THE DEVOURED EARTH

 

The Fourth Book of the Cataclysm

 

by Sean Williams

 

 

"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

 

 

"Prologue"

 

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 standing."

A Scribe's Book of Questions

 

Everything 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 filled his bladder faster even than ordinary tea, so he spent much of every day with his legs tightly crossed.

He refused to say anything, though, and not just because he knew everyone aboard the blimp was feeling the same effects of their staggered ascent as him.  The memories of his rough treatment at Chu's hands during the water-sickness incident were still fresh.  That she was as sick as him this time wouldn't stop a repeat performance, if she saw an opportunity.

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

The blimp was the biggest balloon he had ever seen, and the enclosed gondola it supported was roomy enough for thirty people, but he had never craved privacy so much as he had during every moment of their journey so far.  Barely had she told him her heart-name than they had been whisked out of the Panic city and taken to Milang, where Marmion had been coordinating the biggest expedition, according to local records, ever mounted to the very top of the mountains.  Since then, the only moments they'd 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 again."

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."  The Mage Kelloman's slender hand touched his shoulder.  "We all feel it.  We're tired and impatient, easily distracted.  But the end is in sight.  By this night's fall, we could finally be on level ground.  And then, 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 titled 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 as the wardens returned to the 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 charm 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, where Griel, Chu and Marmion ensured its employment 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 and big eyes--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, and Skender willed himself to stop thinking entirely.  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 it 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 the fire that 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 see what lay to the northeast, where the Twins assured them the greatest threat lay.  No one knew quite what to expect.  Skender didn't take any encouragement from floods, murderous wraiths, earthquakes and man'kin invasions--but 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 from Milang and at several points along their journey unveiled the shape of the mountain range beyond the region known to the Panic and the foresters.  It was, in fact, several mountain ranges combined--at least seven converging on a central point, like a giant starfish or spider 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.  The peaks surrounding that land were unstable, shaking and rumbling under the influence of forces Skender could barely imagine.

When the balloon reached the uppermost limits of the forester's knowledge, then flew beyond even the Panic's charts, they relied on Kelloman's soundings to find a way through steep valleys and broad fissures, rising further and further with every hour.  On the second day, they punched through the uppermost layers of the permanent cloud cover hugging the lower expanses and found themselves flying for the first time in clear air.  From then on, navigation became somewhat easier, but the daunting mass of mountain still looming above them reminded them never to become complacent.  Vast shelfs of snow and ice awaited them, more dangerous in their own way than cloud.  The balloon couldn't fly continuously, and safe docking points became harder and harder to find.  The sound of whining 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 almost invisible until the balloon came directly alongside them.  Once, when surmounting a broad spur and coming into view of the valley beyond, the mission had been confronted by a vast, flat roof large enough to cover two Milangs.  Canted at a steep angle to prevent snow from building up, 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 emerged to stare at the intruder in the skies.  Few did anywhere, made cautious by the events of recent weeks.

Everywhere they went they saw evidence of the flood.  Deep channels that diverged and joined traced a complex path down the side of the mountains.  It soon became clear that 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 surged and roiled foamily as it fell.  One waterfall dropped so far that from its middle Skender could see neither top nor bottom.  For one enchanting but unnerving hour he could pretend that flow was literally 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 meter of altitude from a reluctant sky.  With painful slowness the cloud level dropped away and the vista of jagged, twisted stone below them became 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, with altitude sickness taking a severe toll on minds and bodies that would have been fatigued anyway.

Nowhere was that more obvious than in the rivalry between Kelloman and Marmion.  The air had always been tense between the two men, both ambitious and masters of their own very different disciplines.  That tension presently manifested in the form of fiercely pitched battles of pointed politeness.  Skender, caught up in the ongoing campaign since he was nearly a mage himself and therefore the only ally Kelloman had to lean on, found his impatience rising 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.  The latest manifestation of that repressed conflict was no different.

A long, sustained shudder rippled through the gondola, 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 down the interior to where Skender knelt at the back, doing his best to concentrate.  He shuddered in sympathy 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.  The outside was 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 once 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 had always been, but getting to it had proven far from easy.

