45
The question is: what broke our world?
Better yet: what poisoned it? They did of course. Every place they touch is broken and strange, and everything they leave behind sinks into the very flesh of Sarn to spread its tendrils of poison.
It poisons the world, but where do you put it? It’s not refuse that can be dumped in a distant ravine – the ravine will become poisonous, and the poison will spread. Put it in the sea, and the sea will also be poisoned. Attempts have been made to move the broken pieces of Behemoth, over the generations. They always result in people dying, one way or another. Even my beloved vine forest, and the grapes I have cultivated my whole life, are just as poisoned as anywhere else that has been touched by the Jure’lia.
So, instead, we build walls around our cities, the edges of towns are closely watched, and travel is a dangerous occupation, fit only for the mad and the desperate.
Extract from the journals of Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon
The silver pods, high in the branches of Ygseril, were trembling slightly all over. Noon could see perhaps fifteen of them, and under the smooth silver skins living things were moving sluggishly. She had a moment to wonder if the fall would just kill them outright, and then they were falling, dropping one by one like overripe autumn apples.
‘The Ninth Rain,’ Tor breathed next to her. ‘But it’s so fast . . .’
The pods fell, and, belatedly, Noon realised exactly how large they were – the biggest was the size of a fully loaded cart. She yanked Tor back, looking too late for cover, and then they were crashing to the marble floor all around them, bouncing and rolling in sudden chaos, hitting with deep sullen thuds that Noon felt through her boots. She and Tor danced out of their way while Hestillion cringed against the roots, but miraculously none of them were struck.
‘I never thought I’d see it.’ Tor looked bewildered, and much younger than he had a moment ago. ‘I never thought I’d see them.’
Noon glanced around at the pods, her heart in her mouth. Something was wrong here, terribly wrong, but there was no time . . . she knew which one as soon as she laid her eyes on it, as clear to her as the full moon in an empty summer sky. It was the largest of them all, taller than she was, and the pull towards it was impossible to ignore.
‘Now you have to cover me, my friend.’
Tor blinked at her, utter confusion on his face, but then his sister was standing up and shouting questions at the queen, her voice strong and faintly outraged.
‘This is holy ground you walk upon, creature. What do you think gives you the right to be here?’
Noon saw the mask-like face that hung within the teeming mass of the queen’s body turn towards Hestillion, its perfect eyebrows raised in genuine surprise, but then the pod seemed to summon her again. She walked towards it, no more able to stop than she was able to float up into the sky. Inside her there was a fluttering sensation, as though she were a glass jar with a moth trapped inside.
‘I am here, I am here,’ she murmured. Placing her hands on the smooth skin of the pod, she wasn’t surprised to find that it was hot to the touch, fevered almost. Beneath the taut covering something was shifting, pushing and straining. Distantly, she was aware of both Tor and Hestillion remonstrating with the queen – they were distracting the Jure’lia creature, but she wouldn’t play along for long.
‘Everything hangs in the balance,’ she said to the pod. ‘Here, at the time of your new birth.’ The words weren’t hers, and as each one left her mouth she felt dizzier and dizzier.
Help me, said the voice in her head. You will have to help me. This is too soon.
Noon was momentarily lost. She had no knife, nothing to cut this smooth surface with. Dimly she was aware that Aldasair and the big man, Bern, were somewhere amongst the fallen pods, and she briefly considered asking the Finneral man to let her use his axes; but instinctively she flinched away from this idea. Human steel at such a birthing was wrong. Instead, she knelt by the pod and pressed her hands flat to it, summoning the swirling energy to her as she did so. Not flames, but heat; not the sun, but the fine building of summer within the sun-soaked stone. She poured it into the pod, feeling the surface beginning to blister under her fingers, and then it split, suddenly, like a nut on a fire. Noon pushed her fingers under the edges and pulled, revealing a membranous white material, a little like lace, and then that tore and she was looking into a huge, violet eye, the pupil a black slash down the middle, narrowing at the sight of her.
VOSTOK.
It was like being punched between the eyes. Noon reeled, struggling to stay conscious, and then she was tearing at the pod, and inside it something huge was battering its way out. Pieces of the pod came away in her hands easily now, slippery with an oily fluid, and the lace-like substance disintegrated in her hands. A scaled snout thrust its way through the gap, blasting hot breath into her face, and then an entire head appeared, shaking off scraps of pod material before collapsing heavily onto her lap.
‘Vostok?’
