43
It was a slow process. All the time that Vintage worked, securing her own rope ladder to the soft cubes of greyish matter, she was all too aware that if she got this wrong – misjudged the length of the ladder or failed to secure it properly – then there was a good chance that she would die in this place, trapped inside the hidden chamber until she died of thirst or starvation. No one knew she was here, and no one would come looking for her. Not in time to save her life, anyway. And even worse – she could be trapped down there forever with the remains of her beloved Nanthema.
‘Some people might call that romantic,’ she muttered to herself as she gave her ties a final, experimental tug. ‘Such people want their heads examined, of course.’
There was no more putting it off. Checking once more that her pack was secure across her shoulders and that the ladder could take her weight, she began to climb slowly down, the travel lamp hanging from her belt. It banged against her hip, sending confused shadows into the chamber below. It was tempting to look down, to glance over her shoulder, but she kept her observations to a minimum so that the ladder wouldn’t twist about. Could she see the floor? Yes, and the ladder would be long enough. Bracing herself to take the impact on her knees, she dropped down carefully, staggering only slightly, and looked around. Down here, the soft nodules of light protruded from the place where the floor met the walls, so that everything was doused in a strange, dreamlike light – light that slid along the edge of the giant, jagged crystal.
‘Well. Goodness me.’
Rather than pink, this crystal was yellow, sickly and off-putting, like jaundice. On the floor by her feet, Vintage saw some shrivelled pieces of fibre and a few sticks of splintered wood – the remains of the ladder brought by her predecessor, of course. Her heart thumping painfully in her throat, Vintage approached the shining surface of the crystal, and just as it had inside the Behemoth on Esiah Godwort’s compound, the slick blankness of it vanished and instead she was looking at a vast, empty landscape, stretching from one horizon to another. It was like looking through a window at something entirely impossible.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever get used to looking at this,’ she said, her voice little more than a rushing sound in her ears. The landscape was different to the one at Godwort’s compound. The sky was yellow and streaked with black clouds, while the stony ground was littered with all manner of strange, unlikely rocks. Boulders as big as houses perched precariously on top of each other, flat rocks with wide holes in their centres stood lined up together as though someone had thought to make a passageway somehow. Everywhere she looked, rocks stood in circles or in lines, or on top of each other. There were patterns everywhere, so many that they broke down, intersecting their neighbours and ruining the symmetry of it. As she watched, she realised that the clouds were moving, as if with a brisk wind.
‘How can that be?’ She moved closer to the crystal, until her fingertips threatened to brush its surface. Her breath pillowed there, reminding her that she stood next to a solid object. ‘The landscape was still at the other Behemoth, although I suppose it’s possible there was nothing to move there, or we left before—’
A figure lurched out from behind one of the tall rocks and Vintage gave a breathy little scream, jumping backwards as she did so. A tall woman with a sheath of black hair falling untidily over her face stumbled towards her. She wore tight-fitting travelling leathers, functional and well used. There was a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles hooked over the collar of her shirt, and she looked no older than thirty, yet Vintage knew her to be much, much older than that.
‘Nanthema?’ Vintage found that she was gasping for air even as tears rolled silently down her cheeks. It was the damn spectacles, glinting in the light of an alien sky. Twenty-odd years later and she still had her damn spectacles.
The woman looked stunned, her eyes as round as moons as she approached the edge of the crystal. Vintage saw her lips move, saw her asking disbelieving questions, and then she broke into a grin. She was speaking faster and faster now, shaking her head.
‘Nanthema, my darling, I can’t hear you, I can’t.’ Vintage went back to the shard and without any thought for what it might do, pressed her hands flat to the surface. She did not fall through into the strange landscape, but when Nanthema placed her hands on the other side, her voice abruptly filled the chamber, tinny and strange, as though coming from a very great distance.
‘– if anyone could find me, of course it would be you, of course it would, I don’t know why I even worried for a moment –’
‘Your voice!’ blurted Vintage. She felt a wild impulse to crash her fists against the crystal, but controlled it. ‘I can hear you!’