"Would you like to rest before the final push?" asked 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 sun-catching charms.  The gondola's engines throbbed at a deeper pitch, casting a golden light on the cliff face as the blimp resumed its upward journey.  Fifty metres didn't sound like far; Skender could have walked it with no effort at all.  But walking was very different from flying, especially so 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 the extra potential from somewhere.

"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, moving down the gondola's central aisle, brushing shoulders 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 sun-catching 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 fire too, as though it could in a second 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 broadside-on to 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 mountains, the sides of the cleft were step and jagged.  Its V-shaped base was clogged with dirty snow.  Wind rushed down it with a sustained roaring sound, making the blimp sway.  The vessel shook as concentrations failed and charms flickered.  It held its position, just.

Wisps of cloud wreathed the sides of the cleft.  Skender strained to see through them to what lay on the other side of the wall of stone.  It was thicker than he had imagined, however.  All he could see was the cleft itself, snaking off into the distance like some 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 your conserve your strength through this section of our journey.  We have enough potential in reserve to fly some distance.  Let us and Griel 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 window.  The deck rose and fell beneath him with a steady rhythm as they slid gracefully into the cleft.  Skender peered out either side of the gondola, newly energised by the achievement of their quest and unable to sit passively by as the next stage unfolded.  Lidia Delfine and her bodyguard-cum-fiancée, Heuve, did the same.  Snow drifts 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 had had too much time to stare out the windows as the endless grey cliff slid by, interrupted by ledges, ramparts, shelfs of snow, and mighty fissures, but essentially unchanging.  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.

The eyes of the Homunculus, the artificial body in which they were now confined, glazed over as the walls of the cleft slid by.  Their previous 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.  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?  Who, out of those who had helped and hindered them since their arrival in the new world, 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 shadow growing darker and stronger, looming deeper and more ominously.  Now, with the end of their journey so very close, the shadow sucked at them like a black hole, tugging them onward and inward to their destiny.

Reflected in the window facing the cliff, they saw the black face 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 feeling had gloom at its heart as dark as the Homunculus's aspect.  I reckon we've lost weight.

Something glowing with a faint silver light caught their eye, deeper in the reflection.  They leaned closer to the pane of glass in order to see more clearly.  The reflection of the Homunculus's face seemed to swallow the entire view.

What's that? he asked.  Low in his view was a shining cross, roughly 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 for centuries, 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--

It 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 the new understanding of themselves as the blimp traversed the wall of mountains.  The Homunculus was immune to altitude sickness, but cold bothered it.  They were sleeping more and more, the higher they went, sometimes as long as three hours a night, and their dreams were spectacular.  In one of them, Yod had looked like 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 as they filled up with blood until finally they spilled a flood of crimson tears down grimacing cheeks and swept the twins away.

Skender came and sat next to them, bunching up his black robe in order to keep the drafts from 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 what lay beyond 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 the first 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 west 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 and ash, right?"

Seth nodded, studying the far side of the crater with 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 actual shore, 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 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 at least 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.  The Asian-looking miner from Laure winked back at him.  Embarrassed, the twins looked away.  The mutual obsession between the two young lovers reminded them of cold nights in Europe and an unhappy ending in Stockholm, long ago...

Something moved out of the corner of Hadrian's eye.  On the 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 snipped where hands should have been.

"Watch out!" Seth yelled.

Then all was breaking glass and shrieking wind, and the terrible clash of eight 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 forced their way 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 bodyguard Heuve slashed ferociously back at the nearest devel.  The forester looked almost grateful for something to do, but the expression was soon wiped off his beardless face--almost literally, as a pair of blades barely missed his nose.  Only a wild lunge backwards saved him, and 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 of 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 he 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.  He twisted his arm around and freed 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 its balloon's light-brown skin.

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

For a second they thought the devel might reply.  It hesitated, anyway, 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 and snow 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 now.  Griel was taking his charges away from any further attacks but inadvertently increasing their danger in the process.

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 their heads.  Pieces of both whizzed past them, ricocheting off the gondola and arcing into open air.

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

"Crap."  Seth drove them back to the hole in the gondola.  If Griel didn't already know about the damage, he would need to immediately.  The balloon shook and rolled, already destabilised by the severed cables.  How long it would remain airworthy was beyond his knowledge.

