27
The Winnowry’s giant bats (or to give them their proper name, Targus Black-eye Bats) are originally from the mountainous region of Targ. It’s a place that has long intrigued me, I must admit – all evidence points to a cataclysm taking place there millennia ago, long before even the very first visit from the Jure’lia – but its reputation as a cursed landscape means that it is absolutely impossible to book a passage there. No one travels to Targ, alas.
Except that wasn’t always true. We know, of course, that when the early followers of Tomas were laying the foundations for their delightful prison for women, some of them did travel to Targ, and we know that they came back with a clutch of Targus Black-eye young. As a side note: I would dearly love to know why they travelled to Targ in the first place. With its bleak chasms and towering mountains you would need a very good reason to go. Perhaps the reason is hidden somewhere in Tomas’s private writings; of the secrets he brought back from the sea, did one contain a reason to go to Targ? Or more intriguing still, does the region have a connection with winnowfire?
Either way, the young bats were raised at the Winnowry, as were their offspring, until they knew no other home, and generations of the creatures flew from the spindly chirot tower at the top of the Winnowry. They are carnivorous animals, hunting birds and smallish mammals, but they also enjoy fruit – on one memorable occasion I caught a fully grown Targus Black-eye feasting on the grapes in the vine forest. It must have been a rogue, having fled from the Winnowry – I can’t imagine that even such a huge winged creature could fly all the way from Targus to my forest. I chased it off with a stick, the bugger.
By all accounts they are loyal, intelligent creatures, with a tendency to fixate on their keeper, or other close human.
Extract from the journals of Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon
The day was swiftly dying, and the three of them stayed the night in Esiah Godwort’s enormous empty house, each finding an abandoned room to bed down in. Tormalin woke in the early hours and went down to the kitchens, looking for food and a bottle of wine to ease him back to sleep. On his way back he noticed that there was a band of buttery light underneath the door of Esiah Godwort’s study, and he could hear the dry noise of paper against paper; perhaps the man had been driven mad from a lack of sleep. From Noon’s room he could hear small noises of distress, muffled with sleep, and he stood there for some time, one hand pressed lightly against the door. He was curious, but he was also tired.
Back in his own room, camped on a bed thick with dust, he opened the wine and found that he no longer wanted it. Instead, he reached into his bag and retrieved one of the last vials of blood – blood donated by Ainsel. Turning the glass between his fingers, he watched the crimson fluid swirling thickly by the light of his single candle. Years ago, when Ebora had only been a few years into its blood-lust, a coating had been developed for glass vessels that kept blood from growing thick too quickly, and he had made sure to pack several jars in his bags when he left the city. Tormalin unstopped the vial and pressed it quickly to his lips. The blood was no longer even in shouting distance of fresh, and it did little to alleviate his weariness, but the taste of Ainsel was still there, the memories of her warm skin sweet against his tongue. For a few moments the abandoned room felt less lonely.
Pinching out the light and crawling beneath the musty covers, Tormalin thought of Noon again, caught in the repeated nightmare that wasn’t a nightmare, over and over. Eventually, he slept.
The girl wriggled deeper into the blankets, the horsehair rough against her bare feet. It was midday, and the walls of her mother’s tent glowed faintly with captured sunlight. This was good. If it was bright outside, they would be less likely to see what she was up to.
She reached into the basket and pulled out the bushel of rala root her mother had harvested earlier that morning. It was dying fast, the long green leaves that sprouted above ground were already wilted and soft, but there was enough life left in them for what she needed – she could feel it through her fingertips, ticklish and alive and leaking.
The girl looked up to the entrance of the tent, checking again that her mother wasn’t going to make a sudden appearance, but the flap was closed, and outside she could hear the gentle, everyday sounds of her people: voices raised in greeting, gossip and command, the huff and chuff of horses being tended, the faint sound of Mother Fast singing successful hunting to them all. There was the steady thump of axe against wood, the sound of other children playing and calling to each other, but within the tent everything was still. This was her time, a brief moment alone where she could do what she wanted. And there was only ever one thing she wanted.
The girl wrapped the fingers of one hand around the rala root, and held her other hand out in front of her. The living greenness of the plant beat gently against her fingers, almost as though it wanted her to take it. In the sun-hazed gloom of the tent, the girl grinned.