Nanthema looked down at where her hand was pressed against Vintage’s, separated by a layer of crystal and an unknowable distance. Cautiously, she took it away, and Vintage saw her mouth move, asking a question. Then she put the hand back.
‘Can you hear me now?’
‘Yes, I can bloody hear you, what are you even doing in there?’
‘It’s the contact, somehow,’ Nanthema was saying, peering at their hands. ‘I would not have guessed that. Of course, I’ve had no way to find out.’
‘Nanthema!’ This time Vintage did knock slightly on the shard. ‘You have been missing for twenty years! Do you have any idea what that has done to me? I thought you had run off, left me, decided I wasn’t interesting enough . . .’
Vintage’s words ran out. Nanthema was standing quietly, just watching her, in that way she had.
‘Oh, Nanthema.’ Vintage gave her a watery smile and they stood in silence for a moment, both pretending the other wasn’t crying. Eventually, Vintage cleared her throat. ‘How can I get you out of there?’
‘As far as I know, you can’t,’ said Nanthema, shrugging slightly. ‘The rest of the chamber is empty, if I remember correctly.’
‘I will be back.’ Vintage left the shard and did a slow circuit of the room, looking for something, anything – some sort of handy lever, perhaps, or a rope to pull. Aside from the remains of Nanthema’s ladder, it was entirely empty. She returned to the shard and placed her hand against the crystal again. ‘You’re right, as ever, but that doesn’t mean there’s no way out of there. I will find it, even if I have to search this entire stinking wreck.’ She took a breath. ‘How did you even get in there in the first place?’
‘Would you believe me if I told you I don’t remember?’ Nanthema looked rueful, an expression Vintage remembered well. ‘I was asleep, Vin, in this chamber. I had spent a good week inside this wreck, barely sleeping, trying to see as much of it as I could, and when I found this place – well.’ She grinned. ‘It’s extraordinary, isn’t it?’
Vintage glanced at the yellow sky above the other woman’s head. ‘It is certainly that.’
‘It’s also quite cosy, or as cosy at it gets in this place. I decided it was safe to have a nap. I woke up on my feet, walking through a crystal that I had previously thought to be entirely solid. By the time I was on the other side, it was too late. I couldn’t get back through.’
‘First of all, exploring this place for an entire week is utterly out of all realms of sense. Secondly, doing it alone it lunacy, actual lunacy. Third,’ Vintage frowned slightly, ‘I have missed you a great deal.’
Nanthema grinned. ‘You haven’t changed at all, Vin.’
At that, Vintage felt a surge of sorrow in her throat so thick that she could not swallow. Not changed at all, except that she had – she had grown older while Nanthema was trapped in here. Her skin had lost that deep burnished luminescence that the young take for granted and there were strands of grey in her hair. But Nanthema had not changed, not even the tiniest bit. Her crimson eyes were still clear, her black hair hadn’t turned grey or fallen out. She blinked.
‘Never mind that. How are you not dead? Is there food in that place? Where are you, exactly?’
‘Vin, this place . . .’ For the first time, Nanthema looked troubled. ‘I’m not sure I can explain it to you, and I know you will hate that. I’m not dead, Vin, because I’m not hungry, or thirsty. I don’t feel those things here. Time itself seems to have no meaning, and I don’t really seem to feel that either. You said I’ve been in here for twenty years? I had no idea. Vin, if I had been sitting here in these rocks for twenty years, wouldn’t I be a gibbering wreck by now?’
‘But it has been that long,’ Vintage insisted, feeling a fresh wave of sorrow at the thought. ‘Look at my face, if you don’t believe it.’
‘I can’t explain it to you.’ With her free hand, Nanthema pushed her hair away from her face. ‘It’s like . . . like I am held in place, in here. Unchanging. This place, is unchanging.’ She gestured behind her. ‘You remember that chunk of amber I bought at the market in Jarlsbad, with the locust stuck inside it? That creature must have been ancient, but it looked like it could hop right away. That’s how I feel, in here. Stuck in syrupy sap.’
‘And have you explored it? This place?’
