The Heretic Land (51 page)

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Wait.’ He turned to slide back down, but Leki was not waiting. She was climbing without care, head still tilted and left eye bleeding bloody tears. He wanted to hold her and care for her wounds, but there was no time for that. He knew there never would be again.

He reached out and grabbed her offered hand, helping her up onto the Engine’s top and relishing her warmth. It was natural and sweet compared to the construct’s heat. That was the warmth of something diseased.

‘If we open the hatch and drop that inside—’ Bon said, almost touching the thing Leki held against her chest. But he knew he was clutching, trying to grasp something that could keep him here, with her, for longer. What she said next settled things, and moved everything on towards a future neither of them could know.

‘You need to open the hatch and then leave me,’ Leki said. Her voice was soft, unhindered by the hard blade buried in her skull. Head on one side, still she managed to give him a smile. Her last.

‘I don’t want to
leave you,’ Bon said. ‘I’ve only just found you.’

‘But I don’t want you to die,’ she said.

Bon turned away and attacked the hatch, biting back tears. Still they fell, splashing in the melted snow and merging with the water bubbling gently around the hatch’s edges. The handle turned easily, and he lifted the metal cover open on soft hinges.

A warm breath wafted out, carrying the smell of something unknown. Bon closed his eyes, but none of the complex scents were familiar. The mystery of it was terrible.

He looked inside but it was dark.

Leki was shifting past him, gently but firmly shouldering him out of the way.

‘Wait,’ Bon said.

‘No time.’ Her voice broke, growing weaker. She sat on the edge of the hole, legs dangling inside. Then she looked at Bon one last time, left hand coming up and almost touching the knife’s shaft. ‘No time,’ she whispered.

Bon was about to say something more, but Leki shuffled herself from the edge and dropped into darkness.

‘Leki!’ he gasped. He did not hear her strike the bottom. Neither did he hear her voice, crying out in pain, or surprise, or horror. He heard nothing. It was as if Lechmy Borle had been plucked from the world, and the only evidence that remained of her was the confusion of Bon’s heart.

As he sat there bereft, and alone, something changed.

The Engine ceased its subtle vibrations. The scrutiny he had felt before faded, abandoning Bon to this blood-and body-strewn landscape. A moment of utter loneliness followed, in which the losses he had felt hit home afresh – Milian, tumbling from the tower with the truth still close to her heart; Venden, an awkward boy fleeing and becoming something else; and now Leki.

He sighed and it turned into
a cry. It seemed a fitting theme to the scene before him.

But this moment of Bon alone was brief, because then the Engine began to assert its presence again. Rage gushed from it, so deep and profound that Bon tumbled from the Engine and struck the wet ground in his efforts to escape it. He was on his feet and running, leaping between the dead to begin with, then tramping through trodden snow, and finally sprinting across a glade of virgin snow, running, running, from the horrible thing behind him and knowing that he had only a short time before Leki’s actions struck home.

Whatever she knew about the Engines, and whatever use Aeon had intended for that part of its heart, it seemed she had already made her move.

Bon had never known he could run so fast, and the thought of what he was leaving behind ironically sent him faster. He mourned Leki, the lover he had never made love with. And his good son Venden, lost to him years ago, and lost again to Aeon. Both were behind him, and his need to survive in their honour drove him on.

Snow fell more heavily. The ground began to shake, as though something huge chased him. Bon did not look back. Creatures were fleeing with him; flying, running, crawling, squirming. Most were small, but he heard larger animals thundering through the undergrowth and, once, a huge shadow passed overhead, a winged thing the likes of which he had never seen made ambiguous by the snow. A tadcat sprang past him, hissing and growling and swinging its spined tail, but not pausing to attack. Bon watched it go and ran on, not knowing what else to do.

Each time he thought of
slowing, Leki’s image appeared in his mind’s eye – head tilted, knife protruding, the truth of her demise sparkling in her one good eye. She knew that to die now was her fate, but there were greater fates at work here. If he let himself die also, he would be failing her.