"I know, I know.  I'm doing everything I can," said the Panic soldier as they dropped into the 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.  "With luck, we'll make it."

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 back, and Chu pressed forward from where she had been standing with Skender to join him.  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 dead people as they tried to get to the Second Realm.  The remains would be given to Yod to eat."

"So they ultimately 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 before we 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 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 into 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 at them 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 4:19

 

On 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 dawn to pick up the trail of the man'kin.  Sal wanted to push on, hoping to keep travelling without 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.  He didn't come out and say it, but Sal knew why that was, and that angered him more than Kail's stubborn refusal to change his mind.

"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 where Habryn's coming from.  And you 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 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 it 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 getting further and further ahead of him.  Every minute they paused, they 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'm not.  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, agreeing reluctantly.  "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 heard it too.

#

The half-full 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 now, shuttered against sinister forces supposedly abroad on the mountains.  Sal and his companions had been regarded as such at first, and never completely earned the villagers trust.

Kail said that the man'kin and their mysterious companions had climbed straight up the sheer cliff looming over the small settlement.  While the locals had shivered in their beds, Shilly and the man'kin had casually scaled an edifice Sal could barely imagine climbing, let alone quickly enough to keep up.  Life in the flat, coastal Strand had never prepared him for this.  Highson fared little better.  Only Kail, with his decades of outdoor experience, had any knowledge of climbing at all, and even he struggled.  His Sky Warden training was next to useless in the mountains.

At the top of the path, when they finally reached it, there were no more arguments.  Sal was glad to help Highson and Kail unfurl their low 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.  The mountain was no more barren than a desert.  Life struggled, but hadn't yet given up.  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 a 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 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 will end?

Sal thrust all thought of Tom and prophecies from his mind.  He could worry about that later.  For now, he needed only to rest.  That he could accomplish easily enough.  All he had to do was close his eyes...

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 awake, but he too hadn't gotten up.  In wordless agreement, they waited until Highson stirred before making any move to rise.  Kail may have been the oldest 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 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 to be thankful for."

Sal agreed, telling himself not to think about the time that had passed while the slept.  Kail was right: to push himself too hard would be to commit suicide.  One slip was all it would take.

The way ahead looked easier.  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 man'kin tracks 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 would become apparent towards noon, when the day was at its brightest.  They would reach the alley by then, if Sal's new knowledge of mountain treks could be trusted.  Should any surprises lie in wait for them there, that would time out well.

"Let's get moving," he said, not seeing any point in delaying.  If the way ahead was easier for them, it would have been easier for the man'kin too.

Highson tipped the dregs of his tea onto the grey stone.  Thick stubble painted his dark face with 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; a tumble would be protracted but just as fatal as if he had fallen unimpeded.  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, when they reached the entrance to the valley, they 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 around the mountains, a trick of perspective made him feel profoundly dizzy, as though the world was 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 embarrassment.  "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 go 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'll 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.  You wanted her back.  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.  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.  I think you know it."

Sal looked down at his feet.  The emotions boiling in him were so 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 mountainous trek had added new lines around his mouth and eyes.  He too was recovering from an injury, and that showed sometimes in a certain stiffness when he moved.  "I want to see where the man'kin are heading as badly as you."

"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 assume that or else another six might drive him mad, for it could well take him that long to catch up with Shilly.  But 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.  That hope warred with despair, leaving him feeling very much 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 the wrong way and the whole mountainside could come down on top of them.

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 them.  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 the wind 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 only on moonless nights.  This one must've been desperate."

Just an animal, then.  That was something.  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 as much by it as he was at his own incompetence in the face of danger.  He should have reacted as quickly and capably as Kail.  He might need to 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.  "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 for a day or two.  It won't take me long to butcher it."

Sal swallowed automatic revulsion, telling himself that bear meat was bound to taste better than its blood.  And now the excitement was over, bruises were making themselves felt where the bear had hit him and he had fallen on his arse.  "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."

They set to it immediately.  Highson kept his pocket mirror radiating at full strength while Kail went about his grisly job.  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 might come from suitable stones he gathered as well, but there would be real flames on top of it, and real smoke.  The meat would cook properly, and they would all feel better for it.

