The Heretic Land (46 page)

Leki’s laugh was forced. ‘You look different also.’

‘What’s that?’ Sol asked. He held out his hand, nodding at Bon’s hand.

‘No,’ Bon said. Sol’s eyes flashed with anger. Here was a man not used to being refused.

‘Not for the likes of you,’ Leki said.

‘The likes of me?’ Sol asked.

‘Or me,’ Leki continued. ‘Or Bon, or even the Skythians. It’s not for the likes of any of us, except as a message.’

‘Did you find Aeon?’ Sol asked. ‘That was your duty, and your mission. Where is it? He can stay here, hold that thing up and keep these bastards down, and you and I will go south with the news.’

‘And then the Engines will raise magic to destroy Aeon once again,’ Leki said.

‘Of course,’ Sol said. ‘That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?’ Bon could already hear doubt in the soldier’s voice, and confusion.

‘Everything
you know is wrong,’ Bon said. He was surprised at the conviction in his voice, the strength. He lowered the bone in his hand – sighing as the discomfort lessened – but kept one eye on the Skythians. The fight seemed to have gone from them all, but it might return without warning. Everything was in the balance.

‘You speak when I address you,’ Sol said softly. He was looking back and forth between them, his expression dark and unreadable.

‘Bon, I told you to let me—’ Leki started, but Sol reached up suddenly, grasped her arm and pulled her from the shire. She tried to land on her feet but stumbled, falling onto her side and hitting the ground hard.

Bon stiffened on his mount, but the heavy woman had slipped silently to his side. She rested her spear against his right thigh, ready to shove its tip into his stomach.

Sol paused for an instant, then bent to grab Leki’s arm again.

Leki kicked up and out at Sol’s hand, knocking it aside. He inhaled sharply. Fisted his hand, examining his fingers. The moment froze as Sol Merry avoided looking at anyone.

‘So, Leki,’ Sol spoke softly. ‘Have you and he …?’

‘No!’ Leki stood, tense and ready. She looked shocked, confused. ‘Sol, why are you doing this?’

‘I thought you were …’ He stood away from his wife, and Bon noticed something strange. It was no trick of the light, and no imagination on his part. Leki’s blood-spattered husband was shaking. ‘I thought you were dead.’

‘Things have changed,’ Leki said. ‘
Everything’s
changed.’

Bon wondered what she meant.

We don’t have very long
, he thought, not quite sure where that idea had come from. He glanced across the battlefield, at the blazing fires and the people who had until recently been
trying to kill each other. And he was struck by a terrible sense of hopelessness. In his right hand he carried something beyond human comprehension, and humans continued to fight and kill in the name of one god or another.

‘There’s nothing we can do,’ he said.

‘You. Quiet, or Deenia will—’ Sol began.

‘Will what? Kill me?’ Bon glared at Sol, holding the bloodied soldier’s gaze, and slowly shook his head. He carefully showed him the bone-like object, not wanting it to look at all like a threatening gesture. ‘This is incredible, yet you want to destroy it. We live in a time of wonders, and you want to fight, and to kill.’ He looked across at the bridge, and the slew of bodies across its span. He felt beyond sad. He felt empty.

‘We have orders,’ Sol said. He nodded towards Leki. ‘
Both
of us.’ He and Leki stood apart, and their stances said that the distance between them had never been greater.

‘Founded on wrong information,’ Bon said.

‘
So
wrong,’ Leki said. ‘Aeon is not the enemy here. It’s just a thing, a wanderer.
Magic
is the enemy, Sol, because it will raise something
terrible
. You have to know what I’ve found out, and if you’ll only let me tell you—’

Sol drew his sword and pointed it at his wife’s face. Bon tensed, and felt the tip of the heavy spear pressing against his jacket and the roll of fat around his stomach. The eyes of the woman holding the weapon had barely changed, and he knew that she would gut him without blinking.

‘You
believe
all this?’ Sol shouted. ‘You’re blaspheming. Why? Because you’re Arcanum? Because you’re a
witch
?’

