The Heretic Land Part 3

Misery was her currency, and madness her means of delivery.

There were seven of them hidden in three rooms, and Milian took them all apart. Blades came at her and she broke or dodged them, thrown punches were caught and fists crushed, a haze of poison spray swept across her eyes and was blinked away by the mad daemon inside her. It took heartbeats, and then the screaming ended and she could feed again. She dug for the livers, because she liked them best.

Afterwards, she left the farmstead and ran on, down towards the sea fifty miles distant where fis.h.i.+ng villages would provide more game. Instinct urged her this way. The need to kill, and feed. The daemon that had entered her was stronger than ever now, and becoming used to the fit of her body. It had its own agenda. It revelled in this newfound freedom.

To her left and right she saw occasional shapes bounding across the moonlit landscape. Blood hazed the air behind them. They were like her, Skythians giving home to daemons, and the only things she was not driven to kill.

She had murdered more than thirty people since dusk, and the night had only just begun.

Later, standing on the sh.o.r.e with the village ablaze behind her, still her hunger was not sated. Her stomach was distended with all she had eaten; liver, so rich. Her teeth were clotted with the flesh of many bodies, and the daemon inside her thrummed in its eagerness for more.

Wet cold dark alone, she thought, and a wave crashed in around her feet. Several sand runners came in with it, claws held high as they surfed the water and then started busily scouring the sand for burrowing, fleshy things to eat. In their enthusiasm they brushed against her bare legs, shrivelled, and died.

Further along the coast she smelled people still living, and she turned that way.

The blazing village cast her shadow across the sea, and more of her kind a normal, loving Skythians changed by events into killing things a trailed after her. Some of them were burning. These walked until they fell, and even then she could feel their daemons raging on, darkening the land without shadow.

From the ridge of the next spur of land protruding into the sea, on a scree of fallen rocks at the foot of the cliff, she saw one of the fabled Engines set into the land. She had heard the rumours about Alderians sailing towards some of the more remote southern beaches. She had heard whispers of the Engines, Alderian constructs supposedly sent to destroy the Skythian G.o.d Aeon. No one had believed that the Engines could be real. Alderia is our friend, people had said of the continent four hundred miles to the south, and that had been true for so long. Why would they turn against us and the truth of Aeon? Would they truly be foolish enough to build Engines that could conjure magic?

But that had been before Aeon's manifestation into a physical presence. The Alderia's Fade religion could not be touched. Perhaps they feared Aeon, which could.

The thing within Milian raged, damping down such sane contemplations. Her hunger burned.

The sand and rock around the Engine were melted into shapes that mimicked the living. Its curved metal casings glimmered with moisture. Long limbs arced from the construct and into the beach, and it looked like an exposed organ from within some gigantic living thing. The land has been ripped open, Milian thought, and the idea suited the red-tinted rage of her daemon.

Around the Engine fussed busy, frightened people in clothing she recognised as Alderian. She had seen them before on trade and cultural visits, but now they were the invaders, the aggressors. These were the real targets for her newfound rage.

She opened her mouth, and her daemon roared.

Those terrible memories haunting her, Milian has begun slowly flexing her limbs. Muscles in her thighs perform involuntary jumps, and her arms s.h.i.+ft. They make a sound. It is like rock grinding against rock, and she wonders if she has been in this cave for so long that she has become a fossil. She saw fossils once when she was a child, excavating a hillside thirty miles north of her village with her school cla.s.s. Her teacher showed her how to hold a trowel and explained why she must be so sensitive when she found a protruding fossil, brus.h.i.+ng at it gently so as not to damage it. She had learned that old things demand reverence. She had still believed that when she became a holy woman, revering Aeon.

I'm an old thing now, she thinks, and she moves her arms again. They sc.r.a.pe across something until they press against the sides of her body. She might have been here for hundreds of years. The air around her has grown old and stale, like her mind.

She wonders how she is still alive, and such musings bring the taste of brine and a chilling coolness closing all around her. She is certain that her daemon is gone, and that she is waking. But in doing so, her memories seem to come even richer, and more horribly detailed than ever.

She scrambled down the cliff face with three others like her a Skythians made furious, overflowing with daemon. Their rage was a physical thing, heating the air around them, cliffs echoing with their cries. The fear she saw in the Alderians around the Engine drew her on. The antic.i.p.ation was delicious.

