The Devoured Earth (23 page)

‘I already told you who I am. Ellis Quick. I didn’t do anything.’

‘I think you’re lying. Did you steal the balloon? Did you crash it?’

‘Of course not. It was going to crash whether I wanted it to or not, smacked out of the sky by the same thing that brought you down. I didn’t kill your friends.’

He tightened his grip. ‘Are they dead?’

She squirmed like a fish on the deck of a boat.

‘Are they dead?’

Her head wrenched from side to side.

‘For your sake, I hope not.’

He let her go and pushed her off balance. She fell to the ground and coughed violently, clutching her throat. He stood over her, feeling feverish with anger and worry.

‘You’re going to tell me everything,’ he said, ‘or —’

It was his turn to be surprised. With one swift, efficient move, she kicked his legs from under him.

He went down with a startled sound and somehow found his arm twisted up behind his back and his face pressed into the snow. Ellis’s left knee came down hard on his back, pushing him deeper. Cold powder went up his nose and down his throat, and started to choke him. His body convulsed, to no effect.

‘Lie still, you big bully,’ she hissed into his ear. ‘I already told you I didn’t do anything. If you can bring yourself to believe that, I’ll let you go. If not, I’ll have to knock you out again and leave you here — and I don’t think you’ll survive another stint in the cold, even with the wreckage to shelter you.’

Humiliated and weakened, he let himself go limp.

‘Now I’m only going to say this once. I’m not your enemy. I’m an ordinary woman. I just know a few things, that’s all, and if you listen to me you might learn something important. I didn’t crash the balloon but I knew it was going to crash, and I was able to guide it to where it needed to be. I knew roughly where to find you, you see, even though I didn’t know who or what you were, and I knew you’d need me — just like I knew what Shilly was trying to do back in the tower, and why she had to be stopped. It all folds together if you look at it just the right way. One thing leads to another. If we follow
exactly the right path
we’ll end up at a safe place. If we don’t, well, the big bad wolf is waiting. And neither of us, I think, wants to be eaten.’

She eased the pressure, and his head came up out of the snow.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘tell me how to find the twins.’

His face was numb. He couldn’t tell if the moisture on his cheeks was from tears or melted ice. ‘I don’t know where they are. They should have been with Marmion, in the balloon.’

‘They weren’t. It was just Shilly and Tom and the King.’

‘And you.’

‘And me, yes. We’ve already covered that. Back to my question, please. I didn’t ask you where the twins were. I asked how I can find them.’

‘I guess they’ll be where Marmion is. Why don’t you know? I thought you knew everything.’

‘Not where they’re concerned. They’re unpredictable, two lives in one, with world-lines so knotted and tangled only they can separate them. Besides it’s much harder to unpick the threads out here in the thick of it all. In Sheol, it would’ve been easy, but I couldn’t have done anything. I would have been an observer, like my so-called sisters.’

She stopped talking as though bringing herself into check. He didn’t prompt her to continue, figuring she’d do so when she was ready.

The crash site was silent for a moment, apart from the dripping of melted water.

‘I know what you carry around your neck,’ she said in a very different tone. ‘You mustn’t lose it, no matter what happens.’

Then her weight came off him, and she was running lightly across the snow, back into the gloom of the ravine, her robe flapping in her wake. He went to sit up, thinking to follow her, but the pain in his back and neck was worse than ever. By the time he opened his pack and got his mirrorlight out, she would be long gone. Only her tracks would remain.

He rose, groaning, to his feet. Some parts of the wreckage were still glowing, and he could see well enough by their light to find his way closer to the site of the accident. His intention wasn’t to rest, as the mysterious Ellis had suggested, but to look for something he had only glimpsed earlier.

The woman’s tracks were visible, and others, too, as he had thought. Many sets of feet had tramped over the disturbed snow: more than just the four he should have found: Shilly, Tom, Vehofnehu, and the mysterious Ellis Quick.

She had said that there were only three others in the balloon apart from her, so either she was lying or more people had visited the site since the crash. His priority was to find Shilly, not follow strange women around the lake in pursuit of the truth, so he chose to presume the latter option and follow the tracks to their conclusion.

