The Heretic Land Part 31

But, in truth, she is a little bit afraid of him. In the Engine, the engineer has something that is just beyond her understanding. A gateway to magic, when magic is a forbidden thing. A route aside from the Fade, not alongside it. Yet she calms this fear with the knowledge that this is the Fade's work they are doing a the destruction of a false G.o.d, daring to accept the term deity.

'The fight is almost over,' the priest says. 'I have sent word back to the generals that we will establish the Engine here.'

'Good a place as any,' the engineer says. He licks his finger and holds it to the air, looks through spread fingers inland and then back out to sea. He grins. She knows he is toying with her.

'You'll not grin when this is over,' the priest says. 'When your Engine is planted, perhaps you will stay with it.'

The man's face grows grim. 'You think any of us will be allowed to stay?' he asks.

'What do you mean?'

He chuckles. He is twisting wires together, connecting thin, membranous tubes to the Engine's side. He is a few steps away from her, but she can smell his sweat over the scent of roasting flesh. The battle made them closer together than ever; them, and the Engine.

'What it will release,' he says. He pauses, looking at the machine as if it is something he loves, and hates. Then he nods at her hand beneath her robes, buried in the wet warmth between her legs. 'It's already been talking to you.'

'I ...' the priest says, preparing outrage. But the engineer is right.

'A few moments,' he says. 'The Engine where we made land is already awake.'

'How do you know?'

'Don't you know?' All humour has left his voice. He sounds like a man resigned.

'What will happen?' the priest asks softly. It is her first, and last, expression of doubt and concern.

'The Engine comes alive.' The engineer works on in silence, and the priest's fingers dance to the Engine's silent song.

The third Engine moves north. Its journey has been an easier one a no Skythians have yet found it, and the three Blades accompanying it have nothing worse than rough terrain to contend with. The wagon bearing the Engine has already lost two wheels, and repairs take time. But the priest is happy because the G.o.ds of the Fade are with him, and the Engine is his friend.

He prays to each G.o.d in turn, as he does every day, and has done every day since he can remember. He whispers exhortations, but he also tells them about himself, grasping reality by making himself real to the G.o.ds. His thoughts and fears, excitements and yearnings, all are whispered up amongst and behind his prayers. People have long since stopped listening to this priest because they think him mad, but he barely notices that lack of attention. The G.o.ds attend him. They welcome his voice. Soon, they will answer.

Because he can sense them waiting within the Engine. This, the construct of their victory over false G.o.ds, will soon gush forth the magic that they forbid because it is so close to them. The priest is certain of this, just as he is certain that they do not disapprove of him thinking so. They whisper to him, and he is their familiar.

The engineer works around the Engine as they travel. Triangulation, resonance, prashdial wavelength ... the priest cares nothing for these, and he and the engineer have never spoken. Sometimes he prays for the engineer, but it is a lonely prayer. Their worlds are far apart.

The Engine sings inside, and the priest hears its song as echoes of the Fade.

It was only Leki's presence that prevented Sol from ordering the slaughter of their prisoners. While the remaining Spike soldiers a there were less than thirty out of the forty-nine who had marched this way with him a gathered the Skythians together and disarmed them, Sol sat with his wife. Tamma remained close by, keeping watch on the man Sol had punched unconscious. He was tied up. The thing with which he had killed Deenia was on the ground between Sol and Leki.

Everything was changing, and so much going wrong.

'I don't know who you are any more,' Sol said.

'You can say that? You're the one who attacked me!'

'I only pulled you from the horse.' Leki did not reply. 'I thought you were dead, Leki. Then I saw you, with him, and you started saying things that made no sense-'

'I'm the person I always was,' she said. 'But I'm aware of so much more.'

'The person you were served the Ald, and the G.o.ds of the Fade.'

'No,' Leki said softly. 'I was always Arcanum first. And ...' She glanced away from him, eyes dancing with fire.

'Maybe Cove was right about you.'

'The General?' Leki asked.

'He called you an amphy witch.' Leki did not reply. Sol went on, 'So maybe it is your arcane arts you place before everyone, and everything else.'

'Can't you speak to me as your wife?'

'I feel like I'm married to lies.'

'No,' Leki said sadly. 'No lies, Sol, I promise. The truth has power and weight.'

Sol stood and kicked the bone-thing before him. It did not roll as far as it should have, as if it were much heavier than it actually felt.

'You have to believe me,' Leki said.

'Why? A threat, Leki?'

'You forget. I've seen it.'

'And you forget we're here to kill it.' Sol was conflicted, confused, and both emotions fed his anger. He had killed so many so recently, yet he wanted now to kill more. His blood was up. That unconscious b.a.s.t.a.r.d would be first, as revenge for Deenia, her face smashed back into her brain by the bone-thing. And then some of the prisoners.