The rala leaves crumpled and turned brown. The bulbous heart-shaped root, so good when cooked in stews, grew wrinkled and shrunken. After a few moments, the ends of the leaves turned black and curled up.
Almost triumphantly, the girl held up her other hand, her small fist clenched, and a ball of greenish-blue flame winked into life around it. The eldritch fire began at her wrist and formed a point above her closed fingers, flickering and dancing wildly.
Unable to help herself, the girl whooped with delight and the flames grew a little higher, filling the tent with shifting, other-worldly light. She no longer cared that someone might notice the light from outside; her chest was filled with a sense of floating, of being apart. There was nothing but the flame.
The inside of the tent was painted with light. The blankets, the bed rolls, her mother’s cooking pots, her books, her scrolls, her precious bottles of ink, the girl’s wooden toys, her wooden practice sword, the dirty cups and the crumpled clothes – they were all transformed, captured in a glow that made the girl think of the waters of the Sky Lake. She wondered if this was what it was like to live underwater.
Her hand did not burn, but the tent was filling with heat, and she could feel pinpricks of sweat under her hair and on her back. The rala root was a collection of soft, blackened sticks in her hand – there was a smell, like rot, like old mushrooms and harvest – and the flames were dying now, sinking back towards her fingers. Desperate, the girl reached out without thinking, seeking more of that green life, and plunged her free hand into her mother’s basket of greens.
The flames roared back into life, shooting towards the gathered ceiling of the tent in a wild plume of shimmering blue, and at that moment the tent flap was thrown back.
‘Noon!’
Her mother shuffled rapidly into the tent, pulling the flap tight behind her. The flame swirled wildly for a moment as the girl tried to control it, licking against the dried flowers hanging above. They lit up like tapers, the blue-green light turning a more familiar orange as it came into contact with something to burn, and then her mother was cursing and shouting, snatching down the burning plants and smothering them quickly with blankets. The beautiful fire was gone, and the tent was thick with heat and the bitter stench of smoke. When the fires were out, her mother fixed her with a look. There was a smear of soot on her cheek, and her black hair was a tumbled mess.
‘Noon! What have I told you about this?’
The girl hung her head, rubbing her fingers together to brush away the dead rala root. ‘Not to do it.’
Her mother sat heavily across from her daughter. ‘And?’
‘That it is bad.’
‘Noon. What have I raised? A little frog that croaks out words? Come on.’
Noon looked up. Her mother’s face was a still shape in the gloom of the tent, her skin warm and alive. Her eyes glinted with exasperation, but the anger was already fading.
‘That the winnowfire is dangerous. That I could burn myself, or other things. That I could burn the tent down.’
‘You nearly did this time. Not to mention wasting an entire basket of decent food.’ Her mother tipped the basket up so that Noon could see the inside of it, revealing a sad pile of blackened vegetation. She sighed. ‘Continue.’
‘That no one must know I can do it. That if they find out –’ Noon stopped, fidgeting – ‘the Winnowry will come and take me away.’
‘And they will, my sweet. I won’t be able to stop them. Mother Fast won’t be able to. None of us will. They’ll take you far from the plains, and I won’t see you again.’
Noon pushed the blankets away, sitting up properly. ‘But how could they ever know, Mum? I will keep it secret, I promise. No one will ever see. I could use the winnowfire to be a proper warrior! I could protect us, keep us always warm when the snow comes!’
Her mother watched her for a few moments, saying nothing. ‘What does it feel like?’ she asked eventually. ‘When you summon the fire?’
Noon paused, sensing a trap, but when her mother said no more, she shrugged. ‘Like being alive. Like there is too much life in me, and I can do anything.’
Her mother’s lips grew thin, and she looked away, her head bowing briefly so that her thick black hair covered her face. Then she looked back at her daughter, meeting her eyes steadily. ‘I am sorry, Noon, but you must hide it. You are very small now, and you can’t possibly – their witch spies are everywhere. You might be safe for a day or two, maybe even a week, or three, but eventually the Winnowry would come for you.’ She shuffled over and gathered her daughter up into her arms, kissing the top of her head. ‘I can’t lose you, little frog.’