One of the others slipped and fell, bouncing from outcroppings and das.h.i.+ng himself to pieces on the rocky beach below. She heard the impact and saw the splash of blood, and then he hauled himself upright and started across the sands. His left leg was broken and dragging, and a spew of blood and brains stained the back of his ragged s.h.i.+rt. She could hear him panting and groaning as he made for the Engine, and the daemon within him was struggling loose now, bursting from his open wounds like rats fleeing a sinking s.h.i.+p. Its disparate parts danced around his head like cold blue fire, whipping at the air and setting it alight. His hair burned. He rushed on, faster, and then the strangers around the Engine started firing crossbow bolts his way.

They had come to destroy the Skythian G.o.d Aeon, but now had no idea what they faced.

The man's damage was great, and the bolts. .h.i.t home. By the time she and the two others reached the bottom of the cliff, he was crawling across the sand with a dozen bolts embedded in his face and the las.h.i.+ng flames faded almost to nothing.

Milian ran, and when she came within range of their weapons she roared, and they veered away and broke. Her daemon scream and rage held such power and strength. Feet pounded sand, blood splashed her body from the wounds she had already received, and she could see the terror etched on the faces of the strange people around the Engine. Three of them worked on it, eight others tried to protect them.

She was antic.i.p.ating the feel of flesh parting between her hands once again when- The world lit up. The Engine howled like an impossible beast in pain, its limbs flexing and then rising, issuing a terrible glow that grew brighter and brighter. The ground shook. Sand made fluid by the movement rippled like water away from the Engine, and Milian felt her daemon s.h.i.+ver with something that might have been fear.

The enemy dropped their weapons and took several steps back towards the sea, an unconscious retreat towards their homeland across the water. Their eyes went wide in fright ... and then awful acceptance.

Milian pursued them, and then the Engine exploded. The blast threw her far out past the beach and over the water, and behind her the land had come alight. The whole stretch of coast she could see had blossomed into bright white flame, the fires blasting way above the cliffs, spiralling up and out from the Engine on the beach and splas.h.i.+ng across the land. Molten rock flowed, trees exploded, and the atmosphere itself thudded with shock after shock. As she dropped, another body fell with her, and they both flitted through the air as if carried by giant hands. Just before she splashed down she saw the ruin of the man it had once been. His body was split by some vast impact, his head a dangling mess pinned with crossbow bolts, and the dregs of his daemon hissed away to the air.

She thought, How much of that is in me? Then, moments before she struck the water, something struck her.

The touch of Aeon was unmistakeable. As a holy woman she had imagined its touch, but actually experiencing it was undeniable, and shattering. It scorched the daemon within her to nothing, instantly ridding her of the thing that had turned her, for a time, into a beast. A moment of joy followed, quickly subsumed by sadness because- She hit the violent surface of the sea, but hardly noticed.

-Aeon was no more. Object of Skythian wors.h.i.+p for millennia, a pa.s.sive G.o.d that observed but did not intrude, exuded power but did not demand fealty and fear, she sensed its pa.s.sing as surely as she felt this single shard of it pa.s.sing into her. It parted her soul and settled inside, and the shard became the centre of her perception.

They killed it! she thought, hardly believing. They murdered Aeon! With the cataclysmic power that had just blasted from the Engine on the beach, what was left of Skythe now? What was left of anything?

There is always something left, a voice had said, and Milian opened her mouth to gasp. Water flooded in, but she did not drown. I have you, the voice continued. The voice of her G.o.d. And you have me. This shard is a part of me, and will become a seed. But it will take time. The material part of Aeon is ruined. But ... will you carry this shard of me?

Milian could not believe that Aeon was asking her permission. But she agreed silently, and felt her G.o.d acknowledge.

What was the daemon? she thought. Was that born of the Alderian Engines?

I must rest, Aeon said. It sounded pained, and shocked, and its voice was growing more and more distant. I must ... recuperate ...

And me?

South, away from Alderia, Aeon said. And when you reach land, you must rest also.

For how long?

Until I am ready to wake.

They destroyed you, Milian thought, and her tears mixing with vast seas could have been endless.

Nothing is for ever, Aeon said, death least of all.