Bigger than a horse’s head, it was reptilian in nature, a long snout studded with pearly white scales, some as big as medallions, some as small as the nail on Noon’s smallest finger. The creature – Vostok, thought Noon feverishly, her name is Vostok – opened her long jaws and panted, revealing lines of wickedly sharp teeth and a dark purple tongue. The top of her sleek head bristled with curling horns, bone-white and tapering to points, while on the bony nubs protruding from beneath the violet eyes, tiny white feathers sprouted, damp and stuck together. A long, sinuous neck led back inside the pod, where Noon could just make out a body, curled and compact but already moving to be free. Noon cradled the head in her arms as best she could. The fluid of the pod had soaked into her clothes, and there was a bright, clean smell everywhere, like sap.
Child, you birthed me in your witch fire.
Noon nodded. The voice was echoing strangely.
You understand I have to take back what was taken.
Noon nodded again. She understood. She welcomed it.
The great reptilian body inside the pod – dragon, exulted Noon, dragon – flexed and the last of its cocoon burst and fell aside. The head rose from Noon’s lap and the snout rested against Noon’s forehead for a moment. The scales felt cool now, like a blessing.
There was a brief impression of movement and bulk – Noon saw great white wings, still wet and pressed to the dragon’s back – and then a long talon pierced her, in the soft place below her ribs.
Pain, and a rushing sensation. The presence within her, and its boiling energy, flowed away, rushing out and leaving her stranded, a piece of debris on the shore. And then on the tail of that, her blood, soaking the front of her jacket. In confusion she thought of Tor. Couldn’t she hear him shouting something now? Wasn’t it her name?
‘Thank you, child.’ The voice that had been carried inside her for so long was now issuing from the dragon. Noon didn’t understand how that could be, but it was. Vostok’s long jaws hung open, panting like a dog. ‘But your service is not over.’
Vostok withdrew her talon. Noon screamed, unable not to – the taking away was somehow worse than being pierced – yet when she looked down she saw her torn jacket, her blood, but no wound; just a ragged silver scar. She pressed her fingers against it wonderingly.
‘No time.’ Vostok thrust her head against her, nearly knocking her over. ‘Get up and fight.’
A war-beast. A real living war-beast, born from Ygseril’s branches.
Tor could hardly drag his eyes from it. The creature was glorious, a confection of pearly white scales and silvered claws. It had wings like an eagle, but each feather was as white as snow, and as yet still wet with the fluid it had been birthed in. Noon was talking to it, her hands pressed to either side of its long mouth, heedless of the teeth and the power in that jaw—
Hestillion’s elbow caught him in the rib and he dragged his attention back to their current problem.
‘This is unprecedented,’ Hestillion was saying. Her voice now was level, control in every word as she spoke to the Jure’lia queen. And, for a wonder, the queen was listening. ‘Our peoples have never spoken before, as far as I know?’
‘Peoples.’ The Jure’lia queen seemed to find this amusing.
‘Why is that? You are clearly intelligent, you can communicate with us.’ Hestillion cleared her throat and held her head up. Her face was still much too pale for Tor’s liking, but there was a stubborn set about her mouth that he remembered well. ‘What I’m saying is, surely an agreement can be reached.’
‘Hestillion . . .’
She elbowed him in the ribs again. She didn’t want his opinion; she wanted his attention.
‘Such a remarkable mind,’ said the queen. Her mask-like face split into a wide smile. Slightly too wide. It made Tor think of hands making her face move; hands that did not truly understand how human faces worked. ‘Always thinking of solutions. You never rest, seeking it. Remarkable. I have so enjoyed our talks.’
Hestillion seemed to ignore this. ‘There is no need to re-live this war over and over again, as we have done for generations. You want land? You can have it. We can agree on land for you to have. Then you will stay there, and we will stay here. In time, we may . . . reach out to each other. Or, if you prefer, we could never speak again.’
The dripping black mass that made up the body of the queen shivered all over, like a breeze across the calm surface of a lake, and then she made an odd, hissing sound. It took Tor a moment to realise she was laughing, or whatever the Jure’lia equivalent was.
‘Your bright little mind does not know everything,’ said the queen, baring her gumless teeth. ‘All must be consumed, for us to live. We do not make agreements with food. You have no idea how close to the end you are.’
The queen gestured up, to the bright sky overhead. Within it, the corpse moon hung like a green shadow and – Tor felt his heart lurch in his chest – it was larger than he had ever seen it. The corpse moon, the long-dead Behemoth in the sky, was coming towards them. Now that he looked, he could see movement on the surface of the thing. Too distant yet to identify, but patches of it that had been in shadow as long as he could remember were growing bright again.