The small blaze was crackling happily by the time Kail returned with the first cuts from the dismembered beast.  The smell of it cooking sent saliva rushing through Sal's mouth, and he had to force himself to keep looking away from it and at the darkness around them instead.  He saw and heard nothing untoward.  Perhaps, he thought, the fire and the scent of blood had frightened the mate off.  Nevertheless he agreed with Kail that watches should be posted through that night, just in case it returned and found the three of them sound asleep.

He ate until he could physically eat no more then settled back in his bedroll with the soothing sound of flames in his ears.  He felt warmer, even if the wind was cold and his cheeks and toes ached.  Insulating charms stitched into collars and blankets helped.  When Kail volunteered to take the first watch, he was 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 hadn't been half as bad as he had expected.  Nothing like lamb or rabbit, but a vast improvement on the tough jerky they had picked up in the town 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 strange meat made staying awake easy.  Even when his two hours were up, he delayed a little longer to give Kail extra time to sleep.  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, swaddled in protective fabric.

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, blinking 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 camp site.  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 last 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 way downhill.  "But 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.  "Or if not tested, exactly, then at least being checked out.  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 and let us be.  If they'd wanted to hurt us, they would've done it when they had the chance."

"Even so..."  He 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 re-stow everything in their packs.  He set about doing it with dismal determination.  His fear of falling further and further behind Shilly was now compounded by this new fear: that someone was following them in turn.   A distinct feeling that he was being watched only made matters worse.  The persistent itch between his shoulder-blades kept him looking back the way they had come or up at the mountainside ahead, but not once did he see anything out of the ordinary.

Not reassured at all, 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 prints that frequently left deep indentations or crushed pebbles probably belonged to the Angel, the large man'kin Sal and Shilly had met in the forests behind them.  Others were smaller, but no less enigmatic: 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 didn't go by when Kail failed to berate himself for falling asleep on his watch that morning.  His lack of care profoundly unsettled him, charm or no charm.  He should have been alert to all kinds of attack.  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 an hour he considered volunteering to 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 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 fact.

Before that 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 torturous ascent.  Kail froze as he always did, listening carefully.  A sustained rumble that might have been thunder echoed up a canyon from further down.  It grew louder instead of fading away.  The ground beneath him began to shake again, and his palms and scalp 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 it 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 repairing the wound inflicted on him by the Swarm, but the endless climbing and the heavy pack he wore were taking an inevitable 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 man'kin trail and keeping an ear out for any subsequent 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 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.  Closing his eyes and guessing the man'kin's route at random, he thought, might have been just as effective.

"I don't believe it," said Sal in a choked voice, tugging back his hood to expose his shocked, bleached 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 up emotion 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 a growing 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 it 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 like him.  And it wasn't like Sal, either.

A new thought occurred to him.  What if the avalanche had been deliberately triggered to put them off the trail?  That was a possibility he couldn't afford to ignore.  But who would 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.  Wherever they were headed, she didn't want to be found by anyone, Sal included.

Kail felt for him.  "This was an accident," he told Sal, putting a broad 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 do 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 that scattered with a rattling sound all around them.  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 man-like thing with many qualities that weren't 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 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 help.  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.  Am I wrong to want to know if you were likely to return the courtesy?"

"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 you neck, if that's what you're wondering.  I took a good look at your pretty bauble while you snored on, and I assure you it's not what I'm after.  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.

"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 get on with 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 you're 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.  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 shortcut, like the one I have in mind."

"A shortcut."  Sal's scepticism was naked.  "What sort of shortcut?"

"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 and swirled around the two of them, 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 almost instantly dissolved away.  Kail felt father and son's wills clashing in the bitter silence, 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 didn'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 chose to follow Pukje, or try to find the trail again 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--and 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

 

The sun was a bloated red ball in the sky, too bright to look at directly but casting little heat and no comfort at all across the blasted land below.  Shilly had stopped looking at it long ago, keeping her head bowed as she hobbled as quickly as she could along the lit sections of the ravine.  When she reached shade, she stopped to take a breather.  She knew the route as well as she knew her own face in a mirror, and the wrongness of it never failed to surprise her, too.  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, from her workshop to the struggling community that traded precious supplies for her remedies and advice.  No one ever offered to help her 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.  The total weight of her supplies was shrinking as she got older and ate less.  Maybe one day, she idly wondered, 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 left."  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 her walking stick--the same one Sal had carved for her, now much the worse for wear, like her--and braved the burning glare outside her temporary shelter.  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 mighty 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 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 consisted of little more than a cave with 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 long enough to divert Yod's dogs from finding her too.  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 wall and into a ewer, where she filtered the worst of the muck out of it and drank it cold.  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 for one simple reason.