In her cold and dusty room in Esiah Godwort’s grand house, Noon turned over and opened her eyes, pieces of the dream speeding away like leaves on the river. For a moment, she thought she could still smell her mother – the scents of wildflowers and horse – but it was just the stink of musty bedclothes, after all. Her hand trembling only slightly, she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and waited for the sky to lighten. Things would look better in the daylight.
It was the biggest wall Noon had ever seen. It was so big, in fact, that she hadn’t realised it was a wall until she saw the enormous gate built into the side. If anything, it resembled an extremely steep hill, with unusually uniform sides. To complete the resemblance, the thing was covered all over with a brownish clay, and here and there small plants and trees had taken root. They should have been an encouraging sight in the barren landscape, but they were sad, twisted things; the poison of Greenslick seeped in everywhere, it seemed.
‘He said the gate was open.’ Vintage had her broad-brimmed hat pulled firmly down over her head, and had spent part of the previous day scavenging Godwort’s house for supplies, so her pack was bulging. Tormalin stood next to her, his long sword slung over his back. He had been up before Noon, boiling water to wash in, and as usual he looked elegant and composed, his long black hair held in a liquid tail down his back, his skin shining. Looking at him, it was difficult to believe his people were a dying race.
‘It is, but just a crack. Look.’ Tor went to the enormous gate. It was constructed from oak trunks and riveted with iron, and it stood open about an inch. A thick blanket of shrivelled leaves and dirt had settled against it, but by leaning his whole weight against it Tor managed to open one door wide enough for them to squeeze through one by one. They filed in and stood, caught in silence for a moment.
‘What a place.’ Noon cleared her throat. ‘I’d almost rather be back at the Winnowry.’
It was the Wild, festering behind gigantic walls. Enormous trees loomed over them, strange twisted things, their branches intertwining and spiralling around each other, as though they were blind and reaching out for their neighbours. Noon saw bark of grey, black and red, leaves of a diseased green, running with yellow spots. There were mushrooms too, bloated things like corpses left in the water too long, bursting from the trunks of the strange trees or erupting out of the black earth. It was already an overcast day, and dismal light within the compound was strained and jaundiced, almost as though it were an afterthought. A deep feeling of unease seemed to ooze from the deep shadows that pooled around every tree.
‘Great, our own personal patch of Wild to get killed in,’ said Tor. He unsheathed the Ninth Rain and held it loosely in one hand, his dark red eyes narrowed. ‘This place is too quiet.’
‘It’s because there’s no wind, that’s all. Don’t get jumpy before we’ve even started, my dear,’ said Vintage dismissively, but she already had her crossbow held securely in both hands.
‘Being jumpy in here might save our lives.’ Tor started forward, sword at the ready. ‘I’m assuming we just start walking, Vintage? The Behemoth remains will be hard to miss, I suspect.’
Within the shadows of the trees, Noon’s sense of unease grew until it felt like a weight on her neck. She found herself looking back, seeking out the brown clay of the wall, but it was swiftly eaten up by the giant trees. She could see nothing moving.
‘How big is this place?’
‘It takes up over half of Esiah’s land,’ said Vintage. The scholar was trying to look everywhere at once, her eyes very wide. ‘I can’t believe I’m finally here. And he barely needed persuading at all.’
‘Yes, because the fool has lost his mind,’ said Tor, just ahead of them. ‘Or have you politely chosen not to notice that, Vintage?’
Vintage ignored him, elbowing Noon instead. ‘Try to remember as much of this as you can, my darling. Any strange details, any odd thoughts that occur to you. I will be writing extensive notes afterwards.’
The Wild closed over them, and soon it was difficult to picture the outside world, or to believe that just an hour ago they had been standing in the hall of a great house, drinking slightly stale tea and packing their bags. In here, civilisation felt like a dream she had had once, now half forgotten. Noon was just starting to get used to the thick, alien stench of the place when a sonorous wailing sounded from nearby. Noon felt the hair on the back of her neck trying to stand up.
‘A parasite spirit,’ said Tor. ‘Let’s keep moving.’
It wasn’t long before they saw their first one of those. A shimmering of lights lit up the gloom, and Noon found herself crouching behind a great mushroom the colour of cow’s liver. The spirit passed around twenty feet away from them, a thing that looked like a shark with legs, blunt head fringed with yellow lamps, and it didn’t appear to see them. Noon moved out of her crouch, only for Vintage to grab her arm.