‘No!’ Hestillion took an angry step towards the roots. ‘Why won’t you listen to me? I know you’re not an idiot!’
‘Enough, little morsels,’ said the queen, almost kindly. ‘Ebora ends here, now, forever. And Sarn will follow.’
‘Never.’
At the sound of that voice, Tor felt all the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He turned round to see the dragon stalking towards them, Noon sitting on its back, just ahead of where its wings began.
‘Oh, old enemy,’ said the queen. ‘You have been turned out of your womb too early. You are but a babe in arms, and your brothers and sisters still sleep.’ She pouted. ‘I am sad for you.’
‘My wings may be wet and my fire unkindled, but I can still kill you, parasite. I am not alone.’
The dragon lowered its head as Noon sat up, her hands in front of her. A bright point of green light appeared there, and then Noon seemed to strike it, sending a ball of roaring fire across the hall straight at the Jure’lia queen. The wall of black ooze rose to meet it in a teeming curtain, but the fire exploded against it like acid, blowing it to tatters. The Jure’lia queen shrieked, twisting the black slime around her like a cloak. All around them, the drones and the burrowers that had been still lurched into sudden life.
It was the strangest, and perhaps shortest, battle of Tor’s life. There were around fifteen drones left, men and women with holes for eyes and dreamily blank expressions. Three of them rushed him, trying to overpower him at once, but none of them carried weapons and his sword made short work of them. Two of them went for Hestillion, who produced a short dagger from the folds of her dress, and then she was lost to view as another three came for him. He heard a bellow and a series of thumps and spotted the warrior Bern, his axes flying as he took down the drones on that side of the hall, an expression of horrified disgust on his face. Aldasair was there with him, weaponless but refusing to leave the bigger man’s side.
Tor raised his sword again and was almost knocked flying as the dragon leapt past him, crashing into the group of drones. Tor caught a glimpse of Noon, her hands and arms working furiously as she generated ball after ball of winnowfire. Her face wasn’t just calm; it was exalted. The dragon swept its long tail across the floor, knocking a handful of the drones onto their backs, before Noon drenched them all in dragon-fuelled winnowfire. They went up like tapers, as though being hollow inside made them easier to burn.
Another drone lurched at Tor. This one he recognised; once, it had been Thadeous, an Eboran who had been a good friend of his father’s. When Tor had trained for the sword, Thadeous had been there too; the man had been a legend amongst those who trained with weapons, practising relentlessly, decades of skill endlessly honed. For the ceremony, he had dressed in his old military uniform, despite the ravages of the crimson flux turning his face into a cracked mask, and his sword still hung at his side. Now, his eyes were empty black holes.
‘Thadeous,’ Tor nodded formally, ‘I don’t suppose those creatures ate away your skill at using a sword, by any chance?’
The drone bared its teeth at him and lunged, the blade suddenly in its hands. Tor met it easily enough but found himself pushed away, wrong footed, and narrowly avoided being run through. He staggered, aware now that there were burrowers all around, scuttering across his boots and dividing his attention. Thadeous leapt at him again, and they fought bitterly for a few moments, Tor gradually being pushed back away from his sister and the roots. The burrowers may have eaten the man’s brain, but it seemed that his body remembered his years of training, and Tor found himself at a distinct disadvantage.
‘Too many years,’ he gasped, ‘fighting off – giant bears and – bloody parasite – spirits.’
The old man got in under his guard; too close for a killing wound, but the drone brought up his fist and punched him on the scarred part of his face. Tor felt the skin across his cheekbone split, a bright slither of pain, and that somehow was too much. This day had started so well, with its sunshine and its hope, and now he was here, about to be killed by one of his father’s oldest friends while the Jure’lia spread their filth over Ebora. Enough.
With a bellow of rage he brought his elbow up and crashed it into Thadeous’s throat, half collapsing it in one blow. The drone fell back and Tor swept the Ninth Rain up and round, severing its head from its neck so swiftly it turned a full somersault in the air before falling to the marble floor with a hollow thud.
‘You always were a tedious old fart, Thadeous.’
The joy of battle.
Vostok had spoken of it to her in the quiet moments between dreams, but Noon had not understood. Now, with one hand pressed to the dragon’s smooth scales and the other carving elegant shapes in the air – shapes that summoned flames more precise and powerful than she’d ever imagined – she saw their enemies falling before them and she was filled with a sense of rightness. No question here of what was right or wrong, no concerns over guilt. There was just the joy of battle, of believing utterly in the fight.