Putting down her supplies by the ewer 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 leading deeper into the ground.  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 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 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 ever-expanding field of tiny glowstones sprang to life.  Each hung by silk threads from the ceiling, spun by worms trained especially for the purpose.  The wave of light illuminated a sea of sand below, one that stretched from her vantage point to shadowy limits of the cave, where the 'stones 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 canvass large enough for her to work on.  She had tried many different methods in the past, but this was the one that came closest to meeting her needs--the same 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, now.  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, and 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, more efficacious every time.  True conversation was inevitable at some point.  Huffing to herself, Shilly dragged 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 the charm from footprints.  She 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 intimately.  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.  Her life's work wasn't complete, but it still covered a space as large as a small town, lovingly crafted in isolation.  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 and the watcher's inability to grasp what it had taken her decades to perceive.  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 awe at what she had accomplished.  She had always known that she could be the bringer of 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, in a way, ultimately 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 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.

#

The image of a flat expanse of sand etched with lines in a pattern too intense to comprehend became a superficially similar vista upon the opening of Shilly's eyes.  A broad shelf of perfectly white snow 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, an old man who wasn't quite a man, and--

Shilly closed her eyes again 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 failed him, somehow.  That the world was dying too seemed a lesser concern against that 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, somehow.  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 might come to nothing.  What would happen to her if she failed to grasp 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 to concentrate on the charm.  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 stand apart from 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 vividly of her other self.  A time of feverish drawing usually followed.  Then it was back onto the man'kin steed she shared with Tom to resume the journey upwards with the others.  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 white, whiskery hairs, but they radiated nothing but compassion.  The corners of his wide mouth were very slightly turned down.  His fingers were calloused, but long and strong and very warm, wrapped right around her hands.  "We are asking a lot.  If it wasn't so important--"

"I know, I know," 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, apparently couldn't say what happened after then.  That the future Shilly glimpsed appeared to be in 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 be warm again.  "Tell me are, please."

"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 band on its 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, fanged head and thick tail, it had an unerring ability to find toeholds in even the sheerest cliff.  Its claws dug deep into the slipperiest of ice walls.  Thus far, it hadn't tripped even 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.  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 upper 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 awkward and bony against her back but welcome when wind kicked up, stealing 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 be waiting for them at the top, Vehofnehu promised her, and she believed him.

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 the 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 and faced Shilly out of all the people standing around it, nervously watching to see what it would do next.

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 threatening 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 non-stop climbing, Shilly had become immune to spectacle.  Before night came, 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 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've 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 headache 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 is as far as I got, I'd be pretty upset, over all."

"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 from side to side for several minutes as their steed negotiated a region of tumbled boulders and icy spurs.  When things 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.  So 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 nearly sheer cliff face that stretched apparently to infinity above them.  "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 your 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 happy to talk to her, answering questions before she'd actually asked, which made for strange and tense conversations.  In recent times, however, they had avoided her, turning 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 them 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 shrugged.  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 likely pulling out her hair in clumps.

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 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 reprimand anyone before, and his tone now definitely had the sting of reproach in it.  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-wracking enough, climbing at night was positively terrifying.  Shilly didn't know how the man'kin found their hand- and toeholds by starlight, let alone kept 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.  That Tom was clinging tightly to her in turn didn't help.  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 were 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, to ease the hearts of the living left behind.  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 anything from nothing at all to Yod itself, with maw open to swallow the world.  She let the plaintive song carry her thoughts 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 up 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 it.  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 the link between our many selves possible.  Without me, you wouldn't see anything at all.

Shilly's head spun.  Another version of her?  How many could there be?

The task before is too much for a single lifetime, 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 down on 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 forty years and no more, 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--and 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 sky 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.

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 forever 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 of some kind, 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.

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 delicate passengers in 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 be frozen 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 from the highest points.

"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 tight 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."