With her land aflame behind her, Milian sank into the water until darkness flooded her.

In the cave, back in the present and away from those distant memories for a while, Milian blinks sore eyes. Pain is better than no feeling at all, so she blinks again. Sand in her eyes, or salt, and she goes to lift her hand and rub them. Her hand refuses to move, but there is pressure in her shoulder. Her stomach muscles flex. She is coming alive again, but ...

No sign of the shard. No sense of Aeon.

Perhaps I am dead. Landed in the sea after the Engine erupted, sank, settled on the seabed and dreamed of Aeon. And the movements I feel are the sea creatures of the Duntang Archipelago tasting my eyes and tongue, my skin, rooting in the wounded flesh across my chest and stomach and hips ...

This is real, however, and the movements she feels are her own. These thoughts are level and unpanicked, not the drone-like ravings of the murderous thing she had once been. And the old memories carry a story that is not yet finished.

As she sank into the sea, salt.w.a.ter soothed her wounds. She only noticed them as the pain receded, and awareness returned to her as her senses became more deprived a sight limited by darkness, hearing by the pressures of depth. Above her she saw the remains of the ruined man drifting down towards her. A cloud of blood softened his outline, and past him the sea's surface shone and glimmered with an unknowable light-show. It looked both beautiful and deadly.

A large shadow flitted quickly through the water, streamlined and sharp, and s.n.a.t.c.hed the man's remains from within the spreading cloud. The shadow disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, leaving only an echo of the dead man's presence slowly dispersing into the water.

Am I bleeding too? she wondered. It seemed an age since she had thought of herself, though she knew it had only been hours since the daemon had come a those shockwaves that had seemed to thump through the air, the land, the rock of the world itself, and then the thing ripping into her, fixing against her soul with barbed tenacity.

She opened her mouth to cry out at the horror of what she had done, but the last of her air had already escaped her lungs. She sank deeper, coming to rest on the ocean floor. Something large and flat moved beneath her feet, and in the faint light she saw only a hint of the wide, circular creature as it glided gracefully into the obscure distance.

I should be dead! she thought, and a wave of heat closed around her from the direction of the land. Whatever was happening back there was also forcing heat into the endless sea. She turned slowly, raising her hands to protect her eyes and face from the swarm of creatures fleeing away from the land and towards her. Jellyfish slicked by, trailing tentacles that set fire to her skin wherever they touched. Tiny fish nibbled at her eyes and lips. Things with sh.e.l.ls almost as large as her sprung along the seabed, landing around and upon her and leaping again, their spiked feet piercing her thighs and ankles. Sharks arrowed by, a sea snake curled around her flailing arm, fishes nibbled at her bleeding flesh. There was no pain from the bites, though the jellyfish caresses burned so much she was amazed her skin was not aflame.

Something inside hurt worst of all. The shard a silent now, and buried deep a reminded her of madness and the things she had done, and then it prodded home again, a terribly sentient pain that seemed to speak to her and guide her, demanding something she barely understood.

She tried to breathe, but water filled her lungs. Death surely circled her but, like the dozens of arm-sized bone sharks that formed a dark cloud above her head, it did not close in entirely. The shard of Aeon warded it and them away, and she felt it urging her onward. Away from the land. Out across the ocean floor. South, it had said. And when you reach land, you must rest also. Hundreds of miles south was Alderia. All that was left of Aeon wanted to hide under its enemy's nose.

Her body leaking blood and tears, senses all but useless the steeper the seabed sloped down, creatures investigating this intruder in their midst, Milian followed the shard's bidding.

She walked across the seabed, leaving both madness and sanity behind. In their place settled a curious, distant calmness, as though both fear and normality were being crushed from her by immense pressures. Soon, the glare of fires was lost above and behind her. The darkness welcomed her in and down.

Great things moved in the waters around her, and in the ocean floor beneath. Eyes sought, nostrils flared, other organs sensed her heat and electrical charge, her womanhood and the memory of the songs her mother sang, echoes of her past drawing giant star-nosed slugs that fed on pain. But these things would mostly move aside as she approached, or fade back to their own nebulous pasts at the last moment. They were confused, and then forgetful. She was there, and then she was not. The shard of the dead G.o.d within was protecting her.

