21
Dear Nanthema,
The box of artefacts I bought from the Rodelian merchant arrived this week, and I am sad to say that they are obvious forgeries – not even good ones! Half of them are made from plaster and have broken to chalky pieces on the journey, while the etching that claims to be the work of Deridimas is laughable. I can, of course, imagine the face you are pulling now, dear one, and you are completely right. Dodgy dealings with merchants is no way to solve the mysteries of the Jure’lia, but while Father keeps me here that’s all I have available to me. Once Mother has recovered from the fainting fever I’m sure he will be more amenable to letting me leave. Thank you again for the crystal salts you sent, by the way – Mother tells me they are of great comfort, when she is lucid, at least.
It has been a while since your last letter. I hope all is well with you, my love.
Copy of a private letter from the records of Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon
It was around mid-afternoon the next day when the chuffing contraption they were riding slowed abruptly, causing Noon to stagger up the carriage and Vintage’s pile of papers to fly off the end of the table. Tor stood up, steadying himself against a bench.
‘What was that?’
The carriage shuddered, and from somewhere ahead of them came the sound of squealing metal, followed by a chorus of shouts. The winnowline lurched again, and this time they came to a stop. Noon grasped the table, resisting the pull as the contraption fought against its own momentum, and then everything was still. As one, the three of them went to the carriage door, looking out the glass at an overcast day. It was, Noon thought immediately, a bad place to stop. The line here was carved directly into the side of a steep hill, curling around it like a belt, while above them and below them the Wild loomed, closer than ever. There was a scent, deep and earthy and somehow slightly wrong, just like there had been in the Shroom Flats – not quite disguised by the oil-and-hot-metal stench of the winnowline.
‘Probably a technical problem,’ said Vintage, climbing down onto the raw earth. There was a flat path next to the line, no more than twenty feet wide, scattered here and there with gravel. Not for the first time, Noon wondered at what an enormous undertaking this had been for the Winnowry, and all the while she and the other fell-witches had known nothing of it. And why should they? They were just the fuel for the Winnowry’s wealth, after all. She stepped down after Vintage, touching her fingers to her head to check that the hat was still in place. Tormalin followed after, blinking at the subdued daylight.
‘When you say technical problem, Vintage, are we talking about the sort of technical problem that results in the whole thing exploding? Like it did the other week?’
‘I don’t know.’ Vintage pulled her own hat down over her bouncy hair. ‘Let’s go and have a look, shall we?’
‘Of course,’ said Tormalin. He had slipped his sword belt over his shoulder, and the hilt of the Ninth Rain looked dull in the grey light. ‘Obviously, the clearest course of action is to get closer to the thing that might explode.’
Despite his dour tone, he followed Vintage as she began to walk to the front of the contraption, and Noon followed on behind, keeping her head down. Other passengers had come out of their carriages now, their faces rueful or worried, looking to the head of the contraption or out at the Wild that seemed to crouch below them like some waiting beast. Noon noticed a few heads turning to follow them curiously, so she hurried to catch up, putting Tormalin between her and the crowd.
‘Pamoz! What’s the problem?’
Vintage had reached the engine to find the engineer standing with her hands on her wide hips. She glanced at Vintage and gave her a wry smile.
‘Come and have a look. It’s big enough.’
Pamoz led them around to the front of the engine. Noon was so busy trying to keep an eye out for fell-witches or agents that she almost walked into the back of Tormalin, who had stopped. She ducked round him and winced. It was a pretty big problem.
A tree had fallen across the winnowline tracks, and this being the Wild, it was no ordinary tree; it was huge, a good sixty feet in length and wider across than the height of a human with her arms stretched above her. It was twisted and warped, the greyish bark bulbous and smooth, while the broken branches were still thick with dark, shiny green leaves. Pamoz was shaking her head.
‘It’s going to be a bastard to clear, Lady de Grazon. We’ll have to take the engine back up the track aways, and then the witches can start burning it. They can do that – very controlled, focussed heat, take it to bits – but it’s going to take a while. We’ll have to go slow to avoid damaging the line underneath. That’s if it’s not broken already.’ Pamoz gave a sudden huge sigh. ‘We’ll need time to clear the debris too. This could put days on the journey.’
Vintage looked as serious as Noon had ever seen her; a deep line had formed between her eyebrows, and her mouth was turned down at the corners.
‘I’d advise you to be careful burning it, Pamoz, my dear. The smoke from Wild wood can have strange effects, and this –’ she paused, taking a few steps forward to look at the far end of the tree; an explosion of pale roots lay exposed to the sky, still thick with clods of mud – ‘this isn’t a dead tree. And nothing else has fallen on the track.’ The frown deepened. ‘I think this was placed here, Pamoz.’
‘Placed here?’ Pamoz laughed. ‘What could possibly fucking lift it? I mean, I think it’s a little large to be moved around easily, Lady de Grazon, is what I mean to say.’
There was nothing they could do here. Noon opened her mouth to tell Vintage that she was going back to their carriage to wait – she had no intention of being out in the open when the tame fell-witches came trooping out to deal with the tree – when there was a deafening crash, and the whole contraption rocked wildly towards them. For a moment, Noon was sure it would topple and fall on them, no doubt reducing them all to elaborate stains on the rough dirt, and then it fell back. The air was full of frightened shouts, and then they were all drowned out by a shattering, discordant roar.