‘Magic came from another god,’ Bon said. He tried not to look at Leki, knowing that anger would not serve him well against these killers. ‘A being as much a god as Aeon, at least. It was called Crex Wry; it fell long ago, and must never rise again.’

‘What?’
Sol said, angry. ‘So now
you’d
tell me a story?’

‘A story is fiction,’ Bon said. ‘This is the truth. If the Engines work and magic is raised, it might be the end for us all. It will destroy Aeon, magic’s Kolts will rise, and this time they won’t be so easy to put back down.’

‘And if we let that Aeon thing wander the world, what then?’ Sol said.

‘Then nothing,’ Bon said. ‘Aeon and its kind wandered the world for ever, and witnessed the creation of the world we know today.’ Bon felt the warmth in his hand. ‘But one of them went mad.’ The warmth seemed to pulse, a living part of Aeon. ‘They put it down, because it was set to destroy everything they had made. And they worked hard to keep it down, for so long that the mountains forgot magic, and the valleys and seas had never known its corrupt touch.’

He held the bone tighter.

‘I’m not interested in stories,’ Sol said. ‘Not even if they’re the truth. I’m a soldier, and I’m only interested in orders.’ He turned away from Leki and raised his sword at Bon. ‘Now if you don’t hand that thing over—’

‘No,’ Bon said. ‘Not to someone like you.’

‘Then I’ll
take
it.’ Sol came for him.

Bon glanced at Leki. He saw a slight shake of her head, a widening of her eyes. Sol saw it also, tensed—

Bon thrust his hand forward and struck the woman across the nose with the part of Aeon. She grunted and fell back, and Bon winced away from the spear’s point as it slipped from his leg and fell with her.

He waited for the bone-thing to grow, or surge, or flow with the power of Aeon, spewing its message across the landscape so that these fools would know the truth.
I have Aeon in my hand!
he thought, feeling the heat, the pulse.

But nothing happened.

Hands
grabbed him and pulled him down from the shire. Bon gasped in a breath to shout. Something struck his face, the fires visible between the startled shire’s legs faded and true darkness fell.

The priest watches the battle, but is no part of it. Hers is a higher purpose. She keeps close to the Engine, one hand against its warm, shivering surface, the other nestled between her legs. The Engine seems to speak to her of its intentions. She listens, and loves.

They moved twenty miles along the coast before the enemy came. The going was easy, and the three Blades escorting her and the Engine – a hundred and fifty Spike soldiers, armed and ready for a fight – made sure the ground ahead was scouted, and any dangers eliminated or avoided. The priest watched some of their creatures of war move ahead, and sometimes she caught rumour of their implementation. A smell, a smear of blood on the sand, the ruined remains of some unknown enemy.

They said the Skythians were little threat.

And then the attack.

But the battle is almost over now, and the Spike soldiers are close to victory. The glade close to the sea where the ambush took place is covered with dead. Several large fires have been started, and in their deceiving light she can see piles of corpses, all of them Skythian. They are being heaped high and burned, and the Spike dead will be taken to the beach and given proper cremations, their ashes and the heat of their demise given to the gods.

‘May the gods of the Fade smile as they accept the sacrifice made today,’ the priest says. The Engine throbs in response, the sensations travelling across her shoulders and down her other arm. She closes her eyes and sighs.

‘It’ll be
ready soon,’ the engineer says. He is a weedy, rodent-like man, and she has never liked him. She once saw a tattoo on his shoulder that might have been Outer, and when she confronted him and forced him to strip before a jury of Fader priests, it was revealed as a birthmark. He has never trusted her since then. He says she does not believe how devout he is.

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 – the destruction of a false god, 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 – 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 gods of the Fade are with him, and the Engine is his friend.

He prays to each god 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 gods. 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 gods 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 gods, 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 – there were less than thirty out of the forty-nine who had marched this way with him – 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 gods 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 bastard 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.