She fell into chasms and was lifted by warm tides. She pa.s.sed the rearing edifices of the islands of Duntang Archipelago, and avoided their rise towards land. She stumbled through seaweed forests for days, avoided the sharp beaks of decapuses and the poisonous spines of sand spites, and once she saw a deep pirate swimming rapidly away from her. The waving weed fronds rose high above, s.h.i.+fting slowly back and forth to the sea's beat, which might perhaps have been the pulse of the whole world. But, for her, such musings were rare. She continued to exist because the memory of the dead G.o.d Aeon was within her, and rarely did she consider what purpose she might be travelling towards.

She could not count the days. But at some point in her journey she felt the urge to stop for the first time, crawl down among the broken ruins of old s.h.i.+ps that had been swept against an undersea cliff by ancient tides, and hide. The sea itself seemed to pause in its constant movements a there were always currents, cool and cold contacts, but now everything was still. She sat silently for a long time. Crawling things investigated her and moved on.

And then something came close.

She never saw what it was, but she felt it, probing at her thoughts with a mind utterly alien and cold. Its presence pervaded the whole area, and she saw several fluorescent fish swimming so hard away from it that they simply died, slowing and sinking to the seabed, their lights fading to nothing. The shape pa.s.sed close by, sending a heavy, cool wave across and through the piled wrecks. They moved as though unsettled by the ma.s.sive thing's presence. It took a long time to drift past, and the sense of size was staggering. Even after it had gone she remained where she was for some time, unsure of exactly who she was or what she was doing anymore.

Then she was moving again, and the memory of her ruined G.o.d moved with her.

Much later, when so much time had pa.s.sed that she could no longer recall the origins of her journey a not then, at least a the sea floor began to rise.

She emerged eventually into sunlight, onto the strange sh.o.r.e of a continent she had never visited before a Alderia. The beach was cracked with spreads of melted, gla.s.sy sand, glimmering black in the daylight. Bright blue birds plucked insects from the wing. A slow mammal walked along the beach on four wide feet, not seeming to notice her. Way behind, the horizon glowed with a sickly heat. She was very, very tired, and the world was so far away. She had no wish to see any more.

She found a cave in the cliffs at one end of the beach, its entrance barely exposed even at low tide. It went deep, and so did she.

In that same cave now, she can hear the sea. It is distant, but comforting, a constant that would sound the same one age to the next. And now there is the faintest light as well, bleeding in somewhere and reflecting and refracting through the cave to where she lies. She is all but buried after being there for so long. Even the cave feels new, reshaped around her over time as seasons and years have come and gone, rocks have fallen, and the sea has done its timeless, erosive work.

It will take some time for her to find herself again. Her mouth is moist once more, but her eyes are still gritty and sore. She can feel the weight of slumped organs in her body, though her muscles seem to be reacting to her commands, doing their utmost to obey.

She thinks her G.o.d's name, but Aeon is silent. She probes for it, but there is no response. Perhaps over the time she has been hidden down here, it has faded away to nothing. It was a mere shard of what Aeon had once been, after all.

Some time later, Milian Mu sits up at last.

Chapter 3.

adaptations Venden Ugane dropped the cart's reins and fell upon a red-spined snake, one hand clamping hard behind the powerful jaws, the other pressing down halfway along its length, trying to prevent the creature's thras.h.i.+ng and avoid it curling around his arm. A year ago he'd witnessed a specimen smaller than this wrap itself around a hillhog and squeeze until the swine's guts exploded from its a.r.s.e.

'Calm it, for the b.a.s.t.a.r.d G.o.ds' sakes!' he hissed. The snake seemed to weaken, and then its movements drew to an abrupt halt. He'd seen serpents feigning death before, a defence mechanism or a hunting ploy. He would not lessen his grip.

'Fifteen spines. Shorter than they should be. Won't catch anything with them.' He lifted the head and pressed, its dislocated jaw dropping open under the pressure. Sickly yellow venom dripped from its long fangs, and he was careful not to breathe in any of its fumes. 'Teeth should be longer to break through a hillhog's hide. Hogs growing heavier and tougher. Don't adapt, don't survive.' He stood slowly, then heaved the snake down the hillside. It twisted and rattled through the air, then fell in a clump of bushes and slithered away. He watched it go, wondering how it could still be alive and whether its offspring would persist for long. It was far from a perfect specimen, but then he was already certain a perfect specimen would no longer exist. On Skythe, perfection was further away than anywhere else. The snake hunted imperfect prey, living among flora that barely understood seasons. That confusion led to beautiful landscapes of many colours a lush greens and blooming wonders, as well as the autumnal hues of orange, red and brown. But such beauty was unnatural, and wrong.