Nanthema snorted. ‘What do you take me for? Of course I have. This place . . . I don’t think it’s real.’ She shuffled her feet, real discomfort on her face at dealing with something she could not explain. ‘There is an invisible boundary, and although it looks like there’s more of this miserable landscape, you can’t reach it. And if you look carefully at it, the rocks and the ground are blurred, out of focus.’
Vintage felt cold. ‘Nanthema, none of that makes sense.’
‘Oh, that’s the least of it. It’s also stuck in a loop.’
‘You’ve lost me there, my darling.’
‘It’s like an unfinished book, but you can only get up to the third chapter and you must go back to the beginning, over and over. Look at the clouds.’ She pointed upwards. Overhead, the black clouds scudded restlessly across the jaundice sky. ‘I have seen those same clouds, a hundred thousand times. They pass over, drawn by a wind I can’t feel, and then they start all over again.’
‘Nanthema, how could you possibly tell?’
‘Believe me, Vin, with nothing to look at but the clouds, you soon get to recognise them. It’s like this place is someone’s memory, or a dream, and I am stuck inside.’
She stopped talking, and for a moment the only thing Vintage could hear was her own breathing. They were so deep within the Behemoth that even the sea was silent. A thought occurred to her.
‘So what are you looking at now? What does the chamber look like to you?’
Nanthema grinned, although there was little humour in it. ‘It looks like a great shard of crystal, with my dear Vintage sitting within it.’
‘Hmph.’ Vintage shook her head. ‘What is this thing, then? What is it to the Jure’lia? Why would they need such chambers at the heart of their vessels? What does it do?’
Nanthema smiled lopsidedly. ‘That’s my Vin, always two steps ahead. And what do you mean, chambers? Have you seen another like this?’
‘I have.’ Vintage did not want to describe what they had found in Esiah Godwort’s Behemoth wreck – it would be like admitting that Nanthema must stay trapped forever – so she spoke quickly before she could ask more questions. ‘What else can you tell me about it?’
In answer, Nanthema shifted closer to the crystal, bowing her head as though she were going to whisper in Vintage’s ear. ‘I hear voices in here sometimes.’ The Eboran woman swallowed hard, and Vintage realised that she was frightened. ‘You will now declare me a lunatic, I expect, but it’s true. Whispers carried on the wind, drifting . . .’ Nanthema’s eyes rolled back to the rocks behind her, and Vintage had to swallow down a surge of fright. What if she had been driven mad, after all? ‘I think this crystal and the memory it contains, Vin, are integral to the Jure’lia in some way. Something deep, in the bones of what they are. And there’s something else.’
Nanthema turned back, and now she looked very young indeed, her face that of a child waking from a nightmare. ‘Vintage, the Jure’lia never went away. They’re still here.’
Tor had never seen so many people in the Hall of Roots. The sight made him deeply uneasy for reasons he couldn’t quite pinpoint, but he kept an easy smile on his face as he moved among them. All of the diplomats were here, the minor royalty from far-off kingdoms, the representatives of a dozen republics, the men and women from less defined places, the traders and the merchants, eager to see what coin could be made from Ebora’s corpse, no doubt. Aldasair had introduced him to them all, rattling off names and honorifics and locations in a manner that quietly stunned Tor – his cousin had rarely been so collected – and the people he met eyed him curiously, no doubt fascinated to talk to another living artefact from this mausoleum.
Except that wasn’t quite the case. There were a handful of Eborans here too, the last haggard survivors of the crimson flux, flushed out of their rooms and hiding places to be here. Hestillion had insisted that they be seated separately, away from the sharp eyes of the humans, and they were clustered to the east of the room. There Tor saw faces he hadn’t seen in decades, the faces of people he had been sure were long dead. It was unsettling, like sharing air with the ghosts of your ancestors, and mostly they looked like they might die at any moment anyway; he saw skin turned dusty and broken, riddled with the tell-tale red cracks of the crimson flux, and on some faces, the simple signs of old age. He felt a mild trickle of disgust down the back of his throat. They should not be here. For their own health, he added silently to himself.
But of course, who could stop them? Today might see the resurrection of their god, and if Ygseril lived again, his sap would restore them all. Crimson flux would be banished, his scars would be healed, and Ebora would rise from the ashes.