When he was ready, he told himself. First, he needed to gather both his thoughts and his strength. The encounter with Ellis had profoundly disturbed him, even more so than falling from Pukje’s back. He had a lot to process.

I know what you carry around your neck. You mustn’t lose it, no matter what happens.

Kail didn’t think she was referring to the letter from Vania, the lover he had left long ago and so very far away.

As he lowered himself gently onto a portion of the wrecked gondola that looked likely to hold his weight, a voice spoke out of the red-tinged darkness at his feet.

‘You will not find that position comfortable.’

He literally jumped, then put a calming hand to his chest. He knew that voice. ‘Mawson, you very nearly killed me.’

‘You very nearly sat on me.’

‘And that wouldn’t have been dignified for either of us. I apologise.’ Kail pulled at the wreckage and uncovered the stone bust that had at one time been Sal’s family heirloom. He was lying on his side, half buried in snow. With a wrench, Kail managed to prop him upright. ‘What are you doing here? No, don’t tell me. I can guess. You were on the balloon when it crashed. Ellis and the others mustn’t have noticed you.’

‘
The Goddess
,’ Mawson corrected him.

‘What about her?’

‘The being you speak of is usually referred to that way.’

‘What being?’

‘You used the name “Ellis”. That is not her real name, although she went by it for a time. She is properly called Nona and is, at this instant you call “the present”, the sole remaining Sister of the Flame.’

‘The Goddess was on the balloon when it crashed?’

‘Yes.’

An indefinable sensation swept up Kail’s spine, part disbelief, part fear, part wonder, part sheer terror. He didn’t for a second consider that Mawson might be joking. Man’kin weren’t known for their sense of humour.

He looked around for somewhere to sit. All the strength had gone out of his legs. ‘The Goddess was talking to me, and I tried to strangle her.’ He felt faint. ‘She probably could’ve stopped me at any time. Why didn’t she just tell me outright as soon as I touched her?’

‘She didn’t lie to you. She is a woman with extraordinary capacities. But away from the Flame many of those capacities are closed to her. She must rely on other skills.’’

He was reassured to know that he had been felled by someone with superior ‘capacities’, but there was very little other comfort to be found.

‘What was she doing here?’ he asked his stone companion. ‘What does she want with the twins?’

‘
I do not know, Habryn Kail
.’ Mawson looked uncharacteristically forlorn. ‘
It pains me to say so. I am at the juncture my kind has feared for so long. The future is clouded. I am unstuck in time
.’

‘And I’m stuck in space.’ Kail looked around the ravine, seeking the other way out. The second set of tracks led deeper into the mountains, away from Ellis and the lake — and, presumably, the rest of his people.

When he looked up he could see nothing but darkness in the sky. He had no idea what time it was, but dawn seemed a very long way off.

‘I think I’m going to have to leave you here,’ he told the man’kin. ‘I’m sorry about that, because no one’s likely to see this wreck from the air. But you’re too heavy for me to carry, and I’ll need to get moving soon. Those Ice Eaters the Goddess talked about might come back.’

‘I do not fear being alone.’

‘Well, good.’ Kail reached across and patted the bust on its head. ‘Even so, I’ll come back to get you just as soon as this mess is sorted out.’

‘
I
fear that it will never be
.’

Kail leaned back and watched Mawson for a long time. He had never heard a man’kin speak of fear before. Fear assumed a degree of uncertainty over what might come next. If the man’kin truly didn’t know, anything at all could happen.

They said nothing as the wreckage continued to cool, ticking faintly to itself like a giant and very peculiar bug. When Kail supposed that he was as rested as he was likely to be that night, he put on his pack and set out after Shilly.

* * * *

The knife at her throat was made of bone but it felt as sharp as steel. That single thought occupied Shilly’s attention with a single-mindedness for which she was perversely grateful. If she was afraid, she couldn’t cry, she couldn’t wonder what might have been and she couldn’t berate herself for failing so badly and letting everyone down.

‘What were you doing in the Tomb?’ The man with the bad teeth and white hair pressed his face close to hers. She tried to pull away but the man behind her, the one holding the knife, wrenched her left arm so hard she thought her shoulder might dislocate. ‘Tell me!’