And then Leki? His wife, for her betrayal of their cause? If he took her back with him, she would doubtless face banishment from Alderia anyway. Banishment back here. Perhaps he should leave her here, killed by his loving hand. If he acted quickly, maybe the memory of the woman he had loved might still survive.

'You still love me too much to kill me,' Leki said. She was smiling, one hand splayed in the blood-slushed snow, finger pressed into the muddy ground.

'You'd dare read me, floater?' As he spoke the word, a pang of shame made him turn away. There was silence for a precious heartbeat, and then Leki spoke.

'You're such a fine soldier,' she said to his back. The words were so loaded they hurt.

'I'm a loyal soldier!' Sol snapped. The distance between them was growing. He wished she had never found them, even if that meant the battle would still be raging. He held up that thing and the Skythians fell to their knees. Sol glanced back at Leki and the fist-sized object, pale in the reflected firelight. I should kick it into the fire.

His wife was lost to him. He loved her so much, and yet a stranger sat before him now, loaded with lies and corrupted by the land she had come here only to visit, not to be absorbed by. Its false G.o.d had made a disease of her mind. She shunned the Fade, and the mere idea of that sent a shiver down his spine a Sol was never an obsessive, but he was a devout Fader because that was how he had been brought up, the life he had lived.

His skin was stiff with dried blood, his hip burned and raged where he had taken an injury, his fingers were open to the bone where a sword had slipped across them. Yet the greatest pain nestled deep within his chest.

'There are no G.o.ds but the Fade,' Sol said. He drew his pistol and walked past Tamma, kneeling beside the bound man and pressing the barrel against his chest.

'Sol!' Leki cried out, and in that one word Sol heard so many admissions that it made the pain in his own chest heavier, and deeper than he thought he could carry.

'Oh by all the f.u.c.king G.o.ds of the Fade ...' Tamma said. Her voice dripped awe and terror, and when Sol looked up past the fire he dropped his pistol, fell onto his rump, pushing himself back across the wet, cold ground.

Beyond the fires, where snow still lay relatively untouched outside the battlefield, something emerged from the shadows of the trees. Something huge, and pale, and impossible.

'There, Sol,' Leki whispered tenderly. 'Aeon arrives.'

Chapter 20.

witness Aeon gave them a chance, Venden thought. Before Aeon lay evidence of humanity's squandering of that chance a bloodied snow, bodies, flaming pyres, and at the battle's centre another act of violence about to take place. The message it had sent with his father and the woman had been cast aside.

Now, Aeon was gathering itself, its aura of sadness pushed aside as something began to rise. Venden sensed a shadow deep within the ancient being's mind, forming inside and ballooning outward, and at its heart was such violence, turmoil and hatred that he had never imagined.

What is that? Venden thought, but Aeon did not respond, and he quickly realised why. That's ... they're ... Recoiling in horror, Venden could not turn away.

Soon, they would soon be released.

Sol kicked his pistol aside and drew his bloodied sword, angry at himself for dropping his weapon, shocked, staggered by what he saw, but already he was struggling to gather his senses. Tamma was behind him, standing and shaking. Gallan was to his right, edging sideways closer to his Blader and showing no external signs of his shock. Sol knew that it must all be inside.

He had seen one of his Blade press a knife to his eye and fall on it. Suicide was a mortal sin amongst Alderians, and even more so for a soldier during the height of battle. Each Spike soldier bore the weight of the brothers and sisters within his or her Blade, and to remove one's own life a in whatever circ.u.mstance a was to put the rest of the Blade in danger. Sol wanted to rush across and stab at the soldier's corpse, slash and ruin his body as punishment for what he had done. But his soul had already filtered to the Fade, and any punishment was now in the hands of the G.o.ds.

'Sol, what is that?' Gallan said. Tamma answered from behind them.

'Aeon,' she said. 'The Skythian G.o.d, Aeon.'

'It's what we all came here to kill,' Sol said. Such a statement seemed so foolish in the presence of this thing.

'You can never kill it,' Leki said. She had regained her feet and stood almost within Sol's reach. Almost. She was not afraid.

As the huge shape drifted closer to them, ambiguous, difficult to discern fully in the shifting shadows and dancing firelight, Sol was overcome with awe at the history it implied. It was a manifestation of the purest blasphemy a devout Fader could imagine a a player at being a G.o.d, in denial of the Fade. He could understand why the Skythians believed it a deity, but in the same thought he hated the very idea of such beliefs, and hated Aeon for attracting them.

Around him, captured Skythians had dropped to the ground and lay p.r.o.ne, faces averted.