Together they had edged closer to the Jure’lia queen, burning or breaking the drones she sent towards them, and now they were on the edge of the roots. To Noon’s surprise, Vostok stepped lightly over them, her enormous serrated talons not leaving a scratch, and the queen retreated, slithering back to the bulk of the trunk. There was a building of excitement in Noon’s chest as the queen threw up wall after wall of her strange black substance, and again and again she burned it away.
‘Bite her or burn her?’ she murmured to Vostok. The dragon’s amusement washed over her.
‘I would not bite such as she. I will be picking it out of my teeth for weeks.’ Vostok shook herself, like a dog in the rain. ‘No, you must burn her, child.’
Noon grinned. ‘Gladly.’
At that moment, the Hall of Roots filled with a desolate roaring. Hot, fetid air was blasted on them from above, and a great shadow fell over them. Noon looked up and saw the corpse moon hanging now not in the distant sky but just above them. Scuttling shapes like six-legged spiders moved busily across its surface, and at the blunt head of the thing, a dark mouth was opening. All joy and certainty fled, and instead she was left with the eerie sense that her dream had come back – the nightmare that had caused her to flee the Winnowry had followed her and here it was. Perhaps everything had been a dream, after all.
‘Pay attention!’ Vostok shook her, tossing her back and forth like a doll. ‘Are you a warrior or not?’
‘But that thing—’
‘That thing is a distraction. Will you look at what is happening here?’
Dragging her eyes away from the rapidly approaching corpse moon, Noon saw that Tor was fighting for his life. With them distracted, the queen had sent the burrowers in a thick wave towards him, and now he was thrashing on the floor, trying to keep them from crawling inside his mouth.
‘Tor!’
‘Leave him. Now is our chance to take the queen. Take what you need from me—’
‘No.’ Noon could feel Vostok’s will pressing on her like a physical weight, but she threw it off. ‘You can’t ask me to do that. Not him. I will not—’
‘Humans! You are more foolish even than Eborans.’ But the dragon turned and leapt, crashing down to stand over Tor protectively. Noon slipped easily from her back and released a wide cloud of green flame, a burst of near-heatless energy that doused Tor from head to foot. Each of the burrowers burst into flame but the Eboran was left unscathed. Dragging him to his feet, Noon shoved him towards Vostok.
‘Thank you, I think. Did you mean to burn just them?’
‘Shut up and get up there.’
Together they scrambled up onto Vostok’s back, but it was too late. The corpse moon now blocked out all daylight, and a thin line of the wet black fluid had descended from the gaping hole in its front end like a rope, and the Jure’lia queen had extended her arm to reach it – the two were one now, a glistening black line from one to the other. She smiled at them.
‘You are running away?’ bellowed Vostok. The dragon reared back in frustration and Tor and Noon had to grasp onto her shoulders to keep from falling off. ‘Coward! Noon, burn her!’
Noon scrambled up, holding on with her thighs only, and threw a barrage of winnowfire at the queen, but she swept away from it, closer to the waiting Behemoth.
‘You will get your fight soon enough, relic.’ Her face changed, becoming, to Noon’s mind, almost conflicted. ‘I said, did I not, that you would not be left behind again?’
Noon frowned, belatedly realising that the queen wasn’t talking to them. She looked up to see Hestillion standing on the roots, her dress ragged and torn but otherwise untouched. In her arms she held the smallest of the war-beast pods.
‘You did say that, yes,’ she said. Her face was very still and pale.
The Jure’lia queen nodded once, and Hestillion and the pod were swept up in a wave of black fluid, borne past them and up, up towards the broken ceiling of the Hall of Roots. There she joined the queen and then they were lost to view, spirited up to the waiting Behemoth at an uncanny speed. Vostok leapt forward, her wet wings beating once, twice against her sides before giving up. The gaping mouth at the front of the corpse moon sealed over in silence, and a dozen spidery creatures crawled over it, smoothing it into place before the whole thing shuddered and roared again, turning slowly away from them.
Noon watched as the Behemoth moved south, edging out of their field of vision until the blameless blue sky filled the hole in the roof again. Small fires burned everywhere in the Hall of Roots, and bodies were strewn amongst the broken chairs. The place stank of smoke and death.
Tor was the first to break the silence.
‘Did the Jure’lia just steal my sister?’
Noon opened her mouth to tell him that she didn’t think ‘steal’ was the right word, but looking at his stricken, bleeding face, she found that she could not.
Instead she took his hand and kissed the palm of it. She tasted blood.