His mind never still, Venden enjoyed retroscrying; trying to discern how these animals and plants might have been in the past, and how perhaps they should have been in the present. And he could sometimes retroscry back to the point when everything had changed a when Alderia's a.s.sault had blighted the land, and polluted it for centuries to come.

Back where he'd come from the idea that Alderia had implemented magic was a forbidden concept, but here there was no one to forbid. Not this far north, at least. On the southern sh.o.r.es there were the slayers, and some people still foolish enough to fear uttering the truth. But here he was deep in the heart of Skythe, and deep in the wild past.

The war had changed things more than most people could ever believe. Discovering the truth was a challenge that had become a personal quest since he had come here to live, and every oddity he found only served to pique his interest more. Back on Alderia, his interest had necessitated the gathering of forbidden information a parchments, diagrams, whispered rumours pa.s.sed on in dingy bas.e.m.e.nt rooms. He had never questioned his strange interest in a war six hundred years old, not even when he was a child. But coming to Skythe meant that he could wander the corrupted site of the war and discover evidence for himself, and his fascination seemed like the most natural thing in the world. It was what he had been born to do, and he felt more at home than ever before.

Especially since discovering the remnant, when in a flash his life had taken on new meaning. Since then, his retroscrying of local flora and fauna had become little more than a way to pa.s.s time during his journeys. What he sought now was something far less known.

Venden picked up the cart's reins and started hauling it forward again. He had come this way once before on one of his scouting trips for further remnants, but any tracks he had left behind had been wiped away by the weather. The gentle slope of the hillside was relatively free of trees and rocks, and a good route along the valley towards his destination. Soon he would drop down to the valley floor and follow the river. The cart was small, light, but it was the object on it that might cause him some problems. It had taken eight days to come forty miles, and now he was almost home.

Memories of his previous life a the sad, wasting man who was his father; the dead mother a came clearer in dreams now than in waking hours, an indication that he was leaving his past way behind. It was a long time since he had whispered apologies to his father before dropping into a peaceful sleep.

Sometimes he thought to whisper to that void hiding inside of him instead, but he had long given up trying to understand.

The cart b.u.mped, and the thing it contained thudded against the timber sides. Venden glanced back at it. Every time he looked, his stomach dropped and he felt sick. It was a sickness at his loss of control, at the feeling of being controlled. He should never have known where to travel to find it.

It had been the same with every other remnant.

The memory of his long journey north from Skythe's southern sh.o.r.e, and what he had found close to the source of the river, was as fresh now as the time he had first relived it. Each recollection seemed to make it more real, as if his mind was solidifying his experience to hold back the subtle madness he felt. Everyone blessed with genius is also tainted with madness, his father had told him on the day Venden was accepted into the Guild of Inventors. But that was a continent, and a lifetime, away.

'I'm not mad,' he said to the wilderness. Each reiteration chipped away at his confidence in the idea, and the watcher inside had never deigned to offer an opinion.

All through his journey north from Alderia to Skythe, he had suspected that he was being drawn to something. After many days stowed away on the supply s.h.i.+p a fearing capture, stealing food a the open freedom of this strange land had refreshed him. It washed out the fears that had built in him, and the regrets about what he had done. And finding himself somewhere he had dreamed of for years, it had not been difficult to follow the lure.

He guided the cart down the gentle slope, turning so that he was behind it and the weight of its contents pulled it down. Staring at the shape exposed to the harsh sunlight, Venden felt that s.h.i.+ver again, the mysterious sense that this hidden thing was always meant to be found by him. The first time he touched it, the smooth shape seemed to fit his hand perfectly, as if he had always known it. It had lain in the ruin of an old Skythian temple for centuries, buried beneath a fallen wall, swathed with sickly crawling plants, patiently waiting. It had taken only a morning to pull back the rubble and cut away the plants that sought to smother the object, and it had felt like granting freedom.