Something was building behind him. He felt its terrible weight and repulsion, shoving him onward through the snow, beyond the limits of his stamina, through the barriers erected by his doubts and fears. He ran and ran and then, way behind him, the Engine exploded.

A great hand lifted him and shoved him forward, up through the leaning and shivering tree canopy, and this time when he fell he was accompanied by other falling things, both living and dead.

The snow will deaden my fall
, he thought, and then he struck the ground.

Bon Ugane felt nothing else but blackness.

Wake
, Venden
thought.
Wake … wake … wake …
And then he realised that Aeon
was
awake, and that its inactivity was due to something else.

Aeon was remembering those old things with which it had once wandered the land. Its memories were vague and diluted through unimaginable time, yet there was a pride and contentment that felt shockingly human. There were also aspirations and fears, most of them old but some still relevant, and strong. There was sadness. And there was hope.

Hope that what it had done would suffice.

And then, behind this staggering mass of history and memory, Venden sensed the brutal power of Aeon’s heart in sudden turmoil. Disgust flooded his mind, a sickening sensation that he was surrounded by all that might be bad or rotten in the world, and Aeon’s consciousness writhed where it lay. Its body and mind were both repulsed by what it sensed and felt. Far away, that part it had given became a loaded point of rapidly growing energy, its power shocking, and it sat at the centre of Crex Wry’s burgeoning, pitch-black soul.

Ready to explode,
and cleanse.

With a sigh, Aeon calmed and settled, and somewhere south of them a massive detonation rocked the land. Two more followed soon after, further away but even more impactful. The three blasts plunged seismic fingers deep down to the icy core of Skythe’s heart and stirred it, rupturing connections, erupting pressured ice and giving violence, for once, to the land itself.

A distance grew around Venden, as if everything that Aeon had once been was expanding to fill an endless void.

What’s happening?
Venden asked. The distance threatened to consume.

Fading
, Aeon said.

Dying?
Venden wondered. But he was not afraid.

Only as much as we can ever die.

As Aeon drifted away, so did Venden, swallowed by the void and settled into nothing. But he knew that sometime – soon, or far into the future – they might wake again.

Following initiation, the Engine pushes them further and further along the beach. General Cove does not call it a retreat, but there is no other way to view the Spike’s progress along the shore, then inland away from the Engine’s spreading influence. The priest is dead, the rackers are dead, sand is melting, and to the north a snowstorm rages like a beast waiting to strike.

Cove sent scouts along the coast to contact the other Blades, and more scouts north, and north-west, to make contact with the other Engine and Sol Merry’s Blade. None of them have returned. The Spike do not dig in, because they always have to be ready to move again.

There have been skirmishes with Skythians all along the coast. The forces are not large, and they are disorganised and easily fought off. But the small combats mean that no one can rest. The soldiers are tired, and the expanding influence of the Engines has started to inspire rumblings of discontent among the ranks.
Magic rises for us
, the voices protest,
so why must we retreat before it?

Cove has many of the
same concerns, but he is their general and cannot voice his worries.
All is going to plan
, he says.
This was all anticipated, and soon magic will be our tool in destroying Aeon, and returning the world to the rightful hands of the Fade.
He speaks these words with confidence, but his stomach does turns and jumps as he watches the Engine’s influence scorch its way along the shoreline. He can only assume that the Engine further along the coast is doing the same, and the one to the north …

But when his scouts do not return, and his suspicions grow, and the discontent amongst his troops turns in some cases to outright questioning of their cause and method, Cove makes a stand. He calls an audience of the Bladers, and as they wait before him the ground begins to shake.

They look to the north.

A pillar of fire burns through the hazy atmosphere inland, illuminating snow clouds and sending colourful swirls of flame dancing through the air. Clouds boil, steam billows, and then the sound of the staggering explosion reaches them.

‘Back to your Blades!’ Cove commands. It is the last order he issues, and they are the last words the Bladers will hear.