'This is why we brought the Engines,' Gallan said.

'We can't run away,' Sol said.

Gallan turned to him. 'I wasn't suggesting we should.' His tone betrayed the lie in his statement. Fighting this was the last thing he wished to do, and Sol could not blame him.

But Spike never ran. There were countless stories about the Ald's soldiers holding out against all hope, succeeding against all expectation, triumphing against overriding odds. Stories, too, about heroic defeats.

'Blade, re-form!' Sol shouted. Gallan blinked, afraid. But he pressed his lips tight together, and nodded once at Sol.

'Alderia,' Gallan said, the fighting call barely a whisper.

'Sol!' Leki said. She moved closer, holding his arm as she used to. But her touch had changed. 'Sol, listen instead of fighting, and perhaps you can learn something.'

'Don't condescend to me!' Sol hissed, shoving her away. She tripped over a discarded spear and fell close to the man Sol should have killed. But there was something larger to kill now. She was welcome to him.

'Sol ... you're so wrong.'

Traitor, he thought, but he did not respond. His wife was lost to him, and Sol turned his back on her.

The remaining soldiers had formed into three groups, each placing itself between two of the Skythians' large fires. Aeon paused at the edge of the battlefield, its pale body reflecting blood-tinged flames in streaks of red and orange.

'Alderia!' Sol shouted. Without another glance at Leki he hefted his sword, charged Aeon, and knew with complete faith that the remainder of his Blade followed.

Bon surfaced, blinking away pain, and wondered if he was the only person to notice the sky.

It was smeared with dawn in the east, and the snow had stopped, yet the sky was ominously heavy with something ready to fall. He noticed Leki close by, looking up and frowning.

'Something wrong,' he said.

She turned, surprised at his voice. 'Yes,' she said. 'Laden with doom.'

Bon sat up and Leki helped him, and her words struck home. Laden with doom. His whole time here on Skythe had felt like that, and now it gathered towards a climax. Doom watched him, and he looked around to see what else it saw.

Fires burned, piled bodies cast spiky skeletal shadows, and Aeon was here. They were attacking it, but ineffectually. Spears ricocheted from its body, some snapping in two. Swords wielded by experienced hands seemed not to touch its legs, nor its stomach where it dipped low enough for them to reach. Its huge head turned lazily, knocking two soldiers to the ground almost by accident. It's not fighting back, Bon thought. It's almost as if ...

'Waiting for something,' Leki said.

'I think so too,' he said.

'What about ...?' Leki nodded at the Skythians, scores of them still lying on the ground.

'Waiting as well.' Aeon doesn't need them to protect it, he thought. A pile of Skythian corpses burned close to the bridge, grotesque shapes of bone and simmering flesh thrown out by the flames, and he felt so sad. Tears blurred his vision. It sent those as well as us, and ...

'What if we've both failed?' he asked.

'What do you mean?'

'Look at the sky,' he said. Dawn was brightening, but the sky was still rank with something terrible.

'Oh, by all the G.o.ds,' Leki said, and she slumped against him. 'Bon, I see it now. I smell it. I think maybe one of the Engines is working already.'

'Already?'

'Magic draws close,' Leki breathed.

'And this is growing warm.' Bon had pulled the bone-thing Aeon had given them closer with his foot. Wet mud steamed around it, slushy snow melted. He was about to kick it away again when Venden spoke in his mind. The voice was his son's when he was very young, barely able to talk. But the words carried great weight.

Hold this part of Aeon's heart, and close your eyes again, father. Whatever you hear, whatever you sense ... close your eyes.

Sol Merry had fought Outer rebellions, dissenters in western Alderia, a plague of rabid Ban Chock tribesmen in the east, and a rash of rawpanzie attacks on the Chasm Cliffs. But he had never faced an enemy like this. Aeon was beyond imagining, because it was blasphemy to imagine a false G.o.d. To even consider them capable of being imagined was heresy, and as he drove a spear towards the monster's underbelly, and darted between its legs to hack at the heavy swinging parts either side of its head a tentacles, or other appendages a he felt the G.o.ds of the Fade moving with him. He was fighting for them and every honest, devout Alderian who paid them the homage they deserved. He was fighting for his dead father's warrior heritage, his politician mother who strove to better her town's outlook and future, and his sister and her burgeoning family.

But he was no longer fighting for his wife, and that left a knot of scar tissue at the centre of his soldier's b.l.o.o.d.y heart.

Aeon did not seem concerned at the attack. It moved towards the river, kicking apart one of the Skythian's fires, and the Spike followed. It swung its huge head from left to right, knocking two soldiers aside. But their fall was an accident, not a deliberate attack.