‘Stay there, my darling,’ she whispered. ‘Just a moment.’
Silence and gloom, and then an eerie brightening all around them. Blue light, then purple, then pink. Two more parasite spirits, passing by on either side of them. Noon shrank back against the fungus, her heart pounding. Another three hovered beyond that – she could make out glowing translucent flesh, fronds like oversized fingers, and dark, puckered holes. She had the absurd feeling that they were caught in a parade of parasite spirits – perhaps this was what they did for fun, alone in this forgotten place. Again, the sonorous wailing started up, much closer this time, and Noon remembered everything she had ever heard about the spirits; particularly the part about how, if they touched you, they could turn you inside out. She wished fervently that she could sink into the ground. Next to her, Vintage was speaking rapidly in a language she didn’t know.
‘I had no idea Catalen had so many swear words,’ murmured Tor, amused. ‘Although I’m less than happy about offering up my own energy, perhaps we could get our witch to burn them, Vintage? Isn’t that what she’s here for?’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ hissed Vintage. ‘They will just move on past us. No sense in announcing our arrival.’
‘Why are there bloody loads of them?’ said Noon. Again, the spirits did not appear to notice them, and eventually their strange lights vanished back into the gloom of the Wild.
Vintage was grinning. ‘Isn’t it extraordinary? We are probably witnessing the largest population of spirits anywhere on Sarn.’
Noon blinked. ‘Vintage, this is not a good thing. We could die. We really could.’
‘Nonsense.’ Vintage patted her sleeve. ‘We have you, and Tor’s sword arm. We’ll be fine. Come along.’
They headed deeper into the compound, pausing every now and then as a parasite spirit lumbered silently past. Sounds like wailing and, once, a child laughing, echoed through the trees. On one of these occasions Tor stopped dead ahead of them, his entire body going very still. When he didn’t move or speak, Noon went to him and tugged at his arm. His face was caught in the expression of someone desperately trying to remember something.
‘Does that remind you of anything?’ he said urgently, his red eyes meeting hers. Noon had never seen him look more unguarded.
‘Does what remind me of what?’
‘That sound, it’s like music I heard, once . . .’ He trailed off and shook his head. He turned away from her. ‘Come on.’
When finally they saw the Behemoth, Noon thought they had come across some strange building in the midst of this overgrown forest, dark windows glinting under the overcast sky. Next to her, Vintage swore in another language again, her eyes wide.
‘There it is. Look at the size of the bastard.’
As they stepped through the last fringe of trees, the remains of the Behemoth loomed into existence. At the Shroom Flats there had been tiny pieces of wreckage, and Noon had seen Vintage’s drawings of the things, but nothing had prepared her for the physical reality of it. The thing rose above even the giant trees, dark green, grey and black in colour. It was made of what looked like softly curving sheets of metal, except that it didn’t shine like metal – instead it looked greasy, like the skin of someone kept in bed with a fever for months. The surface was puckered here and there with round holes, some of which glinted darkly with what Noon assumed was glass. Hanging from one side was a strange, withered appendage, like an arm with too many joints, ending in a series of tapering claws.
‘This is just the front piece,’ said Vintage, her eyes shining. ‘Its head, for want of a better word. This must be the most intact specimen on Sarn.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And, finally, I look upon it.’
They circled around and came to the ragged edges of the Behemoth’s head – torn green plates tattered like skin, with fat pouches of some sort of grey material underneath. The interior of the thing was exposed to the air, and again Noon was reminded of looking at a building, only now it was one that had suffered a catastrophic disaster. She saw floors exposed, empty rooms with gently curving walls, the floors now covered with the debris of the forest. There were other shapes there hidden in the shadows. She couldn’t even begin to guess what they were, but looking at them made her stomach turn over.
‘The interior of a Behemoth,’ breathed Vintage. ‘By all the gods, it’s more or less intact. I never thought I – it must have crashed at the end of the Eighth Rain with such violence that this entire section was torn off. Extraordinary.’
Noon caught Tor’s eye. The corner of his mouth twitched into a smile, although there was no humour in it. ‘Yes, we’re very happy for you, Vintage. Shall we keep moving?’