‘By the bones of Sarn, what—?’
A huge shape appeared around the front of the engine, shrouding them all in shadow. Noon felt her throat close up in fright – what it had been, or what its ancestors had been before it had been worm-touched, she did not know. Something like a bear, perhaps; it was bulky, with a thick midsection and four short but powerful legs, and a long, blocky head. But instead of fur it was covered in pale, fleshy pouches of skin, which shivered and trembled as it moved, and Noon could see four circular black eyes along its head, clustered together and oddly spider-like. Its mouth, when it opened its jaws to roar again, was pink and wet and lined with hundreds of yellow needle-like teeth.
‘Vines save us,’ gasped Vintage. ‘A horror from the deepest Wild!’
The monster reared up on its back legs and roared again, blasting them all with a hot stench of rot and green things. Long tendrils of drool dripped from its jaws, and Noon thought she could see things squirming in it. Behind them, the other passengers were screaming and running back down the track.
A few of the fell-witches piled out of the engine, their ash-covered faces slack with surprise. Instinctively, Noon tried to move away, but of course they weren’t looking at her – as she watched, four of them formed a line and threw a swift barrage of green winnowfire at the monster. The creature reared up, the flames only licking at its strange, twisted flesh, and hitting instead the tree behind it. Small fires burst into life amongst its branches, while the monster roared again and leapt forward, directly at the fell-witches. The faster ones fell back, but one young woman was caught with its huge paw and she crashed to the ground, rolling in the gravel. The monster made to follow her when a short length of wood appeared suddenly in the side of its thick neck. Noon turned to see Vintage with her miniature crossbow raised, and then the monster was lumbering towards them, a thin line of crimson blood leaking from the hole she’d made.
‘Did you mean to do that?’ Noon was finding it difficult to catch her breath. She wanted to siphon energy, grab it from Tormalin or someone and then burn it, burn the monster, but if she did that, they would all see what she was. There would be no more hiding. ‘Because now it’s looking at us, Vintage, it’s looking at us.’
Vintage was pressing another quarrel into her crossbow. ‘Where’s the boy?’
Noon looked around. Tormalin was standing over the fell-witch who had been thrown to the ground, but now he was drawing his sword, an outraged look on his face.
Later, when she would think of what happened, Noon was inevitably reminded of the stories Mother Fast had told them, and the books her mother had read with her. For all of the terror and the fear, she briefly saw a tale brought to life: when Tormalin the Oathless killed the worm-touched monster of the winnowline.
He brought the sword round in a series of elegant swipes, dancing the daylight along its length like sunlight on water, and the monster, dazzled for a moment, swept its great blocky head around to face him. With its attention solely on him, Tor stalked towards the creature, tall and steady, unafraid. Behind him, most of the passengers had fled, and the fell-witches were gathering their fallen colleague up and dragging her away, but a few people were left, watching with wide eyes. The monster roared and, still walking on its back legs, took a series of shuddering steps towards Tormalin, but, abruptly, the Eboran wasn’t there. Noon blinked, and then he was back in sight, circling round the monster so that he was at its back. He ran, slashing his long sword low, across the back of the creature’s legs. Bright blood spurted across the gravel and the animal shrieked. It tried to turn, but its legs were no longer obeying its commands, so instead it twisted the great bulk of its torso around, long jaws snapping at the thin form of Tormalin. For the strangest moment it looked to Noon as though Tormalin had chosen to leap to his own death – he reached up, putting himself within easy reach of the thing’s teeth, and Noon was sure that he must now die, torn to shreds by the fangs of an abomination. But although the jaws seemed to close a hair’s breadth away from his smooth neck, it was the monster’s blood that was shed; its throat burst open in a shower of red, a sudden second mouth where one hadn’t been before. Belatedly Noon saw the silver line that was the Ninth Rain sliding through flesh like it was water – and then the monster was falling. Right on top of Tormalin.
Noon gasped and heard the watching crowd gasp behind her. The thing was enormous; it must surely have crushed the Eboran under its weight. But then the huge bulk of the thing rolled to one side, Tormalin the Oathless lifting it off as easily as a man discarding a horse-blanket, with the Ninth Rain still held firmly in his right hand. He stalked over towards them while a wide puddle of steaming blood grew from the body of the worm-touched creature. He looked aggrieved.
‘Tormalin . . .’ Vintage shook her head. ‘Tor, my darling, are you all right?’
He pursed his lips at her, apparently oblivious to the watching crowd. ‘Would you look at this?’ He held up the cuff of his jacket, which was smudged with blood. ‘Do you know how difficult it is to get blood out of Reidn silk? And now this.’ He turned in a circle, revealing a huge patch of crimson on the back of his jacket. It was soaked in the monster’s blood, as was much of his hair.
‘Your clothes,’ said Noon. She wasn’t sure what else to say. ‘Your . . . clothes?’
‘I’ve had this jacket since I left Ebora, Vintage. There isn’t another like it in Sarn. And, of course, this wouldn’t be quite as much of an issue, if you hadn’t started giving away my clothes to random women we meet in the woods.’
‘Yes, dear,’ Vintage patted his arm, smiling faintly, ‘it is, indeed, a tragedy.’ She turned away from him, looking back to the engine. ‘Pamoz! You’ve another obstruction to burn, I’m afraid. Better get started.’