She shook her head, unable to quell the tears any longer. How could everything have gone so wrong? Why hadn’t she trusted her instincts? If only they hadn’t gone to the tower. If only…

The white-haired man turned and spat. Her captor pushed her savagely forward. She stumbled awkwardly on her lame leg and went down as fast and hard as a stuck steer, pain shooting through her hip. It was joined by a nasty jar to her elbow as she landed, and that set her wrenched shoulder singing with pain again. She gritted her teeth.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she hissed, anger cutting through the fear and shock. ‘Who are you people?’

‘We’re asking the questions,’ said the man with the knife. Under other circumstances, he might have been handsome, with a broad, open face and straight jet-black hair, but he was made ugly by distrust. ‘Tell us what you were doing in the Tomb or we’ll bleed you now and save Treya the trouble.’

‘Gee, that sounds tempting,’ she snarled back. ‘Tell this Treya of yours how glad I am I got to talk to you two idiots first. It’s made my life so much easier.’

The younger man went to kick her, but white-hair held him back. He squatted down next to her. The stench of his sewn-together skins was powerfully strong.

‘You need to understand something, young lady,’ he said. ‘Your life is as good as over unless you start talking. You may not realise it, but the Tomb is off-limits to everyone — and we’ve had the odd explorer or two through here down the years, trying to get their hands on it. They all failed, because we stopped them. They didn’t get past us like you did. Maybe you brought the Death with you in order to do so. That’s not going to make you popular with anyone, least of all Treya.’ He raised his ivory knife and moved it so a brittle glow of crystal-light ran across it like honey. ‘If you value your life, if you think
we
should value it, then you’d better give us a reason to.’

She nodded slowly without taking her eyes off him and let her face relax into a mask of shocked acquiescence. He seemed satisfied with that, and offered her a hand to help her up. She took it, ignoring the pain of her many bruises and bumps. For a moment the present seemed to overlap the future of her tired, arthritic self, but she shrugged off that sensation too.

‘My cane,’ she said, looking around the cave with a pained expression. ‘I have trouble standing without it.’

White-hair nodded, and his young friend handed it to her.

The wooden stick wasn’t the original one she had brought from Fundelry. That one had been destroyed by Skender during the flood, taking Marmion’s hand with it. This one was much more recent, with carvings and charms that were still being familiarised to her touch. Nonetheless, the relief she felt at holding the stick was immense — Sal had imbued it with the same potential as the last one. For emergencies only.

She brought it down hard on the icy floor, picturing a charm she had learned under Lodo’s tuition, long ago. Greenish flame wreathed her and the cane — an illusion only, but an impressive one. Her hair writhed about her head as though filled with snakes. Her eyes glowed a brilliant red.

White-hair fell back with his hands over his face. The younger one braved the illusion and tried to take the stick from her. She gave the illusory flames some bite, and he retreated, cursing bitterly.

‘If you’d asked politely, I would’ve told you anything you wanted,’ she said. ‘Instead you took me prisoner and threatened me, and I have no doubt you’ve done the same with my friends. Can you give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you both?’

‘Because you can’t,’ said a smooth male voice from behind her.

She spun with the cane raised before her. The flames leapt higher. ‘Don’t push me.’

‘Be careful, Mannie,’ called white-hair. ‘She’s dangerous!’

‘Oh, I won’t push you,’ said the new arrival, looking at no one but Shilly. He must have been standing outside the cave entrance the whole time. A tall man with big ears and strong features, he didn’t flinch from her display. ‘I won’t need to. Your lightshow is impressive, but I don’t think you can maintain it for long.’

She sensed white-hair moving behind her, and shifted position to put the wall at her back. That left her in a corner, but she couldn’t see what other option she had. The door was blocked. She would have to talk her way out.

‘Do you really believe that?’ she asked, poking the end of the cane at him and making his furred collar sizzle.

‘I know it,’ he said. ‘Unlike my friends here, I’ve had some training too.’ His left hand tugged the glove off his right. With fingertips that dripped a steady stream of clear, unnatural water, he pushed the tip of the cane gently but firmly away.