Trees and fungus had grown up in the gap between the head of the Behemoth and its main body, which, Noon realised as they stepped through, was even larger than the front. Part of it had collapsed, the strange green-black material falling over the exposed innards like a flap of gangrenous skin, leaving a low, tunnel-like entrance to its insides. Vintage made straight for it.
‘I’m not sure that that’s a good idea,’ said Noon. She glanced up at the sky, grey clouds indifferent over their heads.
‘Nonsense. Esiah Godwort, remember, has been in and out of these ruins for years, gradually delving deeper and deeper, and he has always survived. It’s probably safer in there than it is out here.’ Vintage nodded back the way they had come. Noon turned to see the shifting amorphous form of a parasite spirit moving just beyond the trees in front of the Behemoth’s head. The creature had six spindly legs, the bulk of its body suspended like a balloon over them, but its long neck twisted round, six glittering lights like eyes seeming to focus on their small group. It lifted one spindly leg, taking a step towards them.
‘All right,’ Tor waved them back, ‘let’s get inside and out of sight. Perhaps it will forget we’re here at all.’
Glancing up at the sky once more, hoping it wouldn’t be the last time she saw it, Noon ducked under the flap of oddly organic metal and followed Vintage into the interior of the Behemoth. The floor underfoot was soft and grey and somehow slightly warm, as though they walked across the living flesh of a giant. She supposed they did, in a way. They found themselves in a circular corridor, the walls streaked with a deep greenish substance that looked like a form of rust, next to strange geometric shapes etched in silver lines. There was a smell, sweet and sickly, like old meat, while nodules burst from the walls every few feet or so, twisted bunches of string-like membrane; each one glowing with a faint, yellow-white light.
‘Interior lighting!’ cried Vintage, peering closely at one such nodule. ‘How long has this been burning? Can you imagine what sort of power source could be responsible for it? There is too much here, too much. I should have negotiated for a month in this place, or even a year’s extended study.’
‘For what it’s worth, I don’t believe Master Godwort would care much either way,’ said Tor. This seemed to lessen some of Vintage’s glee and they moved back off up the rounded corridor. The sound of their footfalls echoed strangely, becoming an odd discordant heartbeat, and, inevitably, Noon returned to the idea that they were walking around inside the body of a giant beast – not dead, despite all its torn pieces, but sleeping.
‘Godwort and his team were studying here for years. Look at this.’ The corridor had widened slightly and Vintage stopped by a piece of wall that was raised from the rest and covered with the silvery geometric patterns. Here, someone had constructed a wooden frame, on which rested several oil lamps, long since extinguished. They were covered in a thick layer of dust. Not sure what drove her to do it, Noon pressed her fingers into the dust and smoothed it between her finger pads. It was faintly greasy, and there was no life force to it at all. She didn’t know why she had thought there might be. ‘They wanted as much light as possible, do you see?’ Vintage was saying. ‘Some of these passages have only recently become accessible, you know, as parts of the Behemoth’s body degraded and fell apart naturally. Godwort was always very keen that the thing be kept as intact as possible.’
‘I don’t know why we’ve bothered coming here, Vintage,’ said Tor. He was peering at the oil lamps with a faint expression of distaste. ‘You already know all there is to know about the place.’
Further up the corridor they came across more evidence that the space had been thoroughly explored: rope ladders led to empty alcoves in the ceiling; boot prints in the greasy dust; a single empty ink bottle. They reached a place where the corridor grew wider, and in the strange alcoves were several shining orbs, made of greenish-gold metal. Each had a clear section, like glass, and inside it was possible to see a viscous golden fluid.
‘Look at this!’ cried Vintage. ‘This is what we found in the Shroom Flats, only intact.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘The substance that makes vegetation grow. Imagine what you could do with this much of it! Esiah Godwort is sitting on a fortune.’
‘Do you want to take it with us?’ asked Tor.
For the briefest moment, Vintage looked tempted, but then she shook her head.
‘I could not break Esiah’s trust so soon after gaining it.’ She coughed lightly into her hand. ‘Come on, there is much more to see.’