He suddenly realised what was bothering him. He leaned over to speak directly into his sister’s ear.
‘Where are all the paintings? The sculptures and cabinets and so on?’
‘We have moved them.’ Hestillion had washed and brushed her hair and her skin was shining. She wore a white silk wrap over a pale blue dress, but there was a feverish energy about her that he did not like. Her eyes moved too often, and were too wet. Once, Ainsel had come down with a sweating sickness and Tor had moved into her rooms for a few days to nurse her. She had been outraged at first, horrified that he should see her in such a state, but he had insisted. Human illnesses were not the crimson flux, after all. At the height of the sickness she had been fidgety, would not stay in bed, and her eyes had had the same restless brightness of Hestillion’s. ‘The artworks are now stored in some of the outer rooms. We still have plenty of empty ones, after all.’
‘Hmm.’ Tor realised that deep in the back of his mind he had thought the strangers had stolen them. Just spirited away thousands of years’ worth of Eboran artefacts; hidden them under their tunics, perhaps. He pursed his lips. It seemed that Hestillion wasn’t the only one who was nervous.
‘Where is your human pet?’
Tor raised his eyebrows at that. ‘Noon is resting. How do you want to do this?’
Hestillion looked up, and Tor followed her gaze. Above them, the glass roof of the Hall of Roots was filled with bright sunlight. The dead branches of Ygseril hung there, as they ever did, and beyond that Tor could see the ghostly smudge that was the corpse moon.
‘We just do it,’ said Hestillion. ‘We’ve all waited long enough.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’ Tor raised a hand to Aldasair, who had been standing with a tall man with green eyes, and his cousin came over. Of the three of them, Tor noted, he looked the least nervous – Aldasair looked better than he’d ever done. Together, they went to the edge of the roots, where the Jure’lia artefacts had been set, and they each picked up two of the orbs, one under each arm. A hush fell across the Hall, and Tor knew suddenly that this was right. No elaborate speeches, no declarations or promises. They were simply the children of Ebora, doing what they could for the tree-god. There would be witnesses, whatever happened, and that was good.
The three of them stepped up onto the roots together and walked slowly apart. There had been some discussion about this – they would pour the fluid over the widest possible area, and slowly. Tor stumbled slightly and felt a rush of heat to his cheeks. It had been a long time since he had walked the roots. He looked over at Hestillion for support, but she was staring straight ahead, her pale face as expressionless as a plate. Abruptly, he wished that Noon was here; she would have rolled her eyes at the solemnness of it all, and told them to get on with it.
Eventually, he came to the appointed place. With numb fingers he set one of the orbs down, and then removed the other’s seal. Wincing slightly, he knelt directly on the roots.
‘Please work,’ he murmured. ‘Please just . . . fucking work.’
He glanced up to see Hestillion and Aldasair to either side of him, performing the same slow actions. Ahead of him now he could see the crowd of humans and the handful of Eborans, watching closely. Some had their hands clasped over their mouths.
He tipped the orb, and the shimmering golden fluid poured from the opening. It was thick and slow, like syrup, and it pooled at first on top of the gnarled root he was perched on, before slipping to either side and moving down into the dark. Tor felt tension thrumming in all of his muscles – it was like the pent-up feeling you got just before cramp seized your leg.
Nothing was happening.
Glancing up again, he could see Hestillion to one side of him, her head bent gracefully over her work. To the other side, Aldasair was gently shaking the orb up and down to encourage the fluid out. The crowd were still silent, but he could see one or two people moving from one foot to the other, craning their necks to get a better look, and he knew they were thinking the same as he was. Nothing was happening, and this was a waste of time. Worse than that, it was a humiliation. Fumbling for the next orb, he tore the seal from it with more violence than was necessary, and hurriedly shook the contents over the roots. Still, that terrible silence.
As the last of the syrupy fluid dribbled from the orb he stood up, already thinking of how swiftly they could leave. He would grab Noon, several cases of wine, and he wouldn’t even need to look at his sister again. He had just taken his first step when he lost his footing; the roots under his feet had shifted, and he scrambled to stay upright. There was a chorus of cries from all around the room, a mixture of wonder and fear.