Along the beach, out of sight around a headland where it stands amidst a sea of molten glass and drifting gas, the Engine erupts. Cove lives long enough to see the land itself rising, and the sea rising with it, as though the world is punching a fist from beneath to destroy some travesty.

Then all is fire as, in the majestic beat of Aeon’s heart, Alderia’s offensive force is wiped from the face of Skythe.

*  *  *

Venden as he might have
been, tall and smiling in his Guild of Inventors graduation robes. At his side stood his Guild invention, a mechanism whose use was hidden, but which impressed Bon nonetheless. There was craftsmanship in its construction, and a gentle pride in the way Venden stood close to it, not quite touching. Perhaps it would win him a scholarship, perhaps not, but Bon was as proud as could be. Venden opened his mouth but could not speak, because this was not real.

Milian Mu as might have been, a smiling woman with love in her eye and a carefree demeanour. She sat beside Venden at the ceremony and had tears on her cheeks, thankful tears at what they had in their son, and in each other. There were no doubts here, and no shield between her dark secrets and the long, happy life ahead of them. Bon reached out to hold her hand, but she was not there.

Leki appeared across the Guild parade ground, a thin, fleeting shadow peering between the upright graduates and their many and varied inventions. Bon saw her and raised a hand to wave but Leki showed no sign of seeing him. She was motionless and not breathing – a statue, raised in honour of something none of those present knew – and the shadow of something protruding from her head chilled Bon’s heart.

He looked to Venden and tried to catch his son’s eye, but the boy was looking elsewhere.

He turned to Milian, but she was subsumed in sadness once more, and already falling away from him.

Bon closed his eyes on the vision, slowly, so that he retained a final glimpse of the young man and the two women he had loved.

And he opened his eyes onto a world in ruin.

Fire and ice. The two did not belong together, but as Bon staggered across the clearing to a pile of fallen trees at its edge, he struggled against them both. Fire stretched the skin on the back of his neck and probed his clothing, seeking flesh to seed itself in. It rose behind him like a solid wall at the end of the world, and though he guessed it to be several miles distant, it almost scorched the life from him with every breath he took.

Through the heat fell chunks
of ice. Green and opaque with age, he had seen its like before. Deep in the land, where Aeon had lured them, Skythe’s frozen depths had been an illustration of the hurt it had suffered centuries before.

Now the land was erupting and the ice raining down, and another hurt ensued.

Snow had ceased falling. Warm rain came down in its place. Trees had tumbled, some snapped off high up, others seemingly shoved by the same heavy hand that had flung Bon through the air. Reaching the shelter of the pile of fallen trees, he hunkered down behind them to assess his wounds.

There were many, but none appeared life-threatening. Lacerations, grazes, bruises, some cuts were filthy with mud, others seeping surprising amounts of blood. But now was not the time to tend himself. Chaos had taken Skythe, and the coast lured him.

Leki had told him to go that way.

Leki
. She was gone. Whatever she had done inside that Engine, the resulting explosion had punched a hole in the land and set the air aflame. There was no sign of Aeon, and no indication that magic – that obscure force, blackened soul of an evil thing – had succeeded in manifesting. She had done Aeon’s bidding, but at such a price.

Bon headed south through the fire-lit night, across a landscape that had been shattered and reshaped by the Engine’s explosion. The further he went, the less he felt the effects of the huge fire. Ice still rained down around him, but in smaller chunks and quantities. He scooped melted snow to drink, and picked fruit from tumbled trees to eat. He had no way of telling whether what he ate was poisonous or not, but he did not care. If Skythe deigned to kill him after all this, there was little he could do to protect himself.

As morning dawned
and the sun smudged itself against the smoke-filled sky, Bon collapsed in a heap to rest. He found a small cave in a rugged hillside, and though he sat warm and sheltered from the outside, he could not sleep. From the north came the sounds of thunderous impact, transmitted through the ground to kick up at him, as if the world itself was ripping open and spewing out its frozen guts. And to the south-east blazed another incomprehensible fire where another Engine had exploded. Miles across, miles high, there seemed to be an unnatural life to the blaze that Bon knew he must evade.