Eventually the corridor ended, and they were in a cavernous chamber, the shadowed ceiling stretching high above them, unseen. Here, there were more alcoves in the walls, all filled with strangely organic-looking tubes – Noon was reminded of the stringy roots on the bottom of the tubers her mother would boil for dinner when she was a child – and there was a persistent humming noise, just discordant enough to cause discomfort. Noon winced.
‘This place is still alive,’ she said, not wanting to speak the words aloud but unable to keep it in. She was thinking of her dream at the Winnowry, how the Behemoths had hung in the sky over Mushenska. Had she ever thought she would be walking around inside one? ‘It’s still alive, this thing. Can’t you feel it?’
‘Nonsense,’ said Vintage firmly. ‘This Behemoth crashed generations back and it has been rotting ever since. No, my dear, you must think of it as a piece of clockwork still winding down, or a stone out under the sun all day that is gradually losing its heat.’
Noon nodded, but she crouched and briefly brushed her fingertips to the clammy floor, probing for a sense of life. There was nothing, but she didn’t feel any safer for it.
‘What’s this in the centre here?’ Tor led them across the floor. In the middle of the tall chamber there was a soft greyish mound rising from the ground. As they got closer, Noon saw that it was made from large, translucent lumps of material, all pressed in together to form the gently rounded structure. Some of the lumps, which were almost cube-like in shape, had more of the stringy tubes, like those in the alcoves.
‘Fascinating,’ said Vintage. She was trying to look everywhere at once, her eyes bright. ‘Is this some sort of central control room? The heart of the system?’
‘Whatever it is, it looks like Godwort has decided to see what’s underneath.’ Tor gestured from the far side, and Noon and Vintage joined him. He stood over a ragged hole in the greyish material, and it was clear that several of the lumps had been carefully prized away and put aside, forming a tunnel into the murk below, where a pinkish light glowed fitfully. Many of the tube-like appendages lay ragged and torn, blackening at the ends. Looking at it all made Noon feel strange – it was like staring at an open wound. And the smell of rotten flesh was stronger than ever.
‘Well,’ said Vintage, beaming at them both, ‘I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get down there.’
A green flower of fire blossomed to life between her hands. Wincing slightly against the pain in her shoulder, Agent Lin laid the fire gently on the dry sticks she had collected, and watched as it spread, eating and consuming and growing bigger. Green turned to orange, and she felt the heat push against her face. This was still hers. This was still hers to control. There was always that.
She was camped some distance from Esiah Godwort’s house, its red bricks just in sight. She and Gull had flown over it several times – had observed, from far away, the small figures of the fugitive Fell-Noon and her companions moving about its grounds. Of the owner, she had seen nothing, but it was well known, according to Pamoz the engineer at least, that Godwort was an eccentric recluse. The people she was looking for had headed into the compound behind the house some hours ago, and now she would wait. When they came out again – and they would, unless they were killed by the parasite spirits inside – she would kill them. As simple as that. She had rushed in before, too confident of her own efficiency. She had not taken into account the desperation of the girl, and that in itself was a ridiculous mistake. Had she forgotten already what it felt like to be that desperate? Or had she chosen to forget?
The problem with waiting, of course, was that it gave her too much time to think. To turn the Drowned One’s words over in her mind, for example. To imagine the loss of her son’s finger, to imagine the ways they would take it from him. How he might scream and cry.
When she had been a prisoner of the Winnowry, she had been wild and desperate enough to do anything. The need for the touch of another person was maddening after a while, and that had resulted in her boy, Keren. Not born of love, or affection, but a simple terrible need not to feel alone, just for a little while. It was incredible, the need for the sensation of skin against skin, and she had not been able to control it.
Sitting alone in the terrible landscape of Greenslick, Agent Lin summoned another ball of winnowfire and fed it to the flames already burning. And then another, of the exact same size and intensity. Control.
Keren had dark brown hair, like his father, and it had curled against his skin, so soft. She hadn’t believed such softness existed. His eyes, too, had been brown. He had been a warmth next to her chest, both better and deeper than the heat of the winnowfire, and they had let her keep him just long enough to name him. His fingers and toes had been tiny and perfect – but best not to think about that.
Fell-Noon would soon find out that there was no resisting the Winnowry. Just as she had.
Another ball of flame, identical in every way to the others, slid into the fire. Control. No more mistakes.