The roots were moving – not quickly or violently, but enough to make it difficult to stand on them. Tor looked up at the branches spreading above the glass roof, and they were moving too, as though a strong wind had suddenly blown up on this sunny, peaceful day. Tor ran for the edge, his heart beating sickly in his chest. Of all the things he had expected to feel if this happened, he had not expected to feel so afraid. He half fell, half jumped onto the marble floor and turned back to look. Aldasair and Hest had had the same thought and joined him moments later, Hestillion’s empty orb slipping through her fingers to smash into brittle pieces. Behind them, the murmur of the crowd was growing into a roar.
‘By the roots,’ breathed Aldasair. ‘We did it!’
‘We did something,’ said Tor. Why was he so afraid?
Ygseril’s bark, grey and silver for as long as Tor could remember, was changing colour before their eyes. The roots were darkening, growing plump and dark, steel warming to a deep burnished copper, and then a dark, reddish brown. The warmth flowed up from the roots to the enormous girth of the trunk, rising rapidly like a tide line. The newly ripened bark shone with health. There was a crackling noise, like a blazing fire on a cold night.
By now, the crowd of observers were shouting, some of them even whooping with joy, and reluctantly Tor felt his face split into a grin. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that several of the ill Eborans had climbed out of their chairs and were staggering towards the roots. Next to him, Hestillion was murmuring under her breath, words that he couldn’t catch, but he did not look at her; he couldn’t take his eyes from the glory of Ygseril.
Up and up the new colour spread, making them all lean back, craning their necks to watch as it flooded up and through the branches, and it was moving faster now, racing to the tips and flooding them with health.
Someone was crying. Tor could hear their breathless sobs, and he didn’t blame them. His own throat was tight with unshed tears.
‘We will be healed,’ he said, his voice thick, and Aldasair took his hand and squeezed it. His cousin was grinning.
‘It wasn’t the end after all,’ he said brightly.
There was movement in the branches high overhead. At first Tor thought that it was light in his eyes, perhaps reflecting off his own tears, but new points of brightness were appearing there; silver leaves were unfurling.
‘He lives!’
The cry came from one of the Eborans, an ancient man with broken skin and his crimson eyes sunk deep into his skull. He had reached the edge of the roots and had knelt to lay his hands on them, his ruined face split into a beatific smile. ‘He has come back to us!’
Tor grinned, turning to his sister with the thought that he would embrace her – not something they had ever made a habit of, but if any occasion merited it, surely this was it – when abruptly he was filled with a sense of enormous sorrow. It had come from outside himself, he was certain of it, and it nearly felled him like a blow to the stomach. He gasped, staggering, and saw Aldasair do the same, the pleasure on his face replaced with dismay. There was such sadness everywhere, such regret. It was hard to breathe, under that blanket of despair.
‘Oh no,’ said Hestillion. ‘Oh please, no.’
His sister was so pale now she looked almost translucent, as though he might see the shifting of her blood under her skin, and for a frightening moment Tor thought she would faint dead away, but then she was pointing at the roots. At what was boiling up through the gaps between the roots.
A black, viscous liquid was seeping up, surging everywhere between the healthy roots, like a dark oily sea coming into shore. Tor took a step backwards, confused. Was it the golden fluid? Had it been corrupted somehow? The cheers and chatter behind them stuttered and died.
The black liquid leapt and spread, moving not like a liquid at all, but like a living thing. Wet fingers of fluid danced and came together, weaving a form in the centre of the roots, a figure of sorts, something taller than an Eboran, something formed of sticky strands and seething wetness. Arms and legs appeared, a torso, a sleek head garlanded with tendrils of the shifting black substance. And a face surfaced there – beautiful, terrible. Pleased.
‘You have freed me. Remarkable child.’
‘It can’t be!’
For a moment Tor couldn’t think who was screaming until he saw Hest advancing on the roots, her hands knotted into fists at her sides. She was glaring at the creature standing on the roots as though it had done her a personal insult, and more alarmingly, the creature was looking back at her with something like fondness.