The length of his arm but slightly thicker, the spine-like object had fourteen protuberances down both sides, each of them as long as his thumb. They were round and smooth, and pocked with between three and thirteen holes. These holes had been home to crawling things, but since loading the object onto the cart they all seemed to have crawled away. The central trunk was almost circular, with one side slightly heavier than the other. If cut it would have the cross-section of a seagull's egg, but Venden would never try to cut it. He wasn't certain it could be cut a even after so long, its surface was completely unscarred by anything time, or the falling temple wall, had thrown at it.

With each b.u.mp it seemed to slip across the cart's wooden surface, moving as if alive.

But it was not alive. When he'd picked it up it had been cold and still, hard.

The cart jumped over a rock and the ropes jarred through his hand, burning his skin and causing him to cry out. He tugged hard, pulled the axle to the left, and jammed the wheels against a rut in the hillside. Panting, Venden released the cart and sat down. The sun blazed. His water skins were empty. Home was near, but the familiar desire to draw out his journey had been nagging at him for the past two days.

He liked being at his camp, but when he was out looking for a relic he never wanted to get there. Deep down, past even that shadow at his core, he was terrified of what he was doing.

Falling onto his back in the long gra.s.s, turning his head to the side, he saw a small spiky plant speckled with hundreds of tiny purple flowers. 'Bruised heather,' he said, used to talking to himself. For the past years, there had only been the animals and plants of this place to speak to. The Skythians he encountered seemed lost to civilisation, regressed to more feeble times. 'Haven't seen it this far inland before. Likes the sea breeze.' He leaned on one elbow and examined the plant closer. 'Flowers are catching insects. Drowning them. It's turned carnivorous. Long stems, flowers too heavy when they're full ...' He lifted several drooping stems with one finger and found that more than half of them had snapped. At the breaks, the bright green stems were turning a rusty brown, as if their drowned victims' blood seeped out. 'Not fit for purpose.' Sitting up, Venden looked at the sky. Up there where the sun burned fierce and the clouds flowed south to north, there was nothing that looked wrong. The sky was pure and untarnished, while Skythe was tainted by the past.

'It should all be dead by now,' he said, because from his studies back on Alderia he knew that such natural systems could not persist if things were going wrong. It was early spring, but down the hillside he could see a swathe of trees whose leaves were smudged orange, yellow and red, a gorgeous array of colours that betrayed the errors imprinted in whatever still drove the trees to grow. Perhaps they drew this corruption up from the soil through their roots, infected water, mutated nutrients. Or maybe even Skythe's air was polluted and wrong.

Down to the valley floor, following the river, he soon approached the place he had come to know as the ruined vale. From a distance it presented a pleasing vista a the river curving in a gentle arc around an area of uneven ground, trees standing sentinel, and the remains of two stone bridges planted either side of the river. One of them was almost unrecognisable, but the other had only lost its central span, the carved stone formations on either side evidence of the graceful structure it had once been. The ground here was sometimes marshy, but not today. The river had not flooded for several moons.

As he drew closer a flock of sparrs took flight, startling him to a standstill. The commonest birds in this part of Skythe, they were also the prettiest, with luminescent blue wings, long trailing tails, and a green flash on their chests by which it was possible to identify the males from the females. But in flocks their combined song sounded like a stalking creature's roar, and Venden could never get used to the brief moment of shock.

The sparrs flittered up and to the east, higher into the hills, swirling and swooping but never breaking formation. There were hunting things in the air in these high valleys that would pick off any bird straying from the group.

The ruined vale used to be a large village. Destroyed during or soon after the Skythian War, it no longer betrayed any evidence of its violent demise. Nature had reclaimed the village, subsuming it, smothering the buildings with crawling plants and trees, pulling them back into the ground. There were glimpses of upright stone structures here and there, but time had ensured that there was no longer much order left to this place. Walls had fallen and been taken back to the wild.

Once, walking through the ruined vale almost two years before, on the day he had named it, Venden had sensed something beneath one of the small hillocks of tumbled stone. There was no sound and no hint of physical movement, but staring at the plant-covered mound he had been taken with the disconcerting sensation that everything within was in turmoil. A terrible aura of violence projected from the motionless pile, and Venden's heart rate had doubled in the blink of an eye.