Maintainer bore a fragment of the Change-robbing Caduceus, as a sign of rank and also so that when they gathered together no one could eavesdrop on their business. They occasionally remarked on the tree’s strange vitality, but no one ever suggested removing it. The green of its leaves added welcome colour to an otherwise bleak vista. Children, what few there were in such a remote outpost, enjoyed playing in its branches. Fallen twigs never ended up in the kitchen fires: some were whittled into elegant shapes; others were cut and varnished and given away as good-luck charms; a handful went into the making of a magnificent wooden chair, designed to seat the Goddess of the Flame, should she ever return.

 

The elderly Grandscribe himself once came to visit. During the tour of operations he paused under the tree and stroked its rough bark, smiling gently.

 

‘This old wonder has a story or two, I bet.’

 

‘Yes, sir.’

 

‘If only it could talk, eh?’

 

His guides led him to supper, where waited the mother of his children and their eldest granddaughter, the twelfth in his proud line.

 

When they were gone, the native stretched its broad arms and rejoiced in its beautiful world.

 

* * * *