‘You lied to me!’ Hestillion’s voice was ragged with rage. Tor made an attempt to snatch her back but she shook him off. All around them now he could hear the men and women of their audience panicking, shouting in alarm. Someone had thrown open the big doors and some of them were leaving, but not actually that many. Despite themselves, most of them were still curious. The thing that had formed from the black substance under the roots was still shifting, changing as though forming itself; long hands with fingers like talons, hips like thorns, narrow clawed feet, all sculpted in oily darkness.
‘It is good to see the light,’ said the figure. Its voice was soft and yet still carried to every corner of the room. The voice, Tor realised, and the figure, were female. It stepped forward a little, holding up its hands to look at them. ‘To smell something other than dirt.’
‘You lied to me!’ With a start, Tor saw that his sister was crying. He had never seen her cry; not when their parents died, and not when he left. ‘I would have died for you!’
‘Dear Hestillion, special child,’ said the figure. It smiled. ‘A remarkable mind.’
‘Hest, how does it know your name?’ All at once this seemed like the most important question he’d ever asked. ‘Why does it know your name, Hest?’
He didn’t expect an answer, but his sister spoke without looking at him. ‘I spoke to her,’ she said, her voice soft and dreaming now, as though half asleep. ‘I believed she was our god, but she was a prisoner within his roots, whispering through the cracks.’
‘What is she, Hest? What is this?’
The woman on the roots turned – she hadn’t formed completely, he saw then, there were ragged holes in her forearms and calves, bisected with slimy strings of matter – and gestured, almost lazily. The remaining ooze in the roots surged into busy life again and split into thousands of tiny scurrying things, a tide of them moving out of the shadow of Ygseril and towards them, the people on the marble floor.
Burrowers had come to Ebora, and the figure that stood on the sprawling roots of his god was the Jure’lia queen.
‘Get away!’ He turned and began running for the back of the room. ‘Everyone, get out!’ Most of the guests had got the idea already and were crashing through the doors, but in their panic, many of the chairs had been overturned. He saw people falling, being trampled underfoot, and then he saw them being overtaken by the beetle-like creatures. In moments, the Hall of Roots was filled with screams, and with a wave of horror that was almost like fainting he realised that he had left his sword back in his room.
He looked back, seeking his sister. What he saw was the old Eboran who had knelt by Ygseril’s roots. The old man was writhing as the burrowers surged down his throat and nibbled busily at his eyes; they were inside him already, eating away at his soft organs and flesh and leaving behind their own excreta – black lines of it dribbled from his mouth. Beyond that he could see the rest of the Eboran contingent – some of them had had the sense to get up and were making for the doors, but most were too weak to move. He saw one woman stamping weakly at the beetle-like creatures underfoot, but they were already in her hair, their mandibles slicing easy holes into her flesh. Aldasair’s friend, the big one with the axes – he remembered, his name was Bern and he was from Finneral – had his axes in his hands now. Although they were little use against such a small, fast moving enemy, he stood in front of his cousin as though he meant to protect him.
‘Hestillion!’
His sister jerked at the mention of her name, but she did not turn – she merely shook her head, as if disbelieving. The old Eboran had stopped writhing, and now he was standing up calmly, moving with more grace than he had in centuries. His eyes were empty holes, and he was smiling.
‘Hest! We’ll die if we stay in here! Come away from there!’ Tor shouted.
A crowd of burrowers swerved towards him then and Tor danced back, his heart in his throat. One of them got a purchase on the soft material of his boots and he felt a series of pinpricks in his skin as it scrambled up his leg. Grimacing, he smacked it away, but there were already two more in its place.
‘We have to run,’ he said, although he no longer knew who he was talking to. The Jure’lia were back, they had released the queen, and it would all end here after all; just faster than expected. A bitter laugh twisted in his throat.
And then there came a voice. There were no words, but a series of feelings, impressions – it came, he knew instinctively, from the same source as the great sense of sorrow he had felt moments before. Something enormous was speaking, although it had no mouth or throat, and with a shudder Tor knew what it was saying.
A gift. A final gift.
High above them, in Ygseril’s newly living branches, something silver was growing.